Conspirituality: Recent Episodes
Derek Beres, Matthew Remski, Julian Walker
A weekly study of converging right-wing conspiracy theories and faux-progressive wellness utopianism. At best, the conspirituality movement attacks public health efforts in times of crisis. At worst, it fronts and recruits for the fever-dream of QAnon. As the alt-right and New Age horseshoe toward each other in a blur of disinformation, clear discourse and good intentions get smothered. Charismatic influencers exploit their followers by co-opting conspiracy theories on a spectrum of intensity ranging from vaccines to child trafficking. In the process, spiritual beliefs that have nurtured creativity and meaning are transforming into memes of a quickly-globalizing paranoia. Conspirituality Podcast attempts to bring understanding to this landscape. A journalist, a cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic discuss the stories, cognitive dissonances, and cultic dynamics tearing through the yoga, wellness, and new spirituality worlds. Mainstream outlets have noticed the problem. We crowd-source, research, analyze, and dream answers to it.
Sure, a big question: one Derek explores in the context of this nearly three-year-old Conspirituality project. Criticism and awareness are essential tools in a critical thinking kit, but to what end? As he prepares upcoming presentations on the topic of misinformation in public health, Derek reflects on the value of identifying charlatans and quacks while also speculating about how to move forward.
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Those who fly high, fall hard. Pole dance company S-Factor crashed and burned in 2021 amidst a stack of complaints. Detractors said the company was conducting unlicensed group therapy, cosplaying enlightenment by co-opting the labour of sex workers, and whitewashing issues of racial equality.
Created by former actor Sheila Kelley, S-Factor monetized pole dancing as a path of feminist and spiritual awakening.
In this 2-part Listener Story, Matthew speaks to Jessica Hopper about her 13 years learning and teaching in the now-defunct company. Hopper paints a picture of a confusing, high-demand group, and tells us how she made her way out.
NOTE: During our discussion, Jessica recounts a tense all-hands S-factor staff meeting to discuss PR strategy at a crucial moment as the company cracked-up over issues of white fragility. I wasn't able to secure a recording of that call before my interview with Jessica, or since. But after we recorded, I did confirm what Jessica reports about it with 3 of the other participants on that call. MR
Show NotesStripped Down: The Undoing of Hollywood's Favorite Pole-Dancing Studio —Hollywood Reporter.
"Strip Down, Rise Up" | Official Trailer | Netflix
Faces of Fierce Femininity—online conference organized by Kelly Brogan
Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema—Laura Mulvey, 1975
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Can you believe that Nancy Pelosi paid people to attack the Capitol on Jan 6 in order to make Republicans look bad? Actually, I mean, Jan 6 was the most peaceful gathering of a million patriots in history. Wait, hold on: Jan 6 was an antifa operative to act as cover for the fact that the election was, indeed, stolen.
Do any of these stories sound familiar? Now imagine hearing them all, and dozens more like them, all in the same day, and you’ll get a glimpse of what Daily Show correspondent and host of the podcast, Fingers the Conspiracy, Jordan Klepper, endures on a regular basis. Today Jordan joins us to talk about the cursed world of conspiracies that he’s witnessed, up close and in person, with the people who spread them, what it was like to be at the Capitol on Jan 6, and the bewildering intersection of comedy and politics.
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Katie Griggs. Katie Day. Kundalini Katie. Guru Jagat. We hardly knew you.
The late "Queen of Conspiracy Theories" is now memorialized on NPR through Emily Guerin's LAist podcast "Imperfect Paradise."
Matthew sits down with Emily to explore how we cover figures like Griggs, what it was like to interview her family, and what we can ultimately say about the compromised feminist empowerment she offered her followers—and whether she could have taken another route.
Show NotesShe was a popular yoga guru. Then she embraced QAnon conspiracy theories — NPR, LAist36: Guru Jagat’s Pandemic Brandwash (w/Philip Deslippe & Stacie Stukin)37: Guru Jagat Cultjacks Kundalini Yoga (w/Philip Deslippe & Stacie Stukin)
(PDF) From Maharaj to Mahan Tantric: The Construction of Yogi Bhajan’s Kundalini Yoga — Philip Deslippe
Yogi Bhajan Turned an L.A. Yoga Studio into a Juggernaut, and Left Two Generations of Followers Reeling from Alleged Abuse — Stacie Stukin
Inside the Dubious World of RA MA Yoga, and Its Girl Boss Guru to the Stars — Cassidy George, VICE
Guru Jagat Dies. A Saint Is Born. | by Matthew Remski | Aug, 2021 | Medium
Guru Jagat Mourned in Person with Breathing Exercises, No Masks — Matthew Remski
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What do you do when your psychotherapy clients suffer from conspiracy theory anxiety?
What do you do when the conspirituality-based therapy advice they get from TikTok is compelling, but also misleading?
Toronto-based Registered Psychotherapist Alessia Caputo joins Matthew for this Listener Story installment to discuss the changing therapeutic landscape, in the office and online.
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Using a combination of Alexa, Siri, and your extensive search history, we've been able to scan your bio energetic field, and are sending personalized quantum rebalancing and immune-boosting frequencies your way as you listen. Can you feel it?! Can your pet feel it? Because, dear listener, there’s a program for them, too. In fact, there’s a program for everything and everyone because frequencies don’t discriminate—as long as you’re not into Big Pharma, that is. All you need is to invest in this little $1,000 machine—$4,000 if you want the “professional edition”—that clips onto your Lulu gear and injects quantum vibes straight into your soul.
That’s right, this week we’re talking about the Healy. Our correspondent, Mallory DeMille, has scanned the ethereal social media frequencies to find a greatest hits collection of influencers attempting to energetically guide you into their downline. Derek offers a bit of Healy history, which is rooted in the anti-EMF movement, while Matthew and I wonder: why is it that the same wellness crew that’s afraid of 5G and vaccine technology is so willing to wear this mysterious device?
Show NotesHealy World Official on YouTube
Marcus Schmieke explains the Technology and Science behind Healy
@trusting_birth questioning Healy
See conspirituality.net/episodes for screenshots mentioned during this episode
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Did the Matrix kidnap Top G? Or is Andrew Tate the Matrix himself, now unplugged and shorting out in a Romanian jail?
While his self-confessed crimes against women come home to roost, the online spectacle his arrest has generated provides a litmus test for just how fast the cognitive dissonance of culture war chaos can plummet.
Welcome to the broader “Tate crime”: a spectacle of acute reality-reversal, fuelled by reactionary politics and driven by a cultic network of devotees and SEO managers, where culture war punditry is funded by bogus self-help courses and online pornography.
Show Notes
The PHD Program (“Pimping Hos Degree)
Andrew Tate said he broke a woman's jaw and that his business was a 'scam' ahead of Romanian charges
Tate admits to statutory rape
Part One: Andrew Tate, and the Mythopoetic Men's Movement - Behind the Bastards | iHeart
The Dangerous Rise of Andrew Tate
"From Pick-Up Artists to Incels: Con(fidence) Games, Networked Misogyny, and the Failure of Neoliberalism"
A Coordinated Group Of 4,500 Bots Tweeted In Support Of Andrew Tate
Teachers Warn That Misogynist Andrew Tate Has 'Radicalized' School-Age Boys
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Ok, the title is a bit outlandish, but for a reason: many of Russell Brand's Rumble videos feature titles like "HERE WE GO" and "THE FALL OF FAUCI." When everything is at volume 11, nothing seems to make sense—which is a bit how Derek and Julian feel after listening to his recent interview with Bari Weiss.
Not that Bari isn't a solid presenter—she is, even if we don't agree with everything she says. We'll pick apart her portion of the Twitter Files, while also continuing our investigation into Russell's always-on and always-loud tactics that disorient as much as obscure.
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Perhaps you’ve seen the Rumi quote repeated on social media memes: “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” The wounded healer is a popular archetype in wellness spaces, and indeed, sometimes experience teaches wisdom, enabling the victim to overcome their trauma and help others. But in conspiritualist spaces, the wounded healer can also begin a monetization stream where everything becomes evidence of trauma, only to be healed through this book, or that course, or a brand-new brand of meditation that’s only the marketing scheme of an old form.
Speaking of brands, we look at the wounded healer through the lens of Russell Brand, among others. This leads to Derek’s interview with YouTuber and podcaster, Chris Boutte, aka The Rewired Soul, who happens to be in recovery and watched firsthand as Russell went from helpful figure to shadowy archetype. Can an addiction to drugs be healed, only to lead to an addiction to clicks and likes? Stay tuned…
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In part two of Derek and Julian's deconstruction of the Russell Brand/Matt Taibbi Twitter Files Rumble Session, Matt and Russell swoon over their interactions with Elon Musk, discuss how the MSM unfairly maligns Vladimir Putin and his invasion of Ukraine, and chat about the old regime at Twitter being in service of the sinister agenda of global institutions like the IMF.
Strap in.
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How do the screams of the Satanic Panic echo in anti-woke politics?
This past week, New Age Satanic Panic influencer Teal Swan released a new video to 1.5M YouTube subscribers about the dangers of "Wokeism." Yesterday, Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) announced plans to form a Congressional Anti-Woke Caucus.
We know by now that conspirituality is a machine charismatics can use to generate mystical solutions to exaggerated or imagined crises. With Swan’s pivot into anti-woke discourse, she is taking the next logical step in broadening and secularizing her message.
What's not entirely clear is the pathway Swan has taken from Satanic Panic influencer to a New Age starseed, to unlicensed trauma recovery expert, to this potential future as a culture warrior. This Brief connects some of the dots, as the entanglement between New Age wellness objectives and reactionary populism tightens.
Show Notes"Wokeism" and Today's "Woke" Society
- Who’s Afraid of Teal Swan? (w/Jon Kasbe)
111: Who's Afraid of Teal Swan (pt 2) (w/Jennings Brown)
UNLOCKED: Swan Song Series 1 | Close to Home (please search "Swan Song Series to find all unlocked episodes)
From QAnon to Anti-Woke. A New Age guru pivots to a new… | by Matthew Remski
Qanon - The Great Awakening: PsyOp or the Real Deal? - Piercing the Veil of Reality Bernhard Guenther
The January 6th Capitol Siege has indelibly linked QAnon to domestic terrorism.
The deletion of vast networks of QAnon influencers and groups from social channels like FB and Twitter
Cullen Hoback’s Q: Into the Storm documentary
Rep. Jim Banks announces the Anti-Woke Caucus
Fighting the Woke Agenda in Congress - The American Mind
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Where have all the strongmen gone, long time scrolling? Where have all the strongmen gone, long time ago? Where have all the strongmen gone? Gone to posting, everyone. Oh when will they ever turn off their phones? Not anytime soon. Trump on Truth Social, Modi on Instagram, Bolsonaro tweeting from a Kentucky Fried Chicken in Miami.
Today we’re looking at the new strongmen at the top of our political circuses. According to our guest, strongman-whisperer historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, they’re of new breed. They’re not the steampunk fascists of 100 years ago. They’re not Cold War autocrats, installed by the CIA. These guys are posters. They do not need to seize the means of production. Their goal is to disrupt the production of meaning.
Julian’s interview with Ben-Ghiat gives us a great opportunity to look at the strongman fetish in conspirituality, and to rate the top male influencers in our book on a scale of 10 Gaddafis.
Show Notes
Twitter’s moderation system is in tatters
Who is the 'Trump of the Tropics?': Brazil's divisive new president, Jair Bolsonaro— in his own words
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In November, the College of Psychologists of Ontario (CPO)—through which Jordan Peterson must be licensed in order to treat private clients—opened an investigation into complaints over his Twitter behaviour. A few days ago, he publishing the disciplinary paper trail to Twitter, but failed to properly redact the names of complainants.
Mystery questions:
Can you shitpost at public servants, dox complainants, misgender people, call doctors who provide gender-affirming care “monsters,” cavort with fascists, and fat shame random swimsuit models to millions of people on Twitter and continue to be a licensed psychologist in the province of Ontario?
Dr. Taslim Alani-Verjee joins me to do some 101 work on JP’s commitments to the profession that gives him clout and credibility. She is a clinical psychologist and the Director and Founder of Silm Centre for Mental Health. She teaches psychology and ethics at Adler Graduate Professional School, and is adjunct professor at Lakehead. Some of her concentration areas include intimate partner violence, stigma, social justice, and cultural competence.
Show Notes
CPOntario vs J B Peterson
Howard Levitt: What's happening to Jordan Peterson could happen to anyone now
When Your Psychologist Goes Viral: How Jordan Peterson's Fame Affected His Private Practice
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While the Twitter Files revealed...not much at all...the right continues to push Elon Musk's "revelations" as hard as Hunter Biden's magical laptop, which seems to absorb every ill in society like Pandora's infamous box. And then there's Russell Brand, who can't turn away from a good conspiracy, or a bad one. He talks about Hunter's laptop and more with Matt Taibbi in a recent hour-long Rumble session.
This week is part one of Derek and Julian's deconstruction of what went down, why it ultimately doesn't matter, and why it matters very much to both Brand's and Taibbi's brand building.
Show Notes
Will the Real Tesla Founder Please Stand Up?
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Matthew and Julian sit down for the second of a two-part examination of the 1988 bestseller at the heart of the recovered memory movement. This is episode 10 of the Swan Song Series.
Show Notes
Controversy Behind the False Memory Syndrome Foundation
The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse
Truth and reconciliation
Cases That Have Resulted in Convictions
Why The Courage to Heal Isn't on My Recommended Reading List
Creating Hysteria
25 Years of Trauma Treatment Networker 2014
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Happy New Year, Conspirituality listeners!
As with the much anticipated midterm elections, the holiday season is now officially behind us. Which means that in addition to any of the colds, flu, and COVID strains circulating, many of our listeners may still be in recovery mode from family time.
We're specifically referring to political tensions over the holiday dinner table. You know, the vegan sister insisting on a land acknowledgment before the QAnon uncle says grace, while the anti-vax aunt rants at her to take off her mask. Can somebody pass the apple pie?
Our guest today is journalist, author, and political analyst, Anand Giridharadas. Julian spoke with him about his new book, The Persuaders, in which he profiles people on the ground working to change minds, bridge divisions and fight for democracy. The Persuaders offers inspiration to those who refuse to accept that a rigid polarization in which no one ever changes their mind, is the new normal.
Show Notes
How to Become a Better Persuader
Understanding Your Circle of Influence: Calling In with Loretta Ross
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The Hodgetwins’ brand of comedy relies on punching down, not nuance or storytelling—or being based in reality in any meaningful way. They’ll take a subject, make fun of it, then sometimes moralize about why they’re right on a topic—especially when it comes to their version of masculinity.
Derek looks at these twins' vitriolic humor and places it in the context of competition. Whether they're preaching transphobia, fat-shaming, or other forms of bigotry, what they're revealing is really male fragility, not the all-important masculinity they profess.
Show NotesThe Racist Roots of Fighting Obesity
The Bizarre and Racist History of the BMI
Breaking Down the ‘Wellness-Industrial Complex,’ an Episode at a Time
Frans de Waal: The surprising science of alpha males
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Chaya Raichik of Libs of TikTok calls the LGBTQ+ community a cult. Does this mean the term has lost all meaning?
Searching for the roots of Raichik's abuse of cult discourse leads Matthew back through a cursed gender critical message board to an ill-conceived Twitter thread by cult expert Steve Hassan.
A Conspirituality Brief on what happens when fascists seize control of highly-charged explanatory tools.
Show Notes
Libs of TikTok has become central to right wing politics - The Washington Post
Twitter account Libs of TikTok blamed for harassment of children's hospitals
The artificial growth of hate speech
The Happy-Go-Lucky Jewish Group That Connects Trump and Putin - POLITICO Magazine
Cross-Dressing - Parshat Ki Teitzei - Chabad.org
Secret LGBTQ Chabad Group Fills Void - Jewish Telegraphic Agency
'Social contagion' isn’t causing more youths to be transgender, study finds
Meet Chris Elston, the BC Man Taking Anti-Trans Hate On Tour Across Canada
Chris Elston: Woman followed by man demanding trans health 'education'
Study finds 2.5% of transgender kids go through detransition
Detransition Facts and Statistics 2022: Exploding the Myths Around
Hassan's main detrans Twitter thread
Hassan's other detrans Twitter thread
The BITE Model of Authoritarian Control: Undue Influence, Thought Reform, Brainwashing, Mind Control, Trafficking and the Law - ProQuest
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Matthew and Julian sit down for the first of a two-part examination of the 1988 bestseller at the heart of the recovered memory movement—which played a central role in validating Satanic Panic testimonials. This is episode 9 of the Swan Song Series 9.
The basic premise of The Courage to Heal, by creative writing instructors Ellen Bass and Laura Davis, is that memories of childhood abuse, especially child sexual abuse, can be recovered and articulated by survivors who are given the proper space, tools, and validation. The book explores how this be facilitated within the context of journaling, writing poetry, and writing memoir, and what the therapeutic benefits of full confessional articulation can be.
While countless people affirm that this book was a lifeline during a time in which recovery resources for child abuse survivors were rare, there are substantial problems with the book's method, claims about memory, dodgy sources, and endorsement of outright Satanic Panic propaganda.
Show Notes
Controversy Behind the False Memory Syndrome Foundation
The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse
Truth and reconciliation
Cases That Have Resulted in Convictions
Why The Courage to Heal Isn't on My Recommended Reading List
Creating Hysteria
25 Years of Trauma Treatment Networker 2014
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Part 2 of Matthew's conversation with Sarah.
Sarah grew up in the Church of Scientology. But she also grew up in a small town. And, in a neurodiverse family.
We come from so many places. Exploitative, hierarchical, hypocritical. Generous, tender, and odd.
It is an honor to present this installment of Listeners' Stories. We're tickled to learn that Sarah's awakening from Scientology was quickened by that South Park episode. And we're humbled to learn about how her mother, despite being deeply enmeshed in a coercive cult, still managed to kindle both compassion and common sense in her children.
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The second part of Julian and Matthew's long look at the 1999 film Teal Swan was reportedly obsessed with as a teen. Girl, Interrupted is a freewheeling adaptation of a 1993 memoir by Susanna Kaysen about the 18 months she spent undergoing treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder in a Massachusetts psychiatric facility in the late 1960s. This episode 8 of the Swan Song Series.
This study is provoked by a memory recounted by Swan's childhood friend, Diana Hansen Ribera, that Swan identified with the character of Lisa Rowe in the film. Angelina Jolie won an Oscar for her searing performance of Rowe, a sociopath.
In this second episode, we explore several characters that Swan may have (and may yet) identify with, discuss the awkwardness of portraying mental health narratives on the big screen, and what it would really take for such an intense film to be digestible for typical teenagers. Matthew ends with a meditation on immersive/claustrophobic media—which Swan goes on to master—compared with the relief of developing a meta-view capable of inhabiting many stories, as opposed to imitating one.
Show NotesSENECA THE YOUNGER, HERCULES FURENS - Theoi Classical Texts Library
Hercules (Seneca)
Girl, Interrupted — Susanna Kaysen
1607: Growing up with Teal Swan - Diana Hansen Ribera
Mad, Bad, and Sad: Women and the Mind Doctors by Lisa Appignanesi
Brittany Murphy: Inside Her Sudden Death at 32 That Still Confounds Hollywood
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Elon, Elon, who are you? Where is your essential self? Where are you as you soar through your space fantasies, as you track and hedge and bet your billions, wondering if all those emeralds gave you an unfair advantage in life?
What is the weather like on Mars? Have you found yourself yet, hiding in millions of lines of self-driving code? Have you found your own face as you surveil your quivering workforce, bunking in the San Francisco headquarters you stopped paying rent on?
Is the real you playing endless video games, getting stoned with Joe Rogan, making an eleventh baby with a fourth partner? Do you feel you’re connected to everything when you post at the speed of light?
As Musk teeters on the brink of ego death and financial annihilation, Matthew wonders about his inner life, especially after he dropped a Buddhist-type Easter Egg in a tweeted photo of his bedside table.
Is Elon Musk a Buddha-bro? No surprise if he was. After all, a big chunk of American Buddhism lines up perfectly with Musk's reactionary centrism, performative transcendence, bog-standard conspiracism, and culture war shitposting.
Here to help us understand this strange world—and what kind of Buddhism could make Elon Musk a better human, if he gave a shit—are Dr. Ann Gleig, Aassociate Professor of religion and cultural studies at University of Central Florida, and independent scholar Brenna Artinger. We’ll be focusing on their awesome paper, “#BuddhistCultureWars: BuddhaBros, Alt-Right Dharma, and Snowflake Sanghas,”
Show Notes
Adam Jensen | Deus Ex Wiki
THE CALIFORNIAN IDEOLOGY
Mindfulness in Silicon Valley | Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School
BuddhistCultureWars: BuddhaBros, Alt-Right Dharma, and Snowflake Sanghas
Reactionary White Buddhists Have Joined The Fight Against Critical Race Theory
Why Are White Buddhists So Angry?
A Murky Scandal Involving a Powerful Punk Rock Dharma Teacher Is Dividing a Major Buddhist Community
Leaked Internal Report: Famous Buddhist Leader Noah Levine Was Accused of Rape and Assault
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Sarah grew up in the Church of Scientology. But she also grew up in a small town. And, in a neurodiverse family.
We come from so many places. Exploitative, hierarchical, hypocritical. Generous, tender, and odd.
It is an honor to present this installment of Listeners' Stories. We're tickled to learn that Sarah's awakening from Scientology was quickened by that South Park episode. And we're humbled to learn about how her mother, despite being deeply enmeshed in a coercive cult, still managed to kindle both compassion and common sense in her children.
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Remember way back to the beginning of this podcast, shortly after “Plandemic” dropped, when wellness influencers immediately began selling supposed “immune supporting” supplements? That trend has only intensified in recent months, with grifters like Peter McCullough and Mikki Willis getting in on the supplement game. In part three of his trilogy on supplements, Derek talks with dietician Kevin Klatt about what supplements are actually good for—as well as how this unregulated industry is monetizing fears around future viruses.
They also discuss the wild west of nootropics, supposed brain-enhancing substances that don’t scare you about pandemics, but instead make you believe that with just a little more optimization you’ll be the most perfect you possible…until another product drop, that is. To discuss the world of lack that other influencers capitalize on, we’ll discuss the annual A Fest, a TED-style wellness gathering for millionaires that banks on you never actually feeling content in your life, but instead chasing a promise of unachievable eternal betterment.
Show Notes
Inside the Wellness Festival for Millionaires
Human Rights Watch: Jordan
Kevin Klatt on Instagram | Twitter
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In this special report, Julian examines how the machinery of right-wing propaganda engineers the necessary conditions for stochastic terror. The recent waves of dehumanizing anti-LGBTQ bigotry heighten the probability of extremist violence. When it happens—as in November's tragic mass-shooting at Club Q, pointing this out leads right-wing media to quickly accuse the left of exploiting tragedy. Worse still, we're supposedly defending "groomers" and "child mutilation."
Meanwhile literal swastika flag-waving Nazis, as well as Proud Boys, Patriot Front, and other armed militia-types are increasingly showing up outside LGBTQ venues across the country. Terrorists deliberately sabotaged a North Carolina power grid, in an act many believe was designed to stop a drag show. Forty thousand people were without power for four days in early December as a result.
At the epicenter of this latest toxic culture war shock-wave is The Daily Wire. Funded by idiosyncratic religious fundamentalists who believe abortion and homosexuality are not only sins, but should be crimes—their roster of edgy, slickly produced personalities, like Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Candace Owens, and now, Jordan Peterson, all go hard on the ugliest characterizations, both of LGBTQ people, and of the teachers and doctors who care for them. Julian shows how they have picked up on James Lindsay's outrageous conspiracy claim of a "handshake agreement" between communists and pedophiles, and how the "grass roots" moral panic org. with super PAC funding, Moms for Liberty, is hijacking school boards in Red states and Blue.
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Those who fly high, fall hard. Pole dance company S-Factor crashed and burned in 2021 amidst a stack of complaints. Detractors said the company was conducting unlicensed group therapy, cosplaying enlightenment by co-opting the labour of sex workers, and whitewashing issues of racial equality.
Created by former actor Sheila Kelley, S-Factor monetized pole dancing as a path of feminist and spiritual awakening.
In Part 2 of this Listener Story, Matthew speaks to Jessica Hopper about her 13 years learning and teaching in the now-defunct company. Hopper paints a picture of a confusing, high-demand group, and tells us how she made her way out.
NOTE: During our discussion, Jessica recounts a tense all-hands S-factor staff meeting to discuss PR strategy at a crucial moment as the company cracked-up over issues of white fragility. I wasn't able to secure a recording of that call before my interview with Jessica, or since. But after we recorded, I did confirm what Jessica reports about it with 3 of the other participants on that call. MR
Show NotesStripped Down: The Undoing of Hollywood's Favorite Pole-Dancing Studio —Hollywood Reporter.
"Strip Down, Rise Up" | Official Trailer | Netflix
Faces of Fierce Femininity—online conference organized by Kelly Brogan
Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema—Laura Mulvey, 1975
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Julian and Matthew take a long look at the 1999 film Teal Swan was reportedly obsessed with as a teen. Girl, Interrupted is a bold adaptation of a 1993 memoir by the writer Susanna Kaysen about the 18 months she spent undergoing treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder in a Massachusetts psychiatric facility in the late 1960s. This is episode 7 of the Swan Song Series.
This study is provoked by a memory recounted by Swan's childhood friend, Diana Hansen Ribera, that Swan identified with the character of Lisa Rowe in the film. Angelina Jolie won an Oscar for her searing performance of Rowe, a sociopath.
Show NotesGirl, Interrupted — Susanna Kaysen
1607: Growing up with Teal Swan - Diana Hansen Ribera
Mad, Bad, and Sad: Women and the Mind Doctors by Lisa Appignanesi | Goodreads
Brittany Murphy: Inside Her Sudden Death at 32 That Still Confounds Hollywood
Girl, Interrupted at her Music. Vermeer. 1660.
It’s the painting from whose frame a girl looks out, ignoring her beefy music teacher, whose proprietary hand rests on her chair. The light is muted, winter light, but her face is bright. I looked into her brown eyes and I recoiled. She was warning me of something—she had looked up from her work to warn me. Her mouth was slightly open, as if she had just drawn a breath in order to say to me, “Don’t!” I moved backward, trying to get beyond the range of her urgency. But her urgency filled the corridor. “Wait,” she was saying, “wait! Don’t go!” — Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted
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We didn't have tracking BDSM Easter eggs in fashion shoots or Ye’s Jew-hating Christofascism on our bingo card. But here we are, covering a cluster of cursed images and hypomanic clips.
We’ll stare right at the train wreck this week, but we refuse to feel hopeless. Because we can always learn—in this case about how the psychic and bodily impacts of this churn of bizarre hatred relate to the function of propaganda. And we can always be inspired by people who slow down and do the hard work of understanding the spectacle.
From our side of the progressive aisle, it's easy to assume that consumers of Ye and conspiracy theories are gullible cultural dopes. But our guest today, sociologist and media scholar at UNC, Chapel Hill, Francesca Tripodi says "not so fast!" To understand how right-wing propaganda functions, she spent months consuming a conservative digital news-diet and went undercover in hard-right circles.
Show Notes
Kanye "Ye" West—The Emperor w/No Clothes (TimbahOnToast)
Balenciaga and the long history of "shockvertising"
Jewish Allies Denounce Trump's Dinner w/Antisemites
Masked Ye West Praises Hitler on Alex Jones' InfoWars
Proud Boy Founder Gavin McInnes Hosts Ye West
QAA 210: Balenciaga, Ye, Club Q
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Those who fly high, fall hard. Pole dance company S-Factor crashed and burned in 2021 amidst a stack of complaints. Detractors said the company was conducting unlicensed group therapy, cosplaying enlightenment by co-opting the labour of sex workers, and whitewashing issues of racial equality.
Created by former actor Sheila Kelley, S-Factor monetized pole dancing as a path of feminist and spiritual awakening.
In this second installment of Listener Stories (part 2 next week), Matthew speaks to Jessica Hopper about her 13 years learning and teaching in the now-defunct company. Hopper paints a picture of a confusing, high-demand group, and tells us how she made her way out.
Show NotesStripped Down: The Undoing of Hollywood's Favorite Pole-Dancing Studio —Hollywood Reporter.
"Strip Down, Rise Up" | Official Trailer | Netflix
Faces of Fierce Femininity—online conference organized by Kelly Brogan
Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema—Laura Mulvey, 1975
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Matthew checks in with investigative journalist Alexi Mostrous on his fantastic work digging up the Hampstead Hoax.
Show Notes
Hoaxed — Tortoise Media
Re P and Q (Children: Care Proceedings: Fact Finding)
Jacqui Farmer's "Hampstead Research"
Charlotte Ward’s conspirituality.org About page
Hoaxtead Research
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Did you know, right now, as you sit there listening to this, your body is filled with parasites that need to be cleansed? Of course, that’s if you live in America, since every other country on the planet cleanses four times a year. Seriously. We heard it on TikTok.
Scrolling through the gutters of TikTok is challenging for us Gen Xers, and so our TikTok correspondent, Mallory DeMille, has done the dirty work for us. After laying out an all-too-common supplement scam, she looks at the shitty world of parasite cleanses where budding influencers snap strange shots of their feces before scaring you into their downline. I’ll also preview a bit of my upcoming conversation with dietician Kevin Klatt, who’s been tracking this TikTok trend with dismay as well. He’ll bring the science while Mallory breaks down the techniques.
Show NotesMallory DeMille on Twitter
Kevin Klatt on Instagram
Parasite cleanses are ‘modern snake oil.’ Experts explain why.
Mason Kuhr on TikTok
Stampede Network on TikTok
Kim Rogers on TikTok
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Are you ready for the bestest, purest immunity-boosting supplement in the history of the world? No, not that one. Only I have discovered what really works, and I'll share it with you this week.
Ok, not quite, but Derek looks at a recent JAMA study that found many of the top 30 supplements sold on Amazon don't contain what they claim. He opens by looking at Mikki Willis's latest best supplement ever, as well as a naturopath and her binder filled with detoxing supplement protocols.
Show NotesWellness influencers don't understand history
Does Z-Stack multivitamin work to boost the immune system, and is it safe?
Analysis of Select Dietary Supplement Products Marketed to Support or Boost the Immune System
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Well jeez. What can we say? We're totally honored to host and learn from Aubrey Gordon, author and co-host of Maintenance Phase. She gives us the rundown on anti-fat bias, its links to racism, the soft eugenics of the BMI, the insincere "concern" of the slender, and the intellectual and moral dead end of "being fat is a choice." We also get into some psychothinalysis. Oh yes we do.
It's super inspiring to interview someone with a deep command of crucial material, plus the ability to pivot in startling directions, plus the skill to listen as fluently as they speak, plus all that warmth and welcome and empathy and accessibility. Thanks Aubrey!
Show Notes
Your Fat Friend website
What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat
“You Just Need to Lose Weight” AND 19 OTHER MYTHS ABOUT FAT PEOPLE—Preorder
Maintenance Phase
Correction section: The NHS was limiting care for fat people and smokers before the pandemic (The Guardian), but backed off of that stance during the pandemic (NYT) before naming weight loss as one of its primary COVID strategies (Time Magazine).
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Matthew and Julian sit down for the second of a two-part examination of the 1988 bestseller at the heart of the recovered memory movement.
Show Notes
Controversy Behind the False Memory Syndrome Foundation
The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse — Goodreads
Truth and reconciliation | Salon.com
Cases That Have Resulted in Convictions - RA Info
Why The Courage to Heal Isn't on My Recommended Reading List | HealthyPlace
Creating Hysteria — NYT archive
25 Years of Trauma Treatment Networker 2014
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The homestretch of our study of Michelle Remembers zeroes in on the literal symbols—and symbols gone literal—of the Satanic Panic. Archetypes, gore, anxieties about sex and babies and filth: Lawrence Pazder mined it all, using modes of abstraction and dehumanization as old as religion itself to weave a story he claimed was all about Michelle—but was really an exercise of his own fetishes.
Michelle Smith could have received proper care for her understandable stresses. She could have offered up her feelings and sensations and images from dreams for discussion and contemplation, and an actual therapist would have held that material safely for her to explore. But in Pazder, Smith found someone who wasn’t interested in common human complexity. He was interested in cosmic warfare, and the role he could LARP within it.
But Pazder was so blind to his craven narcissism that he couldn’t help but tell on himself. In the final passage we analyze, Pazder records Smith demanding to end therapy. “If I could tear out my tongue,” she says, “I would never have to speak again.” But in the very next paragraph, the man who is forcing her to “remember” symbolically tears out her tongue, rejecting her plea to end the sessions, interpreting her demand as though it were coming from Satan himself.
She imagines herself getting in a car and driving and driving, anywhere. Away from this psychiatrist who wanted to be an exorcist, away from his story, perhaps to find her own.
Show Notes
HIGHEST GAME IN TOWN
‘I See His Blood Upon the Rose’
How to Lose Weight (Weight Loss and Obesity) - Teal Swan
The Cause of Obesity - Teal Swan Articles
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American-style white Christian Nationalism tells of a promised land given by God to the Puritan settlers. Their divine mandate for political dominance sanctifies a violent history that stretches from the 1690's all the way through to modern right-wing politics.
Our interview today is with sociologists, Philip Gorski and Samuel Perry, authors of The Flag and The Cross. We discuss their study of Christian Nationalism as a white supremacist phenomenon that has always leaned into conspiracism and a primordial obsession with blood purity and blood sacrifice.
With the dreaded midterm elections now in our rearview, Derek covers the Muscular Christian masturbation rules of bro-science influencer Ben Greenfield, while we reflect on the prophesied red wave that never crashed.
Show Notes
The Flag and the Cross—Gorski and Perry
Is Christian nationalism growing or declining? Both.
Most Republicans Support Declaring the United States a Christian Nation
Rally Urges US Midterm Voting Connected to Christianity
Ben Greefield: How I Practice The Spiritual Disciplines, Practical Ways To Build Your Spiritual Muscles, Listener Q&A On God, Religion, Reincarnation, Masturbation & Much More.
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Antisemitism is in the news again, as Candace Owens defends Kanye West and Kyrie Irving, while her boss, Ben Shapiro shakes his head in dismay. In this Bonus special report, Julian looks into the Assembly of Yahweh family, which funds conservative new media giants, The Daily Wire and PragerU.
How do we make sense of the racial and religious tensions created by the strange bedfellow alliances of right-wing propaganda?
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An ancient text at the root of the culture that gave birth to the yoga tradition says that if an outcaste person—a Dalit—dares to learn the holy language of Sanskrit, they must be tortured. Molten lead must be poured into their ears. Their tongue must be cut out.
In the Ramayana, an Dalit who dared to practice yoga was murdered so that the sickly child of a priestly family might regain his health. In the Mahabharata, an Dalit boy is commanded to cut off his own thumb for the sin of being devoted to a guru above his station. The pious are told that these obscene retributions maintain the divine order.
Indian wisdom traditions have globalized to the extent that its evangelists have laundered the spiritualization of caste-based violence, and hidden its history from erstwhile progressives. Many of those evangelists have either been caste privileged, or caste apologists. The yoga they constructed for export has become a form of soft power, serving Hindu nationalist objectives.
The Trauma of Caste: A Dalit Feminist Meditation on Survivorship, Healing, and Abolition by Thenmozhi Soundararajan puts this history under a microscope. It pulls back the curtain on the carceral impacts of terms like dharma and karma, and concepts like purity, pollution, and reincarnation.
In terms of our work here at Conspirituality, Soundararajan's text cuts through the romantic Orientalism used by influencers, cult leaders, and nationalists to exploit emotional vulnerabilities. It also points to—and updates—a vision of spiritual practice first articulated by the Dalit leader B. R. Ambedkar, rooted in the ancient Buddhist call to compassion and equality.
Show Notes
The Trauma of Caste by Thenmozhi Soundararajan
Thenmozhi Soundararajan: Transmedia Artist, Theorist & Futurist
B. R. Ambedkar - Wikipedia
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Matthew and Julian sit down for the first of a two-part examination of the 1988 bestseller at the heart of the recovered memory movement—which played a central role in validating Satanic Panic testimonials.
The basic premise of The Courage to Heal, by creative writing instructors Ellen Bass and Linda Davis, is that memories of childhood abuse, especially child sexual abuse, can be recovered and articulated by survivors who are given the proper space, tools, and validation. The book explores how this be facilitated within the context of journaling, writing poetry, and writing memoir, and what the therapeutic benefits of full confessional articulation can be.
While countless people affirm that this book was a lifeline during a time in which recovery resources for child abuse survivors were rare, there are substantial problems with the book's method, claims about memory, dodgy sources, and endorsement of outright Satanic Panic propaganda.
Show notes:
Controversy Behind the False Memory Syndrome FoundationThe Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse — GoodreadsTruth and reconciliation | Salon.comCases That Have Resulted in Convictions - RA InfoWhy The Courage to Heal Isn't on My Recommended Reading List | HealthyPlaceCreating Hysteria — NYT archive
';l,k25 Years of Trauma Treatment Networker 2014
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In the second of three episodes on Michelle Remembers, we recap its Catholic contexts, and Lawrence Pazder's quest to transcend the limitations of psychiatry through mystical nightmares. We then explore the front matter: how Pazder introduces his project (and himself), and the ambivalent endorsement of Remi de Roo, Archbishop of Victoria. In Pazder's many clerical alliances, a crucial theme is established: the rapprochement between psychiatry and the priesthood, in which the former submits to the latter to restore the reality of the supernatural.
We also look at the pre-emptively defensive intro penned by the publisher, Thomas B. Congdon Jr. He claimed to have verified the substance of the book through interviews, and thought that Pazder and Smith were very earnest and forthcoming people when he hosted them for editorial meetings. Okay sure.
Show Notes
Remi De Roo
Thomas B. Congdon, Editor of Best Sellers Like 'Jaws,' Dies at 77
The Beginning of a Community
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Mark Roseman opens Lives Reclaimed, his compelling history of the “Bund”—a leftist communitarian group that resisted fascism and protected Jews during the Reich—with a quote from Michael Ondaatje’s novel The Cat’s Table: “That was a small lesson I learned on the journey. What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power.” Roseman, a professor of Jewish and German Studies at University of Indiana at Bloomington, joins Matthew to paint a picture of methodical, relational, and spiritual resistance to the speed and terror of fascism. At the center of the conversation is the quandary of how the Bund made generative use of many of the same naturalistic and spiritualist ideals and practices that were central to the physical culture of fascism. Joining the panel are Peter Staudenmaeir, professor of modern Germany history at Marquette, and Rebecca Carter-Chand, historian at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Peter and Rebecca add their expertise on the tangled ferment of religious and ideological passions in the background of Nazism, and how persistent, even through the worst of times, our flickers of altruism and empathy can be.
But before all that: we’ll cover the Q-pilled assassination attempt on Nancy Pelosi that has left Paul Pelosi in urgent care, and far-right media scrambling to overwrite the facts.
Show Notes
Lives Reclaimed — Roseman
Dr. Rebecca Carter-Chand — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Dr. Peter Staudenmaier - History
The Futurist Manifesto Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
The Awful Truth: Paul Pelosi Was Drunk Again, And In a Dispute With a Male Prostitute Early Friday Morning.
Pelosi attack suspect David DePape shared conspiracy theories
Criminal complaint: David Depape
Depape’s archived site
Pelosi attacker was immersed in 2020 election conspiracies
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Imagine a technology so powerful it's been directly downloaded from spirit during a Scorpio eclipse. This revolutionary tool can cure burn victims, remove cysts from dogs, and endow you with ultimate productivity. Thanks to phase conjugation, this bioenhanced scalar tech will change the way you view medicine and healing forever—provided you don't have any expectations and remain open to source, that is. And whatever any of that means, Derek will try to decipher—and fail, though some other aspects become clearer in the process.
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Listeners: today’s episode marks a turning point for us all here at Conspirituality HQ.
Humbled by a recent quantum download, we realize that we have for too long been relying on our critical faculties. For too long we have insisted that words mean things. Our poisoned irony has calcified our throat chakras and burned your ears to the point you may never trust a spiritual influencer again.
Today we release our addiction to meaning, our fetish for precision in words. We begin to trust the inner babbler of heart-language. We hearken to the oracles, the speakers in tongues, the oompa loompa doompety doos, the glossalalics who trimper the ainions with seedgly refurns. Our hope is that with their help, we can begin to scrize the colong of wolfile stenoses.
But we cannot enter this new world of activated communication alone. Our guide today is correspondent Mallory DeMille, who comes to us from the land of TikTok, where Light Language has gone viral, and is making bank, bank, bankity bing bong bank.
Show Notes
Mallory on Instagram | Twitter
Kundun - Nechung oracle
Blonk performs Ursonate with real-time typography
Sofia for anxiety: Reply to @jennam1127 anxiety relief #anxietyrelief #anxietyhealing #lightlanguage #nervoussystem #energywork #lightworker
Sofia: “Removing Darkness”
Sofia helping with everyone’s kidneys
Sofia’s light language was “opened up” by ayahuasca
Sofia has her activations turned into tie dye wraps so awesome
“Become a Light Language Practitioner” with Sofia
Sofia provides light language for loneliness
Sheryl presents: Light Language Love
Sheryl needs you to sit TF down
Sheryl’s waiver
Lily on how to unlock your light language potential
Lily’s fee
Daniel’s gonna get you
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A departure today, as Matthew eulogizes his teacher and friend Luciano Iacobelli.
From the opening:
*This story may be a little personal and indulgent, but I’ll take a risk on it because I think it hints at an answer to a question we often get on the podcast about our own beliefs in the existential or spiritual categories.
We spend a lot of time eviscerating bog-standard hypocrisy in the economy of spirituality. Listeners resonate with this, but the project is also depressing, and in the parasocial contract they form with us, finding out that we still believe in something, or that something still provides relief—this becomes important.
It’s never a comfortable question to answer in the abstract. It's a gift when something comes along that shows instead of tells.*Show NotesConversation with Luciano Iacobelli
SEED Part One – Michael Barker
IN MEMORIAM: Remembering Luciano Iacobelli – Accenti Magazine
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What is the state of the documentary film in the age of manipulative online propaganda? In the hands and eyes of a documentarian like Amy Berg we find a journalistic commitment to the truth combined with the artistry of compelling and intimate story-telling. Along the way, her projects are guided by an obsession with justice. In two cases—that of the West Memphis Three, and more recently the murder trial of Adnen Syed— her film-making played a role in changing the real-world narrative; leading to the release of those wrongfully convicted via cultural bias, moral panic, and conspiracy theories. In other instances Amy's work has embodied investigative journalism to show how real conspiracies hide the awful abuse of innocents, while protecting the powerful. We ask her how she measures her instincts against the evidence, how she gains the trust of people who have been ignored for decades, how she managed to log days of interview time with an abusive ex-priest, and how she keeps her mental health intact amidst all the uncertainty.
In This Week in Conspirituality, Matthew covers an example of the co-optation of trauma-informed jargon by women in the land of the Three Percenters.
Show Notes
Pro-Trump brand is fined by FTC for incorrect ‘Made in the USA’ labels
The Lion: Sean Whalen Is Empowering Thousands to Take Accountability for Their Lives
Aubrey Marcus's "Code of the Sentient Savage"
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The second part of Julian and Matthew's long look at the 1999 film Teal Swan was reportedly obsessed with as a teen. Girl, Interrupted is a freewheeling adaptation of a 1993 memoir by Susanna Kaysen about the 18 months she spent undergoing treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder in a Massachusetts psychiatric facility in the late 1960s.
This study is provoked by a memory recounted by Swan's childhood friend, Diana Hansen Ribera, that Swan identified with the character of Lisa Rowe in the film. Angelina Jolie won an Oscar for her searing performance of Rowe, a sociopath.
In this second episode, we explore several characters that Swan may have (and may yet) identify with, discuss the awkwardness of portraying mental health narratives on the big screen, and what it would really take for such an intense film to be digestible for typical teenagers. Matthew ends with a meditation on immersive/claustrophobic media—which Swan goes on to master—compared with the relief of developing a meta-view capable of inhabiting many stories, as opposed to imitating one.
Show Notes
SENECA THE YOUNGER, HERCULES FURENS - Theoi Classical Texts Library
Hercules (Seneca) - Wikipedia
Girl, Interrupted — Susanna Kaysen
1607: Growing up with Teal Swan - Diana Hansen Ribera
Mad, Bad, and Sad: Women and the Mind Doctors by Lisa Appignanesi | Goodreads
Brittany Murphy: Inside Her Sudden Death at 32 That Still Confounds Hollywood
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For the prophet and the revolutionary alike, the time is always now. Gird up your loins brave heroes, and show your true faith! The signs portend that The Last World Emperor is rising to do battle against the AntiChrist. The time is always now, but in that flat circle of iterative history, no bad idea is really new under the Black Sun—it's just been engineered to go more viral.
Our guest today is history professor Thomas Lecaque, who writes about how medieval ethnonationalist holy war is woven into hugely popular video games, right-wing political rhetoric, and even how assault weapons are marketed. I talked with him about the Hobbit-fetish of new Italian PM and heir to Mussolini, Giorgia Meloni, as well as the American right’s obsession with the Templar Knights, and the troubling midterm election trend of open White Christian Nationalism.
For TWIC, Matthew muses on the overlaps between conspirituality and neo-fascism, but first Derek reports on the battle between testicular cuisine and buttery coffee.
Show Notes
Manclan Episode 1: Liver King vs the Soy Boys
Cornell Expert Warns Against Megadosing Vitamins
Dietary Supplements Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report
Stay in touch with us on Twitter: @derekberes @julianmwalker @matthewremski
On Instagram: @conspiripod
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Methylene blue will give you more energy! It’s neuroprotective! Your skin will never look better! Your bunghole will never be bluer!
This week, Derek investigates one of biohacking’s hottest trends: a textile dye that does, in fact, have medical applications—just not the ones optimizers are promoting, and optimizing. He’ll look into this organic compound’s history, how it’s being marketed by the butter coffee guy, and finally, reading from Aubrey Marcus’s latest newsletter on blue buttholes.
Show Notes
So You Want to Pop Into a Hyperbaric Oxygen Chamber to Rid Yourself of Wrinkles?
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy: Get the Facts
When Medicines Go Rogue, Part 1: Methylene Blue
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There's no Teal Swan without the Satanic Panic. And there's no Satanic Panic without the 1980 publication of Michelle Remembers, by Lawrence Pazder and Michelle Smith.
In this first of three segments on this melted book, Matthew and Julian cover its historical, cultural, and mass media context. We start with a review of a 1985 20/20 episode called “The Devil Worshippers” for a taste of how mainstream outlets hosted cranks like Pazder, giving him a hall pass on evidence, and overlooking how his Catholic fetishes and paranoias played a huge role in the fictions he spun.
The post Vatican 2 context is crucial, especially as we bear witness to the current political triumphs of Trad-Cath propaganda and politics in our post-Roe, QAnon -fried world. For help, we look to an excellent essay by social historian Bernard Doherty about the genre and elements of the Catholic Horror Film, which begins with Rosemary's Baby in 1968. This reactionary genre attempted to respond to modernizing—or postmodernizing, as Jordan Peterson might say—changes in Church doctrine.
Bottom line? The Satanic Panic largely begins in and is sustained by Catholic-flavoured conspirituality anxiety about secularization, sex, babies, and abortion.
CORRECTIONS: My dad informs me that I've made some Pope mistakes! Pius X was the last legitimate Pope according to the sedavacantists, and John XXIII, not Paul XXIII, opened the Vatican 2 proceedings. Thx dad. MR
Links:
Michael Hobbes and Sarah Marshall cover Michelle Remembers with great skill.
"20/20" the Devil Worshippers - May 16, 1985
West of Memphis movie review & film summary (2012) | Roger Ebert
Mel Gibson: The man without a pope - Where Peter Is
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
Mystery topic today. Emergency episode. Breaking story. Amazing if true! Totally transformative plot twist. You gotta listen through for the big reveal, and then hit smash for more.
Spoiler alert: QAnon was foreshadowed by Pizzagate, but Pizzagate was foreshadowed by a moral panic in London, England that was driven in part by someone the three of us are karmically bound to, for good or ill, forever.
But first, Derek’s got a This Week in Conspirituality segment on the boom times for pseudoscience telehealth. Psychic healing for Zoom, as he calls it.
Show Notes
Network of right-wing health care providers is making millions off hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, hacked data reveals
The Anti-vax founder of America’s Frontline Doctors now has a license to practice in Florida
US cardiologist makes false claims about Covid-19 vaccination
Hoaxed - Tortoise
Teal Swan allegations documents • MuckRock
Re P and Q (Children: Care Proceedings: Fact Finding).
Jacqui Farmer's "Hampstead Research"
Illuminati Party! - Reasons Not to Be Scared of the Illuminati.
Charlotte Ward’s conspirituality.org About page
Full article: The Emergence of Conspirituality
Hoaxtead Research
Charlotte writing as Jacqui on conspirituality.org
Charlotte Ward denounces ‘Hampstead psy op’ | HOAXTEAD RESEARCH
Charlotte Ward - Academia.edu
Ward cites Icke.
Alex Jones’s trans-bigoted conspiracy theory about Michelle Obama
Unhinged ‘Transvestigators’ Think They’re the Only Cis People Left
Julian and Matthew take a long look at the 1999 film Teal Swan was reportedly obsessed with as a teen. Girl, Interrupted is a bold adaptation of a 1993 memoir by the writer Susanna Kaysen about the 18 months she spent undergoing treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder in a Massachusetts psychiatric facility in the late 1960s.
This study is provoked by a memory recounted by Swan's childhood friend, Diana Hansen Ribera, that Swan identified with the character of Lisa Rowe in the film. Angelina Jolie won an Oscar for her searing performance of Rowe, a sociopath.
Girl, Interrupted — Susanna Kaysen
1607: Growing up with Teal Swan - Diana Hansen Ribera
Mad, Bad, and Sad: Women and the Mind Doctors by Lisa Appignanesi | Goodreads
Brittany Murphy: Inside Her Sudden Death at 32 That Still Confounds Hollywood
The book is filed. Our mental health is in check. And, as it turns out, Matthew found a new guru. We return to trio work by investigating his fellow Canadian's cure for, uh, anything, or maybe something, as well diving into two biohacking conferences and the conspiritualist's new favorite fascist on the block.
Show notes
Tip of the iceberg: erectile dysfunction and COVID-19 | International Journal of Impotence Research
Will in the News, TV & Internet Culture
Umberto Eco Makes a List of the 14 Common Features of Fascism | Open Culture
The Cruelty Is the Point - The Atlantic
https://twitter.com/LuigiMastro_/status/1566673115383570433
Alessio Di Giulio's Racist Selfie With Roma Woman Enrages Italy
Meloni holding melons
CPAC: The Whole World is Watching - Giorgia Meloni
Dal rugby allo yoga, tutto lo sport di Giorgia Meloni
Pierre Poilievre rubs his old wood
If you tune into your favorite Instagram wellness influencer or financial life coach, you’ll learn that money is really a state of mind—right? Thinking the right thoughts is the truest judge of character, and therefore indicative of your bottom line. This week Derek looks at research from behavioral economics, which found the perceived relationship between wealth and morality dates back to post-WWII America—and has damaged the poorest among us for generations. He weighs evidence from this field, which looks at the real societal and political causes of wealth disparity, against the metaphysical bullshit that proponents of the “mindset creates wealth” uber-text, A Course in Miracles, try to sell you.
Show NotesWhy we shouldn’t push a positive mindset on those in povertyThe Causal Effects of Place on Health and Longevity
Conspirituality on Patreon
If you tune into your favorite Instagram wellness influencer or financial life coach, you’ll learn that money is really a state of mind—right? Thinking the right thoughts is the truest judge of character, and therefore indicative of your bottom line. This week Derek looks at research from behavioral economics, which found the perceived relationship between wealth and morality dates back to post-WWII America—and has damaged the poorest among us for generations. He weighs evidence from this field, which looks at the real societal and political causes of wealth disparity, against the metaphysical bullshit that proponents of the “mindset creates wealth” uber-text, A Course in Miracles, try to sell you.
Show NotesWhy we shouldn’t push a positive mindset on those in povertyThe Causal Effects of Place on Health and Longevity
Conspirituality on Patreon
Some of the most valuable material that come to us from Paula Marino's Open Shadow film of 2017 is an extended interview with Swan's parent's, the Bosworths. They speak about Swan's sensory sensitivity as a young child, and how that morphed into a staunchly independent but sometimes isolated social life. They describe Swan's secret runic writing, their belief in her capacities as a medical intuitive, and discuss the gaps in psychiatric care that failed them all when her mental health needed help. This episode examines this interview, and then cross-checks some aspects against the account of Swan's childhood friend, Diana Hansen Ribera.
Here we have the unique insight into parents speaking vulnerably and transparently about their baffling child—which means we can really lean into the primal material that pre-exists the charged questions about whether Teal Swan is running a cult or encouraging suicide. What we find, between the accounts of the Bosworths and Ribera, is a collection of commonplace phenomena: high sensitivity, parents learning as they go, the intrusion of internet pornography, and a likely abusive figure who was too close to the family.
In this episode, Matthew and Julian discuss the mystery of familial memory, idealizing vs. pathologizing children, the appeals of fantasy as a mode of relief, whether the Satanic Panic was a collective cry for help to resolve commonplace domestic and community abuse, and the possibility that cult formation is a social form of post traumatic play.
Open Shadow — Paula Marino
Do You Cry Easily? You May Be a 'Highly Sensitive Person' - WSJ
The science behind why some of us are shy - BBC Future
Study: Pornography does not cause violent sex crimes | UTSA Today
When Children Act Out Sexually: A Guide for Parents and Teachers - Canada.ca
1607: Growing up with Teal Swan - Diana Hansen Ribera - Mormon Stories
“Forbidden Games”: Post-Traumatic Child's Play — Lenore Terr
Valerie L. Dripchak (2007). Posttraumatic Play: Towards Acceptance and Resolution. , 35(2), 125–134. doi:10.1007/s10615-006-0068-y
Are you ready to biohack your brain with buttered coffee? How about going “within” at the Drybar of acupuncture? What if we told you that cannabis will catapult your chakras into higher consciousness—all it costs is a $5,000 retreat entry fee, not including airfare and hotel? In the $4.4 trillion wellness industry, is any cost really too expensive to achieve true self-care—even if it never really seems like you arrive anywhere at all?
Rina Raphael was getting burnt out as a millennial digital news producer at NBC News. And so she did what anyone would do: she moved to Los Angeles in search of that self-care. Yet she could never shake her journalistic chops, and so she ended up writing about the wellness industry for the NY Times, the LA Times, Fast Company, and other publications. Her skeptical eye and earnest curiosity lead her to write her brand new book, The Gospel of Wellness: Gyms, Gurus, Goop, and the False Promise of Self-Care. And she’s here this week to talk to us this week about her adventures in modern spirituality—its teachings as well as its traps.
Christina Flinders returns for the second of a two-part tour through her experience with cultic dynamics, conspirituality, and the long road towards finding her place in the world.
Picking up where she left off, Flinders discusses breaking free of the sexually abusive cult of Eknath Easwaren, finding ambivalent agency as a stripper, and then graduating to yoga teaching—where she then had to dodge being redpilled.
Thanks again to Christina for her generosity and lucidity, and her family for their support.
If you'd like to share your story with us and our Patreon community of listeners, please get in touch.
Christina Flinders returns for the second of a two-part tour through her experience with cultic dynamics, conspirituality, and the long road towards finding her place in the world.
Picking up where she left off, Flinders discusses breaking free of the sexually abusive cult of Eknath Easwaren, finding ambivalent agency as a stripper, and then graduating to yoga teaching—where she then had to dodge being redpilled.
Thanks again to Christina for her generosity and lucidity, and her family for their support.
If you'd like to share your story with us and our Patreon community of listeners, please get in touch.
Did you know that Joe Biden is a Satanic alien Nazi pedophile intent on bringing about the New World Order? Or that Donald Trump is the only thing that will save us from complete tyranny? How about the fact that COVID vaccines are bioweapons destroying the global population? But that’s okay, because colloidal silver is the magic bullet that will boost your immune system to help you fend off this scamdemic. Add that to your herbal stack alongside Lung Health Organic Herbal Spray which is definitively proven to boost your immunity even though it’s never been clinically tested.
Oh, and have we mentioned that chocolate is an octave of the sun?
Strap in, folks, because this week we’re finally looking at David “Avocado” Wolfe, whose paranoid Telegram channel boasts all of the above claims and much, much more. And we’re not just clipping recent podcast talks and driver’s seat rants. We’re joined by longtime journalist, health food marketing guru, and co-founder of the website, Ethos, Jill Ettinger, who worked side-by-side with David for many years. She’ll tell her side of it—and honestly, it’s not all bad, except for recent years. In effect, we’re looking at a conspiracy-prone health food guru turn full conspiritualist over the last two decades. Bonus: Jill brought Derek along to many events across the country in the aughts, and David was often there, so we’ll hear about this descent from people who watched it happen.
Christina Flinders is our honoured guest today for the first of a two-part tour through her of experience with cultic dynamics and conspirituality. Matthew and Julian learn about her family's enmeshment in the cult of Eknath Easwaren, and her subsequent journey through rebellion, self discovery, and political awakening.
We'd like to thank Christina for her generosity and lucidity, and her family for supporting her in this.
We hope that this will be the first in a series. If you'd like to share your story with us and the Patreon community of listeners here, please get in touch.
_____
Comment from Pratik Joshi on Easwaren's abuse history in India
PEOPLE v. RUPPENTHAL
Eknath Easwaran on the Training of Attention
On May 31st, 2014, Morgan Geyser stabbed her onetime best friend Bella Leutner nineteen times, while her new best friend, Anissa Weier, looked on. All three girls were twelve years old.
Geyser was living with schizophrenia, and Weier had introduced her to the crowd-sourced internet phantasm known as Slenderman, who first appeared on Something Awful, the message board at the root of chan culture. Together, Geyser and Weier came to believe that Slenderman was demanding a sacrifice in exchange for his protection. Their crime, at once naïve and brutal, sparked a moral panic.
Author Kathleen Hale joins Matthew to discuss her reporting on this story in her riveting and compassionate new book, Slenderman: Online Obsession, Mental Illness, and the Violent Crime of Two Midwestern Girls.
Slenderman is brimming with tenderness for these girls, who are all creative, confused, scared, and ultimately bound to each other through social contagion and mental illness. Hale's writing is accessible but elliptical as it uncovers jagged details, but never easy answers, about a world that predicts our own.
On this podcast we spend a lot of time on the virtual demons that animate conspirituality and QAnon, driving some devotees to violence. Hale's work is good medicine for those who know that internet chaos and mental precarity will remain locked in feedback loops for the foreseeable future. Her meticulous investigation—enriched by hours spent interviewing Morgan Geyser—shows that the road to understanding is always paved with empathy.
Slenderman — Kathleen Hale '
Am I being catfished?' An author confronts her number one online critic | Books | The Guardian
Folklore, Horror Stories, and the Slender Man: The Development of an Internet Mythology
The Slender Man Wiki | Fandom
As we're all with family over the holiday weekend, here's a 2018 interview that Derek conducted with neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga after the publication of his last book, The Consciousness Instinct: Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind. Michael revolutionized the field of neuroscience in the 1960s with his work on split-brain patients and remains a towering figure in his field.
Do you ever stop to think about whether or not you can afford organic food—and then consider that many people don’t have such an option? Is Goop’s $295 incense holder a sign of feminine empowerment or merely another Gwneth Paltrow grift? Will that $32 spin class that features an endless litany of positive affirmations make you more likely to slip $5 to the homeless person camped outside of the studio—or does it increase your happiness or contentment levels at all, once the endorphins wear off?
These are just some of the questions posed by CTZNWELL founder, Kerri Kelly, in her new book, American Detox: The Myth of Wellness and How We Can Truly Heal. Beginning with her own transformational moment after 9/11, Kerri has long asked difficult questions of both herself and the industry she’s spent decades immersed in. In fact, while Derek and Julian were co-founding the Conspirituality pre-cursor, YogaBrains, over a decade ago, Kerri was an integral member of yoga-activist organization, Off the Mat, Into the World. She joins us this week as co-host to discuss her own origin myth and to tell us exactly how she’s detoxing from America these days.
Show Notes
American Detox: The Myth of Wellness and How We Can Truly Heal
The homestretch of our study of Michelle Remembers zeroes in on the literal symbols—and symbols gone literal—of the Satanic Panic. Archetypes, gore, anxieties about sex and babies and filth: Lawrence Pazder mined it all, using modes of abstraction and dehumanization as old as religion itself to weave a story he claimed was all about Michelle—but was really an exercise of his own fetishes.
Michelle Smith could have received proper care for her understandable stresses. She could have offered up her feelings and sensations and images from dreams for discussion and contemplation, and an actual therapist would have held that material safely for her to explore. But in Pazder, Smith found someone who wasn’t interested in common human complexity. He was interested in cosmic warfare, and the role he could LARP within it.
But Pazder was so blind to his craven narcissism that he couldn’t help but tell on himself. In the final passage we analyze, Pazder records Smith demanding to end therapy. “If I could tear out my tongue,” she says, “I would never have to speak again.” But in the very next paragraph, the man who is forcing her to “remember” symbolically tears out her tongue, rejecting her plea to end the sessions, interpreting her demand as though it were coming from Satan himself.
She imagines herself getting in a car and driving and driving, anywhere. Away from this psychiatrist who wanted to be an exorcist, away from his story, perhaps to find her own.
Show Notes
HIGHEST GAME IN TOWN - The Washington Post
‘I See His Blood Upon the Rose’ | Franciscan Media
How to Lose Weight (Weight Loss and Obesity) - Teal Swan
The Cause of Obesity - Teal Swan Articles
Fitness is the beating heart of America. No, wait, that’s opportunistic capitalism. But opportunistic capitalism, as it turns out, is the beating heart of fitness. Yet fitness has a soul too—in fact, mysticism, capitalism, and fitness have been dancing together for a very long time, while politics calls the tune, as historian and assistant professor at The New School, Natalia Petrzela, is here to tell us about today. We should also note that Natalia is our only four-time guest.
She’s also the author of an incredible new book, to be published this December by the University of Chicago Press, titled Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America’s Exercise Obsession. The book spans over a hundred years, chronicling shifting cultural attitudes, gendered expectations, political inflections, and jackpot innovations in how Americans have celebrated, reviled, bought, sold, and been turned-on or enlightened by rituals of exercise.
Like us, Natalia loves physical culture, but contradictions abound in the collisions between embodiment, politics, and commerce. If, as the marketing has told us over the years, recreational running is better for the mind than psychotherapy, moonlit naked hottubing at Esalen can save the world, women can simultaneously embrace dance studio fitness as a path of feminist liberation and a way to titilate the male gaze, and yoga can promise freedom from ever needing drugs or surgery, is it any wonder that a country so obsessed with exercise is so notoriously unhealthy?
Show Notes
Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America’s Exercise Obsession
From Performance to Participation: The Origins of the Fit Nation
Working On The Work of Working Out: A history of fitness in America
JP Sears constantly refers to himself as a freethinker. His increasing religiosity is counter to critical thinking, however. Derek responds to two recent videos that detail his religious thinking and transphobia, showing how a specific strain of Christianity—and binary thinking—is not freethought, but propaganda.
In this episode of the Swan Song Series, Matthew interviews Paola Marino about why she found Teal Swan a fascinating subject to film for 2018’s “Open Shadow.” They discuss aesthetics, the mystery of personality, why Swan’s parents agreed to sit down with her. Matthew also surprised her with the newly-revealed translations of Swan’s coded journal pages.
Prefacing the interview is a discussion between Julian and Matthew about art, artifice, the risks of doing and not doing hard journalism on the subjects we cover. They discuss James Joyce’s proverb about noble art, in which he describes “aesthetic arrest” as the middle way between propaganda and pornography.
Marino’s work attempts to find that path, while Jon Kasbe’s The Deep End falters to both sides. On one hand Kasbe’s film titillates viewers with high drama. On the other hand it tells viewers what they should think. And in both cases it creates a story where the truth would suffice.
The feelings excited by improper art are kinetic, desire or loathing. Desire urges us to possess, to go to something; loathing urges us to abandon, to go from something. These are kinetic emotions. The arts which excite them, pornographical or didactic, are therefore improper arts. The esthetic emotion (I use the general term) is therefore static. The mind is arrested and raised above desire and loathing.Show Notes
James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Open Shadow—Paola Marino
Gizmodo Launches 'The Gateway,' an Investigative Podcast About a Controversial Internet Spiritual Guru
In the second of three episodes on Michelle Remembers, we recap its Catholic contexts, and Lawrence Pazder's quest to transcend the limitations of psychiatry through mystical nightmares. We then explore the front matter: how Pazder introduces his project (and himself), and the ambivalent endorsement of Remi de Roo, Archbishop of Victoria. In Pazder's many clerical alliances, a crucial theme is established: the rapprochement between psychiatry and the priesthood, in which the former submits to the latter to restore the reality of the supernatural.
We also look at the pre-emptively defensive intro penned by the publisher, Thomas B. Congdon Jr. He claimed to have verified the substance of the book through interviews, and thought that Pazder and Smith were very earnest and forthcoming people when he hosted them for editorial meetings. Okay sure.
Remi De Roo - Wikipedia
Thomas B. Congdon, Editor of Best Sellers Like 'Jaws,' Dies at 77 - The New York Times
The Beginning of a Community - Virtual Museum-Canadian Polish Historical Society
Traditional Chinese Medicine is an ancient medical system that has persisted in its homeland for countless generations before being exported to the rest of the world—right? Well, not exactly, but that doesn’t mean the varying sets of practices have not made an impact in China and abroad.
This week, historian Tamara Venit-Shelton joins the podcast to talk to Derek about the history of Chinese Medicine in America. The author of Herbs and Roots: A History of Chinese Doctors in the American Medical Marketplace, they discuss the xenophobia and racism that Chinese encountered in the 19th century West, how early Chinese doctors used the exoticism of their system to their advantage when advertising to disaffected Americans who were suspicious of the dominant health care system, the moment that these varying practices became unified by Chairman Mao in the middle of the 20th century, and how the acupuncture needles we use today are not actually Chinese in origin—we can thank the Japanese for the world’s recent widespread adoption of that practice.
Show NotesHerbs and Roots: A History of Chinese Doctors in the American Medical Marketplace
Tamara Venit-Shelton gets to the roots of Chinese medicine in America
Evidence Map of Acupuncture review of systematic reviews on 1,500 RCT’s.
David Gorski “Acupuncture is a theatrical placebo, retconned beyond recognition.”
$2.5 Spent—No Alternative Cures Found by the NCCIH
There's no Teal Swan without the Satanic Panic. And there's no Satanic Panic without the 1980 publication of Michelle Remembers, by Lawrence Pazder and Michelle Smith.
In this first of three segments on this melted book, Matthew and Julian cover its historical, cultural, and mass media context. We start with a review of a 1985 20/20 episode called “The Devil Worshippers” for a taste of how mainstream outlets hosted cranks like Pazder, giving him a hall pass on evidence, and overlooking how his Catholic fetishes and paranoias played a huge role in the fictions he spun.
The post Vatican 2 context is crucial, especially as we bear witness to the current political triumphs of Trad-Cath propaganda and politics in our post-Roe, QAnon -fried world. For help, we look to an excellent essay by social historian Bernard Doherty about the genre and elements of the Catholic Horror Film, which begins with Rosemary's Baby in 1968. This reactionary genre attempted to respond to modernizing—or postmodernizing, as Jordan Peterson might say—changes in Church doctrine.
Bottom line? The Satanic Panic largely begins in and is sustained by Catholic-flavoured conspirituality anxiety about secularization, sex, babies, and abortion.
Links:
Michael Hobbes and Sarah Marshall cover Michelle Remembers with great skill.
"20/20" the Devil Worshippers - May 16, 1985
West of Memphis movie review & film summary (2012) | Roger Ebert
Mel Gibson: The man without a pope - Where Peter Is
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
We can't understand Teal Swan without understanding the Satanic Panic. And we can't really understand that historical disaster with out feeling our way into the mysteries of memory, fantasy, shame, and terror.
Many of you will have heard about therapists interfering in a family constellation by insinuating the client has has memories of abuse to uncover, and that they can’t go forward in their lives without doing that work. This is the bread and butter of Swan's technique, with the result being that many of her close followers come to tell stories about their childhoods that echo hers. Swan's own story of childhood abuse crystallized after she goes through treatment with a leading Satanic Panic therapist, Barbara Snow.
Those are stories on the page. But today, to kick off the Swan Song Series, Julian shares the moment-by-moment mechanics of how this disastrous parody of therapy turned his own life inside out, and alienated him from his family for a decade.
Content warning for listeners: we’ll be talking about stories of child sexual abuse.
Links:
The Gateway
Michelle Remembers, covered by Sarah Marshall and Michael Hobbes
Forrest Yoga students ask A. Forrest to stop using the Zia Nation symbol
A. Forrest's ostensible mentor
Matthew sits down with ace journalist EJ Dickson to explore her deep archive of reporting on the policing of women's bodies, and how it reflects on her own experience of childbirth.
This episode opens and closes with reference to the essay that first introduced Matthew to this world, "Giving Birth in Yogaland," written by his partner Alix, after two C-section deliveries.
Links:
"Giving Birth in Yogaland" —Alix Cale
raggapunzel on Instagram —water birth on the beach
Pieces by EJ Dickson
Covid-19 Vaccine: How Dommes Are Convincing Submissives to Get Jabs
Matt Gaetz, QAnon Followers, and the GOP Are Exploiting the #FreeBritney Movement
Are Sex-Negative 'Puriteens' Actually Taking Over the Internet?
'Pastel QAnon' Is Infiltrating the Natural Parenting Community
Princess Diana Struggled With Bulimia. Does 'The Crown' Do Her Justice?
The Baby-Formula Shortage Has Spawned a New Brand of Mom-Shamers
Roe v. Wade: Top Influencers Avoid Abortion Debate - Rolling Stone
Amber Heard, Johnny Depp: TikTok Reenactments of Testimony Goes Viral
Michelle Phan: How YouTube Beauty Guru Fell in With Bullshit Peddler
There Are a Million Reasons to Get An Abortion. This Was Mine.
Bentinho Massaro: Instagram Guru 'F-king' His Followers 'To Freedom'
In Minnie Mouse's Dress, Right Wingers See a Penis — and a LGBTQ Conspiracy
James Van Der Beek's Influencer Wife Is Peddling Vaccine Conspiracy Theories on Instagram
A TikToker Made $200,000 Farting In Jars. Here's How She Did It
TikTok Cult Leader Pivots to Preaching Anti-Vax Conspiracy Theories
Vaginal bleaching: dangerous, arguably racist, and on the rise - Vox
A recent review questioning the serotonin theory of depression has revived a generations-long debate over the very notion of "chemical imbalances." While there are plenty of important debates about the roles of pharmacology and psychotherapy in mental health disorders, conspiritualists from both wellness spaces and the far right have been using mental health to promote (and monetize) their own agendas. Derek investigates.
Show Notes
The serotonin theory of depression: a systematic umbrella review of the evidence
The New Study on Serotonin and Depression Isn’t About Antidepressants
Inside Kelly Brogan’s Covid-Denying, Vax-Resistant Conspiracy Machine
The Far Right’s Next Target for a Bullshit Moral Panic: Antidepressants
Life is scary. Natural disasters, violent intruders, and deadly viruses threaten our survival and endanger our loved ones. When ordinary solutions and institutions are not trusted, we may reach for talismanic help; crystals, herbal remedies, ritual prayer and magical thinking, or we might consult the charismatic oracle who channels prophecies from the Great Beyond—right on your iPhone.
But what about weaponry? Even though guns exert devastating real-world impact, our guest argues that they also carry an important symbolic power. While most may never use it, the knowledge that cold hard steel is nearby is one attempt at managing an anxiety that is all-too human. In fact, coping strategies both magical and militaristic are woven into the American political psyche—and as the pandemic has demonstrated, flare up dramatically during social crises; even at times becoming strange bedfellows.
Philosophy and religion professor Alan Levinovitz calls this "empowerment epistemology" and describes it as a connective tissue between the seemingly distant domains of gun culture and the wellness sphere. In both cases, this longing for empowerment in the face of helplessness motivates us to cleave to what we believe protects us, regardless of evidence to the contrary—or the tragic consequences in our middle schools and medical ICUs.
Show Notes
Oprah's 'happiness guru' designed apartments to maximize joy — and they start at $5 million
Killing does not come easy for soldiers - The Washington Post
Hanns Johst “Schlageter”
Quote/Counterquote: “Whenever I hear the word 'culture'…”
Some of the most valuable material that comes to us from Paula Marino's Open Shadow film of 2017 is an extended interview with Swan's parent's, the Bosworths. They speak about Swan's sensory sensitivity as a young child, and how that morphed into a staunchly independent but sometimes isolated social life. They describe Swan's secret runic writing, their belief in her capacities as a medical intuitive, and discuss the gaps in psychiatric care that failed them all when her mental health needed help. This episode examines this interview, and then cross-checks some aspects against the account of Swan's childhood friend, Diana Hansen Ribera.
Here we have the unique insight into parents speaking vulnerably and transparently about their baffling child—which means we can really lean into the primal material that pre-exists the charged questions about whether Teal Swan is running a cult or encouraging suicide. What we find, between the accounts of the Bosworths and Ribera, is a collection of commonplace phenomena: high sensitivity, parents learning as they go, the intrusion of internet pornography, and a likely abusive figure who was too close to the family.
In this episode, Matthew and Julian discuss the mystery of familial memory, idealizing vs. pathologizing children, the appeals of fantasy as a mode of relief, whether the Satanic Panic was a collective cry for help to resolve commonplace domestic and community abuse, and the possibility that cult formation is a social form of post traumatic play.
Open Shadow — Paula Marino
Do You Cry Easily? You May Be a 'Highly Sensitive Person' - WSJ
The science behind why some of us are shy - BBC Future
Study: Pornography does not cause violent sex crimes | UTSA Today
When Children Act Out Sexually: A Guide for Parents and Teachers - Canada.ca
1607: Growing up with Teal Swan - Diana Hansen Ribera - Mormon Stories
“Forbidden Games”: Post-Traumatic Child's Play — Lenore Terr
Valerie L. Dripchak (2007). Posttraumatic Play: Towards Acceptance and Resolution. , 35(2), 125–134. doi:10.1007/s10615-006-0068-y
Some of the most valuable material that comes to us from Paula Marino's Open Shadow film of 2017 is an extended interview with Swan's parent's, the Bosworths. They speak about Swan's sensory sensitivity as a young child, and how that morphed into a staunchly independent but sometimes isolated social life. They describe Swan's secret runic writing, their belief in her capacities as a medical intuitive, and discuss the gaps in psychiatric care that failed them all when her mental health needed help. This episode examines this interview, and then cross-checks some aspects against the account of Swan's childhood friend, Diana Hansen Ribera.
Here we have the unique insight into parents speaking vulnerably and transparently about their baffling child—which means we can really lean into the primal material that pre-exists the charged questions about whether Teal Swan is running a cult or encouraging suicide. What we find, between the accounts of the Bosworths and Ribera, is a collection of commonplace phenomena: high sensitivity, parents learning as they go, the intrusion of internet pornography, and a likely abusive figure who was too close to the family.
In this episode, Matthew and Julian discuss the mystery of familial memory, idealizing vs. pathologizing children, the appeals of fantasy as a mode of relief, whether the Satanic Panic was a collective cry for help to resolve commonplace domestic and community abuse, and the possibility that cult formation is a social form of post traumatic play.
Open Shadow — Paula Marino
Do You Cry Easily? You May Be a 'Highly Sensitive Person' - WSJ
The science behind why some of us are shy - BBC Future
Study: Pornography does not cause violent sex crimes | UTSA Today
When Children Act Out Sexually: A Guide for Parents and Teachers - Canada.ca
1607: Growing up with Teal Swan - Diana Hansen Ribera - Mormon Stories
“Forbidden Games”: Post-Traumatic Child's Play — Lenore Terr
Valerie L. Dripchak (2007). Posttraumatic Play: Towards Acceptance and Resolution. , 35(2), 125–134. doi:10.1007/s10615-006-0068-y
We spend so much time on this podcast discussing the wellness industry’s paranoia around anything from the medical “establishment” or the Luciferean nature of “Big Pharma,” but there’s another devil that’s lurking around every corner: the Mainstream Media.
Derek has long argued that there’s no such thing. Media organizations are competing businesses, and while there can be sloppiness when trying to break a story or laziness when rewriting press releases for clicks, the notion of a media “Deep State” is usually part of the conspiritualist’s sales technique, not the reality of modern media.
Derek began his career as a religion journalist, and this week he interviews Sam Kestenbaum, who’s made a career in this field. Sam has written for the NY Times and the Washington Post, where he recently published an expose on Christiane Northrup. Derek asks him about this story in particular, as well as his process of reporting on religion, the differences between spirituality and religion, and the coming post-pandemic spirituality surge—and how conspiritualists are already monetizing it.
Show NotesChristiane Northrup, once a New Age health guru, now spreads covid disinformation
Life After Proclaiming a Trump Re-election As Divinely Ordained
Godspeak Calvary Church Defies Quarantine, Attendance Soars
We spend so much time on this podcast discussing the wellness industry’s paranoia around anything from the medical “establishment” or the Luciferean nature of “Big Pharma,” but there’s another devil that’s lurking around every corner: the Mainstream Media.
Derek has long argued that there’s no such thing. Media organizations are competing businesses, and while there can be sloppiness when trying to break a story or laziness when rewriting press releases for clicks, the notion of a media “Deep State” is usually part of the conspiritualist’s sales technique, not the reality of modern media.
Derek began his career as a religion journalist, and this week he interviews Sam Kestenbaum, who’s made a career in this field. Sam has written for the NY Times and the Washington Post, where he recently published an expose on Christiane Northrup. Derek asks him about this story in particular, as well as his process of reporting on religion, the differences between spirituality and religion, and the coming post-pandemic spirituality surge—and how conspiritualists are already monetizing it.
Show NotesChristiane Northrup, once a New Age health guru, now spreads covid disinformation
Life After Proclaiming a Trump Re-election As Divinely Ordained
Godspeak Calvary Church Defies Quarantine, Attendance Soars
In this episode of the Swan Song Series, Matthew interviews Paola Marino about why she found Teal Swan a fascinating subject to film for 2018’s “Open Shadow.” They discuss aesthetics, the mystery of personality, why Swan’s parents agreed to sit down with her. Matthew also surprised her with the newly-revealed translations of Swan’s coded journal pages.
Prefacing the interview is a discussion between Julian and Matthew about art, artifice, the risks of doing and not doing hard journalism on the subjects we cover. They discuss James Joyce’s proverb about noble art, in which he describes “aesthetic arrest” as the middle way between propaganda and pornography.
Marino’s work attempts to find that path, while Jon Kasbe’s The Deep End falters to both sides. On one hand Kasbe’s film titillates viewers with high drama. On the other hand it tells viewers what they should think. And in both cases it creates a story where the truth would suffice.
The feelings excited by improper art are kinetic, desire or loathing. Desire urges us to possess, to go to something; loathing urges us to abandon, to go from something. These are kinetic emotions. The arts which excite them, pornographical or didactic, are therefore improper arts. The esthetic emotion (I use the general term) is therefore static. The mind is arrested and raised above desire and loathing.
James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Open Shadow—Paola Marino
Gizmodo Launches 'The Gateway,' an Investigative Podcast About a Controversial Internet Spiritual Guru
This podcast was born in response to COVID and vaccine disinformation that, while bubbling up for some time, flooded the population with the release of the pseudodocumentary, “Plandemic.” Ever since then, we’ve wondered how to combat the constant tides of pseudoscience masquerading as “natural remedies” that conspiritualists champion, then sell for a profit.
One of our earliest champions was the Southern California-based cardiologist, Danielle Belardo, who built up a large social media following even before the pandemic ravaged the world. Not only was she on the actual frontlines of COVID wards, but she’s been leading the charge on providing evidence-based information on her social media feeds, as well as her excellent podcast, Wellness: Fact Vs Fiction.
Derek was recently a guest on that podcast, and now Danielle returns the favor, joining him to discuss her thoughts on being a science communicator and a female cardiologist in a male-dominated field, as well as many of the wellness myths circling around social media, including supplements, statins, sunscreen, veganism, organic foods, and GMOs.
Derek steps back from conspiracies and wellness this week to discuss something very healing and personal to him: music. Specifically, how music has shaped his career, as well as the story behind the music you hear every week on this podcast.
Show Notes
EarthRise SoundSystem on Spotify
Earthrise SoundSystem vs Nina Simone: Come Ye
Bole 2 Harlem
Pete Kuzma
Global Beat Fusion: The History of the Future of Music
Our guest today, Jennings Brown, is a bright light in an increasingly chaotic cult-content economy. His 2018 podcast on Teal Swan, The Gateway, produced with Gizmodo, sets a high-watermark standard for research, fairness, and sensitivity. A lot has happened since that pod dropped: #MeToo, MAGA, QAnon, COVID, and now a post-reality Supreme Court in which Justice Thomas publishes a concurrence in which he states that COVID vaccines use the tissues of aborted fetuses. All of which is to say: we don’t know how intensely the insanity of the era will escalate, but we do know that clear, ethical reporting on difficult issues is a very thin lifeline back to sanity, communication, and trying to do something.
If you listened to episode 109 (if you haven’t we encourage you to stop here and go there), you’ll hear our criticisms of The Deep End docuseries about Teal Swan. You’ll hear us interview the director, Jon Kasbe. We lean on him, maybe too gently, on the numerous integrity issues with his film. Bottom line: with deceptive edits and a vacuum of expert commentary and research, we feel that this project is a real setback for everyone trying to understand cultic dynamics in the online age. And as we’ll report at the top of the show, before our interview with Brown, the story of this embedment is only getting messier.
Our interview with Jennings steers clear of the muck, because what we really wanted to hear was all about his process, his editorial decisions, and the help he got from his producers. We were also very lucky to have him drop some previously unreported data into the mix. Spoiler alert: it’s about the types of things that Swan used to write in her secret runic alien language.
Show notes:
Jennings Brown — About page with tip line contact info
Episode 109: Who's Afraid of Teal Swan? w/ Jon Kasbe
Jon Kasbe wishing Teal Swan happy birthday
Bits Sola rapping Teal Swan happy birthday
Gizmodo Launches 'The Gateway,' an Investigative Podcast About a Controversial Internet Spiritual Guru
Open Shadow — Paola Marino
Paola Marino on The Deep End (clip)
Jennings Brown — Revelations
We can't understand Teal Swan without understanding the Satanic Panic. And we can't really understand that historical disaster with out feeling our way into the mysteries of memory, fantasy, shame, and terror.
Many of you will have heard about therapists interfering in a family constellation by insinuating the client has has memories of abuse to uncover, and that they can’t go forward in their lives without doing that work. This is the bread and butter of Swan's technique, with the result being that many of her close followers come to tell stories about their childhoods that echo hers. Swan's own story of childhood abuse crystallized after she goes through treatment with a leading Satanic Panic therapist, Barbara Snow.
Those are stories on the page. But today, to kick off the Swan Song Series, Julian shares the moment-by-moment mechanics of how this disastrous parody of therapy turned his own life inside out, and alienated him from his family for a decade.
Content warning for listeners: we’ll be talking about stories of child sexual abuse.
Links:
The Gateway
Michelle Remembers, covered by Sarah Marshall and Michael Hobbes
Forrest Yoga students ask A. Forrest to stop using the Zia Nation symbol
A. Forrest's ostensible mentor
Rosaries made of shell casings. A breakaway Unification Church sect that holds rituals with gilded ARs. JP Sears on the gun range. The unholy American trinity of conservative politics, religious extremism, and gun culture is deep into its liturgical calendar. And it looks like conspiritualist influencers in the yoga and wellness space are setting up their juice bars outside the temple of the gun.
Is Christiane Northrup LARPing when she talks about murdering political enemies? What would Mikki Willis wear to tactical boot camp? Amidst the carnage of Uvalde and the Supreme Court, are conspiritualists gearing up to offer logistical or merely symbolic support for political violence? Does it even make a difference? When does the Temple of the Gun become a firing range, and then a staging ground?
We’ll cover these questions this week in part one of our look at guns and spirituality. Then in three weeks, Julian will talk to sociologist of religion Alan Levinovitz about how New Age spirituality and US gun culture shake hands through an “epistemology of individual empowerment,” which, he argues, has emerged amidst a crash in social solidarity.
Show Notes
New York Times report on Guns in GOP Ads
How Many Lives Were Saved by The Assault Weapons Ban?
Christian Nationalists and the Holy Gun Crusade
Rod Of Iron Ministries Buys “Spiritual Retreat” Property in Tennessee
Matthew introduces Julian to the solipsism of an old Catholic catechism. Julian remembers meditating on non-duality. What spaces in our brains do these exercises create? Did we need those spaces for safety, or to hide from ourselves and the world? What happens to these spaces when we no longer need them? If we learned how to take pleasure in “cognitive closure” through religion or spirituality, can we use that skill forever, but detached from the ideologies that want to steal that fire?
If the world has become too much to bear—and the bots know it from your search history— you will likely find Teal Swan. She will appear, an angel of the algorithms, part icon and part anime avenger. Against a backdrop of flowing water or turning constellations, she will gaze into your despair. She will speak in a drone at once hypnotic and relieving, giving words to feelings you thought were taboo. At 3am, this might feel like mystical luck, but it’s no accident. Swan is open about recruiting suicidal seekers to her content, and she has the tech chops to do it.
Now, with Jon Kasbe’s series, “The Deep End” airing on Hulu, Swan has entered some A-list limelight. But what do we really learn from this docutainment event, radiating out from an embedment in Swan’s inner circle? According to Kasbe’s own words, we don’t learn the “Capital T Truth” of Swan’s day-to-day, but rather the immersive feeling of what it is like to be under her spell.
Or do we? Swan accuses Kasbe of casting his own spell, with deceptive editing that scrambles timelines and conflates interactions, and even different people. And it appears she might not be wrong. We talk to Kasbe in this episode about his vision and blindspots, and the ironic risk of creating a film of Satanic-Panic level false memories about an influencer who says she specializes in retrieving past trauma.
This episode will pilot a series of Patreon bonus episodes in which we’ll study the Teal Swan spectacle in detail, and how important it is to not only report on it well, but to be fair to an influencer like Swan and her dedicated followers, lest they lose even more trust in the real world.
Show Notes
The Deep End
The Gateway Podcast
Teal Swan 2014 interview on her backstory.
Teal Swan: Gucci Guru article by Be Scofield
Barbara Snow’s seminal Satanic Panic article: Ritualistic Child Abuse In A Neighborhood Setting
Recovered Memory Therapist Placed on Probation
Michelle Remembers & The Satanic Panic
Teal’s Responses to The Deep End Start HERE
Teal Swan Defense :Testimonial Deep End Defamation—Sylvana Caradonna
After becoming global leaders in gun manufacturing in the 16th century, Japan banished all guns from their country for two centuries. How did this happen? And what were the results? Well, even today, the nation of 127 million experiences under 10 gun deaths every year.
Derek looks back at this period in history to find out what happens when a society seems to move backward when in reality progress is made. He also looks at the psychology of warfare while noting that as bad as society can become, nothing is inevitable.
Notes
Giving Up the Gun: Japan's Reversion to the Sword, 1543-1879
The demographics of gun ownership
America's gun culture - in seven charts
Packy McCormick: Optimism
Japan has almost completely eliminated gun deaths — here's how
A Terrible Love of War: James Hillman
War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning: Chris Hedges
Tribe: Sebastian Junger
Half-a-million Facebook followers. Hundreds of videos in a series called “The Great Awakening.” Christiane Northrup, the matriarch of New Age women’s wellness, warns her followers about fake viruses, and tells them to avoid sex with their vaccinated partners. She stumps alongside QAnon celebrities, shovels campaign contributions to Trump, and dotes over sovereign citizen sheriffs. To ease your symptoms of ascension, she offers bath recipes of alfalfa greens and Dr. Bronner’s soap. You can have a good soak and listen to her golden harp.
But in this nowhere world, where oh where is Christiane Northrup? Who is she? Is she flesh and blood, or a social media hologram generated by a Louise Hay AI? Is that mansion she broadcasts from a sound stage, or is there real soil and manure and flowers there? Our guests today know Northrup as super-real, because they live in her home state of Maine. Alyce Ornella, Andy O’Brien, and Mooncat have known her as a doctor, an MLM diva, antivax rabble rouser, and QAnon tour promoter.
Now, they tell us, another Northrup may be crystallizing on Maine’s rocky shore, floating past the lighthouses and over the cranberry bogs on a cloud of essential oils. She’s been seen haunting the blueberry patches, wearing a chunky necklace of lobster claws. As Northrup begins to hold revival meetings in Down East churches, and openly fantasize about murdering political enemies, they wonder if she is assuming her ultimate form—as an IRL cult leader.
Links:
36: Guru Jagat 1
37: Guru Jagat 2
64: Remembering Guru Jagat
81: Praying for Fire
59: Is Rudolf Steiner Dead Yet?
Dear Dr. Northrup
Dr. No: Christiane Northrup
Republican barred from inviting guests into State House
Naomi Wolf: “Five Freedoms” speech, April 2021.
Arise USA rally draws crowds inside, outside Crosby Center
Arise USA Meets Maine Stands Up
Inside the Disastrous Conspiracy Roadshow That Likely Killed a COVID-Denying Ex-CIA Agent
Maine Republican compared the governor to Nazi Josef Mengele
ME state rep compares COVID vaccine mandate to Nazism
Northrup boosts Holo-denier Charlie Freak
On John Linnehan, Dominionist
Julian recently attended his first Catholic funeral and found himself equal parts supportive friend and atheist anthropologist. This week, Matthew draws on his Catholic upbringing and experience as church organist (for close to 1,000 funerals) to help unpack this experience.
In hindsight, it turns out that the rote blandness of organized religion may serve communities more honestly than the monetized performative charisma of New Age ritual. The conversation touches on the mythological and social dimensions of religion, as well as both Julian and Matthew’s experience of corporal punishment at school, meted out by the same authority figures who donned ceremonial robes for church.
Aubrey Marcus really wants to not be a cult leader. He really wants Fit For Service to not be labeled a cult. He’s come out and said so, in a bold but vague response to criticism of his content from our podcast. Matthew takes him at his word, and puts on his cult research hat to give some pointers on how Aubrey can avoid abusing his power. Key bits of advice include: rejecting high intensity recruitment techniques, not depicting the world outside Fit For Service as “upside down” or insane, and not platforming alleged child rapists like Marc Gafni.
While this open letter is addressed to Aubrey, his Fit For Service clients might also find it useful as they decide whether to keep spending up to 20K USD per year participating in the program. Also, if Aubrey feels that this episode contains information that will help current and future participants assess whether he is really making good on his promise to provide “radical self-sovereignty,” we at Conspirituality Podcast would happily give permission for this episode to be included with Fit For Service materials, pro bono.
This letter is also open in a broader sense, because it contains solid tips for all earnest charismatic influencers who want to improve their ethics game. We believe you can do it, influencers! You can dig deep, and live your better life, by fucking over fewer people!
Links:
87: The Aubrey Marcus Spectacle
A Holocaust Denier Is Travelling Across Canada Building Up The Country's Newest Far-Right Militia Movement - Canadian Anti-Hate Network
'I Was 13 When Marc Gafni's Abuse Began' – The Forward
Former Rabbi Accused of Improper Sexual Conduct Now Rising Star in U.S. Spiritual Movement — Haaretz
Gafni Faces Fallout From New Age Community - Jewish Telegraphic Agency
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
“Jane Doe” lawsuit
Nicole Bedera—sociologist of sexual violence
What is DARVO? —Freyd
Institutional Betrayal Research Home Page —Freyd
When sexual assault victims speak out, their institutions often betray them — The Conversation, including 10 points on “institutional courage”
An audio essay from Matthew about how anti-trans ideology can so curdle the soul that an otherwise progressive eco-activist—Derrick Jensen of Deep Green Resistance—can blow up his entire career over it, disrupting the very thing he says he lives for, and destroying the movement he spent years building up.
The story starts more than a decade ago, but comes to its peak absurdity, for Matthew at least, on Facebook. He posted some thoughts about Jordan Peterson freaking out over that woman on the cover of Sports Illustrated. And then Jensen visited his page.
Resources:
The New Age / Medieval Mortifications of Jordan Peterson | by Matthew Remski | Medium
That FB post about Peterson and Yumi Nu
anyways… | with Music Itty Bitty Piggy - Nicki Minaj - spencer goulding
Yumi Nu cleverly responds to Jordan Peterson's 'not beautiful' comment' | indy100
Simulacra and Simulations — Baudrillard
Government Bill (House of Commons) C-16 (42-1) - First Reading - An Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code - Parliament of Canada
Canada's gender identity rights Bill C-16 explained | CBC Docs POV
Four years on, past critics are silent on whether fears around transgender human rights bill were founded - The Hill Times
An Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code - Wikipedia
Jordan Peterson: The right to be politically incorrect | National Post
I Was in the Room While Jordan Peterson and Senators Debated My Human Rights
Lies of the land: against and beyond Paul Kingsnorth's völkisch environmentalism | libcom.org
What Speaking Like Jordan Peterson Probably Feels Like – Matthew Remski
Jordan Peterson's Climate Expert is Science Denier Funded by Oil-Backed Think Tank - DeSmog
Deep Green Transphobia III: Derrick Jensen's Hateful Tirade | Vancouver Media Co-op
How Derrick Jensen's Deep Green Resistance Supports Transphobia - Decolonizing Yoga
DGR and Transphobia – Aric McBay
For a Critical Radical F
We've gone deep on yoga communities infected by conspiracy theories. We've looked at essential oils and supplements influencers peddling in misinformation. There are channelers and astrologers and chiropractors. But there's another world we've only mentioned in passing: martial arts practitioners, which turn out to be another influential vector for disinformation.
This week, Stephan Kesting, longtime BJJ black belt and instructor (and so much more) joins Derek to look at the conspiratorial frame of Joe Rogan, Dana White, and many other figures peddling misinformation in the arts.
Matthew and Julian have to thank Kelly Brogan for hanging out on an episode of Aubrey Marcus's podcast, where she lays bare the emotional avoidance and cruelty that conspirituality attempts to sublimate—or dispel the guilt of.
Here's the pull quote for the ages:
So when I am sick, right, chronically sick, what do I get? I get compassion built in to my life from others who pity me. Right? And who offer me that surrogate hit of love. I get to say no without having to actually learn to assert my boundaries and express my desires in this clear, indirect way because of course, I'm limited by my illness. I can't do that. I get to say no all the time. I get to experience the validation of this felt sense of wrongness and brokenness that's always lived within me out of all my patients told me that the first time they got a diagnosis, they felt like See, I knew something was wrong with me. Yeah. And it's like, you know, ends up being like the prison number you know, that's put on their vest, but it feels in the moment like it's somebody's finally seeing their hurt. And when, you know, we end up over identifying with that wound with the cancer diagnosis with the, you know, the mental illness…
She goes on in the episode to say: "victim consciousness is the only human pathology."
Full episode, along with access to almost 2 years of bonus content at Patreon.
Premka Memoir
If you want to STAY SICK, Don't Watch This | Dr. Kelly Brogan MD on Aubrey Marcus Podcast
Lesson 136: Sickness is a defense against the… | ACIM
Is humanity doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past?
This week, Julian traces a timeline from the bright-eyed early days of the internet to the dark message boards where QAnon emerged—and that still foment white supremacist mass shootings. to the dizzying infinite scroll on TikTok. Each new evolution of social media exploits innate human vulnerabilities more effectively, delivering more potent strains of deceptive manipulation to receptive young minds.
No surprise, then, that a crew of talented dancers with huge TikTok audiences appears to have been recruited into a high-demand evangelical group with a divine mandate to conquer all aspects of American life for Jesus. We'll hear from friends and family anxiously wondering what is going on.
For today's interview, Abbie Richards returns. She's the the mis and disinformation researcher with special expertise on the "clock app."
Show Notes
How Lonelygirl15 Changed The Internet
Analyzing TikTok Usage and Growth
Is "The Garden" a TikTok Cult?
Dancing In The Name of The Lord
Inside the $2.5M LA Mansion Where Alleged TikTok "Cult" Shoots Videos
Shekinah Church "About" Page
The Modern Apostles Who Want To Want To Reshape America Ahead of the End Times
HBO Recruits Instagram Independent Reporters
Julian and Matthew decompress after the interview with Gavin Ryan and discuss the "alt-med treadmill" and what it means to never quite know where the threshold of evidence lies,
Cortney and Shana can’t remember exactly how they first became aware of the New Age promises and anxieties that would come to dominate every aspect of their lives. Their mom brought it into the house and their daily rhythms bit by bit.
As kids in the early 1980s, they would fall asleep to visualizations by the self-help guru Wayne Dyer, on audiocassette. Or mom would read passages from Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramahansa Yogananda, after tucking them into bed. Cortney remembers an eerie photograph of the yogi’s corpse in a glass coffin in the mortuary. The lore was that he just wouldn’t decay. “Mom had a real fascination with beating death,” she told us.
When the girls were still in elementary school, mom took them to an “attunement”, which must have made them the youngest Reiki Masters in Green Bay, Wisconsin—if not the whole midwest. “She was on a search,” Shana told us.
And at some point the local massage training, the flyers in the health food stores, and the mail-order books weren’t enough. Mom started going to events, a long way from home—all the way out in Washington State. One time she came home with a VHS tape and played it for the girls. It showed a woman named J.Z. Knight transform into someone she called “Ramtha,” who she said was 35,000 years old, and carried the wisdom of the ages. She also brought audiocassettes of Ramtha, which they played in the car.
This was their introduction to “channeling.” They were young teens, and didn’t know what to think. Was it magic? Was it funny? Ramtha sounded like the Great Gazoo, after all. When mom wasn’t home they’d show the VHS tape to their friends and giggle. But they also felt strange about it. Embarrassed.
“I remember yelling at my mom, ‘Why can't you be normal?’” Shana said. What they understand now is how much she desperately needed to find something that was meaningful.
“She was really struggling in the Catholic religion,” Shana said, “And her marriage,” Cortney added. “And midlife. It was the perfect storm.”
Matthew sits down with Cortney and Shana as they share their story publicly for the first time.
As the crew is in the final stages of submitting their forthcoming book, Julian and Derek reflect on how yoga has evolved in their personal lives. In Part 2, they talk about yoga in aging bodies, the pursuit of philosophy, and leaving the damn cell phone out of yoga studios.
Since day one, we've been covering medical disinformation on this podcast, always wondering where it would move next. Our collective breaths were stolen when learning about the seemingly inevitable overturning of Roe v Wade last week—and the extensive implications that could have for American society.
Mother Jones senior editor, Kiera Butler, has been reporting on medical disinformation in parenting groups for years. Her most recent piece points out the next potential freedom to be stripped from women: the use of contraception. She joins Derek this week to talk about this seemingly dystopian present we're moving into, as well as the continued merging of the Christian Right and wellness influencers—which is very much a part of this movement.
Show Notes
The Anti-Abortion Movement’s Next Target: Birth Control
The Terrifying Story of How QAnon Infiltrated Moms’ Groups
The Death of Roe Is Going to Tear America Apart
As the crew is in the final stages of submitting their forthcoming book, Julian and Derek reflect on how yoga has evolved in their personal lives. In Part 1, they discuss the origins of their yoga practices, what led them to teaching, and some ideas about yoga philosophy in general.
After we published episode 98 on “Placebo Joe” Dispenza, an Australian artist named Gavin Ryan posted a comment to Facebook in response:
“My wife was full of this stuff, when she stopped taking all the treatments that had finally turned her breast cancer around, right up to the day she died of it. Still fully convinced she was going to heal herself by sheer force of wishful thinking.” We reached out, and Gavin agreed to an interview.
Fey was 47 years old when she died under the coconut palms and stars of Ubud, with Gavin at her side. She’d spent six years feverishly trying to keep ahead of breast cancer with alternative medicine and New Age spirituality. She received several turns of evidence-based care that had served her body well. But she would always return to the energy work, herbs, and meditations that spoke to her soul.
Gavin was there with her all the way. He found himself stretched thin between advocating for treatments that worked, and honoring her need for magic.
We're really grateful that he has shared this story with us.
Here's the full recording of Fey reciting "Karuna Breath."
Manifestation workshops. MLM downlines. The supplement grift. Cash is king everywhere in the conspirituality sphere, even—especially—when disguised in the jargon of spiritual-ese. Derek and Julian step back and discuss the cash grab impulse, as well as talk about their own feelings on money and its value.
In this conversation, Beatrice Adler-Bolton—disability justice advocate and co-host of Death Panel Podcast—says something twice:
"Under capitalism, you’re only entitled to the survival you can buy."
Her forthcoming co-authored book is called, provocatively, Health Communism. Part of its argument is that we have to imagine a society in which everyone is entitled to the survival we can share.
How disquieting it is that the natural instinct we have as individuals to ask: "What is this going to cost me?" is microcosmic to neoliberal obsessions—austerity, productivity, and dreams of a better future purchased with moral sacrifices in the present. It’s microcosmic to the brutal decisions our societies are now making about who is worthy of protection and who isn't, and which political constituencies we can't afford to piss off by appealing to the small amount of generosity and humility it takes to wear a mask.
We're living in a culture of What is it going to cost me? And that's not really a culture at all.
If we don't do better, then how exactly are the conspiritualists wrong? Not about the details, but about the existential condition. They imagine a Cabal at the top of everything, making nefarious decisions, and this is easy to dismiss. Less easy to dismiss is the feeling they articulate, that many of us share: that unseen and impersonal forces are working against the spirit of human generosity. They know that sometimes we all feel ourselves participating in that process, which means we have to do something—perhaps as radical as waking up. Not to the magic of turmeric, or the realization that we’re starseeds. Something far more radical than that, and much more mundane: that we can organize ourselves in more fair and loving ways.
Beatrice Adler-Bolton is a blind/low vision and chronically ill artist, writer, and disability justice advocate. Beatrice studies radical patient groups and the capitalist political economy of health as an independent researcher and is earning a master's in Disability Studies at CUNY. She is the co-host of the Death Panel podcast with Artie Vierkant and Phil Rocco.
Note from Beatrice:
If you'd like to give your listeners a little more info on Disability Justice (DJ), I would recommend this link from Sins Invalid, which is a short and foundational DJ text and a really quick primer on what it is written by Patty Berne and Sins Invalid: tinyurl.com/DJ10Principles.
Derek and Julian discuss the literary influences and yogic practices that led them to yoga in the first place, while also discussing what spirituality in a post-pandemic world could look like.
In July 2020, just as we were finding our sea legs with this podcast, Imran Ahmed joined to discuss the state of disinformation occurring around the world. As the founder of the UK’s Center for Countering Digital Hate, he had just produced a report that found anti-vax organizations were reaching 58 million people on social media—and this was well before the COVID vaccines were developed. The total amount of money spent by anti-vax groups and advertisers targeting their followers on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube turned out to be roughly $1 billion.
Imran’s group kept reporting and we kept covering them. You probably remember the Center thanks to its Disinformation Dozen report, which profoundly impacted awareness of just how much anti-vax leaders were monetizing their supplements, seminars, and other supposed COVID “interventions.” The report even reached the White House where Joe Biden called out the Disinformation Dozen during a press conference.
What’s changed in the nearly two years since we had Imran on? Well, a lot—and in some ways, not much at all. Julian interviews Imran this time around after having met up in person at the Defeat the Mandates rally in downtown Los Angeles. Imran discusses what’s changed, what hasn’t, and how the bottom line remains the same: namely, the conspiritualist’s bottom line. They also talk about the nature of free speech in an internet filled with disinformation.
Before hearing from Imran, Derek and Julian briefly discuss the state of disinformation and free speech online, which Derek frames in terms of urban planning and the concept of legibility.
The Sermon of the Sardines is etched into our very souls. Picture the scene, as dreamboat doctor Zach Bush recounts his shimmering story of swimming off the coast of Tulum with thousands of tiny heroic fish, for Rich Roll’s Tuscany retreat participants. In this week’s Bonus episode Matthew and Julian connect the dots between Zach’s quivering amphibious ecstasy, his fascist notions of holy sacrifice in warfare via “non-empathic presence,” how he praises his hospice staff for using reiki as opposed to pain meds, and inspires his listeners to have no fear of death. After all—it’s the ultimate upgrade. From Sardine to Salvation, Bush has it covered.
Listeners: there’s a revolution going on. Legions of Twitter counselors and Instagram therapists has risen up to offer unsolicited sermons on cults, cult leaders, and cult recovery. With COVID closing down the studios, every third yoga teacher has become an expert in trauma. They’re starting Facebook groups. They’re selling courses. They’re doing their Family Systems work out in the open, displaying heroic levels of vulnerability. We’re just waiting for the first QAnon recovery MLM to launch on Kickstarter. We know it’s coming. There will be oils, and breathing exercises, and some very long emotional check-ins on Zoom.
Meanwhile, Netflix is distinguishing itself from GaiaTV, the Netflix of cults, with an explosion of cult documentaries. There’s a gold rush on. Scouts for all of the streaming companies are lined up outside of the ashrams, vetting survivors to see who has the chops to carry a series. We seem to love them, but sometimes not as much as the sociopaths themselves. The cult doc is the new true crime chill.
Beneath the feeding frenzy, there’s real work to be done. The QAnon Casualities subreddit has 235K followers as of today. We get dozens of emails and DMs from people who have had their lives upended by conspirituality and cults. We have hints and whispers to offer them, but no answers. Yes, we live in a capitalist hellscape in which emotional turmoil of the people is commodified and sold back to them in the form of workshops and bingeable series. But we are also able to host Rachel Bernstein, cult recovery therapist, to get some clarity on the basic phenomena that dominate our commons today.
Program note: We’re going to try to stretch this out to 90 minutes so that we can each say we got a 45-minute free consult on why TF we’re doing this job.
Since early on in this conspirituality experiment, Derek has been using the catchphrase that is the title of this week's bonus episode. Julian joins in to discuss exactly what the phrase means in the landscape of conspiritualists, who the most egregious offenders are, and the origin story of the term. If you think your coffee is moldy or those glasses are really blocking blue light, think again.
If you get treated by someone who says they’re a doctor, but they’re not, can they still have a placebo effect? That’s the question we’d like to ask Dr. Joe Dispenza, who’s not a doctor, but who plays one on the internet, treating one and all with the placebo of his bafflegab about Quantum healing and TimeSpace.
Placebo Joe. Who is he? How do you take the measure of a Quantum Man? We’ll shine our browsers into the slit experiment and observe a particle here, a wave there. The particles of video clips, the waves of affiliate links. We’ll run our signature experiment: Schrodinger’s Influencer, to find out just how many parallel Joe Dispenzas are populating the multiple universes he is trying to crack back to alignment with his chiropractic panache. There’s the Joe of the Ramtha School of Enlightenment, Joe who starred in “What The Bleep Do We Know?” There’s faith healer Joe, and Joe who now headlines, alongside David Icke, for the Netflix of conspirituality, Gaia TV.
Joking aside: in episode 89, we heard from Mary, whose husband almost gave up on chemotherapy for aggressive pancreatic cancer under the influence of Placebo Joe. And today we’ll watch him pretend to be able to cure infertility, and romance Aubrey Marcus. We’ll also puzzle over his strangely undramatic origin story. We’ll suss out the normalizing impact Joe has on a whole raft of bullshit. We’ll wonder why this boy from a nice working class famiglia in Jersey wanted to be a doctor so badly, he was willing to talk himself into it.
Notes:Gaia Acquires Yoga International, a Leading Digital Yoga Service | News | bakersfield.com
35. Seance Science w/ Susannah Crockford
89: Till Death Do Us Part w/ Mary
You Are The Placebo
Why Some People Are More Susceptible to Placebos
$2.5B Spent by the NCCIH
Placebo Myths Debunked
85: Gaia Buys Yoga International, Stocks Rise on Uranus
Feedback Monday Bonus: Responding to Lissa Rankin
Merv Griffin Show JZ Knight As Ramtha - 1985 - 14 minutes
RSE: 4 axioms
Life University loses accreditation
Dispenza Quantum University bio
Joe Dispenza "I am the Placebo"
No Joe you are not the placebo
What the Bleep Do We Know!?
Matthew and Julian draw back the curtain to take you behind the scenes of the book-writing process. They step back to consider the pantheon of conspiritualists we’ve covered over the last two years; the kaleidoscope of themes they represent, and the key moments they’ve had on the big cultural stage as the pandemic has unfolded. Who among them is worthy of being cast in the rogue’s gallery we will include in the book that will officially document all of our work over almost 100 episodes now?
This week we’re “just asking questions.” You probably recognize that quip from Joe Rogan, of course, but today’s focus is another actor and comedian turned popular podcaster, Russell Brand. As with Rogan, who he recently said he loved being compared to, Brand is amassing an increasingly large following—trust us, he’ll remind you of that number at the top of every episode—thanks to his high-energy solo rants about the conspiracy of, well, seemingly everything.
But what’s Russell really saying? We’ve listened to hours of his podcasts and watched further hours of videos and, to be honest, we can’t really tell. Pseudo-spiritual musings mesh with benign revolutionary politicizing with a healthy dose of his live performance schedule and reminders to smash the subscribe button thrown in. Russell is exceptionally good at evoking emotions and firing listeners up with his high-energy, seemingly stream-of-consciousness diatribes, yet when you break down the sentences, you find that he’s pretty content-free. Well, except when he’s marketing himself, which, at the end of the day, seems to be the only thing Russell is truly interested in.
Show Notes
Hybrid immunity offers increased protection that is longer-lasting against Covid-19 reinfection, studies show
Russell Brand: My Response
Russell Brand: How Did We Miss This?
Russell Brand & Nigel Farage clash over immigration on Question Time
Russell Brand: 'I've never voted, never will'
Johnson & Johnson Announces Real-World Evidence and Phase 3 Data Confirming Strong and Long-Lasting Protection of Single-Shot COVID-19 Vaccine in the U.S.
Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Vaccine Boosting in Persons Already Protected by Natural or Vaccine-Induced Immunity
Effectiveness of the BNT162b2 Vaccine after Recovery from Covid-19
Protection against SARS-CoV-2 after Covid-19 Vaccination and Previous Infection
World Economic Forum: Digital Identity
Watch Russell Brand Read From A Couple Of My Articles
Hey everyone... Matthew and Julian here with a more relaxed format. We'll be periodically checking in on feedback going forward, starting with a look at some shade thrown by Lissa Rankin at the pod. We're not entirely buying what she's selling, but it does give us pause to reflect on communication styles, satire, and empathy.
Here's what Rankin had to say: https://www.facebook.com/lissarankin/posts/521303766024162.
And here's how Matthew responded: https://www.facebook.com/matthew.remski/posts/10166401550575602
(Apologies about Matthew's sound quality. Kittens knocked over the mic stand and snapped the connectors. Derek is shipping out a hand-me-down for Thursday!)
You might have heard some revolutionary news: germs don’t exist. Ok, they exist, but they only make you sick after you ruin your relationship with your environment—the terrain. Actually, the idea isn’t new. Initially floated in the 19th century, terrain theory was never proven in real-world experiments, and so fell dormant—until now. As with many terrible 19th-century science metaphysics, conspiritualists are feeling nostalgic. And do we have a group to introduce you to this week.
To help us debunk this funk, Dr Dan Wilson returns to the pod to offer his keen ear in breaking down the bullsh*t being shoveled by Tom Cowan and Andrew Kaufman during The Event 2021. First, Derek offers a brief history of the battle between germ theory and terrain theory—one that produced a clear winner in Louis Pasteur, which, as conspiritualists now spin it, is just further evidence of the Deep State conspiracy holding us all back.
Show Notes
Dan Wilson on YouTube | Instagram | Twitter
This pseudoscience movement wants to wipe germs from existence
Germ theory denialism is alive and well – and taking the nuance out of scientific debate
The world's top life coach has a new book, Life Force. Seemingly bulletproof to criticism due to connections in high places (and a litigious legal team), Tony Robbins's new book is a perfect example of the conspiritualist grift: mix science with sciencey sentiment and package it in a shiny revolutionary marketing package that promises much and delivers little more than confusion. Derek reviews.
Show Notes
A single blood test claims to detect dozens of cancers. Skeptics wouldn’t bet your life on it.
The 700-calorie breakfast you should eat if you want to live forever, according to a futurist who spends $1 million a year on pills and eating right
What supplements does Ray Kurzweil take and why?
Instagram: Low testosterone is one of the most underdiagnosed conditions in American men
Epigenetics: It doesn't mean what quacks think it means
Siddhartha Mukherjee: The Gene
Detox: What “They” Don’t Want You To Know
The mystical politics of Aleksandr Dugin, the mercurial philosopher and geopolitical strategist hovering behind Vladimir Putin, is front and center this week. Last week, we covered the phenomenon of Western conspiritualists folding the Russian invasion of Ukraine into their fact-free claims about what's really going on. It turns out that once you're all-in on the cabal, the Great Reset, mole children, and vaccine genocide, whatever happens in the world means you were right all along.
Conspiritualists are claiming that, just like Donald Trump, Putin is really a light worker fighting to save the children and destroy Anthony Fauci's secret bioweapons labs in Ukraine while heralding the true Great Awakening. But an entirely different prophecy, one promising a Soviet spiritual rebirth, appears to be inspiring Vladimir Putin's actions—as well as Russia's disruptive interference in American politics.
Julian unpacks the perennialist religious movement, Traditionalism, and how it speaks to fascist political actors around the world, including Steve Bannon. This is especially relevant in light of tragic events in Europe, a stark reminder of those of us who remember the Cold War. This time, Dugin and Putin dream of a new Russian Empire.
Show Notes
Aleksandr Dugin Ukraine Invasion Press Conference
Moscow Patriarch Stokes Religious Tensions with Ukraine Remarks
Dugin, Putin & The 2016 Election
The Rise of Traditionalism by Benjamin Teitelbaum
Steve Bannon’s Ideological Soulmate
Dugin Fired from University Post for Inciting Genocide
The London Dinner that Brought Europe’s Far-Right Together
Bannon Cites Julius Evola
Inside The Strange Origins of Bannon’s Nationalist Fantasia
Dugin’s Foundations of Geopolitics Reviewed
Dugin’s Eurasianism & The American Election
Benjamin Teitelbaum on Conspirituality
Matthew brushes off and polishes stories and analyses we’ve only had the time to glance at in various episodes. A second or even 3rd instalment may be forthcoming.
Presented in chronological order, dating from a year before the WHO declared the pandemic, up to just after they did.
- March, 2019: How JZ Knight, aka Ramtha, began forging alliances with Qanon promoters back in the spring of 2019.
- February, 2020: How Joe Mercola positioned himself very early as the go-to for COVID quackery, and how his platform primed the pump for circulating terrible ideas right out of the gate.
- March 11, 2020: How Dr. Tom Cowan resurrected R Steiner for his wisdom on COVID.
- March 20, 2020: How Mak Parhar, a Flat Earther Bikram Yoga teacher, was the first yoga studio owner in Canada to defy the shutdown. What was he thinking? He later died of COVID.
After two years of being lied to about COVID, are you really going to believe the mainstream media about what’s happening in Ukraine? Didn’t you know that Ukraine is a child-trafficking hub? That it’s full of US-funded bioweapons labs? Do you really think Putin is evil, or do you just think what you’re told to think? Look at you, with your all-new, personalized, more terrifying feed to doom scroll. Only it’s not new, just more intense. If it wasn’t, how would the powers-that-be keep your attention while they instantly convert your money into social credit and make you pay $10 for a gallon of gas? Wake up! See through the green-screen battle scenes and crisis actors covered in stage blood. The explosions are revelations, the flashes of light are miracles waiting to be recognized.
Yes, dear listeners: Conspirituality influencers have gone to war, and they’ve dragged us kicking and screaming to the front lines. But now that we’re here, we’re committed to understanding and negotiating this liminal space. We are podcast peacekeepers. Our rations are non-GMO. We have our helmets of analysis securely fastened; our flak jackets will protect our vital organs. Most importantly, our hearts will stay intact.
To you at home: we urge you to plant your victory gardens now and keep the faith. Conspiritualists have launched a brutal, illegal attack on a humanitarian crisis. They’re monetizing a war in which starving 19-year-olds are killing civilians. Our influencers may well meet the reality of their empty souls on this battlefield. When they come home bandaged, they will need soup and real jobs—and that will be up to us.
Show Notes
Who is Gene Decode?
Signposts On The Road To Ascension Trailer #1 — Witzeman
Ukraine Invasion & Putin’s Spiritual Advisor Alexandr Dugin
Teal Swan on The War Inside
Christiane Northrup Shares Patriot Underground on the Khazarian Mafia
JP Sears Hot Tub Hot Take
Pro-Publica on Fake Fact-Checks About Invasion
Maajid Nawaz on Facebook and Azov Battalion
NATO on National Women’s Day
BBC on Claims of “crisis actors” in Ukraine
Fascist Messaging in Ukraine Resistance
Kitchen Soup News antisemitic conspiracy word salad
Trucker Convoy Ukraine Talking Points
Russian Disinformation Makes Local Relatives Doubt Accounts of Relatives in Ukraine
Pat Robertson Says Ukraine is the Pathway to The Second Coming
New Age Influencer Akura’s Dream Prophecy
Matthew takes a break from the news to expand on the possible origins of conspirituality—as being related to intergenerational trauma.
What is conspirituality, if not the mobilization of forced, fragile, and ultimately empty spiritual aspirations, made to temper hypervigilance?
It's also just a relief and a pleasure to spend time away from the feeds, and immersed in this brilliant film.
____
Dr. Nerurkar on the glorification of trauma.
A few weeks ago, you couldn’t turn to a social media platform without seeing that Joe Rogan was trending. The diversity of topics boggled the mind: COVID disinformation; misogyny, pseudoscience; transphobia; and, of course, racism, thanks to the infamous N-word mixtape. Then a parallel argument came through: fair pay for musicians on Spotify. Given that Rogan was given $100 million for his podcasting contract—a number we’d later find out was closer to $200 million—the economic discussion brought another dimension into the conversation. But given all of the topics being discussed, which dimension should we have focused on?
That thought led Derek to write a series of tweets on the topic, followed by a more in-depth Substack article contemplating the three main issues of concern: scientific misinformation, racism, and fair pay. The tweets led to a lot of pushback, which we’ll be looking at through the lens of conversation and debate, as well as a 2021 Pew Research poll on American political typologies. It also led to today’s guests—infectious disease epidemiologist and science communicator, Jessica Malaty Rivera, and civic product leader and community activist, Daniel Latorre—offering their own views on the topics, first on social media, then here on the podcast. But first, we’ll discuss the implications of intersectionality and progressive politics in a world in which social media can distort as much as it amplifies. Matthew will dish on how much he loathes everything Joe Rogan stands for, and why—but also wonders about how pragmatic his seething hatred is, or could be.
Just a note before we begin. Between our last episode—in which Julian caught up with Sara Aniano and dappergander on current events in the QAnon world—and today, Russia has invaded Ukraine, and all of the news is terrible and terrifying. Since the first rockets hit, we’ve been monitoring how conspirituality influencers are responding, and we’ll bring you that data next week, as it continues to show the adaptability of the movement and the willingness of its influencers to say literally anything to remain at the center of the attention and outrage economy.
Show Links
Joe Rogan: We are in Kali Yuga
Joe Rogan shares Sadhguru: “It is fashionable to suffer”
Matthew Sheffield on Right-Left “balance” on Rogan.
McInnes appearance on Rogan “instrumental” to Proud Boys’ growth: Rolling Stone
Beyond Red vs. Blue: The Political Typology
Race & Class at Spotify
Pivot Counties that Voted Obama-Obama-Trump
Why Rust Belt Cities Voted for Trump
Obama’s Legacy and Hilary’s Loss
Pew Research on “Defund The Police”
The “Great Awokening”—White Progressives Now To The Left of Minorities
Gallup Poll: Mixed Opinions on Transgender Issues
The Left-Right political spectrum doesn't really capture the breadth of political sentiment in America. Derek looks at a 2021 study by Pew Research on political typologies—as well as Jean-Pierre Faye's horseshoe theory—to better understand the multivariate dynamics at play, as well as its implications for democracy in America moving forward.
Show Notes
Pew Research: Beyond Red vs. Blue: The Political Typology
Rational Wiki: Horseshoe Theory
"Freedom Convoy" leader, Pat King, recently live-streamed his arrest on Facebook. His racist public incitements to violence belie claims that the convoy was non-partisan and peaceful. As with other conspiracy-based events, inner circle communications and public relations messaging prove to be contradictory.
From RFK Jr appearing at a Far Right rally in Berlin and militias storming the US Capitol on Jan 6 to anti-vaxxers gathering at the Lincoln memorial and the Ottawa truckers tying up traffic and trade for over a month, QAnon appears everywhere.
This week, Julian pilots solo to interview extremism experts Sara Aniano (who regularly reports on the alt-tech far-right cess-pool, Telegram) and dappergander about recent developments in the Q-adjacent conspiracy sphere, implications for the planned American convoy, and the coming midterm elections in America. They also discuss surviving the emotional toll of their research and offer advice for those trying to help themselves—or someone they love—escape.
Show Notes
dappergander on Twitter
Sara Aniano on Twitter
Grid.News Reporting on Planned American Trucker Convoy
Q-Adjacent Convoy Protestor Arrested in Ottawa Cries Out “I’m Being “Stuck with a Vaccine”
Convoy Leader Signs Off Her Speech at Occupation with WWG1WGA Rallying Cry
They couldn’t be more different: the self-made, self-help guru to the stars, the antisemitic Black-separatist, the blue-blood anti-vax lawyer, and the founder of a science-fiction religion. But in the cult-conspiracy economy, strange bedfellows are often the norm.
For this week’s Bonus, Julian investigates how—underneath cultural, racial, political, and even religious differences—opportunistic grifters can always find common cause in the pursuit of wealth and influence. In the end, they’re all carpetbaggers dressed up as pharaohs.
Show Notes
The Lies of RFK Jr’s Medical Racism Documentary
Samoan Measles Outbreak
Somali Measles Outbreak
Measles Outbreak Amongst Brooklyn Orthodox Jews
RFK Jr. At Berlin protest with Neo-Nazis
Weaponizing Racism for Anti-Vax Activism
Werner Erhard: Father of Self-Help
Anti-Vax Infiltrates Nation of Islam
Scientology Money Project
When Stephanie Sibbio, owner of Glowing Mama Fitness in Toronto, livestreamed herself harassing workers in her local health food store over COVID policy, the world was introduced to a now-familiar archetype: the petulant anti-masker who cares as little about science as she does about others. Sibbio has since developed this role with gusto, becoming a minor celebrity in the Canadian antivax movement. Recently, she threw her support behind the Occupation of Ottawa.
But everyone comes from somewhere: a family, a network, a circle. Beneath a persona hardened by the social media spectacle, there’s a person to be known, remembered, and perhaps welcomed back.
Today Matthew sits down with four friends who have known and loved Stephanie since junior high school. They share stories of the bonds they nurtured growing up, and how quickly and violently antivax ideology and social media smashed their circle.
An honest and transparent discussion about the emotional and social costs of conspirituality.
Show Notes
65: Long-Haul QAnon (w/Rachel Bernstein & Jitarth Jadeja)
19: Hurtling Into the Q-Hole (w/Mike Rains)
Glowing Mama Anti-Masker. Toronto Influencer Socially Toilets in… | by Matthew Remski | Medium
The Unbearable Feelings of the Anti-Masker | by Matthew Remski
Oppression Fantasies of White Anti-Vax Moms | by Matthew Remski
That Time When I Was in a Cult and Got a Loving Letter from a Friend | by Matthew Remski | Medium
"An essential pleasure of white liberal identity in Canada is the schadenfreude of looking down our noses when we consider what’s south of us. It’s an unearned pride that says: “We’re not like that.” It’s delusional. We are absolutely like that, with tougher gun laws and the moderating effect of the Parliamentary process—but absolutely like that. We want to say “QAnon wouldn’t find a foothold here.” and it does. We want to say “We’re a long way off from Jan 6,” but we’re not. Democracy is as fragile as the human body."
An editorial piece from Matthew on a harsh awakening in the Great White Liberal North.
Land acknowledgments meant to honor Indigenous people too often do the opposite – erasing American Indians and sanitizing history instead
Harsha Walia on historical continuity
Ottawa police discover children living in protesters' trucks | The Star
Conspirituality Podcast: Anti-Masker at the Skating Trail
Land Acknowledgement – City of Toronto
Toronto Cops Say They Did 'Tremendous Job' After Beating People, Destroying Homeless Camp
Nearly $2 million spent on clearing encampments should have gone to housing, advocates say | CBC News
300 people trapped. 4 hours. Pouring rain. The day I was kettled by police in Toronto. | Short Docs
'We regret that mistakes were made': Toronto police acknowledge 'unacceptable' mass arrests at 2010 G20 protests | The Star
Lawsuit filed against convoy organizers, seeking damages on behalf of downtown Ottawa residents
We're not Tragically Hip fans — and yes, we're Canadian | TVO.org
https://www.robinwallkimmerer.com/
We cover a lot of ground in this episode. But to introduce it in seed form, we want to draw your attention to a 15-second video we’ve posted to our Instagram. It shows a little boy, clearly stressed, sitting in the cab of an expensive black pickup truck with the window open, holding his ears against the incredible noise of the air horns as his mother takes a triumphant pan-shot video of a convoy rally.
The clip encapsulates the surreal chaos of a deceptive, astroturfed, funded-from-outside, social-media-driven catastrophe that is right in line with the worst of the conspirituality world. A torrent of misinformation, co-opted trauma, and “freedom-fighters” LARPing, in which children are weaponized by super-pilled parents, in which we can witness the cycles of social neglect and psychic violence turning in real time.
We open today with a review of the Occupation of Ottawa and what we know so far, and a discussion of how our conspirituality friends are co-opting and distorting events in ways that are not only craven, but will increase the chances that this event will end in violence. Finally, Matthew interviews Elizabeth Simons of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network on the deep background, the big picture, and the horizon.
CORRECTION: Matthew incorrectly stated that The Branches Yoga in Kitchener Waterloo hosted a workshop by Selam Debs. They did not host it, but they did promote it to their community.
Show Notes
Canadian Anti-Hate Network
New Age Healers and Right-Wing Militants Come Together in Ottawa
Candian Yoga Teacher and Anti-Racism Educator Targetted
The 'Freedom Convoy' Is Nothing But A Vehicle For The Far Right - Canadian Anti-Hate Network
Mayor of Windsor: “Some occupiers are willing to die.”
A Holocaust Denier Is Travelling Across Canada Building Up The Country's Newest Far-Right Militia Movement - Canadian Anti-Hate Network
Canada's “Freedom Convoy” Is a Front for a Right-Wing, Anti-Worker Agenda
Ottawa police discover children living in protesters' trucks | The Star
Freedom Convoy Brings the Far-Right—Curtis
The Real Enemy for Truckers is Covid-19 | Teamsters Canada
Ottawa state of emergency declared as 'Freedom Convoy' protests continue in Canada with trucks clogging major roads - The Washington Post
79: Anti-Hate Work in Canada (w/Dan Collen, Elizabeth Simons, & Morgan Yew)
Elon Musk heaps more praise on trucker convoy in Ottawa to protest vaccine mandates | Automotive News Canada
Despite the binary conversations around vaccinations, healing has never been an either/or dependent on one factor. What works for one person isn't necessarily the correct course of action for someone else. One criticism of modern health care certainly stands out: the ritual of healing has been sacrificed for the convenience of scripts and hasty dialogues between doctors and patients.
This week, Derek looks at the intersection of healing and ritual through the lens of placebo studies and psychedelics, arguing that regardless of the discipline, "therapy" is a holistic endeavor.
Mary joins Matthew for an extended interview about the last year of her husband’s life. Louis died of pancreatic cancer almost exactly a year ago, at the age of 45. Mary—who has asked that her last name be kept off the record for privacy concerns—loved him and cared for him throughout that journey. It was hard, not only for the reasons we all share, but because Louis spent his last months under the influence of quantum chiropractor Joe Dispenza. At one crucial point, he was on the verge of stopping his chemotherapy treatment, believing that a Dispenza meditation technique might be more effective.
Mary is an Applied Psychologist with a science background and an evidence-based mindset. She didn’t share Louis’s beliefs or ideals, and at points was terrified that his death would be hastened by conspirituality. But of course, she loved and served him nonetheless. And it seems he had a good death, perhaps blessed by beliefs that made Mary wonder if they might provide relief for her as well.
If we’ve learned one thing over the course of this project, it’s that we’ll be living and dying together for a long time at the crossroads of data and imagination, science and spirituality, evidence and the unknown. We’re grateful that Mary has shared this love story of how she navigated it all.
Note: If you have recently lost someone close to you, you may find this episode difficult to listen to.
Show Notes
John-Roger, New Age Spiritual Leader in California, Dies at 80 - The New York Times
ARCHIVE Cult Leader John-Roger, Who Says He's Inhabited by a Divine Spirit, Stands Accused of a Campaign of Hate
Last week’s Defeat The Mandate March in Washington D.C. saw a who’s-who of conspiracists address thousands from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Live-streaming and mic’d up— some fresh from massive exposure on the Joe Rogan Experience—they complained about censorship and tyranny, and compared vaccine mandates to the Holocaust.
They present themselves as bold outsiders who reveal forbidden knowledge and stand up against the corrupt establishment. But scratch the surface of anti-vax celebrity and Covid-conspiracism and you’ll find the well-oiled machinery of affiliate marketing and global quack-medicine sales networks.
For this week’s Bonus, Julian reports on Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Simone Gold, Pierre Kory, and Sayer Ji. He follows the money and asks, “What’s the difference between a misguided activist and a cynical grifter?”
Show Notes
Kennedy Xmas Party Hypocrisy
Ravens’ Theory of Mind Research
Primate Theory of Mind
Goldfish-Broccoli Study
$1M in PPP Loans for Anti-Vax Groups
CCDH Pandemic Profiteers
Grandview Research on CAM Global Market
NCCIH Spent $2.5 on Failed Alt-Med Studies
Skeptical Inquirer Report on CAM Grants
Snap. Crackle. Pop. That’s the release you’ve been waiting for—the ecstasy of small gas bubbles being “cracked” along your spine. While it’s debatable how much good chiropractic adjustments are doing for your body—there’s some evidence that it alleviates lower back pain, alongside a litany of unsubstantiated claims—what’s not debatable is the number of anti-vax, pseudoscience-prone chiropractors clogging the conspirituality pipeline these days.
This isn’t a “chiropractor takedown” episode, as both Derek and Julian have benefited from treatments in the past. Indeed, there’s a whole realm of “mixers” that try to follow best practices and clinical science. Yet there’s a strong conspiritualist lean among a number of chiropractors and we want to know why. To that end, Derek offers a history of the practice, which is, perhaps unsurprisingly, rooted in an anti-vax, anti-medicine strain of 19th-century vitalism. Julian discusses some of his experiences while Matthew questions consent and harm in the industry. The team then breaks down chiropractor Melissa Sell’s discussion of the antisemitic Germanic New Medicine, which she recently championed on the pseudopalooza of online disinformation conferences, The Event 2021.
Show Notes
U.S. Judge Finds Medical Group Conspired Against Chiropractors
Chiropractors Charged in Insurance Scam
Can Indecision Cause Hemorrhoids?
Goodbye to All Yoga Bullies. | by Matthew Remski | Medium
Inspired by a recent discussion on psychoanalysis and politics with Pat Blanchfield on Know Your Enemy, this brief meditation focuses on two aspects of the conspirituality landscape that have lurked in the unconscious of the pod:
- People do not make sense. There are conflicting impulses and voices within us all. One objective of our project is akin to the goal psychoanalysis: to get those parts talking.
- Calling people hypocrites for not making sense is a terrible way of getting them to make sense. What we call hypocrisy, they have used for coherence and survival. The blowback isn't stubbornness, but a confession of needs.
In this bonus, Matthew looks at how the contradictions of Kelly Brogan and JP Sears make sense. Brogan rails against "mommy medicine" while installing herself as "mommy shaman." Sears tells us "Don't outsource your truth," while he absorbs data from Bitchute and Rogan.
Brogan's followers are attracted by the simultaneous rejection and reconstitution of authority. JP Sears is a hollow husk of a man, telling his followers to look inside.
But when you meet a contradiction or a defence that is harmful, you can’t just argue it away. You have to work towards a better answer to the condition the defence is trying to ease.
Notes:
Freud and Politics (w/ Pat Blanchfield)
When we left our Austin conspirituality heroes in the last episode, Charles Eisenstein, New Age Q, was locking in his position as the philosopher—or jester—in the court of Aubrey Marcus.
But what of this court? Matthew’s scene by scene analysis of some prime Marcus marketing porn will give us some clues. The video in question is for Marcus’s life-coaching programme, which is called “Fit for Service.” The visuals centre around what looks like a haka ritual dance, through which customers release their inner warriors, nurture their affiliate links and jazz up their socials.
On point for the influencer age, the ritual plays out in a narcissistic hall of mirrors, choreographed for performance by programme participants in order to promote the programme they are performing in. Naturally, Matthew will be using the analytical frameworks of spectacle and simulation from Guy Debord and Jean Baudrillard to make sense of it. He’ll also apply Renato Rosaldo’s concept of “imperialist nostalgia” to explore the ugly conflicts in Marcus’s indigenous cosplay.
Show Notes
Fit for Service homepage
fit.for.service: A Dandelion In A Field Is Un-killable
A poet’s plea to save our planet | IN-Q | TED Institute
"Revolution": The FORGOTTEN Voices of The Pandemic Will Have You In Tears
The 5 Desires: Marcus on FFS promises
Aubrey Marcus - Fit For Service Mastermind - Review – Max Hug
The Wellness Pornographers. Gamifying intimacy, abusing public… | by Matthew Remski | Medium
Heresy Labs on Heilung
Renato Rosaldo: Imperialist Nostalgia
Charles Eistenstein has had quite the pandemic. Essays read by millions, retweeted by Jack Dorsey, quoted by Ivanka Trump, held up as the poet philosopher of conspirituality—hell, he’s even been on the podcast!
Given the response to this bonus episode, we've decided to release it into the wild as an important companion to Conspirituality 86. Julian tracks the transformative arc of malformed ideas garnished with spiritualized language that has made Eisenstein the romantic mascot of anti-vax, Covid-contrarian wellness. This is how he finds himself now poised to become the mythic storyteller-in-residence of an emerging Austin-based cult of psychedelic bro science and “medical freedom.”
In 2017, Charles Eisenstein addressed the SAND (Science And Non-Duality) Conference on our "obsession with measurement." A clip of that talk, published in 2019, put forward the question Is Science a Religion? Charles answered yes, offering a number of supposed parallels.
Only—most of them don't hold water. Derek responds to his talk, breaking down Charles's analysis point-by-point. He also bookends the episode with clips from a thinker who brilliantly drew parallels between science and religion without conflating them: Oliver Sacks.
Show Notes
Is Science a Religion? — Charles Eisenstein
Oliver Sacks on Humans and Myth-making
Up to this point, we’ve understood Charles Eisenstein as the poet-philosopher of conspirituality, lending his Burning Man ritual workshop chops to the antivax faux-freedom movement. Out of deference to his apparent sensitivity and respectable writing skills, we’ve given him the benefit of the doubt—we even invited him on this show for two episodes to see whether we could find common ground. We didn’t.
In our last Bonus episode, Julian tracked how Eisenstein has accelerated and intensified his rhetoric. Today, we’ll see how he’s fortifying his money networks, and starting to say the quiet parts out loud. He’s no longer “just” dog-whistling violence and QAnon.
We’re reviewing a recent video he’s co-produced with Onnit multimillionaire and Austin bro-poet Aubrey Marcus. It’s an anime rendition of the ending of his 2013 bestseller, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible. In the book, Eisenstein presents “The Gathering of the Tribe” as a kind of personal mythology. As he levels up to the big leagues, this story about belonging to a group of blessed alien shamans sent to wake up humanity carries clear real-world literalness—and a culty vibe.
If the high-end video doesn’t convince you, a tape from a hipster New Year’s Eve party in Ithaca NY might do the trick. As he holds guru-court for All the Big Questions, Eisenstein tells an Iraq vet that he has special gifts to deploy against the (fictional) building of COVID concentration camps in Rhode Island. Then he says he hopes the “pedophile elite” will just stop. Sound familiar?
Eisenstein’s content is poetic and vague. Its implications are plausibly deniable. It pours out through an endless stream of radiant and inscrutable essay drops. He has mastered the cryptic prompt that either speaks to your soul, to your appetite for disrupting public health, or to your recent tactical training regimen. Who can really tell? His skill is to stand beside and above it all. He can avoid being pinned down. It’s almost as if he’s not really there, but only reflecting the zeitgeist of our broken moment. It’s time to just name him for what he is: New Age Q.
Show Notes
A Gathering of the Tribe | POWERFUL Short Film by Charles Eisenstein w/ Jon Hopkins & Aubrey Marcus
A Gathering of the Tribe | Reality Sandwich (original, 2009)
A Gathering of the Tribe (full version Charles’s site)
Interview with Charles Eisenstein | Inner World Press | Shift in Consciousness Ezine
In the Miracle (Eisenstein essay, 2009)
Charles Eisenstein at Resonance NYE
The Man Behind the World's Most Famous Fake Vagina
233: Aubrey Marcus – Own The Day, Own Your Life
Austin supplement maker boosting brains and bodies
He Had One Product, $80K in Funding, and One Influencer - And Unilever Just Acquired His Company for 9 Figures
Alpha Nails: Men's Nail Polish That Gives You 'Swag And Sex'
Art of Manliness Podcast #93: Total Human Optimization W
Charles Eistenstein has had quite the pandemic. Essays read by millions, retweeted by Jack Dorsey, quoted by Ivanka Trump, held up as the poet philosopher of conspirituality—hell, he’s even been on the podcast!
Julian tracks the transformative arc of malformed ideas garnished with spiritualized language that has made Eisenstein the romantic mascot of anti-vax, Covid-contrarian wellness. This is how he finds himself now poised to become the mythic storyteller-in-residence of an emerging Austin-based cult of psychedelic bro science and “medical freedom.”
On the day after the Winter Solstice, as the world tucked in for an Omicron staycation, a news flash came over the wire. Yoga International—one of the largest yoga media companies in the world—had been acquired by Gaia—one of the largest pseudoscience, pseudointellectual, conspiracy theory platforms in the world. While the CEO of Yoga International immediately assured nervous content providers that the platform will remain editorially independent, only time will tell.
What we do know is that countless print articles written by earnest yogis and thousands of hours of classes created by earnest yoga instructors will now share space with David Icke, an antisemitic conspiracy theorist who believes lizard people have coopted world governments—and that’s only the start.
The acquisition predicts even more brain-melting in yogaland, exposing even more vulnerable and credulous seekers to a dumpster fire of meaning dressed up in a simulation of spirituality. Julian covers some Gaia history. Derek makes us suffer through some Gaia content. Matthew opens by tracking the century-long descent of yoga media to this conspiritualistic nadir.
Show Notes
Rob Price Interview on Gaia and Conspiracy Theories
Gaia Acquires Yoga International, a Leading Digital Yoga Service | News | bakersfield.com
Yoga guru in compromising position / Celebrity instructor Rodney Yee faces allegations of misconduct with students
The Case against Swami Rama of the Himalayas
How to Respond to Sexual Abuse Within a Yoga or Spiritual Community
In 1969, Swami Vishnudevananda pioneered what has become a life transition ritual for the GenX and Millennial precariat: the Yoga Teacher Training (YTT) Programme. He was a cult leader rapist who thought yoga would help the world understand messages sent by UFOs. Not exactly confidence-inspiring.
Not every YTT programme is bad—today's bonus host Matthew has worked in some good ones for over a decade. But on the whole, we're talking about an industry that has graduated up to 500K ppl over 50 years through a pseudo-educational process that has greased the epistemological pipeline towards conspirituality.
YTTs are unregulated by any academic or professional consensus. They are driven by the anxious charisma of urban yoga studio entrepreneurs who need to sell big-ticket products to counter the rising overheads of the gentrification they're helping to drive. Their curricula offers a pastiche of uncited resources. They pad contact hours with sermons and meditation sessions.
The typical YTT training manual is an unironic postmodern meat-grinder in which Iron Age philosophy and high school anatomy are blended with quotes from Carl Jung and Rumi. As an example, Matthew looks at a Jivamukti Yoga School manual from a 2007 training hosted at Omega Institute.
Again: not all YTTs are bad, or lead to QAnon. But the ritual and charismatic pedagogy that most offer has a lot in common with the sacrament of redpilling—albeit more socially acceptable and aspirational.
Conspirituality went viral in 2020. It's time to ask whether the YTT industry compromised a culture's immunity to it.
Notes:
Hello, YogAnon! Selfish Care Rituals | by Matthew Remski | Medium
How a #MeToo Facebook Post Toppled a Yoga Icon | by Matthew Remski | GEN
Shielded for Decades, a Leader of Sivananda Yoga Finally Comes Under Fire for Alleged Abuse | GEN
72: John of Fraud (w/ Lisa Braun Dubbels and Mirna Wabi-Sabi)
John of Fraud. How did slack journalism and New Age… | by Matthew Remski | Medium
Practice and All Is Coming – Matthew Remski
Jivamukti sexual harassment lawsuit says the yoga studio is a cult.
Jivamukti, Dark and Light: Holly Faurot, Sharon Gannon, and David Life Speak Out - Decolonizing Yoga
Terry Eagleton in the New Statesman Re: that Chomsky quote
"When we don't avoid people who think differently than we do, we gain an opportunity for growth and national renewal." So opens Red State Christians: Understanding the Voters Who Elected Donald Trump, a fascinating and insightful book by Lutheran pastor and journalist Angela Denker.
Denker spent years on the road talking to Christians who voted for Donald Trump—listening to their motives and writing honestly, but not uncritically, about their reasoning. To her surprise, she discovered a much more diverse coalition than you’d likely imagine—just like the Left is not the monolith that conservatives sometimes paint. From abortion rights and racial issues to immigration and football, Denker offers an inside look at the American mindset.
Derek investigates the origins of language through thinkers like David Crystal, Michael Corballis, and others, to investigate how two popular figures—Deepak Chopra and Rick Warren—sell their spiritual wares. Their patterns reveal the model many conspiritualist influencers use today.
The global pandemic response is a microcosm of the global climate collapse response. In both we get to see what’s really under the hood when the pressure is on. In the face of endless and relentless odds and near-constant demoralization, what stories do we turn to, what bonds do we form, and who do they help?
Climate journalist emeritus George Monbiot joins Matthew to discuss the never-ending road of empathy and activism, and what happens on that road when otherwise brilliant and sensitive people “lose their mirror,” or sense of responsibility to the commons. What happens when they aestheticize grief. What happens when they have enough privilege to fetishize renunciation.
Their discussion orbits around the recent conspirituality spiral of a writer who has been a hero to many in the realm of climate literature and consideration. Paul Kingsnorth has recently converted to Romanian Orthodox Christianity... and vaccine skepticism. He's also wondered aloud whether the virus is not "a delicious little sign from God" that humanity deserves punishment.
Links:
The Dark Mountain Manifesto
Earth Talk: Five years on a mountain - Paul Kingsnorth and Dougald Hine
Is there any point in fighting to stave off industrial apocalypse? | Paul Kingsnorth and George Monbiot | The Guardian
After the failure of Cop26, there is only one last hope for our survival | George Monbiot
The Vaccine Moment, part one - by Paul Kingsnorth
The Vaccine Moment, part two - by Paul Kingsnorth
The Vaccine Moment, part three - by Paul Kingsnorth
George Monbiot on Twitter: "I've read Paul Kingsnorth's anti-vaccine essay on Substack, and I suspect it might contribute to quite a few deaths. Why? Because his writing is elegant and powerful, but some of his facts are simply wrong. Here's a very small sample: Thread/"
In the 1990s, Westerners searching for enlightenment flocked to India. The pilgrimage represented an affirmation of status and authority in the burgeoning yoga economy. Julian reflects on his three months in the “middle circle” of the Osho Ashram in Pune, where he chased a destiny seeded years before in a South African basement. As an earnest yet skeptical seeker passing though cultic territory, he points out the overlaps between meaningful experience and group indoctrination.
While Americans were transforming esoteric strains of yoga into a commodifiable industry in 1980, a young naval officer named Steve Bannon was picking up theosophical texts in metaphysical bookstores and practicing Zen meditation in secret while stationed in Hong Kong. He was wary of his countrymates liberal explorations of Eastern philosophies, aware of the nationalistic roots upon which these “mystical” systems were founded. Then he stumbled into Traditionalism, a perennial philosophy that consumed all world religions, as popularized by the likes of French metaphysicist René Guénon and Italian antisemitic conspiracy theorist Julius Evola.
This week we welcome Benjamin Teitelbaum, an Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology and International Affairs at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and author of the book, War for Eternity: The Return of Traditionalism and the Rise of the Populist Right. Teitelbaum gained access to leading right-wing figures around the world, including Steve Bannon. He’s got their number and brings receipts. Get ready for a long, strange trip.
Show Notes
The rise of the traditionalists: how a mystical doctrine is reshaping the right
Covid-19 Is the Crisis Radical ‘Traditionalists’ Have Been Waiting For
The People Who Pray for the Apocalypse | Benjamin Teitelbaum | The Glenn Beck Podcast
Matthew responds to the robust feedback on the Sam-Harris-is-a-highbrow-conspiritualist bonus, and then stretches the terms around harm in the conspirituality sphere in another way, by looking at the spectrum of agency offered by different wellness/spirituality products. He interrogates the premise implicit in some of our reporting that the cognitive errors and magical thinking of alt-health and New Age paradigms are all on a slippery slope to ruin. TLDR: isn’t it always more about sociology than ideology?
When Mike Flynn posted a video on July 4, 2020 in which his family recited QAnon slogans, it cemented the disgraced former National Security Advisor and U.S. Army lieutenant general as a MAGA patriot super-hero. On September 17, just 14 short months later, Flynn took the stage, bathed in light at the Lord of Hosts Church in Omaha, Nebraska to lead a political prayer that was a fiery angelic call-to-arms. But, oops! It turns out that this prayer traces back to New Age doomsday cult leader, Elizabeth Clare Prophet. Now the Q-faithful have turned on their hero, accusing him of being in league with the Satanic cabal. We’ll ask today’s guest host, Sean Prophet—who happens to be the eldest son of that cult leader—how he got out, and how we got here.
Show Notes
The Radical Secular podcast with Sean Prophet
Relevant episodes:
9: QAnon and Conspirituality: with Matthew Remski - 08.24.20
16: Before Q, There Was CUT: with Joe Szimhart - 10.19.20
22: Getting out of Cults and Harmful Religions - Bonus Episode
54: Blavatsky, the I Am, and The Summit Lighthouse - 07.19.21
Black Sun Journal » Happy Birthday, Mom!: 2006 Article by Sean Prophet on final interaction with Elizabeth Clare Prophet
Church Universal and Triumphant - Nightline - May 17th 1990
CUT/Summit Lighthouse on Oprah 5 with Streiker and Hassan
QAnon Fall Out from Mike Flynn using I Am Prayer
Derek shares a story from his time as a Lululemon brand ambassador to highlight the toxic merging of spiritual practices and consumerism. Not only does he detail Lulu's post-Chip Wilson pivot in an attempt to "own yoga," he also explores the histories of branding, money, and markets in an attempt to understand how we arrived at the influencer culture that dominates social media today.
We've talked a lot on this podcast about the selfie sermon: the kind of iPhone video native to Instagram influencers. Easily weaponized by conspiritualists, this sermon is equal parts intimate confessional, prophecy download, and motivational coaching, directly transmitted from your favorite self-anointed maverick expert. Social media seems perfectly designed for such hypnotic performances and spiritual darshans. But in the brick-and-mortar world, yoga teachers have long blurred the line between acting and teaching, space holding and theater, and ritual ceremony and fitness. If all the world's a stage, as Shakespeare had it, the wooden planks of the yoga studio—and the digital platforms built in ether—demand that teachers embrace a role, adopt a script, and sell a story to their audience. What we want to know is: where does the performance end and yoga begin, or perhaps more to the point, is there even a difference?
Our guest host today is Jill Miller, who many listeners will know from her hugely influential body of work in yoga and movement as founder of Tune-Up Fitness. She's also a former actor, which played an important role in her transition to full-time yoga instructor. We're going to start today with an excerpt from her 2017 TED-style talk that she gave in Toronto titled, “Lights, Camera, Yoga."
Kyle Rittenhouse walks away from the courthouse while Ahmaud Arbery's killers were found guilty and "QAnon Shaman," Jacob Chansley, was received significant jail time. Our opinions on each of these cases are likely determined by our political affiliations, which in turn are a reflection of how we think about morality, crime, and punishment.
Julian draws on scientific research into how genetics and the brain shape our politics, thought experiments in moral philosophy, and the work of moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt.
As he questions whether or not any of us have freely chosen to be the good ones, he wonders if a way out of our toxic polarization might be found through understanding the underlying moral values and emotional reactions that drive one another's political beliefs.
COVID has been a recruiting windfall for hate groups in Canada, with new alliances and networks forged between white supremacists, xenophobes, and ethnonationalists in the fire of accelerated conspiracism. Joining Matthew to map out this landscape are street-level anti-hate activists Elizabeth Simons, the deputy director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, Dan Collen, a researcher with the Neuberger Holocaust Education Center's Online Hate Education and Research Project, and Morgan Yew, a video journalist and DJ from Kamloops, whose coverage of Toronto's anti-lockdown protests has been rich and revealing.
We cover a lot in this one: the “irony poisoning” white nationalist recruiting tactics that target 14 year-old boys, the rogue’s gallery of extremists wreaking havoc at anti-lockdown rallies, racists trying on “sovereign citizen” pseudolaw in the courts, and their craven appropriation of Indigenous rights discourse when they lurch into “Pretendian” territory. We’ll also look at the People’s Party of Canada, and discuss why it is not very smart to write it off as QAnon foolishness.
Content Warning: analysis of hateful views, including notes from a white supremacist recruiting manual that is instructing followers on how to indoctrinate children.
Canadian Anti-Hate Network
Dan Collen’s fantastic articles on Medium: dancollen.medium.com
Morgan Yew’s awesome Twitter feed
Canadian Anti-Semites and Far-Right Conspiracy Theorists Try New Tactic: Aligning with Indigenous Communities
Mediasmarts
Learning for Justice | Education Resources
Wisdom2Action – Facilitate Change. Strengthen Communities.
The 519- nonprofit promoting 2SLGBTQ+ inclusion serving Toronto - The 519 - Space For Change - The519
Egale Canada - nonprofit promoting 2SLGBTQ+ inclusion serving Canada Home - Egale
CASSA - Council of Agencies Serving South Asians - http://cassa.on.ca/
The Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre - https://www.holocaustcentre.com/
Chinese Canadian National Council for Social Justice - https://ccncsj.ca/
Timeline cleanse. Some of Morgan’s video nurturance journalism.
Bonus episode, piloted by Matthew.
There is a subtle form of conspirituality that rides on the familiar dialectic of political cynicism and spiritual promise—but it's dressed for a button-down salon dinner in Harvard Square. No crystals in sight, no essential oils wafting through the room.
Sam Harris isn’t sounding the alarm about the Cabal or the Illuminati: his bugaboos are Islam, or “wokeism,” or “cancel culture.”
And he isn’t saying that starseeds will save the day, or that a Great Awakening is upon us. He’s not so low-brow.
His salvation product is meditation, which he says can validate his political insights. And hey, there's an app for that!
Celebrity Crusaders For Empire
Towards a geopolitics of atheism
Why the arguments of the 'New Atheists' are often just as violent as religion
Harris daydreaming about a nuclear strike
Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web
Will the "University of Austin" ever actually exist?
Sam Harris & Charles Murray
Harris. “A Few Points of Confusion.”
Decoding the Gurus: Sam Harris & Meditation is all you need
Gurometer— Kavanaugh and Browne
Buddhist Studies Has a Whiteness Problem
Buddhism, Race, and American Belonging
BuddhistCultureWars: | Gleig
Joy Brennan on Buddhism & identity politics
Decoding the Gurus. Interview with Sam Harris
I Don't Speak German: 97: Debating Sam Harris
Remski: “I Got Mine-Ism”
"Woking Up" by Eiynah (which Matthew didn't cite NEARLY enough, as he filed before listening to it.)
Conspiracy theories flourish during uncertain times. They're always with us, passed down through generations like alternate histories, yet they’re constantly reinvented when collective stress levels peak. Julian reports on the QAnon spin-off group that’s been camped out in Dallas’s Dealey Plaza for two weeks, hoping to catch a glimpse of a pantheon of resurrected dead celebrities. In light of the Astroworld concert tragedy, which killed 10 people, being interpreted as a ritual Satanic sacrifice on social media, Derek wonders if conspiracies are just how we process everything now. Matthew points out the legitimate reasons conspiracy theorists have for their paranoia while warning against the media's tendency to titillate by misusing the terminology of cult research. And he also reads a bit from Paradise Lost. A conversational recap week as we’re working on some Big Shows in the next few weeks.
01:41 By the Numbers
40:30 Satanic Panic in Houston
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Support Conspirituality on Patreon
Show NotesRiots, deaths, sexual assault: Maybe Woodstock was always a nightmare
The Bizarre Travis Scott Claims Show That Conspiracies Are Just How We Process Things
TikTok and QAnon Panic Over ‘Satanism’ Conspiracies at Deadly Travis Scott Concert
QAnon’s Refuse to Leave Dallas After JFK Jr. Fails to Appear
Inside The QAnon Cult Waiting for JFK Jr.
On The Ground At Dealey Plaza
Twitter videos/thread on Michael Brian Protzman
What Biden is keeping secret in the JFK files
QAnon Influencer Recruiting Secretary of State Candidates
Academic Research on Conspiracy Theories in Times of Social Crisis
Karen Douglas PhD on The Psychology of Conspiracy Theories
Privilege is often blind and rampant across societies. But is the term also overused?
In this bonus sample, Derek looks at two examples of privilege in wellness spaces, the danger of its overuse, and a possible reframing of how to approach the topic.
To prepare this curative episode, we listened carefully to alternative health consumers for many hours, taking an exhaustive history of life challenges on physical, mental, and emotional planes. We scanned the symptoms against our compendium of disease states and prescribed the precise substances that would mirror them.
Then, we took minuscule audio samples from our podcasting apothecary — skepticism, melancholy, and empathy. We mixed these, diluted them a thousand times, to the point at which they became completely inaudible. Then we shook them up and down while chanting the spell of this bespoke remedy: Conspiritualitis investigarium.
Please don’t try to turn up your volume on this episode. You can’t actually hear it, and that’s what makes it so powerful.
But seriously folks. Welcome to our long-awaited homeopathy show — and not a week too soon. NFL’s leading quarterback Aaron Rodgers has just admitted to endangering the entire league by opting to be “immunized” via homeopathy rather than complying with the league’s vaccination requirements. (He’s also a lying liar.) There are reports of homeopaths selling COVID19 remedies — through both small ops in the U.S., and federally-approved dispensers in India, where Narendra Modi’s Hindu Nationalists mingled sugar pills with astrology to help disguise their negligent pandemic response.
Derek takes us on a tour through the strange history of this medicine that isn’t there, and interviews Jonathan Jarry of the McGill Office for Science and Society on why it haunts us. Julian contextualizes homeopathy against the broader “Complementary and Alternative Medicine” landscape. And Matthew wonders about the uses of magic.
02:42 Something's Fishy
12:43 Origin Myth
35:13 An Expensive Problem
1:18:44 Interview w/Jonathan Jarry
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Support Conspirituality on Patreon
Show Notes
A brief history of homeopathy
Vaccines and Homeopath
Homeopathy: A History
Berlin Wall pills: a cure for emotional trauma – or royal-endorsed quackery?
Jonathan Jarry's homeopathy video
Jonathan's articles for McGill University
Homeopathy And Its Founder: Views Of A British Researcher
MEASURING MYTHOLOGY: Startling Concepts in NCCAM Grant
$2.5 billion spent, no alternative cures found
Complementary And Alternative Medicine Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Intervention
Worldwide Homeopathy Industry to 2028 - Healthcare Expenditure and Reimbursement Presents Opportunities
Are emotions really separate from rationality? Is trusting science similar to religious faith? Do poetry and mythic archetypes disclose a reality beyond the material world? What might characters like Mr. Spock reveal about logical thinking?
For this week's Bonus, Julian explores the relationships between scientific and religious world views through the lenses of emotions, metaphors, and the brain. He draws on clips from neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, philosopher Julia Galef, linguist George Lakoff, biology professor Robert Sapolsky, and neurologist Vilayanur Ramachandran.
Show Notes
This Time With Feeling: David Brooks and Antonio Damasio
40/40 Vision Lecture: Neurology and the Passion for Art
George Lakoff - How Does Philosophy Illuminate the Physical World?
- Schizophrenia
The Straw Vulcan, Julia Galef Skepticon 4
There is no avoiding the fact that conspirituality plays out against a backdrop of racially-charged politics and the echoes of colonialism. And from the beginning of this podcast project we’ve tackled things like the origins of yoga and wellness being tangled up with European fascist movements and racist eugenics. We’re speaking from and into a culture that is predominantly white, and has the disposable income to afford boutique health ideologies. We know it’s naturally allergic to the project of public health. We know that it ignores the social determinants of health — because if it didn’t, it couldn’t sell its green-smoothie-based hero’s journeys.
But reporting on race and conspirituality is only going to get harder. In this episode, Matthew reviews a new volume of essays that might help. A Field Guide to White Supremacy, edited by Drs. Kathleen Belew and Ramon Gutierrez, brings together a pile of resources for journalists and policy-makers who want to engage thoughtfully with issues of equality. And he interviews Dr. Belew on best practices, The Great Replacement conspiracy theory, and why there are no “lone wolves.”
In a debrief discussion, Derek and Julian join in to puzzle out the complexities of reporting on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. platforming Black anti-vax activists, how the sources of vax-hesitancy shown by Aaron Rogers and Kyrie Irving might be coming from different places, and how to think empathetically about vaccine hesitancy in Black liberation movements.
02:41 Introduction
11:40 Interview w/Kathleen Belew
1:07:30 Reporting on Race Issues
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Support Conspirituality on Patreon
Show Notes
Kathleen Belew
A Field Guide to White Supremacy by Kathleen Belew, Ramon A. Gutierrez
RFK Jr is one of the Disinformation Dozen, and He has actively courted and collaborated with Black communities and leaders
Twitter thread of Barclay's Center protest clips.
The Creator Of 'The Punisher' Wants To Reclaim The Iconic Skull From Police And Fringe Admirers
Kyrie Irving hints at redpilling followers on IG.
Okay, maybe the title is overstated. But, as Matthew explores in this bonus episode: what are the contours of social comfort and habitus — supported by faith and ritual — that haunt any layperson's relationship to science? When the pressure is on, be it acute or existential, do we really display "critical thinking" — or are we really skilled at post-hoc rationalizing choices that embody the social status we wish to identify with?
What are the psychosocial scents that waft from institutional actors vs. influencers, and what does it say about history and personal experience that one or the other is inviting, or terrifying?
Finally: both Steve Hassan and Lee McIntyre have proposed that careful 1:1 conversations can re-establish interpersonal trust with the indoctrinated. But when we're talking about making vulnerable populations less susceptible to pseudoscience and conspiracy theories, is this really sufficient? Or must we consider broader forms of social atonement, like reparations?
Show Notes
75: How to Talk to a Science Denier (w/Lee McIntyre)
Sapolsky: Religious Ritual is OCDB.C. health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry on COVID-19333,000 children were abused within France's Catholic Church, a report findsSanta Claus and Dr. Tam have a video chat
What happens when a philosopher of science shows up at a flat earth conference to test out his theories about changing people's minds? This story catapults you into Lee Mcintyre’s new book, How to Talk to a Science Denier.
As anti-vaccine and anti-quarantine protests flare up around the world, and the pandemic drags us all through financial and emotional destruction, discussing science communication has become more necessary than ever. Mcintyre's 2018 book, Post-Truth, examined the manipulative world of “alternative facts.” As a sort of addendum, his latest charts a boots-on-the-ground course to understanding and engaging with false beliefs. My interview with Lee is the main focus of today's episode. After we run the interview, the three of us will debrief and discuss.
01:36 Introduction
04:38 Interview w/Lee McIntyre
1:04:21 Trust & Communication
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Show NotesTalking to science deniers and sceptics is not hopeless
When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions
Santa Claus and Dr. Tam have a video chat
It's been over a century since Dale Carnegie began teaching the importance of extroversion, bringing with it a cultural shift that champions an aggressive social and work style. Gone were the days of championing introspection.
This week, Derek explores his own relationship with introversion in Yogaland, wondering how a quiet form of self-investigation that often champions the loud and bombastic on social media. The influence of the extrovert has dominated many domains, but none more insidiously than the wellness influencers feigning compassion in an attempt to influence people but not necessarily win friends.
Show Notes
People Aren’t Meant to Talk This Much
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
What happens when MLM sales and neoliberal life coaching collide with a yoga charisma that oozes with pseudofeminism? Where do we even begin? Exploitation. Heartbreak. Toxic mimicries of therapy, mentorship, political awareness, and community.
In this investigative report, Matthew digs into the background of a recent article posted to Medium called “Open Letter to Elena Brower.” He interviews the author, Tatum Fjerstad, who Brower mentored from 2014 to 2016, and Liz Fullen, who worked as Brower’s unpaid yoga class assistant for approximately three years. He’ll also play excerpts from a legally-recorded Zoom call in which Brower gives non-consensual “coaching” to a stranger.
Friend of the pod Dr. Natalia Petrzela joins the story to recount her personal brush with the Handel Coaching Method. Brower is a Handel “expert coach”, and has merged the Method with her yoga training to produce peak cognitive-dissonant messaging:
You’re fabulous, but you're fucked. You’re already perfect and you know what’s right for you, but you have a lot of work to do, and I can show you how to do it.
Other themes include “performative therapy abuse”, the perils of unlicensed therapy, and how the power pyramids that hide in plain sight may be more vulnerable than we know, especially when we begin to talk about them clearly.
02:15 Introduction
08:54 The Brower Effect
13:23 "You Used Me As a Prop"
35:39 The Oils Coach
57:03 Zoom Call From Hell
1:15:26 Enthrallment is Not Money
1:36:46 Sorry, Not Sorry
1:44:30 Debrief
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Support Conspirituality on Patreon
Show Notes
Open Letter to Elena Brower. CW: spiritual and emotional abuse | by tatum fjerstad | Sep, 2021 | Medium
mlmtruth.org's killer list of research and resources
New Presidential Diamond announcement: Brower
Conspirituality Ep. 4: Racism in Wellness Culture (w/Dr Natalia Petrzela & Dax-Devlon Ross)
Conspirituality Instagram post on "Performative Therapy Abuse"
Yoga Teachers Are Not Doctors, Doctors Are Not Priests
IYNAUS independent investigation of Manouso Manos
The American Yoga ReVolution with Iyengar disciples Manouso Manos and Patricia Walden
“Betrayal of Trust”: 1991 Mercury News Investigation of Sexual Assault Allegations Against Manouso Manos — by Bob Frost
The Yoga Mogul: John Friend, Creator of the Anusara School
Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand • Kelly Diels
Scandal contorts future of John Friend, Anusara yoga
With a new variant of QAnon circulating through white evangelical churches, protests against masks and vaccines are becoming more aggressive around the world. In Germany, a gas station attendant who asked a customer to mask-up was shot dead this week, and a Maryland man allegedly killed his pharmacist brother and sister in law, believing that they were poisoning people with vaccines.
Demonstrations have turned violent in Australia; in New York, a mobile-free Covid-test site was up-ended. In LA, Beverly Hills protest organizer Shiva Bagheri was caught on video punching a breast cancer patient outside a clinic and harassing parents and kids as they walked into an elementary school, yelling that vaccines are a form of child-rape.
For this week’s Bonus, Julian looks at these developments through the lens of research on radicalization and fascist political movements. While Westboro Baptist Church tip-toes right up to the edge of violence with their hateful fundamentalist activism, the anti-abortion movement has included terrorism in the form of bombing, kidnapping, and murder.
But it’s not all bad news. This episode ends with data from a recent study on what supports de-radicalization, as well as a hopeful personal account of how compassionate online interactions led one woman to exit a hate group she was born into, and advocate now for tolerance.
Show Notes
What does Radicalisation Look Like? Four Visualisations of Socialisation into Violent Extremism
Watch a Beverly Hills Anti-Vaxxer Scream at School Kids Vaccines Are ‘Rape’
‘It’s evil’: Jim Acosta reacts to Trump’s remark during interview
The Link Between the Capitol Riot and Anti-Abortion Extremism
What Do Former Extremists and Their Families Say About Radicalization and Deradicalization in America?
Meat is toxic. Dairy is toxic. Eggs? As dangerous as cigarettes. Garlic stokes the hormones. Avoid nightshades at all costs. Organic or bust. Eat according to your blood type. Eat according to your chronotype. Cacao resonates with the frequency of the sun, but never, ever add sugar to it. Sugar is toxic. Juice cleanses lead you to your highest self.
If you’re exhausted already, so are we. This week, Derek anchors our look at how the wellness world disguises eating disorders as purity tests and pathways to “clean” eating. He opens up about his 15-year-battle with orthorexia, an eating disorder he believes to be rampant in yoga and wellness, as well as the broader fitness world, where men hide their own eating disorders with protein shakes and ketogenic fasting. Matthew adds kitchen notes from the spiritual cult front lines.
Julian talks with Chelsea Roff, founder of Eat Breathe Thrive, about her own struggles with food before discussing her decade of experience working with eating disorder victims in Yogaland. Derek then chats with Dr. Jason Nagata about the challenges of treating boys and men in clinical settings, and what to do about a phenomenon so many suffer from yet so few are able to find a language for.
02:28 Orthorexia in Wellness
57:15 Interview w/Chelsea Roff
1:22:49 Interview w/Jason Nagata
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem
Support Conspirituality on Patreon
Show Notes
This Is What It’s Like For Men With Eating Disorders
Eating Disorders in Teens Have ‘Exploded’ in the Pandemic
Eating Disorders Surged Among Adolescents in Pandemic
Men obsessed with building muscle mass have higher mental health risks
Uncovering and Destigmatizing Male Body Dysmorphia in Popular Culture
Doctors alerted to dangerous dry scooping workout trend
Prospective health associations of drive for muscularity in young adult males
What Is Orthorexia?
Body dysmorphic disorder
Film Theory 101 – Laura Mulvey: The Male Gaze Theory
An audio essay loosely based on conversations Matthew has while parenting. Content is possibly appropriate for ages 7 to 11 — although who really knows. The main point is to deflate the media persona and cut back on the cynicism and hot-takery to discuss these things in a way that leaves the door open for growth and hope. Rules: use simple sentences, many examples, frame bad news within good news, and never call anyone stupid. Don’t give a kid a story that has no way out. Don’t people their world with hopeless cases.Questions include:
- What is a conspiracy?
- What’s the difference between a good and bad conspiracy?
- So what are conspiracy theories?
- Are all conspiracy theories bad?
- How can people can believe COVID isn’t real when they can see how many people are getting sick and dying?
- Why do conspiracy theorists make things worse than they actually are?
- Why would the government cover up aliens?
- What is spirituality?
- What do conspiracy theories have to do with spirituality?
- So if you grew up believing in Jesus, did you used to believe in conspirituality?
Whatever one’s conception of “God” is, “John of God” should now be a nauseating name. For decades, João Teixeira de Faria pretended to heal an endless stream of pilgrims to his center in rural central Brazil through the Spiritist practice of “psychic surgery.” In reality, the miracle healing claims worked to cover up an obvious truth. João was sexually assaulting and raping women, in public and in private, likely every day of his “working” life. As he did so, he amassed a vast fortune in affiliate businesses, farming operations, real estate, referral rackets, and sales of crystals and fake remedies.
In this episode we won’t retell this history, now poignantly captured by a new Brazilian-made documentary on Netflix. Instead, we’ll look at how lazy and motivated journalism shook hands with the entrepreneurial New Age to validate and accelerate the absurd claims of a monster. In addition to original reporting on how João made his mark in the U.S., Matthew is joined by former New Age publicist Lisa Braun Dubbels and Brazilian journalist Mirna Wabi Sabi to discuss the globalization of magic and abuse.
Trigger warnings for this episode: rape, sexual assault, fraud, spiritual abuse.
02:17 John of Fraud
1:16:22 Interview w/Lisa Braun Dubbel & Mirna Wabi-Sabi
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Show Notes
Biles, Maroney, Raisman and Nichols opening statements before Congress
Chico Xavier | Obituary
Is ‘John of God’ a Healer or a Charlatan?
John of God — Skepdic
James Randi ABC comments debrief
The trouble with Dr. Oz
John of God 2006 Atlanta Program
About Heather Cummings
Oprah March 13, 2010: “Do You Believe in Miracles?” (webarchive)
Leap of Faith: Meet John of God — Susan Casey (webarchive)
Part One: John of God: Oprah’s Favorite Ghost-Channeling Rapist Surgeon – Behind the Bastards
Famous Brazilian spiritual healer accused of sexual abuse | 60 Minutes Australia
Celebrity Healer in Brazil Is Accused of Sexually Abusing Followers (NYT 2018)
John of God – OMEGA INSTITUTE • 2014 — program guide
Statement from Omega Regarding John of God Allegations | Omega
Brazilian faith healer now accused of running BABY farms
During Thursday’s episode, Derek briefly described Flow States in the context of a universal form of spirituality. He explores that concept in a little more depth, pulling audio from Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s 2004 TED Talk about the social ramifications of Flow States.
We’re grounding down. We’re letting go. We are going deep. We are finding the metta in our meta and tuning in to Source. This week we’ll either answer or transcend the core questions our listeners post in moments of parasocial vulnerability:
Do you guys believe in anything at all? Are there any wholesome spiritual communities out there? Are all spiritual teachers toxic?
This four-hour immersive encounter between three white guys is not to be missed!
(Seriously tho: we’ve got some huge interviews and investigative pieces coming up in the next few weeks, so we’re kicking back a little here to talk basics and regroup.)
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Julian traces the roots of today’s pandemic-era conspirituality back to What The Bleep’s quantum woo, The Secret’s privileged denial and grandiosity, and the dark lessons of why beliefs really matter, as revealed by James Arthur Ray’s deadly Spiritual Warrior Retreat.
Show Notes
Laura Tucker’s response to Nine Perfect Strangers
Guru: The Dark Side of Enlightenment
Daniel Sherrell is the author of an extraordinary memoir and prayer book, Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World, in which he recounts how, as a climate activist born in 1990, he has fought to manage, digest, and even celebrate the desperate tasks of the only age he’s known: the Anthropocene. The book is his homage to the resources that help him meditate on weaning ourselves from the dissociations of Twitter and doing the hard work of transforming climate grief into climate integrity.
In our feature interview this week, Matthew sits down with Daniel to discuss the real conspiracy of climate denialism, and how conspiracy theories provide relief to those who cannot contemplate our condition.
We start the show with Derek’s contemplation of Amitav Ghosh’s “The Great Derangement” and Julian’s notes on climate denialism dwarfing the disinformation we typically interrogate in the wellness world.
01:48 Ticker
46:37 Interview w/Daniel Sherrell
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Show Notes
Warmth by Daniel Sherrell
Sherrell and Dorothy Fortenberry on Know Your Enemy
Why Grief can be Strength in a Warming World | Daniel Sherrell |
Learning How to Die in the Anthropocene – Scranton
Laudato si’ (24 May 2015) | Francis
Tucker Carlson on Military Vaccine Mandate
Dr. Wilson (Debunk the Funk) on Mike Yeadon
Big Oil’s War on Science
UCSA Climate Skeptic Disinformation List
The Climate Disinformation Playbook
Desmog Database
Steven Koonin, the “Obama Scientist”
Daniel Sherrell’s Reading List
Ducks, Newburyport — Ellman
The Summer Book – Jannson
Ice by Anna Kavan
The Mushroom at the End of the World — Tsing
Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett: review
The Passion According to GH — Lispector
The Plains: Text Classics, book by Gerald Murnane
On his family’s yearly trip to Manitoulin Island, Matthew detoxes from conspirituality influencer garbage, and returns with parts of a new plan.
Warmth by Daniel Sherrell: 9780143136538 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books
Living at the End of Our World (w/ Daniel Sherrell & Dorothy Fortenberry) | Know Your Enemy
Lives Reclaimed — Mark Roseman
What Conspiritualists and Anti-Vaxxers Get Right | by Matthew Remski | Aug, 2021 | Medium
This week, California Governor Gavin Newsom rode sane pandemic messaging to victory against the Republican-led recall election by a huge margin. Unsurprisingly, voting patterns perfectly matched the state COVID heat map, with fans of the recall suffering the worst outbreaks. Meanwhile, a strict lockdown in Australia, which is experiencing a Delta outbreak, led to American libertarians and right-wing commentators screaming fascism! We talk to Decoding the Gurus co-host (and real-life Australian) Matthew Browne about the situation on the ground. Later in the episode, Julian interviews another Aussie, Dr. Izzy Smith, about her online anti-conspiracy theory activism and science advocacy.
In the Ticker, Derek looks at JP Sears’s new cryptocurrency grift, which appears to be inspired by fellow Austinite Mikki Willis—who also announced a supplement grift this week. Matthew talks briefly to Toronto video journalist Morgan Yew to begin making sense of the alarming convergence of racist alt-right groups with aggressive anti-mask, anti-vaccine protestors at medical facilities in Canada.
02:14 Ticker
1:21:17 Interview w/Dr. Izzy Smith
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Show Notes
How the media helped fuel the anti-vaxx movement
The Non-Fungible Freedom Column
Atlantic article “Australia Traded Away Too Much Liberty”
Josh Szeps Twitter thread response to The Atlantic
Federalist article Pursuing Covid-Zero Has Turned Australia into an Authoritarian State
Opinion | Meet the police chief turned yoga instructor prodding wealthy suburbanites to civil war
Ex-La Habra police chief Alan Hostetter, 5 others charged in Jan. 6 Capitol riot
When QAnon Came to Canada
Glowing Mama Anti-Masker. Toronto Influencer Socially Toilets in… | by Matthew Remski | Medium
Morgan Yew (@weynagrom)
Morgan Yew interviewing Sarah Choujounian of Canadian Frontline Nurses
Morgan Yew: Plan to “Interview” Racist Anti-Lockdown Influencer Ends in Violence
Who are the Canadian Frontline Nurses organizing anti-vax protests?
In June, Planedemic creator Mikki Willis appeared on Living 4D with Paul Chek to discuss what “really happened” at the Capitol on Jan 6. During the long-ranging talk, Willis took some time to attack a VICE News article that we were featured in. Unfortunately for Willis, we have the audio from the Election Night party in Austin being referenced. Derek updates Willis’s memory.
Show Notes
Living 4D With Paul Check, EP 141 – Mikki Willis 2: What’s Really Going On?
The Election Night audio
Leading New Age Conspiracy Influencers Plan Their Retreat to Utopian Lagoon
Paul Chek will tell you how much he’s influenced the fitness industry. He’ll tell you that he popularized Swiss Balls, and about his time working with the Jordan-era Chicago Bulls and then the championship Lakers. The kinesiologist and founder of the Chek Institute, which offers numerous training programs under the slogan, “We teach the science of living well,” claims that he’s always taken a holistic approach to weightlifting and the gym. In fact, the man does not mind telling you how vast his influence is.
Embedded in Chek’s holistic approach is a penchant for conspiratorial thinking. He trained JP Sears, traded podcasts with biohacker Ben Greenfield, hung with anus sunshiner Troy Casey, and hosted Mikki Willis twice in the last year on his own podcast, Living 4D with Paul Chek. Today’s co-host, NYC-based fitness expert Antonio Valladares, also trained with Chek, but unlike many of Chek’s acolytes, Antonio has used his time and knowledge debunking conspiracy theories in nutrition and fitness, not adding to the fire.
In this week’s closer, Matthew reviews and contextualizes a Facebook post from the charismatic dissectionist Gil Hedley. Hedley’s post leaned into familiar anti-vax territory. But he deleted it — and, in a positive email exchange, revealed some earnest motivations and empathetic impulses. A good lesson that you never quite know where people are coming from, or where they’re going.
02:25 The Paranoid Mysticism of Paul Chek
53:17 Dissecting an Anti-Vax Post
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Show Notes
Deconstructing Paul Chek
Who is Paul Chek: Holistic Lifestyle Coach
Plandemic Director Mikki Willis Explains His Presence at Capitol Riot — Matthew Remski
About Gil Hedley
Gil Hedley: Fascia and stretching: The Fuzz Speech
A QAnon-themed Stop The Steal, anti-vax, Covid-denial roadshow came to an untimely end in mid-August with their fearless leader succumbing to COVID pneumonia on a ventilator in Florida. He denied the virus was real until his last breath.
This week, Julian chronicles the 84-stop Arise USA Resurrection Tour led by the recently deceased former CIA agent, Robert David Steele.
Characters on this Ill-fated tour include the aging wanna-be rock star slam-poet conspiracist Sacha Stone, anti-vax Urban Health Alliance leader Kevin Jenkins, cowboy-costumed MC Trent Loos, and a presidential impersonator named Lincoln Bob.
Psychedelics are all the rage in the investment world, with hundreds of millions of dollars pouring into research-based startups in the hope of finding interventions for addiction, depression, PTSD, end-of-life anxieties, and much more. But is it too much? Are we, as has happened with numerous substances in the past, placing too much faith in plant medicine? Will investors expecting a return on investment skew the research? And, more to the point of this podcast, is the burgeoning crop of yoga instructors turned shamans promising more than they can deliver?
With Matthew on a much-deserved vacation this week, Julian interviews Derek about these topics based on Derek’s 2020 book, Hero’s Dose: The Case for Psychedelics in Ritual & Therapy.
In the Ticker this week, Julian looks at the growing list of anti-vax, COVID-is-a-hoax conservative radio hosts dying of COVID. We begin with the obvious: Joe Rogan recently contracted COVID, and admitted to undergoing what might be the most insane drug regimen to date.
10:24 The Ticker
20:57 Hero’s Dose
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Show Notes
Robert David Steele Dies from Covid, While Denying Covid
Anti-Vax Conservative Radio Hosts Dying from Covid
Caleb Wallace, 30-year-old Freedom Rally Organizer Dies from Covid
Texas GOP official who Mocked Covid, dies from it
Hero’s Dose: The Case for Psychedelics in Ritual & Therapy
After watching the Almost 30 podcast hosts bond over Zach Bush’s Jesus-like qualities, Matthew explores the barren friendship landscape of wellness gigworkers.
From the transcript:
We engage with friendship pornography by consuming attractive images and vicarious sensations of friendship for the sake of pleasure, without having to engage with the complexity of social conditions, class differences, boredom, sickness, or death, and without having to be responsible for the other in any sustainable way.Why is this relevant to conspirituality? Because at every turn on this podcast, we are talking about economies built within demographics sewn together by consumerism. It’s a world in which charisma is the currency and emotions are the commodities. When the influencer sells you on their subscription “community”, they are offering a toxic mimic of friendship — that’s clear… Think of how MLMs co-opt the lingo of “community”, “tribe”, etc, when what they’re really doing is turning every single social interaction within a given demographic into a sales pitch.
Links
About Lindsey & Krista: Almost 30
SoulCycle changed fitness. Its culture and toxic work environment made growth impossible.
The Wellness Pornographers. Gamifying intimacy, abusing public… | by Matthew Remski | Aug, 2021 | Medium
Anti-Vax Doctor Manifests as Jesus. Wellness Ladies Weep with Joy. — Matthew Remski
Spirituality, ill-defined a term that it is, often implies both an emptying out and an addition. What leaves is the vacuous clinging to achievements that are supposedly preventing us from seeing our true nature. What’s granted is a new mindset, a novel way of being, one in which you are at peace with both yourself and the world.
Where does the drive for status play into this quest? As journalist Will Storr points out in his new book, The Status Game: On Social Position and How We Use It, you can’t escape our impulse for achieving status. You can learn to dampen its hold on you, however. Derek catches up with Will to discuss how status plays a role in anti-vax groups, spiritual communities, and political groups.
We start this week with a Ticker by Matthew, who previews a bonus episode on the friendship porn we see on the Almost 30 episode in which the hosts share tears after being snowjobbed by Zach Bush.
02:18 The Ticker
11:35 Interview with Will Storr
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Show Notes
Almost 30 podcast, Ep.451: Dr. Zach Bush on Fear, The Immune System, & The Real Meaning of Life
The Status Game by Will Storr review — how the fight for status defines our world
One of the most debated topics in spirituality (and beyond) involves the origins of consciousness. Most neuroscientists agree that it’s emergent—the physiological systems of the body create what we call “consciousness.”
Derek revisits his 2018 conversation with Michael Gazzaniga, whose 1961 studies on split-brain patients revolutionized the discipline of neuroscience.
Show Notes
Neuroscientist Anil Seth: ‘We risk not understanding the central mystery of life’
VS Ramachandran: 3 Clues to Understanding Your Brain
Decoding the Brain’s Cacophony
Santa Barbara surf coach Matthew Coleman murdered his two young children in Mexico nearly two weeks ago. He told the FBI that he was “enlightened by QAnon and Illuminati conspiracy theories and was receiving visions and signs revealing that his wife possessed serpent DNA and had passed it on to his children.”
Beneath the peak chaos of this story lies a social fabric torn to shreds by QAnon and related conspiracy theories. Marriages are ending, custody battles are raging, and parents and children are negotiating painful silences or estrangements.
Joining us today as a co-host is Jitarth Jadeya, one of the few ex-QAnon followers so far who has been willing and able to discuss what this fever dream did to him and his family. Marriage and Family therapist Rachel Bernstein, the host of the brilliant IndoctriNation Podcast, also joins to discuss her experiences working with cult survivors and providing recovery resources.
In this week’s closer, Derek examines the scientific hipsterism of Zach Bush, who has recently co-opted Malcolm X as a posthumous endorser, when Malcolm would have probably hated his gut biome.
2:26 Long-Haul QAnon: panel with Bernstein and Jadeja
1:08:44 Communications: Anti-vax racism
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Show Notes
Surf Instructor Killed His Children and Claimed QAnon Made Him Do It, F.B.I. Says
QAnon: a timeline of violence linked to the conspiracy theory
Former QAnon follower Jitarth Jadeja on “The Takeout” — 2/12/2021
Former QAnon believer says following the conspiracy “was absolutely a drug”
He went down the QAnon rabbit hole for almost two years. Here’s how he got out
How Ex-QAnon Followers Escaped The Cultish Conspiracy Theory
He’s a former QAnon believer. He doesn’t want to tell his story, but thinks it might help.
Rachel Bernstein’s excellent IndoctriNation Podcast
QAnon Casualties on Reddit
Conspiritualists amp up their victimhood-fetish by comparing anti-vaxxers to Jim Crow-era African Americans and Jews under the Holocaust. Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson questions vaccines, bangs the CRT red-scare propaganda drum, and swoons over Hungarian fascist Viktor Orban.
For this week’s Bonus, Julian compares Fox News’s idealizing coverage of Orban to how they treat another famous Hungarian, boogeyman of the far-right, George Soros. He also tells the tragic tale of Trofim Lysenko—Stalin’s “barefoot scientist,” to illustrate how pseudoscience actually flourishes (to everyone’s detriment) under real totalitarianism.
Show Notes
The Soviet Era’s Deadliest Scientist Is Regaining Popularity in Russia
Under fascism, a generation of scientific knowledge was lost in Spain
Hungarian scientists are on edge as country is poised to force out top university
Say it with statues: Brick-and-mortar revisionism in Orban’s Hungary
Orban shocks the world again: He admits to being a Nazi pilot, calling him a knight and a hero
With guests: Philip Deslippe, Jules Hartley, Janja Lalich, and Stacie Stukin
We’ve convened an expert panel this week to remember and discuss Katie Griggs, aka GJ. She died in an LA hospital on the evening of August 1st. LA Magazine was the first outlet to confirm the death with the RA MA Institute, which Griggs co-founded in Venice, CA.
The cause of death has not been confirmed, but according to a eulogy film put out by the RA MA Institute, Griggs reportedly broke her ankle in Berlin on July 11th, and on the 15th had surgery to repair it in Los Angeles. Subsequently, she developed a pulmonary embolism, which proved fatal.
In episodes 36 and 37, Philip and Stacie joined me to discuss Griggs’s adopted culture and religion, Kundalini Yoga, and where she stood in relation to the legacy of KY’s abusive founder, Yogi Bhajan. They are uniquely equipped for that background: Philip is an expert in KY history, and Stacie has published excellent investigative work on the #metoo wave that swept through the community to uncover long-suppressed stories of Bhajan’s abuses.
Joining us today to dig even deeper are former Kundalini Yoga student Jules Hartley, and renowned cult expert Janja Lalich.
In our earlier episodes, we discussed how Griggs went on the offensive in the midst of the Kundalini abuse scandal, publicly attacking Bhajan’s survivors. We also discussed how she quickly pivoted into conspiracy theories about COVID and BLM when the pandemic hit. We also discussed the culture and cultural impact of Griggs’s RA MA Institute.
We continue that discussion in somber tones today.
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Show Notes
Philip Deslippe’s website
Jules Hartley on IMDB
Janja Lalich’s website and 2021 Recommended Reading List
Stacie Stukin on Twitter
36: Guru Jagat’s Pandemic Brandwash (w/Philip Deslippe & Stacie Stukin)
37: Guru Jagat Cultjacks Kundalini Yoga (w/Philip Deslippe & Stacie Stukin)
LA Magazine Griggs death notice
Inside the Dubious World of RA MA Yoga, and Its Girl Boss Guru to the Stars — Cassidy George, VICE
Guru Jagat Dies. A Saint Is Born. | by Matthew Remski | Aug, 2021 | Medium
Guru Jagat Mourned in Person with Breathing Exercises, No Masks — Matthew Remski
(PDF) From Maharaj to Mahan Tantric: The Construction of Yogi Bhajan’s Kundalini Yoga — Philip Deslippe
Yogi Bhajan Left Generations of Victims of Alleged Sex Abuse in His Wake — Stacie Stukin
Yogi Bhajan, yoga guru and founder of 3HO, ‘more likely than not’ sexually abused followers, says report —
This past week, Matthew defined “Wellness Pornography”, working from the ideas of C. Thi Nguyen and Bekka Williams in their essay “Moral Outrage Porn”. In this bonus episode, he asks:
- How do we measure the violence of wellness pornography when it becomes clear that it fuels vaccine hesitancy?
- When wellness pornographers directly indoctrinate people against public health, are they, like the sexual pornographers eviscerated by Andrea Dworkin, violating civil rights to security and safety?
- If we start to see the death concealed by wellness pornography, will we also see through the ads for pickup trucks to the ecocide they conceal? Will that help?
- What will we do with all of this rage?
The Wellness Pornographers. Gamifying intimacy, abusing public… | by Matthew Remski | Aug, 2021 | Medium(PDF)
Moral Outrage Porn — Nguyen and Williams
Kohut and the self-objectAndrea Dworkin’s Testimony to the Attorney General On Pornography (all trigger warnings)
Hunger Strike: Starving Amidst Plenty by Susie Orbach
The YogaVaxGate Instagram post turns out to have been a bellwether for the $88B industry packed with science skeptics and spiritual bypassers. When Wolf Terry got trolled for daring to argue in Yoga Journal that getting vaccinated was an act of non-harming, the stormfront was clear. As thousands of yoga studios ponder opening amidst the stop-and-start waves of Delta and beyond, one question dominates staff meetings: “Will we ask our returning clients for proof of vaccination?”
Matthew interviews Sarah Garden and Colin Hall of Bodhi Tree Yoga in Saskatchewan, who made national news when they announced that yes, they would. Bodhi Tree clients will have to show their card; if they can’t or don’t want to be vaccinated, online classes are still available. Simple, right? Not in Yogaland. We’ll be reading from emails describing the backlash — from the absurd to the abhorrent — faced by studio owners who are taking the no-brainer Bodhi Tree path.
In the Ticker, Derek looks at Antisemitism in vaccine disinformation campaigns while Julian checks in with Joseph Mercola, who announced he’ll be removing all content from his website this week. In the Jab, Julian lays out the “base-rate fallacy” anti-vaxxers are using to falsely claim that vaccinations are not helping to stop COVID-19. And off the top, we’ll briefly flag the topic for next week: the sudden death of conspiritualist Kundalini leader Katie Griggs.
02:22 Guru Jagat Dies. A Saint is Born
10:55 The Ticker
48:35 The Jab
55:29 Vaccination Policies at Yoga Studio
1:18:58 Interview w/Colin Hall & Sarah Garden
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Show Notes
How About Not Using the Holocaust to Spread Vaccine Disinformation?
Mob Morality and the Unvaxxed
Inside the Dubious World of RA MA Yoga, and Its Girl Boss Guru to the Stars
Griggs LAMag obit
Matthew: Guru Jagat Dies. A Saint is Born.
‘Bold decisions’: Regina yoga studio cancels in-person classes, calls on others to follow suit – Regina | Globalnews.ca
Regina yoga studio requiring proof of vaccination to attend classes
Lawyer says yoga studio should be legally allowed to ask clients for vaccination status
Bodhi Tree Yoga, Regina SK
The Most Influential Spreader, Mercola NYT Article
CNBC: 74% Infected In MA Outbreak Were Vaccinated
CNN: Vaccines Alone Are Not Enough
Map of Vaccination Rates correlated
A recent uptick in Holocaust-related memes around the COVID vaccine is fueling further anti-Semitic thought and behavior. Derek investigates a crop of wellness influencers guilty of this charge.
The genius parade continues this week with co-host Dale Beran, author of It Came from Something Awful: How a Toxic Troll Army Accidentally Memed Donald Trump into Office. All three of us writers are legit blown away by Beran’s layered and penetrating coverage of the chan-verse-to-Capitol Riot pipeline.
After last week’s journey led by Dr. Annie Kelly through the anti-feminism of the high-testosterone sites that prepped cyberspace for QAnon, Beran takes us deep into the cosplayed souls of the man-child nihilists who created an online politics of chaos, and served it up to the MAGA movement.
Equal parts deep-internet history, social psychology, and critique of late capitalism, Beran’s lamentation to based and wasted youth still manages to hold out some hope for the future — and we’re going to ask him why.
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Show Notes
The Return of Anonymous
Who Are the Incels of 4Chan, and Why Are They So Angry?
It Came From Something Awful: How a Toxic Troll Army Accidentally Memed Donald Trump into Office
QAnon emerged out of a perfect storm of evolving technology, social psychology, and global crisis. But it exploited pre-existing neural architecture already easily hijacked by addictive drugs, junk food, porn, persuasive marketing, and cultish religions. It also relied on how mobile social media, running on cellular and wifi technology, amplifies and speeds up the algorithmic impact of hyper-contagious cultural memes on the material world. Maybe 5G was the real threat all along?
For this week’s Bonus episode, Julian explores our conspiritualist tendencies toward patternicity and apophenia, which can be super-stimulated by well-adapted memes, complex puzzles, and grandiose in-group purpose—and suggests a possible antidote.
It takes patience, empathy, and a steady hand to paint a detailed landscape of the politics and culture that connect anti-feminism to ethnonationalism to the broader obsessions of conspirituality.
Dr. Annie Kelly’s scholarship in these spaces reveals a network of “subversion anxieties”: that patriarchy will be replaced by social justice autocrats, that the privileged will be brought low, that feminism will destroy hetero freedoms and pleasures, that human bodies will become cyborgs, that collectivism will replace capitalism. As our guest host this week, she’ll be our tour guide through the last decade of hot internet garbage, and explain how she’s kept her manners and wits intact enough to gain the trust of QAnon moms on the front lines of the U.K.’s anti-lockdown movement. We’ll also talk about her new brilliant podcast “Vaccine: The Human Story,” which takes the history of smallpox and its eradication as an object lesson for the COVID era.
On the vaccine tip, our brief Ticker will address how the yoga world showed its anti-vax ass by trolling a Yoga Journal writer who dared to argue that getting vaccinated was a practice of non-violence.
02:09 Ahimsa Meets MAGA
12:36 From Anti-Feminism to Anti-Vax
1:24:00 Yoga Journal Replies
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Show Notes
Wolf Terry: Getting the COVID-19 Vaccine Was My Act of Ahimsa
Matthew Remski: How Yoga Journal Set Off an Anti-Vax Backlash
Kelly: Opinion | The Housewives of White Supremacy
Kelly: The alt-right: Reactionary rehabilitation for white masculinity
QAA Episode 110: Mothers For QAnon w/ Annie Kelly by QAnon Anonymous
Kelly: Vaccine, the Human Story
Anti-Vaxxers Could Be Helping Create Deadlier Versions of Covid
A closer look at the content and constellations of Josh Rainer Goldstein, who livestreams himself eating raw meat.
Presented in three parts:
- An analysis of how the content is self-centered, ableist, misogynistic, and contribute to structural racism and epistemological confusion.
- An exploration of the deeply Freudian aspects of Goldstein’s account: its frenzied death wish expressed in an oral/anal fetish of raw meat and body perfectionism. The larger psychoanalytic question is: why are these displays gratifying to his followers? What does Goldstein allow them to feel, without shame? Part of it giving absolution for reactionary behaviours that feel good: consuming huge quantities of meat, and fantasizing about being surrounded by dozen babies on a homestead. In this part we also meet Goldstein’s mom.
- A letter that confesses how warmly I feel towards Goldstein: towards the understandable needs that get hijacked by the politics he’s gotten messed up in. How can we control what we’re exposed to, after all?
Links
Eating Raw Meat, Dreaming of Fatherhood — Matthew Remski on Medium
Goldstein’s raw lamb mukbang.
“You own your land. You defend your land.”
Are you crypto-curious? This past year has shown that an increasing number of people are dreaming of becoming crypto millionaires. But what is blockchain and this strange new digital currency and, more pertinent to this podcast, how are conspiritualists trying to exploit it, even when they don’t understand what “it” is?
Matthew drills Derek, who worked in blockchain for over two years with two different companies, on the basics, before Derek interviews David Morris, the Chief Insights Columnist at Coindesk who also just happens to have a longtime interest in MLMs and cults. Matthew also reviews the 1996 essay, “The Californian Ideology,” the famous 1995 study of the bizarre Silicon Valley-fueled fusion of cultural bohemianism and free-market utopia rhetoric.
In the Ticker, Julian reconsiders the definition of free speech in an age of digital misinformation through the lens of anti-vax champion RFK, Jr, Vandana Shiva, and returning Conspirituality champion, Russell Brand.
01:46 The Technology Conundrum
22:12 Blockchain Basics
1:19:31 Interview w/David Morris
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Show Notes
The Lesson of Bitconnect: Promoters Can Be Liable
China’s Anti-Crypto Crackdown Is Different This Time
Of Course China Is Anti-Bitcoin: Look What Happened to Jack Ma
Biden’s New FTC Chair Could Be a Big Web 3.0 Ally
23-year old who kept QAnon online
Italy’s Five Star Techno-Utopians
RFK’s Children’s Health Defense article on Brand and Shiva
Seeds of Doubt New Yorker article about Vandana Shiva
Stanford U. Letter on Shiva’s Anti-Science Rhetoric
“Bill Gates Agenda” viral article
Gates New Agriculture Non-Profit
Barbrooke and Cameron, 1995: THE CALIFORNIAN IDEOLOGY
Richard Brautigan, 1967: All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace
David Golumbia, The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism
Derek investigates a recent NY Times essay by Michael Pollan as an entry point to discuss big questions in psychedelics and conspirituality: How do we honor indigenous traditions as psychedelics are legalized (and monetized)? What dangers lie ahead as pharmaceutical companies and charismatic influencers exploit psychedelics for profit and power? How can we create psychedelic rituals that suit our current time and societal temperament?
Show Notes
How Should We Do Drugs Now?
Is This Peter Thiel–Backed Startup Trying to Monopolize the Astral Plane?
What should a global network of popular and private schools do when faced with evidence that the foundation of their pedagogy was laid by a racist, proto-fascist pseudoscientist? What should they do when it becomes clear that they are evangelizing while pretending to teach secular humanism? These are the sticky questions raised by Dr. Jennifer Sapio in today’s interview with Matthew. Sapio taught for three years at the Austin Waldorf School. She was hired from her secular training, but gradually found herself drawn into what she calls an “inherently racist cult.” Her mentors pushed her towards accepting the 19th-century babblings of Rudolf Steiner, who, among other exploits, read the “Akashic Records” to learn why the spirit world disapproved of vaccines. They discuss the long shadows of racist and metaphysical nonsense that hang over the otherwise wholesome project of Waldorf education.
In the Ticker, Derek and Julian review a recent episode of Ben Shapiro’s podcast, in which he mutually masturbates with Russell Brand to consummate their brands, but they don’t quite come together.
02:06 Ticker
43:43 Long Shadows over Waldorf
1:12:00 Interview w/Jennifer Sapio
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem
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Show Notes
The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 116
The gun control debate is complex, but there are things we can do
Movement against critical race theory is deeply necessary
Dr. Thomas Cowan: Viral video claiming 5G caused pandemic easily debunked
Dr. Sapio’s Waldorf memoir: Waldorf Schools Are Inherently Racist Cults
Austin Waldorf School, Tuitions & Fees
Prof. Staudenmeier: “Anthroposophy and Ecofascism”
Protesting too much: Myths about Waldorf education
Matthew on: The “Akashic Records” to “Do Your Research” Pipeline
APTN: Residential Schools Archives
NYT: Unmarked Graves at Residential Schools in Canada: What to Know
Anishnabek.ca: An Overview of the Indian Residential School System
Woops. Rudolf Steiner on Traditional Childhood Illnesses and Vaccines
Julian reflects on unchosen racial complicity and how moments of moral courage in the face of oppressive power can reveal one’s true colors. He traces the history of Apartheid as it intersects with the stories of his youth in South Africa.
How do we avoid being the subject of—and feeding the market for—trauma porn? If anyone knows, it’s India Oxenberg, who in less than two years (while under the unforgiving glare of a media firestorm) went from cult victim to survivor to anti-cult activist. Matthew sits down with her to discuss her recovery journey: learning to box, learning to love food, learning about “the strong yes” from her therapist. They also discuss the behind-the-scenes expertise that went into the documentary series India starred in and co-produced: Seduced.
In the Ticker, Derek wonders why wellness influencers are falling back on bad habits as the world reopens while Julian tracks how Bret Weinstein’s cries of censorship exponentially boost the exposure of his anti-vax, pro-Ivermectin science hipsterism.
02:06 Ticker
36:20 Cultish Behavior
51:36 Interview w/India Oxenberg
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem
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Show Notes
How Dangerous Is the Delta Variant, and Will It Cause a COVID Surge in the U.S.?
Sah D’Simone: Transmission Hotline
6 facts about economic inequality in the U.S.
The Pandemic Is Turning the Natural World Upside Down
With almost 50 million Americans traveling on July 4 weekend, you may need to pack your patience
June 28 Ivermectin Systemic Review and Meta-Analysis
Matthew’s Twitter thread on Bret Weinstein and his Patreon cashflow
Slavoj Zizek — Is Jordan Peterson the real Postmodernist?
SEDUCED: INSIDE THE NXIVM CULT
A Timeline of the Nxivm Sex Cult Case
Judge Says Allison Mack ‘Willingly Enslaved, Destabilized and Manipulated’ Women
Matthew debriefs after the Mike Rothschild interview, looking at QAnon’s “Conspiracy Theory of Everything” as a hyperobject and spiritual dilemma.
Show Notes
‘A reckoning for our species’: the philosopher prophet of the Anthropocene
Conversations with Cornel West | Glenn Loury, Cornel West & Teodros Kiros | The Glenn Show
It’s only been eight months since Q stopped posting, but Mike Rothschild has been able to corral the firehose of data into the first major journalistic study of the fever dream that has tortured millions since 2018. He joins us as co-host this week just as his new book, The Storm is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Cult, Movement and a Conspiracy Theory of Everything, drops. We’ll ask him about researching a “conspiracy of everything, what a leaderless cult means, how an online religion worships, and how, amidst catastrophic disconfirmation and deplatforming, we’re seeing new delta QAnon variants emerge.
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem
Support Conspirituality on Patreon
Show Notes
The Storm Is Upon Us: How Qanon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything
QAnon Is Not Dead, It’s Evolving Into Something Far Worse
The race to capitalize on the world’s wellness needs in a post-pandemic society—well, at “post” as we can pretend to be—was unavoidable. Derek reflects on the continually unrealistic marketing promises being offered by wellness influencers, discussing how we’d benefit from more honest ad copy than the hyperbole attempting to be passed off as destiny.
In June 2020, equity consultant and journalist Dax-Devlon Ross—who you might remember from Conspirituality 4 that very same month—published an essay called “A Letter to My White Male Friends of a Certain Age.” In it, he applied his decades of experience as a nonprofit executive and program facilitator to have an honest discussion with, as the title suggests, his white male friends.
A year later and the book version of that essay, called “Letters to My White Male Friends,” has been published by St. Martin’s Press. There couldn’t be a better time for this conversation, given the heated skirmishes around the meaning and manipulation of Critical Race Theory in our politics. Dax joins this week as a co-host, nearly a year to the day since his last appearance, to discuss the topics in his book, including the many years of lived experiences that cut through the academic rhetoric and political posturing concerning race in America today.
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem
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Show Notes
A Letter to My White Male Friends of a Certain Age (the original essay)
Letters to My White Male Friends
Humanity has an apocalypse fetish. But wrapped up In the doomsday death wish is a utopian fantasy of the ascension that comes after a fallen and sinful world is purified by cataclysmic fire. Whether the longed-for intervention is supernatural or extraterrestrial, spirituality porn hijacks our neurobiological wet-ware to bond cults together in a shared and singular climactic focus.
For this week’s Bonus, Julian traces the recurring themes between the 19th-century Great Awakening, the Heaven’s Gate mass suicide, the New Age fascination with 2012, and the QAnon fever dream.
Might our vulnerability to these narratives stem from evolutionary side-effects—which, like the space between medieval cathedral archways that are decorated with ornate trumpeting angels and burgeoning flowers, serve no structural purpose, but somehow draw a hyper-focused otherworldly fixation?
This episode is co-hosted by Dr. C. Thi Nguyen, a philosopher who teaches at the University of Utah. His breakthrough book is about agency in games, in which he shines a light on disquieting aspects of our gamified lives and the question of whether we’re still able to act on our own values. We’ll talk about Dr. Nguyen’s key ideas, all of which are super useful for navigating conspirituality: the gamification of Twitter and other systems of “value capture,” the feeling of knowing something really clearly can foreclose on the desire for nuance, and the pleasures and perils of “moral outrage porn.”
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem
Support Conspirituality on Patreon
Show Notes
Polarization or Propaganda? (Boston Review)
Why We Call Things ‘Porn’ (New York Times)
Escape the Echo Chamber (Aeon Magazine)
Why Games are Good but Gamification is Terrible (Conceptual Foundations of Conflict lecture)
Who Trains the Machine Artist? (Daily Nous)
The Gamification of Public Discourse (Royal Institute of Philosophy lecture)
How We Can Understand Ourselves Through Games (OUP)
Group-Strapping, Bubble, or Echo Chamber? (SERRC)
Am I in an Echo Chamber? (Open for Debate)
On gurus and seductive clarity (Decoding the Gurus podcast)
What’s in a game? (Philosophy Talk radio show/podcast)
Games: Agency as Art (New Books in Philosophy podcast)
Cheap talk (Escape the Void podcast episode, talking about clarity porn)
Echoes in the void (Escape the Void podcast episode, talking about echo chambers)
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 a universal good will welcome this Indian art form being made more accessible for children in a State with terrible educational markers. Hindu nationalists, on the other hand, may 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.
To hear the full episode, support Conspirituality on Patreon
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
Encini
Matthew sits down, across 9,000 miles of mostly ocean, with journalist Anke Richter and reporter and Māori rights activist Joe Trinder to discuss the mind-bending rise of Māori MAGA in the COVID-free sanctuary of Aoteoroa, aka New Zealand. Led by former blues musician Billy Te Kahika, conspirituality has seeped from music and cultural festivals and straight into national politics, where white supremacists manipulate Māori post-colonial distrust of settler governments to boost vaccine hesitancy and milk paranoia.
In the Ticker this week, Derek dunks on Deepak Chopra’s “Lovetuner” penny-whistle, which will change your DNA for $58 and a few toots. Julian reports on Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying as they drift farther into conspiratorial pseudoscience and advocate for whiz-bang COVID cure-alls over vaccines.
01:48 Ticker
54:06 Interview w/Anke Richter & Joe Trinder
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem
Support Conspirituality on Patreon
Show Notes
Exploring the Actual Science Behind Why Music Makes Us Feel Good
Anke Richter bio
Anke Richter on cults
Anke Richter on conspiracy theories in New Zealand
How alternative festivals became platforms for conspiracy theorists
Luminate Festival organisers criticised for promoting far-right conspiracy theorists
Anti-conspiracist campaigners take aim at ‘Mothers for Freedom’ event
The self-proclaimed ‘political prisoners’ in managed isolation
Anti-lockdown group of academics criticised for promoting conspiracy theorists
The scientist and the rabbit hole: How epidemiologist Simon Thornley became an outcast of his profession
E-Tangata The rise of Māori MAGA
Billy TK: False Profit
Sue Grey in the High Court:
on Plan B’s support for an anti-vaccine court case : BioBlog
Former far-Right leader plans leaflet drop of Covid-19 vaccine disinformation
Derek looks back at three important historical figures with unsavory pasts to ask the question: who gets to decide who gets canceled, and why?
Show Notes
Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India
How would Gandhi’s celibacy tests with naked women be seen today?
John Muir Is Canceled. Who’s Next?
Don’t Cancel John Muir
I’m an MLK scholar – and I’ll never be able to view King in the same light
A judge gave a drug dealer a second chance. Sixteen years later, he swore him in as a lawyer.
Sponsored Content: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
The Unbearable Feelings of the Anti-Masker
We’re extremely pleased that someone who isn’t a Boomer — and is younger than us — is making a serious but accessible contribution to this golden age of cult literature. Linguist Amanda Montell joins Julian for an engaging interview about her new book, Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism, which examines the power of language in high-demand groups, from The People’s Temple to the local Young Living dinner party. In a debrief, we discuss not only Montell’s study, but also our own run-ins with spiritual mumbo-jumbo.
In the Ticker, Matthew wonders what Sayer Ji does when he loses his Facebook privileges and is relegated to the armpit of Telegram. Why, he goes full Satanic Panic, of course!
01:34 Ticker
15:28 Interview w/Amanda Montell
1:17:59 Learning Cultish
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem
Support Conspirituality on Patreon
Show Notes
Deplatformed for Anti-Vax Propaganda, Sayer Ji Turns to Satanic Panic Content
Amanda Montell’s website
For this week’s Patreon Bonus, Julian and Matthew discuss words, world views, and how productive disagreement can lead to mutual understanding. In today’s overheated discourse, social media posturing can make the culture wars feel like pro wrestling and political conversation like tip-toeing through a hair-trigger minefield. While these two co-hosts share a healthy skepticism for conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, and New Age grift, some of their underlying philosophical and political beliefs hold interesting tensions. On the table this time: postmodernism, science, cultural sensitivity, Enlightenment values, social constructionism, and grand narratives about the arc of moral history.
This week we learned that Melinda Gates was disturbed by Bill’s men’s-club relationship with Jeffrey Epstein all the way back in 2011. And for fuck sake: when Bill visited Epstein’s Manhattan lair, reports say, he counseled the predator on image rehab while Epstein counseled Bill on his loveless marriage. Are the conspiritualists right, and about what? Matthew will revisit an earlier essay on Gates, and fill in some blind spots.
Derek tackles the obscene co-optation of trans activism by anti-vaxxers who now pledge to lie about their status by “identifying as vaccinated.” In keeping with our musical theme, Julian reminisces about playing protest rock under an assumed name and the threat of a bomb under the stage during the Apartheid years in South Africa.
In our feature interview, world-weary rock star Alex Ebert—frontman for Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros—joins Derek to map out the late 20th-century slide into infinitely co-opted creativity and revolution. They discuss the reasons America could use death rituals, the rise of Trump as the ultimate New Ager, wellness influencers as “the clerical class of the right,” and to ask if critical thinking and open-eyed spirituality are the new punk rock—and for how long.
02:41 Ticker
39:50 Protest Rock
49:46 Interview with Alex Ebert
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem
Support Conspirituality on Patreon
Show Notes
The NYT reported in the fall of 2019 that Gates was a frequent guest of Epstein in Manhattan
A description from Town and Country of Epstein’s mansion
Sources at many meetings describe the Gates-Epstein vibe
Sex Redefined: The Idea of 2 Sexes Is Overly Simplistic
The Gene: An Intimate History | Siddhartha Mukherjee
Inside the Republican Anti-Transgender Machine
Gender-affirming surgery linked to better mental health, study finds
“Identify As” Twitter thread
Matthew had a plan for this week — a 4K word essay on what could be learned from studying the content of an outrageously offensive conspiritualist… but then he shelved it. Why?
A last-minute, off-the-cuff discussion on what it means to indulge or not indulge moral outrage porn. What it means to punch up or down, and how we decide. How we might confront an influencer who has managed to monetize mental illness.
Produced with an enormous debt of gratitude to the work of C. Thi. Nguyen.
Links:
“Moral Outrage Porn“: Nguyen and Williams
Nguyen’s public scholarship on gamification, value capture, narrowed morality, and the seductions of certainty.
Nguyen on the gamification of public discourse
Aaron Rabinowitz on cheap talk
Matthew’s elegy for Michael Stone
As our access to vaccines eases the pandemic in the Global North, U.S.-based conspiritualists keep riding the wave of covid-denial influence—all the way to the bank. This week, Julian reports that Gen-Z spiritual entrepreneur Jason Shurka has launched a new media hub, The Academy of Divine Knowledge, and affiliating with the predictable rogue’s gallery—Christiane Northrup, Del Bigree, Sayer Ji, David Icke, and Judy Mikovits among them. This confederacy of dunces charges a $33 monthly membership because “33 is a Master Number that holds many divine meanings” that leads to “infinite possibilities,” such as magically draining your bank account.
Of course, the pandemic is far from over. India is still going through the worst of it, and as Matthew discusses, one reason appears to be the influence of astrologers on Narendra Modi’s decision-making. Meanwhile, Derek unpacks the repeated fat-shaming being done by conspiritualists when boasting of their awesome immune systems.
In this week’s interview, Derek talks with Venezuelan-American singer/songwriter Devendra Banhart about global music, anti-vaxxers, conspiritualist ideology, and paying $24 for a smoothie in Malibu. Next week will continue the theme, as we look at music’s influence in cult worship and indoctrination, with Alex Ebert of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros joining the discussion.
04:06 Ticker
1:06:31 The Jab
1:12:48 Indian Rastas
1:26:00 Interview with Devendra Banhart
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem
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Show Notes
The Racist and Problematic History of the Body Mass Index
Fat shaming, BMI and alienation: COVID-19 brought new stigma to large-sized people
Fat-shamers have felt enabled by Covid, and it’s hard to fight back
CDC: Obesity, Race/Ethnicity, and COVID-19
The Bizarre and Racist History of the BMI
Uncovering and Destigmatizing Male Body Dysmorphia in Popular Culture
Jewish Star article about Jason Shurka’s “miracle Torah”
Signature Investment Group team page w/Jason Shurka as VP
Matthew on Modi and the stars
The Indian government is cracking down on harrowing news about the country’s COVID catastrophe
The crisis in India may claim as many as 1.2 million lives by August
After the festival ended, a region 1000 km south of Haridwar reported a 99% infection rate amongst the returning pilgrims
Reporting in&
Derek discusses a forthcoming interview with Alex Ebert, which will be featured on Conspirituality 52. They discuss the dearth of death rituals in America. In this bonus episode, Derek meditates and, more to the point, our anxiety around aging, including a modern incarnation of that age-old fear: the quest for perpetual youth through wrinkle-free skin.
When the drones hum over the improvised cremation grounds of Delhi, what will the conspiritualist see in the livestream—if they even look? Will their Orientalist spell, fixated on fire ceremonies and mantras, finally be broken? In our interview this week, Matthew speaks with sociologist Sheena Sood about the hubris of Hindu nationalism as its yoga-boosting ministers show their pious ineptitude, telling their gasping citizens to stop being crybabies and consider drinking holy cow urine against COVID.
What about when other supposed zealots show their sell-out colors? Austin’s biohacking guru, Aubrey Marcus just sold his hipster supplement company to Unilever, of all companies. Derek breaks down the insanity of the COVID-contrarian set taking the buyout from the big-Ag, big-Pharm mack daddy. Julian looks at how, in the very same week, Marcus’s biz partner Joe Rogan, excuses his vax-hesitant comments by admitting he’s a moron. But isn’t the joke on us?
Priests and punks, preaching spirit and stockpiling cash. When will this be over?
02:21 Ticker
31:03 The Jab
37:03 Agni Burns
1:01:28 Interview with Sheena Sood
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem
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Show Notes
Super-spreader events in India
Maha Kumbh Mela 2021
Oxygen express trains in India
Waiving Vaccine Patents at the WTO
Anti-Vax Firebombing in Italy
Aubrey Marcus announces Unilever sale
Art of Manliness Podcast #93: Total Human Optimization With Aubrey Marcus
A British Skin Care Brand Pressured Asian Influencers To Promote Its Skin Whiteners. They Fought Back.
Unilever South Africa to pull all TRESemmé products for 10 days over racist ad
World must tell India’s government to stop religious gatherings during COVID
Oxygen Express trains deliver supplies as India hit by covid-19 surge
US supports vaccine patent waiver proposal at World Trade Organization
Government funding of vaccine development
Italian police arrest two anti-vaxxers for fire bombing of vaccination hub
Richard Davis on Thoreau, the “yogi”
Hearts and Minds Documentary:
By the 1990s, the sadistic cult leader who claimed to be God on Earth had already fled the United States to avoid a stack of lawsuits and potential criminal charges. Even still, highly influential spiritual intellectual Ken Wilber was calling him the “greatest living realizer,” privately saying he was “happy about how many people had found their way to Adi Da through reading my books.”
Wilber later modified his model of stages of spiritual development to try to account for supposedly enlightened beings who were awful people. In this week’s Bonus episode, Julian recounts this story of a sociopathic holy man and his brilliantly naive enabler—which culminates in a wickedly illustrative thought experiment!
On the road to the screen, a rich story can flatten into propaganda. On the road to the influencer economy, a complex teaching can degrade into a conspirituality meme. As the Oscar glitter fades, we look at how Amazon could never have signed off on a real nomadland story any more than Gaia TV could have ever done justice to the spiritualities it exploits.
In the Ticker, Julian looks at new research into correlations between huffing essential oils and seizures. Matthew looks at Miami’s Centner Academy’s announcement that they’ll fire vaccinated teachers—and wonders whether Kelly Brogan and Christiane Northrup sending kids and grandkids to this elite private school has something to do with it. In the Jab, Julian reviews the state of the nation re: vaccines, and offers three key principles to inject into conversations with the hesitant.
Our interview this week is with TikTok anti-disinformation activist Abbie Richards, whose “Conspiracy Pyramid” and tea-time QAnon explainers have gone viral on the next-gen platform. Matthew talks with Abbie about her process, challenges, why she hates golf, and what GenXers (and older cohorts) should keep in mind when they wonder if the kids are alright.
02:58 Ticker
35:16 The Illusion of Nomadland
1:12:16 The Jab
1:22:41 Interview with Abbie Richards
2:12:56 Interview update
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem
Support Conspirituality on Patreon
Show Notes
Jim DeFede breaks the Centner Academy story
Centner’s Medical Freedom from Mandated Vaccines (disinfo warning)
Biscayne Times profile of the Centner’s: The Privileged Class
Tour of the Centner’s Miami penthouse
Preethaji and Krishnaji, proprietors of O&O Academy
Krishnaji’s culty dad, Kalki Bhagavan: Mystic and the moolah
‘It’s Baffling’: Parents Confused After Centner Academy Announces They Won’t Employ People Who Have Been Vaccinated
The Case Against Nomadland
What Nomadland Gets Wrong About Gig Labor
Amazon’s Minimum Wage Hike Comes With Cuts To Other Compensation
“Strategic Transparency”: Ann Gleig. “From Sweeping Zen to Open Buddhism: Sex Scandals, Social Media, and Transparency in Western Buddhism” for Buddhism in the West Group. American Academy of Religion, Denver, November 17-20, 2018 (forthcoming)
Abbie Richards
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.
Music: Spiegel im Spiegel and Pari Intervallo: Pärt
Links:
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.
Teal Swan’s suicide-teasing trauma pseudo-therapy has cast a spell over millions. Kaia Ra is an up-and-coming contender, selling divine jewelry and a channeled text about how to transcend QAnon-type nightmares. Both claim to be survivors of long-term Satanic Ritual Abuse and alien ambassadors. Both have capitalized on the chaos of 2020.
We discuss the trend of trauma exploitation, Satanic Panics throughout the decades, and social media entertainment finding cover through the pretense of therapy. Then we’ll hear from the pros: licensed psychologists Hala Khouri and Kyra Haglund join Julian to discuss the importance of trauma-informed yoga and cases of abuse in wellness spaces.
In the Ticker, Derek examines the snake oil of Luke Storey, Julian reviews the “Health and Freedom” conference recently held in a Bible college in Tulsa, and Matthew worries about QAnons in Toronto who have started speaking in tongues. We’ll also discuss a new phenomenon amongst anti-vaxxers: “Reverse Contagion Anxiety”, which leads them to believe that merely being around vaccinated people will make them infertile or re-organize their DNA. (We can only hope.)
CW: Audio clips from Lin Wood and Kaia Ra describing sexual / satanic ritual abuse of children in the context of QAnon mythology (Wood), and personal origin story (Ra).
02:24 Ticker
44:58 The Jab
47:14 Traumatic Influencers
1:26:30 Interview with Kyra Haglund & Hala Khouri
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem
Support Conspirituality on Patreon
Show Notes
Luke Storey wants to sell you a pyramid scheme
Electromagnetic Fields & Parental Panics: A case study in how science can bring comfort
Reporter Sean O’Shea gets yelled at in tongues
Sgt. Brown gets suspended for hugging anti-maskers
When QAnon Came to Canada
@selfhealingmama Chloe Angeline with a dire womb-warning
Christiane Northrup as Vaccine Lysistrata
Gizmodo investigative podcast series on Teal Swan
Backstory on Barbara Snow
Affidavit: Snow threatens family members, trashes house
Snow testifies that she’s a terrible court expert
Remembering Michelle Remembers
Be Scofield on Teal Swan
Teal Swan via the BBC
Swan via OZY
Swan
We don’t get “well” until everyone has an opportunity to tap into the resources needed to live. This week, Derek reads a 2006 essay from one of his closest friends, Dax-Devlon Ross, about being pulled over twice in the same stretch of NJ highway in a manner of minutes—all due to an air freshener dangling from his rearview mirror.
How do we tease apart the gold from the dross? What can be salvaged from a subculture marred by charismatic con-artistry, power abuses, and the toxic ingredients that lead to conspirituality? Founder of the Flow Genome Project, Jamie Wheal joins Derek for a wide-ranging interview about his new book, Recapture the Rapture. Following up on his Pulitzer-nominated bestseller, Stealing Fire, Wheal makes an ambitious argument for a dazzling renewal of meaning and mystery through sacralized biohacking. Rapture can be recaptured, Wheal argues, through awe-thumping music, blessed sex, moderate psychedelic use, and conscious community, or as he puts it “ethical cults.” After the interview, we’ll discuss.
In the Jab, Julian looks at clotting issues and emerging reports of vaccine impacts on women. In the Ticker, Matthew reviews the NY Times investigation of Alan Hofstetter’s wife and her January 6th adventure. Derek covers conspiritualism in fitness bro culture while Julian reports on Christiane Northrup’s latest junk science infomercial.
02:06 Ticker
31:36 The Jab
36:49 Interview with Jamie Wheal
1:56:32 Interview Discussion
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem
Support Conspirituality on Patreon
Show Notes
New Jersey gym owners offer free membership to those who don’t get COVID-19 vaccine
What We Know About Ian Smith, the New Jersey Gym Owner Defying Gov. Phil Murphy’s Executive Orders
Anti-mask gym fined
Fitness centers are struggling to rebound from the pandemic
A Teacher Marched to the Capitol. When She Got Home, the Fight Began.
White women’s role in white supremacy, explained
Recapture the Rapture — Jamie Wheal
Cult Dynamics 101: a primer
Hypnotic Da Free John — Svengali of the truth-seeking set (San Francisco Examiner, 1985)
Guru hit by sex-slave suit (San Francisco Examiner, 1985)
Original Oregonian investigation into Osho and Rajneeshpuram
With over a half-million paying subscribers, Gaia is the world’s largest spiritual media streaming service. Have they have played a role in redpilling the Q-Age demographic? With a little help from Ken Wilber, Lewis Carrol, Jorge Luis Borges, and Jean Baudrillard, Julian maps out their landscape of ascension narratives, UFOs, cryptozoology, conspiracy theories, channelers, and yoga classes. He also tells the story of being part of the early LOHAS social media website they gobbled up in 2007.
Our EP10 guest, Center for Countering Digital Hate founder, Imran Ahmed, has been bringing the heat. His “Disinformation Dozen” white paper made a huge splash, prompting a conference call with Nancy Pelosi’s team ahead of their biannual grilling of Zuckerberg and Dorsey. Ahmed’s paper spotlights the fact that 65% of anti-vax content originates from just 12 social media figures. Conspirituality superstars Sayer Ji, Kelly Brogan, and Christiane Northrup hold positions 8, 9, and 10. Ahmed wants them deplatformed—and he’s making it happen. In response, the Dozen are raising money and having themselves caricatured as superheroes.
Who have they been deceiving and emotionally abusing? This week Matthew interviews Heather Simpson and Lydia Greene from Back to the Vax, an anti-disinformation think-tank they founded after fleeing the online cult of anti-vax propaganda. In their first interview together, Simpson and Greene recount how mother-centered anti-vax social media spaces drew them in and exposed them to all manner of anxious conspiracism—and what it cost them to leave. They’ve got a very clear message about how public health communications can meet this entrenched challenge.
In the Ticker, Julian tracks the Dozen’s emerging strategy, Derek finally addresses the English elephant in the room, Russell Brand, and Matthew takes an early look at the big reveal of Cullen Hoback’s Q: Into the Storm on HBO.
02:43 Ticker
1:12:54 The Jab
1:18:18 Interview with Lydia Greene & Heather Simpson
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem
Support Conspirituality on Patreon
Show Notes
What “Causes” Covid? The Virus or The System?
Decoding the Gurus: Russell Brand: Spiritual Transcendence and Anarchic Revolution is Praxis
Mike Rothschild on Hoback’s Q: Into the Storm
Episode 136: Into The Storm feat Cullen Hoback by QAnon Anonymous
I’m Cullen Hoback, the guy who made that QAnon series on HBO Max. AMA! : television
Rothschild on the HBO reveal: Ron Watkins QAnon: The Truth Has Always Been There
Back to the Vax
Lydia on NPR: She Resisted Getting Her Kids The Usual Vaccines. Then The Pandemic Hit
Heather on CNN: Why this former anti-vaxx influencer is getting the Covid vaccine
Matthew offers a meditation on Brandolini’s Law — “the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it” — and accepting the hopelessness of altruistic reporting, whether on disinformation or climate change. With a haunting clip from ex-journalist Dahr Jamail. Also: a memory of visiting a Benedictine monastery, where there were no screens, and where the ancient rule understood that because work is never done, it only becomes sustainable through contemplating time itself.
Show Notes
Primer on Extra Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO)
Brandolini’s Law
Cuomo covers up nursing home deaths
Sexual harassment allegations against Cuomo
Dahr Jamail and Barbara Cecil on Last Born in the Wilderness
Abbaye de Saint-Benoît-du-Lac
Conspiritualists hide their grifts in mantras. MLMs market themselves as communities, while cults preach freedom. When a research firm spotlights Sayer Ji as a disinformation super-spreader, he calls them a hate group. When Lil Nas X spins a catharsis of gay-goth dreams, he embodies MAGA disgust. It’s an age of misdirection.
It’s also an age of transference. Living and breathing people become memes. The impulse to communicate gets devoured by the need to perform. Drives to justice adopt dominant affects. Real conspiracies get overshadowed by myths. We’re keeping ourselves very busy while the world burns.
This week we’re releasing a bonus episode into the wild that speaks to a small wedge of the transference game. Matthew contemplates what it means, in both helpful and unhelpful ways, to be named as or reduced to “cis white men”, and how important issues can get lost in the dead zone between culture wars and cults.
Both conspirituality and social media influence are driven by the hot take, the keyword, the avatar, and the speed of emotional reactivity. And cults are glued together by intense, non-negotiable emotional demands on participants. So far we’ve shown how all of these elements degrade our chances to evaluate evidence and resist being conned by charismatics or cult leaders. Our hope is that we contribute to a slower and open-ended exploration of how to balance the rhetoric of social change with the nuance of interpersonal empathy.
In the Ticker, Derek looks at the retraction crisis plaguing scientific research. Julian watches Lil Nas X lap-dance through the MAGA homo-pocalypse. Matthew looks at a new cult scheme for recruiting anti-vaxxers, while the Jab examines the conspiritualist love of contrarian experts with scientific credentials but no evidence for their claims.
04:25 Ticker
22:09 The Jab
28:35 Theatre of the Transferred
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem
Support Conspirituality on Patreon
Show Notes
Lil Nas X’s ‘Satan Shoes’ trolled some Christians. But ‘Montero’ is about more than that.
Lil Nas X’s unofficial ‘Satan’ Nikes containing human blood sell out in under a minute
Long-retracted papers are still cited in major journals
Retracting publications doesn’t stop them from influencing science
The ex-Pfizer scientist who became an anti-vax hero
A rare clotting disorder may cloud the world’s hopes for AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine
Marketplace attended a COVID-19 conspiracy boot camp to see how instructors are targeting vaccine skeptics
ContraPoints on Cancelling
Robin diAngelo defining “white fragility“
“Peggy McIntosh’s White Privilege Knapsack“
That time I didn’t
Social psychologists and evolutionary psychologists have been studying the origins, neural networks, and role of intuition for decades. Wellness influencers cling to the belief that intuition is a mystical force. Derek looks at the research while celebrating the importance of this hard-won skill.
It was inevitable: QAnon has stormed HBO. Less inevitably, Conspirituality Podcast has been invited to an academic conference Down Under. In this episode, we’ll review how the first two episodes of Cullen Hoback’s “Into the Storm” lands, and wonder about what happens when conspiracy movements come under big-screen and academic scrutiny.
Cullen embedded within the labyrinthine Q-world for almost four years. He globetrotted, gaining incredible access to a network of social avoidants and keyboard warriors. His sympathy is both touching and problematic. Our own embedding in the wellness world — sixty years between the three of us — hasn’t been quite so weird or dangerous. But it does raise a similar question: how clearly can we see the conspirituality of the world we’ve worked in for so long? As Cullen tries to draw out the humanity and intentionality of the QAnons, how are we understanding — or missing — our own subjects? Then there’s the question of impact. Will America understand itself more clearly after Cullen’s work? And where will the scholarship on conspirituality go after we dump our research on that conference table?
In the Ticker this week, we review the new Lululemon mat, report on how Imran Ahmed’s team at the CCDH identified the social media Disinformation Dozen and succeeded in partially deplatforming conspiritualist power-couple Sayer Ji and Kelly Brogan. In the Jab, we’ll be looking at the woes of Astrazeneca Covid vaccine as they approach applying for FDA approval.
02:38 Ticker
27:20 The Jab
31:05 Netflix & Pill
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem
Support Conspirituality on Patreon
Show Notes
Lululemon gives the yoga mat a clever makeover
Lavrence and Lozanski on Lululemon’s neoliberal schtick
Workers making £88 Lululemon leggings claim they are beaten
CCDH’s “Disinformation Dozen” Report
Matthew’s thread on Zen and the Art of the Q-drop
On Psychological & Influence Ops in the Info Age: Q in the Crosshairs (CW: disinformation site)
Hyperobjects: ‘A reckoning for our species’: the philosopher prophet of the Anthropocene
First we take Deakin, then we take Berlin
Julian recounts the wild and touching journey of four close friends in a self-directed spiritual group therapy session—super high on Ecstasy.
Content Warning: this story includes accounts of traumatic events.
Back in December, a certified anesthesiologist named Dr. Madhava Setty posted a long critique of our podcast to the New Age website Collective Evolution. While cordial and apparently well-meaning, Setty’s essay failed to quote a single episode. Setty filled in his own blanks with outright misrepresentations, leading with: “Matthew, Derek and Julian… assume that there are no large conspiracies in play in our world at this time. To state it flatly, to them the idea of a large conspiracy is so preposterous that they cannot even see that they are making an assumption when dismissing the possibility.”
There’s no planet on which any of our episodes have said anything of the kind. In fact, we’ve repeatedly affirmed the opposite: that conspiracy theories and conspiritualists that monetize them exist because real conspiracies traumatize people. Tuskegee happened. MKUltra was real. #savethechildren took hold in part because Jeffery Epstein’s network has not yet been fully understood or prosecuted.
Setty is so well-mannered and convincing, however, that New Age influencers who might be feeling a little defensive about how the yoga and wellness world has shown its ass in 2020 have welcomed his dulcet tones with open arms. In one appearance, he guested on J. Brown’s Yoga Talks podcast, and provided a master class on how to lead an anxious and altruistic yoga devotee into conspirituality.
We didn’t respond to Setty’s initial essay because there was nothing to respond to: he didn’t offer any data. But now we think it’s worth examining in detail how, in real time — and before he winds up on Joe Rogan — he seductively spins together theories about divine consciousness, 9/11, COVID, and how everything is not as it seems.
In the Jab, Julian reviews the scare-mongering of the newest seemingly-qualified anti-vax doc, Geert Vanden Bossche. In the Ticker, Derek looks at the empty religions of Instagram and the truth seekers of tomorrow—and today.
03:08 Ticker
12:43 The Jab
17:26 How to Redpill a Yoga Podcaster
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem
Support Conspirituality on Patreon
Show Notes
Who is Geert Vanden Bossche?
Dr. Mobeen Syed on Vanden Bossche.
Dr. Zubin Damania on Vanden Bossche.
America Without God
The Empty Religions of Instagram
The Truth Seekers Are Coming
Madhava Setty distorts our podcast content
Madhava Setty redpills J Brown in real time
World Trade Center 7 Report Puts 9/11 Conspiracy Theory to Rest
The Vaccine Race — Meredith Wadman
This episode follows up on earlier discussions on the podcast about how we manage privilege. Our exploration of cancel culture — specifically that part of it that is really a form of horizontal violence — isn’t motivated by any shift to the right, but by a desire to unpack the rhetoric, jargon, and performative behaviours, that, so often in the reductive rhythm of social media, serve to shut down learning, and polarize progressives that might otherwise work together.
Here, Matthew focuses on how a rhetorical device in social justice relates to our project: what it means, in both helpful and unhelpful ways, to be named as or reduced to “cis white men”.
Reduction and essentialism are key aspects of the meme-ification of our politics, and potent weapons in the arsenal of conspirituality. None of the influencers we study on this podcast would have gained their social power without labelling and essentializing their opponents in black-and-white terms, without taking black-and-white positions on things like vaccines, big Pharma, and whether or not a person is “awake”.
Both conspirituality and social media influence are driven by the tag, the hot take, the keyword, the avatar, and the speed of emotional reactivity. And cults are glued together by intense, non-negotiable emotional demands on participants. So far we’ve shown how all of these elements degrade our chances to evaluate evidence and resist being conned by charismatics or cult leaders. Our hope is that we contribute to a slower and open-ended exploration of how to balance the rhetoric of crucial social change with the nuance of interpersonal empathy.
Show Notes
ContraPoints on Cancelling
Robin diAngelo defining “white fragility
“Peggy McIntosh’s White Privilege Knapsack“
That time I didn’t get shot
Minimization as a patriarchal reflex
Cedric Michael Williams on DiAngelo
Daniel Bergner on DiAngelo
Tada Hozumi, Selfish Activist
Log the Fuck Off, Jacobin
Imagine that you’re 25 years old. You grew up Irish, gay, and online. When the Orlando Pulse massacre explodes, you go to YouTube for the news. You watch Milo Yiannopolous and Gavin McInnes fake-kiss in front of the police-taped club and say that the Muslims are coming to kill all gay people. YouTube’s algorithm spins you downward into anti-Islamic content. Before long, you’ve left your marketing job with a mission: to make slick propaganda videos for some of the most despicable alt-right ghouls on the planet. You believe they’ll stand up for you.
How did you get here at such a young age? What does it feel like? If you have a change of heart, if you want to fight back against your old life and its consequences, who will believe you? Should they believe you? How will you help them believe you?
Today Matthew asks Caolan Robertson these difficult questions. After years of being the PR man for people like Tommy Robinson and Laura Southern, Robertson has shaken it off and started to collaborate with other ex-alt-right members on a deradicalization project called Future Freedom.
In the Ticker, Julian reports on the new QAnon variant infecting telegram, Sabmyk. Matthew reviews how Christiane Northrup and a Gen Z priestess in a Greek eco-fascist group flip their positive orientalism on its head to diss the Dalai Lama for getting vaccinated. Derek looks at one of the strangest grifts around: pet psychics.
02:51 Ticker
34:50 The Jab
42:00 Interview with Caolan Robertson
1:40:55 Interview discussion
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem
Support Conspirituality on Patreon
Show Notes
What Do Dogs Really Think? Pet Psychics Are Standing By
The Sabmyk Network: How a mysterious disinformation network is hijacking QAnon – HOPE not hate
What is Sabmyk? QAnon Followers Targeted By New Messianic Mythology
Also: QAnon was big in Iran
The Dalai Lama Gets A COVID-19 Shot And Urges Others To Get Vaccinated
Aeifaron on Instagram
Sofia Katsaiti aka Sofia Tara on Instagram is very worried about the Dalai Lama’s vaccine
Aeifaron looks like a totally normal eco-fascist group
Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine neutralizes Brazil variant in lab study
Future Freedom project on NBC
Caolan Robertson on Twitter
Future Freedom Community
Humans will never be cats. In his new book, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life, the philosopher John Gray argues that we can learn a lot about how to live from them—namely, how to calm our anxiety around existential distress. In this sample of a Patreon bonus episode, Derek shares what he’s learned from his three cats, as well as how Gray’s advice applies to the conspiratorial-minded (i.e. metacognition gone awry).
Two episodes in our catalog haunt this podcast. In episode 6, Steve Hassan advised listeners to treat people under the undue influence of QAnon and conspirituality with welcome and respect. Castigation won’t work. Shame will make things worse. He told this story about how his elderly neighbor brought him homemade cookies when he finally returned home after years in the cult of Rev. Moon. No questions asked—just cookies.
But in episode 10, Imran Ahmed pointed out that any engagement of disinformation peddlers is actually a win for them because it boosts their visibility. His strategy—and he has the data to prove it works—is to block, isolate, and clear the public space for content that is actually helpful. Where Hassan offers an open hand, Ahmed says, “Talk to the hand.”
We’re nine months on from those interviews. Are we living up to either of them? Are we isolating and deplatforming propagandists? Are we adding good vibes to the scene and leaving the door open for earnest people to be forgiven? Or does the frustration of the content trend us towards cynicism and snark? A recent Instagram thread by dedicated listeners really brought the point home for discussion.
In the Ticker, we cover the whitewashing of global cuisine by wellness influencers, bauhauswife’s upleveling of COVID denialism with yellow journalism, and Target-store QAnon vandal Melissa Lively trying to make amends-with-benefits for past outbursts. In the Jab, Julian looks at the facts around the PCR test. (Hint: it works.)
02:35 Ticker
21:23 The Jab
25:54 Snark Tank
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem
Support Conspirituality on Patreon
Show Notes
Lost in the Brine
A Death in Yolande Norris-Clarke’s Free Birth World
Kelly Brogan ditches her psychiatry cred with COVID-denialism
Who wants to eat magic dirt from a COVID minimizer?
Melissa Lively un-cancels herself from QAnon
Bauhauswife free births the news in Canada, from Costa Rica (video)
Bauhauswife free births the news in Canada, from Costa Rica
One-hundred-and-twenty seekers filled the LA hotel ballroom. We sought the life-changing experience that could only happen by holding in our pee, being religiously on-time, and taking full responsibility for creating the lives we said we wanted, but hadn’t achieved… yet.
Around 2015, the alt-right movement erupted online to both provoke and monetize MAGA momentum and distort and defame the real-world progress symbolized in Barack Obama and agitated by Black Lives Matter. Young white supremacist poster-boy Richard Spencer and edgy internet crypto-racists like Lauren Southern, Mark Cernovich, and Gavin McInnes led the viral charge, racking up subscribers while lining their pockets on the side. Daniel Lombroso of The Atlantic embedded with their ilk from 2016-18, collecting enough footage to release the award-winning documentary, White Noise. Julian sat down to talk with him about the movement, and about making this film while Jewish.
Was any of this a surprise to anti-oppression activists on the ground? Not according to Michelle Cassandra Johnson, author of Skill in Action: Radicalizing Your Yoga Practice to Create a Just World. While the white supremacy Lombroso whistleblows is spectacular and absurd, the white supremacy Johnson and other justice activists feel in their bones has been a centuries-long war of attrition against equality. Matthew sits down with Johnson to discuss how the yoga and wellness worlds in particular are (and are not) responding to the intensification of both calls to justice, as well as the blowback.
In the Ticker, we wonder if Gwyneth Paltrow’s new long-COVID Goop merch—and her “longer-term detox” that includes selling Goop-approved $500 blankets and $8,000 necklaces—heralds a dawning era in high-end disability consumerism.
02:52 Goop There It Is
14:40 Interview with Daniel Lombroso
51:49 Fear of a White Planet
1:18:38 Interview with Michelle Cassandra Johnson
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem
Support Conspirituality on Patreon
Show Notes
It took a year, but Gwyneth Paltrow figured out how to exploit the pandemic
Gwyneth Paltrow Is Selling Vibrators
Healing My Body with a Longer-Term Detox
The NHS dings Gwyneth’s long COVID cures
Lauren Southern hides the face of her biracial baby
Daniel Lombroso’s White Noise
Southern Poverty Law on Cernovich
Southern Poverty Law on Southern
Richard Spencer, white subsidy sucker
Michelle Cassandra Johnson’s website
Michelle Cassandra Johnson’s TedX talk at WakeForestU
Excerpt from Skill In Action, ed 2. Due out November, 2021:
Life and Death
Our natural state is that of feeling our breath flowing in and out, deeply and fully. And yet, we are in a time where people are struggling to literally and figuratively find a way to breathe. Dominant culture asks us to disconnect from our humanity, our bodies, and our wholeness while buying into a narrative which states some of us are meant to
One of the precious bright spots for our family in this long dark winter of COVID has been outdoor skating. Other than the walking trails, it’s the only thing that the city has kept open. I take our boys, 4 and 8, while my partner is working. The older one has developed a speed-skater’s stride. He’s not crossing over yet as he turns, but he’s close to it. The younger one has amazed us all with learning to glide easily in this, his first winter on skates…
As per the city regulations, we stay masked and distanced as we’re lacing up, and while skating. But two weeks ago, an anti-masker started showing up, and openly ignored the attendants who asked him to comply.
This audio essay is about all of the feelings that came up for me as I a watched this unfold, tried to intervene, and tried to make sense of it all for myself, and the boys. — Matthew
What are we learning about conspiracies, conspiracy theories, and those who hold them? How are we maintaining our optimism that facts are real, that they can be discovered, and shared? How will we continue to communicate with those who are confused? In this episode, we continue our rich conversation on the proximity of conspiracism and spiritual paths and the ways in which we fall into and climb out of fever dreams.
In the Jab, Julian looks at concerns about vaccines and pregnancy. In a Ticker segment, Matthew ponders the British Wheel of Yoga’s “neutral” stance towards the COVID vaccine, and how it unintentionally welcomes conspiratorial thinking.
Republic of Lies author Anna Merlan sits down with Derek to discuss the process of embedding with conspiracy consumers and peddlers, and the challenges faced when reporting on them. Discussing the interview, Julian uses the ideas of George Lakoff to think about containment and reframing. Matthew looks at how yoga and wellness influencers can play both sides of the consumer/peddler coin through the paradoxical private spectacle of social media.
03:00 Ticker
14:14 The Jab
37:57 Let’s Talk Conspiracies
56:20 Vax Confusion
1:08:07 Slow Down
1:12:54 Interview with Anna Merlan
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem
Support Conspirituality on Patreon
Show Notes
‘I Miss My Mom’: Children Of QAnon Believers Are Desperately Trying To Deradicalize Their Own Parents
British Wheel of Yoga indulges vaccine “neutrality”
Dr. Victoria Male on vaccines and pregnancy
Anna Merlan on the Austin Influencer Movement
Anna Merlan on PBS’s Open Mind
Yoga podcaster J. Brown expresses doubts about COVID and the vaccines
Charles Eisenstein is turning to fiction
Abbie Richards and her Conspiracy Chart
The medium of social media is both relatively new and socially challenging. But this doesn’t mean we can’t have healthy debates. In this sample from our Monday Patreon bonus episode, Derek investigates three areas of research about how—and why—we need robust and progressive debates on our platforms.
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Your brain on political arguments.
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How to become a master negotiator.
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Can social media be fact-checked? A new study offers one way of doing so.
Many of us came to yoga and wellness spaces to heal or flee from the alienation of modernity. We wanted something untouched by our cities and factories and labs; something that reminded us of a world we never really knew. “Nature” was in such short supply that we had to invent it to colonize it anew, in exotic lands and mystical beasts: the deer whose antler gave longevity, the cow whose milk strengthened our family bonds. How many of us knew that our fetish for the “natural” could lead towards a consumerist cul-de-sac or fascist ideology?
In this episode we contemplate the meaning, practice, delusions, and hypocrisies of the “natural.” Derek talks to “Sea of Shadows” director Richard Ladkani about how the hunt for Traditional Chinese Medicine remedies has devastated the ecology of Baja California. Julian thinks about the disenchantment of the lab coat and how it drives so many to the warm regard of the “natural healer.”
To find out more about how some practitioners of complementary medicine are attempting to bridge the evidence and ideological gap with conventional care, Matthew interviews Naturopathic Doctor Juniper Martin and fourth-year student Adriana Berusch Gerardino about their efforts with the Naturopathic Alliance to dispel COVID misinformation and to challenge racism in their profession.
02:51 Ticker
29:39 The Jab
33:10 Natural Fallacies
1:22:15 Dr. Ha
1:27:21 QAnon Anonymous
1:38:48 Interview with Dr. Juniper Martin & Adriana Gerardino
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem
Support Conspirituality on Patreon
Show Notes
Gina Carano fired by Lucasfilm (and publicist and agent) for antisemitic Q-Trump social activity
RFK finally gets deleted by IG
Turn Off Your Mind, Relax—and Float Right-Wing?
Chairman Mao Invented Traditional Chinese Medicine
QAA shines on with Episode 128
Dale Beran’s extraordinary book It Came from Something Awful
Decoding the Gurus launches the Gurometer
Shouting out to Katya Weiss-Anderson of Kumbaya Confessional
Chinese gov and state media boost TCM COVID treatments at home and abroad
Article: Acupuncture Doesn’t Work
Dr. Lad’s kindly but rather banal Ayurveda advice re: COVID (August)
Daniel Moerman, medical anthropologist, on “meaning medicine”
In this sample of our weekly Patreon bonus episode, Julian travels back in time to the 80s. He finds that when it comes to the fear of diabolical evil, the appeal of conspiracy patterns, and the missionary zeal of cults, everything old is new again.
*Content Warning: Briefly contains one disturbing account of ritual abuse and one reference to suicide.
Today we forge ahead with part 2 of Matthew’s interview with Kundalini Yoga scholar Philip Deslippe and journalist Stacie Stukin on the tragic past, chaotic present, and future relevance of the cult of Yogi Bhajan. Matthew looks at Guru Jagat’s (Katie Griggs’s) pseudo-Tibetan mystical poem dedicated to her ex-con mentor, Harijiwan (Stephen Hartzell), whose current wife, Mandev, is about 30 years his junior and makes RA MA propaganda films. Will RA MA survive lockdown with COVID-busting mantras? Will Yogi Bhajan’s crimes be washed away by the ringing of the RA MA gong?
We know by now that cults never let a good crisis go to waste. We’ll also examine how, when there are no global panics for cults to monetize, it’s up to the leader to create one. With RA MA we see the cycle go intergenerational as it cultjacks Yogi Bhajan’s legacy of fantasy and paranoia.
For the Ticker this week, Derek and Julian review Bill Maher’s platforming of Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying as they trot out vax-doubt and the Wuhan lab conspiracy. Julian will cover breaking vaccine news — especially on Phase III data! — to keep you inoculated against your alt-wellness news feed.
02:33 Ticker
30:44 The Jab
41:00 Interview with Philip Deslippe & Stacie Stukin
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem
Support Conspirituality on Patreon
Show Notes
A Campus Argument Goes Viral. Now the College Is Under Siege.
The Campus Mob Came for Me—and You, Professor, Could Be Next
Decoding Bret and Eric Weinstein via Decoding the Gurus
Moderna vaccine complications are rare
Astrazeneca Phase III looks good
Pfizer and BioNtech Phase III results
Adenoviral vectors
NYT on Astrozeneca
CDC Vaccine contrast/compare
The Pfizer recipe
AP on the “lab release” theory
Fauci dunks on Trump’s lab release babble
Lab leaks and conspiracy theories
NY Magazine on the lab release story
“From Maharaj to Mahan Tantric: The Construction of Yogi Bhajan’s Kundalini Yoga” for Sikh Formations by Philip Deslippe (2012)
“
Episodes 36 & 37 cover how Guru Jagat (Katie Griggs) and her Venice Beach RAMA Institute have pivoted in the COVID era to a new area of focus: anti-lockdown, anti-“woke” rhetoric, anti-masking, and anti-vax propaganda. As the center of her own weather system in the wider Kundalini Yoga / 3HO cult, this serves Griggs in a number of ways, from driving engagement to obscuring 2020’s revelations of just how criminal her umbrella organization is.
Cults will never let a good crisis go to waste. Back in the summer, Matthew noticed that Michael Roach, who led the cult he was recruited into from 1996-99, also pivoted to COVID content. He does it with a lot more credibility than Griggs does, but in some ways, this makes it even more obnoxious. In this bonus episode, Matthew analyzes his late-summer “Love in the Time of the Virus” content as a retread of what he’s put out there for more than 20 years now.
Sinking into Michael’s vibe again after all these years brings up old questions for Matthew around earnestness and delusion, altruism and manipulation. It makes him wonder whether a cult’s dogged fixation on doctrine can sometimes be an artifact of the leader’s arrested development.
SHOW NOTES
Nina Burleigh’s profile in Rolling Stone
Scott Carney’s investigation of the death of Ian Thorson (originally in Playboy)
My own somewhat cranky review of Carney’s work
What happens when a charismatic yogalebrity rises to prominence in LA’s fashion and wellness scene, gets exposed as an inheritor of a notorious cult, and then gets sideswiped by a pandemic? Meet Katie Griggs, aka “Guru Jagat,” who, instead of reassessing her channelled “downloads” from the charlatan rapist Yogi Bhajan and lending a hand to public health, has chosen to boost her online game with COVID contrarianism and by platforming David Icke.
Our guests this week are Philip Deslippe and journalist Stacie Stukin. Philip’s penetrating and bulletproof research into the dodgy history of Kundalini Yoga and its criminal founder Yogi Bhajan shook the modern yoga world in 2012. Stacie’s 2020 LA Magazine feature investigation into Kundalini corruption and abuse gathered decades of buried evidence. Together they paint a lucid, non-sensationalized picture of how a high-demand religious group navigates new opportunities for manipulation.
The larger picture is that COVID has been a challenge for the brick-and-mortar assets of cults, which, like every other business, rely on pedestrian traffic and the “retail space” of ritual conversion. But in other ways, COVID is the best thing that could have happened to cults.
Kundalini Yoga was built on promising perfect health, the conversion of fear into love, and a golden age free from atheistic biotech. For people like Griggs—and her ex-con mentor Harijiwan—COVID is an opportunity to hide dirty laundry and market the same empty promises with heightened panic and passion.
02:52 Jagat’s Pandemic Brandwash
1:21:56 Interview with Philip Deslippe & Stacie Stukin
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem
Support Conspirituality on Patreon
Show Notes
“From Maharaj to Mahan Tantric: The Construction of Yogi Bhajan’s Kundalini Yoga” for Sikh Formations by Philip Deslippe (2012)
“Yogi Bhajan Turned an L.A. Yoga Studio into a Juggernaut, and Left Two Generations of Followers Reeling from Alleged Abuse” by Stacie Stukin for Los Angeles Magazine (2020)
“Yogi Bhajan, yoga guru and founder of 3HO, ‘more likely than not’ sexually abused followers, says report” by Philip Deslippe and Stacie Stukin for Religion News Service (2020)
Text of Katherine Felt’s 1986 lawsuit against Bhajan for assault, battery, false imprisonment and more
Text of Pamela Dyson’s 1986 lawsuit against Bhajan for assault, battery, false imprisonment and more
“Wacko World of Yogi Bhajan” archived here
Be Scofield’s work on KY/3HO
Pamela Dyson’s memoir, White Bird in a Golden Cage: My Life with Yogi Bhajan
The Facebook group that supported Dyson’s memoir, and became a meeting place for KY / 3HO survivors
Kelly Brogan’s self-serving review of Premka
Matthew on Brogan’s co-optation of Premka to market conspirituality
We decided to release this Monday patron bonus episode publicly after receiving a great response on Patreon. Julian draws heavily on the work of neurologist and author V.S. Ramachandran in an attempt to explore Conspirituality after the Capitol insurrection. How might an understanding of synesthesia, epilepsy, super-stimuli, hyper-reality, and fascism help us make sense of the overlap between the QAnon fantasy timeline and real world blood and guts?
Joe Biden was inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States yesterday, proving the long-awaited QAnon prophecy false. It’s the perfect time to talk about where mystical or deceptive knowledge comes from, how it works, and what happens when it fails. We may never know who Q was, but we can take a close look at a core feature of conspirituality technique: the transmission of secret knowledge.
Welcome to our channeling episode.
Today we discuss three Q-adjacent channellers: JZ Knight, Lorie Ladd, Elizabeth April, and also Paul Selig. What do they say they’re doing? What does it sound like? And where can we go to figure it out?
Derek looks at consciousness studies through the lens of Rodolfo Llinas, Stanislas Dehaene, Michael Gazzaniga, and other renowned researchers. Julian reviews the philosophical arguments of Daniel Dennett and Susan Blackmore. Matthew plays angel’s advocate and interviews Professor Susannah Crockford about her anthropological fieldwork amongst the New Agers and channelers of Sedona. TL;DR: “There’s never a single answer for anything.”
In the Ticker we look at a tragic anti-vax related father-son murder-suicide in California, anti-vax groups grifting PPP money from the feds, and the Anons, exiled even from Parler, suffering from the collapse of their dream of a Great Awakening.
03:28 The Ticker
27:37 The Jab
32:58 Conscious Consideration
1:02:47: Seance Science
1:45:07: Interview with Susannah Crockford
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem
Support Conspirituality on Patreon
Show Notes
Father-son murder-suicide over anti-vax stress
The Trump administration bailed out prominent anti-vaccine groups during a pandemic
Scientists Investigate Spiritualist Mediums: Why Some People Report “Hearing the Dead”
Hydroxy-pusher Simone Gold arrested for part in Capitol Siege
QAnon will be scrutinized by National Intel Agencies
Parler refugees prepped for Doomsday
QAnon implodes online
QAnon admins nuke then restore threads
QAnauguration meltdown
Argentino and Amarasingam on QAnon prophecies failing
Kevin Roose’s excellent profile of QAnon “meme queen”
More from QAnon Casualties
JZ Knight chann
It’s been eight days since the Capitol was ransacked by a mob of MAGA supporters, Proud Boys, ex-military with tactical gear, and Nazis wearing disgustingly anti-Semitic t-shirts. The death count is six (for now), with a second police officer dying by duty-related suicide on Saturday. As more footage streams in—and the FBI says there’s still more to come—it will get uglier.
So what have our conspiritualists been up to? We’ll run it down this week. Quick story: not a single one has walked back any of their bullshit in the aftermath of the Capitol siege. Some have doubled down.
An unmasked Mikki Willis was involved in the siege as a “journalist,” giving an impassioned anti-vax, pro-liberty speech at a sideshow MAGA event in which he called the ransack that he had just taken part in “beautiful.” Christiane Northrup cheered on the alt-health berserkers during the end of her water fast. Zach Bush took to Instagram to sermonize, saying, “Just as viruses do not take down healthy humans, revolutions do not take down healthy governance.” Lori Ladd spoke in radiant non-sequiturs.
Amber Sears announced she was “preparing for civil war” while her husband JP whined about free speech as his Parler account got nuked and Trump got booted off of Twitter. Meanwhile, Kelly Brogan said nothing publicly about the Capitol siege that we could find, but cashed in on the vibes with a bloated essay on “spiritual warfare.”
We also learned a lot about Jacob Anthony Chansley nee Angeli, the Q-shaman, and his interdimensional conspirituality performance art—as well as his three-day jail fast that was resolved after a sympathetic judge guaranteed a Whole Foods delivery.
Derek interviews RP Eddy, CEO of strategy and geopolitical intelligence firm, Ergo. Eddy previously served as Director at the White House National Security Council under Bill Clinton, Chief of Staff to US Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, and Senior Policy Officer to UN Secretary Kofi Annan. He shares his thoughts about the current state of national security.
03:15 Insurrectionist Influencers
1:17:15 The Jab
1:20:11 Interview with RP Eddy
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem
Support Conspirituality on Patreon
Show Notes
Susannah Crockford on the Q-Shaman’s spiritual potpourri
Matthew’s Twitter thread on Q-Shaman fasting
COVID and tribal elders
Eugene Goodman’s fateful genius
Christiane Northrup’s prosperity gospel affiliate
Northrup as Auntie Good Death
Lorie Ladd everything is all good but difficult something something
Widely-circulated DM about ST cancelling JP Sears
What looks to be an email to JP Sears’s list, disclosing threats of violence against his family. (FYI: link goes to a FB post by a right-wing “news” group.)
Amber Sears preparing for civil war
Mikki Willis’s
Christiane Northrup addresses her followers as “angel warriors.” JP Sears counsels his supplement customers to never “outsource their own truth.” Mikki Willis says he was once a “hero of the left”, and now tells audiences that he’s willing to die for the truth of his message. It’s all very grand, and it doesn’t come from nowhere. Trendy spiritualities of the privileged and disconnected have always focused on the heroic triumph of the individual, which has made them easily co-optable by the right.
But what is a real hero? Joseph Campbell contextualized their journey as a ritual of selfless wandering, undertaken on behalf of the community. The concept of the monomyth, which Campbell defined as the Hero’s Journey, has stages, and they have influenced popular culture in profound and, at times, troubling ways.
In this episode, we’ll look at how certain influencers confuse heroism for megalomania and forget that heroes and their societies are interdependent. Derek and Julian measure some of the usual suspects against Campbell’s ruler while Matthew asks questions about what makes a theory vulnerable to distortion.
In The Jab, Julian looks at the three top questions vaccine-hesitant folks have about the mRNA vaccines currently approved for COVID. In a closing essay, Matthew reflects on a space where the painful splits of conspirituality might be calmed: how the home hospice can bring together public health and private spirituality.
02:34 The Conspirituality Ticker
37:09 The Jab
43:06 Manipulating the Hero’s Journey
1:51:10 Home is Where the Hospice Is
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem
Support Conspirituality on Patreon
Show Notes
Jake Angeli, “Q-Shaman”, describing his New-Age services
CNN on Angeli, “Baked Alaska” and Barnett
The Q shaman — conspirituality runs riot on Capitol Hill
Barnett and “Save Our Children” event in AR in October
JP Sears echoes a justification for ransacking Pelosi’s office
Anti-maskers Storm California Mall, Harass Shoppers and Refuse to Leave
Why Lisa Guerrero Abruptly Ended Interview With Anti-Mask Wearer
Tommy John Sr. hospitalized for COVID
Dr. Tommy John denies his father hospitalized with COVID has COVID
(Tommy’s follow-up post shows his son (?) playing a video game in a COVID-denying t-shirt. Low engagement.)
Trump spews Q garbage in call to Georgia
Prosecutor: Wisconsin pharmacist thought vaccine was unsafe
Blueprints for “vaccine microchip” will make your Fender wail
Cherokee Nation
A rough tally of our labor from the inception of this podcast in May puts us at over 1,100 hours of treading water in the content sea of JP Sears, Mikki Willis, Christiane Northrup, and the rest of the gang. Are we getting our bearings yet? Will we see land soon?
This episode is centered on Part 2 of Matthew’s discussion with Charles Eisenstein — a bellwether for the possibility that wellness and spirituality culture can communicate clearly about conspirituality. In the discussion and analysis that follows the interview, we look at who gets to say what and from which platform, what it means to be brave versus what it means to be evidence-based, and whether South Park really did predict the Trump-Biden choice.
In the Ticker, we’ll peek into the bizarro world of Guru Jagat, run down what anti-vaxxers believe about ingredients, ogle at Michael Flynn’s QAnon merch shop, and dive into Lori Ladd’s recent video where she rallies the troops after a revelatory nap. In The Jab, Julian unravels the facts around the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Finally, in a New Year’s Eve closer, Matthew wonders, from the quietude of a recent home hospice experience, about how we might be able to slow down.
Happy New Year, dear listeners!
2:39 The Conspirituality Ticker
56:26 The Jab
1:09:53 Interview with Charles Eisenstein
2:10:45 Post-interview discussion
2:35:04 If Conspirituality is mostly online, is there a way out?
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem
Support Conspirituality on Patreon
Show Notes
Guru Jagat camp grace talk
Weaving Dharma Art: Guru Jagat x Mandev
Mandev’s Yogi Bhajan propaganda film put out to counter abuse testimony
Harper’s profile on Jagat (pre abuse scandal)
Deslippe rocks the Kundalini backstory
An Olive Branch’s independent investigation into KY and 3HO historical abuse (an initial effort)
Harijiwan’s hagiography of Bhajan via Mandev’s video skillz (one example)
Harijiwan, “toner bandit”
@ramawrong’s excellent IG feed
Phil Good Life discloses three mental health related hospitalizations
Here’s How the Anti-Vaxxers’ Strongest Argument Falls Apart
Why the Government Pays Billions to People Who Claim Injury by Vaccines
Vaccine Court: The Law and Politics of Injury
Majority of anti-vaccine ads on Facebook were funded by two groups
Anti-vaccine leaders targeting minority becomes growing concern at NYC forum
Kelly Brogan
As two coronavirus vaccines roll out we’re being flooded with more disinformation than ever. Wellness gurus are cashing in on home-made “natural” remedies by spreading unjustified fears about this vaccine, and vaccines in general.
This week, we look at Dr. Christiane Northrup’s “line in the sand,” Mikki Willis revealing that he recently helped out the kids of Covington High and Kyle Rittenhouse, JP Sears getting retweeted by Donald Trump, and the QAnon breeding ground that is the MMA. During The Jab, Julian looks at the newly emerged Covid mutation and investigates whether it nullifies the vaccines.
For the main discussion, Julian and Derek sift through the piles of vaccine and health propaganda spread by Robert F Kennedy, Jr and Zach Bush on a recent Instagram Live. Derek interviews Jonathan Berman, author of Anti-Vaxxers: How to Challenge a Misinformed Movement, about trying to build a bridge. Finally, Matthew reports from a family hospice experience on the generosity, discipline, and grace of frontline health care workers.
3:15 The Conspirituality Ticker
51:10 The Jab
53:24 Bro Science and Anti-Vaxxing
1:38:19 Interview with Jonathan Berman
2:21:09 Notes from Hospice Care
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem
Support Conspirituality on Patreon
Show Notes
The Coronavirus Is Mutating. What Does That Mean for Us?
The Duesberg Phenomenon
Mikki Willis at the Red Pill Expo
My Polio Story is an Inconvenient Truth to Those Who Refuse Vaccines
History of Polio
The Denialist Playbook
Pharmacies Partner With HHS to Provide COVID-19 Vaccines
This episode dropped for our Patreon supporters on the darkest day of the year. We’re unlocking it as a holiday gift to all of our listeners.
In this meditation, Matthew reflects on the roots and implications of “blazes of light” that punctuate the speech of both spiritualists and conspiritualists, from the spaces of patriarchal religious ritual to the claustrophobia of the manosphere. One key question: How does the manosphere shape conspirituality and its emotional disorders?
This is a tour through the trance states that charismatic men love and manipulate—how they carry streams of emotion that can never be transparently shared. Matthew investigates the means by which the podcast format squeezes entranced speech into a man-cave so that the speaker can be endlessly extroverted, but also self-protected, and mostly unaccountable.
It is an ethereal and frictionless technology, imposing no limits on the impulse to hold court or to dominate. It allows Alex Jones, Jordan Peterson, Dr. Tommy John, JP Sears, and many others to create limitless self-centered content with almost no feedback. The lack of reality-checking makes their discourse aggressive, but it’s also tragic to watch men believe they are forming relationships while they talk into the void.
No solstice bonus wouldn’t be complete without a nod to the light, however. Matthew climbs back out of this episode with some good man-news about his podcast colleagues, the Mandolorian, and the possibility that his own boys might grow up differently.
Show Notes
Jordan Peterson weeps over individualism.
Instagram isolation curated by Dr. Tommy John
JP Sears plays toady to Tim Kennedy’s alpha-fashy rant
Kennedy implies he’s helping disappear protestors in Portland
Who gets to take up space in critical times? How do we orient ourselves toward expertise? In a culture dominated by “experts” on social media, do charismatics outperform fact-checkers?
This episode marks a milestone for our podcast, as Matthew interviews Charles Eisenstein, whose essay “The Coronation” has cast a long shadow on our ongoing critique of how New Age and spiritual spaces interact with public health. It’s a respectful but robust conversation about the limits of what laypeople can know about science and journalism, the intersection between conspiracy theory and myth, what the word “narrative” really means, and whether activism on the left and conspiracy theories on the right can be equally misguided. The conversation ran long: we dish up and comment on the first hour here.
In the Ticker, we cover Gaiam TV—Netflix for the Q-adjacent—and JP Sears keeping it classy by using the birth announcement of his son to punch down at trans people. On The Jab, Julian reports on Robert F Kennedy Jr’s role in flooding social media with anti-vax ads, and targeting propaganda at minority and immigrant communities, to their detriment.
2:47 The Conspirituality Ticker
25:03 The Jab
31:05 Interview with Charles Eisenstein
1:24:32 Post-interview Discussion
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem (Duke Schommer + Derek Beres)
Support Conspirituality on Patreon
Show Notes
Suzanne Humphries on Rational Wiki
Why Dr Suzanne Humphries, an anti-vaccine activist, is lying to you about measles
JP Sears’s transphobic post
JP Sears’s squat workout / Bill Gates post
Overlap between conspirituality and anti-trans politics
Invite from the “Awarehouse”, oh and this one too
Why this mainstream yoga site is now a hub for QAnon influencers
A Thrive interviewee regrets his participation
Bell’s Palsy, Allergic Reactions, and Deaths in Covid Vaccine Trials
Funding for anti-vax ads on Facebook
RFK is very concerned
The Coronation: Eisenstein
The Conspiracy Myth: Eisenstein
The Banquet of Whiteness: Eisenstein
Here’s an episode that’s been micro-brewing for a while: Bro Science: where conspirituality meets the manosphere.
We’ve even got a working definition! Here’s a taste.
Bro Science is junk science spewed by men who believe their charisma is a substitute for training. It brags, mocks, overreaches. It’s self-serving and self-interested. It can carry hints of toxic masculinity: entitlement, unearned confidence, no qualms about taking up space, repressing emotion or hiding it behind humour or grandiosity. It preaches individualism and self-sufficiency from the lonely triumph of Bro.We’ll listen to some top “Bro scientists” to see how bro-ness reduces, minimizes, and mocks science. We’ll listen to pearls of bro-dom from JP Sears, Kyle Kingsbury, Aubrey Marcus, Sayer Ji, Toronto’s very own BBQAnon, Adam Skelly, and Zach Bush, doctor to the bros.
Dear listeners: you might feel at the end of our tour like you need a coffee colon cleanse or testosterone nootropic. But we’ve got something better: an interview with Dr. Dan Wilson, who does the opposite of Bro Science. He’s a molecular biologist who by day works in the lab at Carnegie Mellon University, but by night crushes out Dr. Wilson Debunks the Funk videos, cutting conspiritualists down to size.
2:20 The Conspirituality Ticker
18:02 Phase Angling
39:10 The Purge
54:59 You’re More Powerful Than the Universe
1:13:02 The Jab
1:15:02 Interview w/Dr. Dan Wilson
2:15:57 Bro Science: A Manifesto in Progress
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem (Duke Schommer + Derek Beres)
Support Conspirituality on Patreon
Show Notes
The Lonely Descent into QAnon, Pt 1
Analysts create AI tool that can distinguish between conspiracy theories and real conspiracies
Former Israeli space security chief says aliens exist, humanity not ready
In 2020, Disinformation Broke the US
BBQAnon thinks he knows something about PCR tests
Public Health Ontario: false positivity rate is 0.01%,
Sayer Ji geeks out with Michael Sandler
Sayer Ji’s GreenMedInfo cherry-picks a vaccine study report
Here’s the actual source that GMI distorted
Dr. Maria Sundaram Twitter thread on how to talk with vaccine-hesitant people.
Covid-19, Remote Work Make Austin a Magnet for New Jobs
What is phase angle?
Dr. Dan Wilson’s Debunk the Funk channel
This week we inaugurate “The Conspirituality Ticker,” a weekly bullet-point rundown on the ongoing pandemic of influencers who spread medical misinformation to sell disaster spirituality. We’ll also continue with “The Jab”, our segment on conspirituality-driven vaccine hesitancy.
The big news this week is the resurrection of Jordan Peterson. After surviving a medically-induced coma in a Russian rehab facility, and then COVID on top of that, Peterson has re-emerged, weakened but resolute, as both hero and provocateur. The announcement from Penguin Canada that his new book of another dozen self-help rules prompted Penguin employees to protest their involvement in an emotional town hall.
In this episode, we’ll dive into Peterson’s imaginarium. We won’t totally discount his button-down commonsensical advice, but we will explore how it has lent intellectual support to the alt-right. Is he a conspiritualist pioneer as he wars against the Neo-Marxist Cabal and dreams of a Jungian promised land? Matthew will add a view from Peterson’s hometown of Toronto, where the messianic prof has been open about his ambitions in right-wing Ontario politics. Julian interviews dissociation debunker Jeff Brown, who champions “enrealment,” and has a heartfelt critique of what he calls the “new cage” movement.
02:21 Conspirituality Ticker
27:22 The Jab
36:35 Jordan Peterson Reborn
1:16:18 Interview with Jeff Brown
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem (Duke Schommer + Derek Beres)
Support Conspirituality on Patreon
Show Notes
JZ Knight Called for ‘Military Coup’ After Biden Took Lead in Presidential Bid
Defiant Night: Hundreds Gather at Pier Bowl for Mask-Burning Rally
Toronto public health shuts down Etobicoke restaurant for allowing indoor dining in defiance of COVID-19 measures
Adam Skelly’s GoFundMe
Skelly hauled off by the po-po
$15,000 Fine After Secret Hasidic Wedding Draws Thousands of Guests
Splitting 5 to 4, Supreme Court Backs Religious Challenge to Cuomo’s Virus Shutdown Order
Supremes’ opinions
Canadian Bar Association on c16, which Peterson didn’t understand
Peterson co-presents with Proud Boy founder Gavin McInnes
Peterson boosting Tanya Granic Allen. (Matthew neglected to report that Peterson raising Allen’s profile helped make her kingmaker in the ON Conservative leadership race. She threw her votes to Ford, promising Catholic support. He then rewards that support by reinstituting a sex-ed curriculum for public schools that was written before the internet.)
BBQAnon twe
Do famous people become famous for staying in their lane? Do some find fame by carving out a lane that never existed before? What is the disruptive promise of charisma in this wellness space, which draws consumers burdened by a double disillusionment? They arrive, disillusioned by conventional medicine and conventional religion. What can the charismatic influencer offer them, and how do they do it?
In this last free bonus episode, Matthew explores the charismatic logic of wellness, in which yoga teachers can become famous by playing at being doctors, and doctors can become famous by playing at being priests. Starting with the strange tale of BKS Iyengar (and how he stretched his way into all three roles through sheer will), this journey will lay out how the basic schtick of the 20th-century the wellness personality has primed the ground for our current explosion in conspirituality.
Matthew will look at how MDs like Tom Cowan, Kelly Brogan, Christiane Northrup, and Zach Bush all run the “Iyengar Arc” in reverse. Where the yoga master was unschooled in medicine, these doctors are unschooled in spirituality. But that doesn’t stop them from pretending to be experts in a weird cocktail that fails both. In their aspirations to spiritual leadership, they each screw the pooch. Cowan ends up shilling for Rudolf Steiner, who knew nothing about viruses, and even less about how not to be a racist. Brogan thinks that Kundalini Yoga is “thousands of years old” even though it was invented by a sociopath in the 1970s. Northrup seems to think that angel channelers are qualified to tell people how to live. And Zach Bush recounts a mystical experience to a group of retreatants in Italy, in which he became a sardine, and realized he wasn’t afraid to die—partly why he uses Reiki instead of pain medication when he’s on the hospice shift.
Ultimately, the “charismatic collapse” between doctor and priest distorts medicine and makes spirituality banal. Perhaps if we see this clearly, we’ll look for better leaders.
For future Bonus Episodes, please become a patron.
Show Notes
Iyengar’s Light on Yoga wiki
Foucault’s Les Mots et Les Choses wiki
Brogan’s Vital Life Project
Anne Cushman interviews BKS Iyengar for Yoga Journal, 1997
About Siddha Yoga
Tom Cowan’s disciplinary rap sheet
Cowan’s disinfo vid
CBC debunks Cowan
Dr. Wilson Debunks the Funk out of Tom Cowan
Brogan hypes Cowan’s banned book
Rudolf Steiner: “The Mission of Folk-Souls,” 1910
Brogan pitching Own Your Self while “reviewing” another book
Brogan’s “A Message to Help Dispel Fear” (by suggesting COVID isn’t necessarily real)
Brogan’s “Vital Mind Reset” program, only $997 US
Philip Deslippe
Though we’re all staying put this holiday season, we continue to super-spread our conspirituality vibes. This week we’re fielding listener questions for our first-ever non-Patreon AMA. During this episode, we’ll be talking about our own spiritual beliefs, finding meaning in crisis, Matthew being canceled, and more.
For a holiday treat, Matthew interviews friend of the pod, the fabulous Alex Auder, about what it means to satirize free-birth influencer @bauhauswife, who’s putting the fash back into fashion.
02:50 Up For Belief
22:25 Hey House
44:55 Eulogy for an Elegy
57:02 Interview with Alex Auder
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem (Duke Schommer + Derek Beres)
Support Conspirituality on Patreon
Show Notes
Four Quartets — TS Eliot
Is Stephen Mitchell a translator? He “translates” so many languages!
Then there’s Jan Van Buitenen, the unknown
Matthew’s elegy for Michael Stone
Diversity has lost some of its strength as a term in our bifurcated world, and yet in nature diversity has always mattered. Our apprehension of using the word points to our further alienation of nature—and ourselves. Derek discusses the power of diversity in three realms he has spent decades studying: international music, fitness, and psychedelics. He also contemplates why diversity matters when considering the growing influence of conspiritualists.
Trump’s personal pastor Paula White seizes the podium to speak in tongues and prophesize that angels from Africa will certify her master’s electoral victory. Evangelical Kenneth Copeland laughs maniacally at the devilish proposition that Biden has won. They both yearn to squeeze some drop of ecstasy from the husk of conservative politics. How much of the emotional terrorism rolling through these times is the return of the repressed?
In our weekly reporting, Derek looks at Australian chef Pete Evans and his nostalgia for fascist mysticism, hidden beneath green shakes and doTerra downlines. Julian covers Dr. Northrup’s latest viral science fictions, as well as the bizarre Nazi comparisons trending on conspiritualist pages. Matthew looks at nested repressions returning with a vengeance: QAnon resurrecting the Satanic Panic, Bill Gates as the return of the vampire, and the strange new phenomenon of the Aggro-Spiritual Boss Babe Rage Witch, whose coin seems to be on the rise just as the Mark Walsh Spiritual Pick-Up Artist currency tanks. He also considers distinctions between canceling and punching sideways, picking up from last week’s episode.
Then, in a rich interview with author of The Immortality Key, Brian Muraresku, Derek explores the ancient psychedelia of Christianity, both forgotten and repressed, and hopes for its return, as it would probably make Paula White and Kenneth Copeland chill TF out.
03:32 Confessions of a Nazi chef
36:37 The Jab: Northrup returns
52:56 Speaking in tongues
1:14:43 Interview with Brian Muraresku
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem (Duke Schommer + Derek Beres)
Support Conspirituality on Patreon
Show Notes
Pete Evans says COVID-19 isn’t contagious
Pete Evans fined $25,000 by Therapeutic Goods Administration over coronavirus claims relating to BioCharger
Controversial celebrity chef Pete Evans canned by Seven Network
Healing hubs, a ‘sacred geometry hub’ and solar-powered cabins: Inside the new hippy commune promoted by Pete Evans where people pay to live off the grid in ‘earth ships’
Pete Evans, Truthseeker
Pete Evans shares the Nazi symbol, Black Sun
Christiane Northrup’s Nazi tweet
Northrup’s COVID vaccine interview
COVID-19 Vaccine To Alter DNA? 5 False Claims By Christiane Northrup
Nazi comparison misusing Shulman’s quote
Friday takeaway: Flu shots
No Time To Be Nice: Now Is Not The Moment To Remain Silent
Paula White / Eminem mashup
Kenneth Copeland
As more of the world has gained access to mobile internet, populism, and the perception (rightly or wrongly) of government, corruption has steadily increased. But what is “populism?” How do populist ideas on both the Right and Left identify “the people” and their enemies? With the size of the online megaphone and Balkanized social media audiences, what role does the word magic of emotionally-manipulative language play in perpetuating division, even when claiming to do otherwise?
Theme music by EarthRise SoundSystem (Duke Schommer + Derek Beres)
Support Conspirituality on Patreon
Show Notes
Vox Euon mobile internet, populism and government confidence.
Steve Bannon’s far right “school of gladiators“ for young populists in Italy.
Populism is Morphing in Insidious Ways via The Atlantic.
Coleman Hughes review of “How To Be An Anti-Racist” and open letter To Ibrahim X. Kendi.
John McWhorter’s review of White Fragility.
In Defense of Looting —one author’s controversial opinion via NPR.
On Election night, Mikki Willis, JP Sears, Del Bigtree, and the conspirituality glitterati gathered in Austin for a prayer meeting for Donald Trump. Willis pitched his new documentary and complained about Marxist professors pied-pipering children towards BLM before a new-age preacher sold allotments in a new alt-health ranch community in Texas. Derek covers this ultimate reveal of the conspirituality grift: predict the apocalypse, then sell off-grid cribs on a five-acre manmade lagoon. Fill the swamp, indeed.
Meanwhile, Julian covers the election of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Madison Cawthorn, QAnon arrests in Philly, and the shitstorm of irate comments against YogaGirl as she stands up for decency.
The election over, our critical work continues. How do we keep it on target? How do we make sure that we don’t become so cynical—or so attached to the process of criticism itself—that we can’t find solidarity? And how do we look for solutions while enthralled by social media, as opposed to being invested in society?
Last week, our guest Tada Hozumi spoke about “clean blows” in politics and justice work, arguing that dignity and nobility in conflict depend on good faith and better will. As we survey the bloody post-election landscape (especially in progressive and wellness spaces), we have to dig in, especially if we’re going to enter the conversation over situations like The Embodiment Conference.
Our guests this week are Clementine Morrigan and Jay from Fucking Cancelled. Matthew will be asking them about the work that the digital Left can do to foster solidarity, loyalty, and freedom. It’s an important conversation because we have to assume that some of the redpilled were already being pushed out the door. Why? Because among the woke-ish, it can be easier to fight each other than to punch up and get things done.
04:30 Black girls are welcome to be president
17:25 Satanic poetry
50:36 F*cking cancelled culture
1:16:11 Interview with Clementine Morgan & Jay
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem (Duke Schommer + Derek Beres)
Support Conspirituality on Patreon
Show Notes
Audio from Mikki Willis and Joyous Heart speaking on Election Day in Austin (original video was taken down from Facebook):
Yoga Girl boosts Black girls as President on Instagram
My Dark Journey Into the Soul of a Model Young Republican Candidate
QAnon goes to Washington: two supporters win seats in Congress
Armed QAnon follower arrested in alleged Philly convention center threat linked to far-right Va. senator
Karl Marx: The Fiddler
Why Silicon Valley billionaires are prepping for the apocalypse in New Zealand
Clementine Morrigan on Instagram and her website and Patreon
Fucking Cancelled on Patreon
ContraPoints on Cance
Mark Walsh, the proprietor of The Embodiment Conference, was recently challenged by cultural somaticist Tada Hozumi in an Open Letter, penned by Hozumi in lieu of accepting the invitation to speak at the Conference. Hozumi proposed that Walsh look more closely at the exclusionary economy of his ambitious project — specifically, at how it centers white men as the heroes of the somatic techniques that colonialism handed them. The letter, dignified and sincere, offered a concise and workable framing of a fraught issue. Walsh did not respond directly, but on his personal Facebook shitposted about being oppressed by “c*ntery” of social justice “twats.”
Those familiar with this aspect of Walsh’s online persona were not surprised. He has openly risen to market dominance in the online somatasphere as a kind of Black Belt culture warrior, a Jordan Peterson in a jock-strap. In this bonus episode, Matthew reviews some of Walsh’s past online hits as a case study of how the wellness world can confuse acting out for freedom, somatic dominance for discipline, and allow charismatic men to weaponize unhealed wounds in the name of authenticity.
Theme music by EarthRise SoundSystem (Duke Schommer + Derek Beres)
Support Conspirituality on Patreon
Show Notes
Open Letter to Mark Walsh and The Embodiment Conference
The Embodiment Conference and “somafascism”: commentary from Ben Spatz
Mark Walsh to 2020 TEC invited presenter (the audio is from 2019)
Statement: We need to divest from Mark Walsh and The Embodiment Conference
Yes, Mr. Walsh, there are Black people in Hungary. One of them was born there, in 1980, and is now an MP.
Mark Walsh documentation
This week could have been worse; what comes now must get better. If we’ve learned anything over these six months, it’s that QAnon is to conspirituality as Trump is to the political status quo. We can debunk or vote out the fever dream, but the virus will remain.
In our first post-election episode we take stock of work yet to do. Derek checks in on QAnon mysticism. Julian speaks on the populism and language games that horseshoe right and left together, and how strong communities cannot afford horizontal violence anymore. We review a new podcast out of Montreal that studies “The Nexus” — the toxic intersection between identitarian activism, social media, and cancel culture.
Matthew crystal-balls the precarious future of post-COVID yoga, and interviews cultural somaticist Tada Hozumi on why Andrew Yang offered attachment politics, decolonizing wellness, and WTF is going on at The Embodiment Conference. “The future of global embodiment,” Hozumi says, “is also the future of global politics. Because the mind always follows the body.”
03:07 Numbers are hard
20:02 How did we get here?
38:21 Walk in the park
1:01:10 Interview with Tada Hozumi
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem (Duke Schommer + Derek Beres)
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Show Notes
Sapolsky: Religious Ritual is OCD
Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst — Robert Sapolsky
Most Yoga Teachers are Not Online Producers. They Have a Deeper Gift, and Now Is the Time to Trust It.
Dr. Northrup continues: now the conspiracy is electoral fraud
Fucking Cancelled podcast
Molly Meehan’s 5-part “zine”.
Molly’s podcast: “Out of the Woods”.
Exiting the Vampire Castle by Mark Fisher (who tragically died by suicide after a lifelong struggle with depression).
Open Letter to Mark Walsh and The Embodiment Conference
Why I, as a therapist, support Andrew Yang
The Ritual As Justice School
Whiteness as trauma in the body
Derek talks with Dr. Ali Haider about being on the frontlines of COVID-19.
Dr. Haider is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Tufts University Medical School. He received his medical degree from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Dr. Haider is board-certified in Internal Medicine, Cardiovascular Diseases, Echocardiography, Nuclear Cardiology, Interventional Cardiology, and vascular ultrasound. He is well versed in all aspects of cardiology, and his areas of interest include coronary angioplasty and interventions, and the treatment of peripheral vascular disease as well as structural heart disease.
Theme music by EarthRise SoundSystem (Duke Schommer + Derek Beres)
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Show Notes
Doctor Responds to COVID Over-Diagnosis Claims by White House
Ali Haider on YouTube and Instagram
When we started this project six months ago, we could feel the cliff-edge of the election on the horizon. We could sense that our footholds of community, reasonable conversation, and consensus reality were eroding. As veterans of spirituality and wellness spaces, we’ve always known that the reality has never lived up to the hype. But the intensification of conspirituality themes, incubating during lockdown into the peak fever-state of QAnon, has made this period especially demoralizing. What do we need now, on the eve of uncertainty? What will we need going forward?
This week, we take some time to explore thoughts and feelings about this menacing week, and how we’re contemplating and committing to the long haul through our work, relationships, and self-care. We’re joined by special guests Hala Khouri, Tara Stiles, and Lissa Rankin, who all offer their wisdom.
02:25 Growing up under apartheid
19:15 “Spiritual” self-care
35:20 The weight of the moment
58:13 Interview with Hala Khouri
1:19:31 Interview with Tara Stiles
1:35:46 Interview with Lissa Rankin
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem (Duke Schommer + Derek Beres)
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Lissa Rankin takes a stand with Rebekah Borucki
Heal at Last: the nonprofit aimed at democratizing healing
Alchemizing Uncertain Times Through Writing
10 New Age Beliefs We Need To Debunk If We Want To Be Social Justice Allies
The Psychology Of People Who Believe Conspiracy Theories
Mind Over Medicine — Lissa’s book
QAnon’s Predictions Haven’t Come True; So How Does the Movement Survive the Failure of Prophecy?
The Republican strategy for every Supreme Court nominee: Hide what you believe
Coming off of Conspirituality 22 with Rebekah Borucki, Matthew casts a wider net over Hay House’s cultural influence in two parts: a brief survey of some of their top authors, and then an examination of a root text in the Hay House world: A Course in Miracles.
ACIM’s corrupt and emotionally manipulative philosophy is the basis for the work of authors Marianne Williamson and Gabby Bernstein, overlapping almost perfectly onto “The Work” of Byron Katie. Louise Hay, for one, was fond of quoting it. Matthew proposes that A Course in Miracles is the unacknowledged in-house bible for Hay House. He has a lot to say about it as a former member of a cult called Endeavor Academy in Wisconsin Dells, which used A Course in Miracles as its core text, and primary tool of psychological abuse.
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Show Notes
Louise Hay quotes A Course in Miracles
Wayne Dyer quotes A Course in Miracles
How Byron Katie emotionally dominates
Bryon Katie on feeling God as babies die and how Hitler maybe brought people to enlightenment (pp. 37-39)
Julian’s open letter to Northrup
Jivana Heyman on Louise Hay (and more)
Louise Hay and AIDS
Applying “The Work” of Byron Katie to the Pandemic
At the heart of ACIM’s influence on New Age wellness is the absurd contempt for the process of becoming sick expressed by “Jesus” in Lesson 136
Letter from Centre for Science in the Public Interest to the FDA detailing Joseph Mercola’s fraudulent COVID cures
An early marked version of A Course in Miracles
A history of A Course in Miracles editing
Author and publisher Rebekah Borucki joins the Conspirituality team as our first co-host for this episode. She’s got a story to tell: the culture of her publisher, Hay House, was so resistant to taking a position on the racist attitudes of some of their leading cash-cow authors that she ditched her contract and her job with the company as a diversity mentor.
We’ll be talking about the money and politics of New Age media, as well as editorial standards, ghostwriting, cult apologetics, and the responsibility of publishers to deplatform authors that are hurtling toward QAnon. New Age media isn’t all love and light—it’s a pathway into consumers’ vulnerability, and sometimes a recruitment gateway for cults.
Also this week: Derek interviews Dr Jay Mohan on his gruelling COVID front-line work as an interventional cardiologist in a Detroit suburb.
02:13 Get Your (Hay) House In Order
1:14:24 Interview with Dr Jay Mohan
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Show notes
Rebekah on toxic White Women Wellness
Rebekah on the silence of Hay House authors
Rebekah on leaving Hay House
A Critique of Abraham Hicks & the Law of Attraction
Celery Juice: The big problem with a viral Instagram ‘cure
More than 20 years ago, Richard Vaughan wrote Matthew a very kind and perceptive letter, asking him to reconsider whether his participation in a Buddhist cult would forever alienate him from the real world, and his real friends. Matthew reads this letter here.
It’s on his mind not only because there are so many people who are now struggling with having lost friends and family members, but also because Richard—only 55, and a hero of Canadian queer literature—has been missing for a week.
Show Notes
N.B. writers and LGBTQ community ‘very worried‘ about missing mentor Richard Vaughan
The Seven Good Reasons Why the Boys in the Band Could be a Musical or, I am the Dollar in the Dolorosa
QAnon Casualties
We still can’t believe alt-health Bali retreat rockstar Sacha Stone called for the “evisceration” of public officials last week. Are conspiritualists really crossing over into militancy? Are the products of wellness so boring, and are the markets so saturated, that messianic influencers have no choice but to up the ante? Stone’s recent interview guest, Christiane Northrup, recently invoked the sacred power of the Sheriff as the highest law in the land for anti-lockdown folks who believe they’re being oppressed. That argument was first made by the white nationalist Posse Comitatus in the 1970s — the seed group for many of today’s militias.
This week, we investigate the means by which religious cults and conspiritualists rattle sabers and poison people. Derek reviews Japan’s AUM cult as a prelude to Julian’s riveting interview with AUM expert Sarah Hightower. Julian reports on the Northrupian intersection between militia movements and alt-health ideas of “sovereignty.” Matthew discusses violence in ISKCON as the Hare Krishnas parade mask-free through Glastonbury.
02:15 The Cult of AUM
20:53 White Supremacy in Yoga
36:05 Stardate Northrup
55:02 Krishna Kovidiots
1:03:42 Interview with Sarah Hightower
1:26:28 OK Qpid
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Show Notes
Rajneeshee leaders take revenge on The Dalles’ with poison, homeless
Cult Leaders & Psychopaths: Power Beyond the Grave
We Need to Talk about the Rise of White Supremacy in Yoga
Epic Yoga San Clemente
Alan Hostetter playing a singing bowl in a Trump t-shirt
Reddit thread on Q Casualties Dating App
Sex and Death on the Road to Nirvana
Amy Coney Barrett uses her children in different ways
What the Second Amendment really meant to the Founders
Who’s right, who’s confused, who’s noble, who’s the bad guy?
Nothing exists in a cultural vacuum. The emergence of yoga as a hugely popular and lucrative phenomenon in the West is no exception.
In this bonus episode, Julian discusses a recent article that was posted, and enthusiastically liked, shared, and commented upon in sincere solidarity by yoga folks contributing to the conspirituality zeitgeist.
This despite the article being written by a respected brown scholar and activist and posted by an earnest white yogi—and being about a billionaire with some questionable history.
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The reality of a second COVID wave started back in the Spring. Now that With over half of American states are experiencing increased cases, the conspiracy theories are surging. At least 32 White House staff and allies, as well as the president and his wife, have tested positive, likely originating in an unmasked close-quartered super-spreader Rose Garden celebration of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barret.
As Trump poses for wheezing conquering hero propaganda following his questionable return from Walter Reed, another type of second wave is being led by brandwashed conspiritualists. Yoga and wellness loyalists are pushing back against criticism of their use of Q hashtags while reveling in mask opposition, anti-vaxxer agendas, and a distorted slacktivist approach to child trafficking that forms the foundation of QAnon. Pastel Q is surging.
This week, Julian investigates the terrifying Line In The Sand online conference, which featured friends of the pod, Mikki Willis, Zach Bush, Christiane Northrup, and many others. Matthew focuses on the chaos of charismatic leadership, weighing Trumpian tactics with the likes of Chogyam Trungpa and Yogi Bhajan. Derek explores the importance of creativity in the time of quarantine, leading into his interview with musician and former cult member, Ben Lee.
The entire crew also discusses Yoga Journal following the lead of the NY Times and Rolling Stone by reporting (and then bearing the backlash) on yoga community leaders taking a stand against QAnon—and getting trolled by Q devotees in the process.
03:30 Reclaim Your Lives conference
33:02 Mistaking chaos for power
54:39 Future Self Summit
1:10:49 Yoga Journal on QAnon
1:21:25 Interview with Ben Lee
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem (Duke Schommer + Derek Beres)
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Julie Salter describes Swami Vishnudevananda, abuser.
NewEarth Haven bio-resonant investment pitch
Trump Supporter Wears ‘COVID Diaper’ to Prevent Coronavirus Farts
Episode 94: The New Age to QAnon Pipeline by QAnon Anonymous
The Case against Swami Rama of the Himalayas
Future Self Summit
Reclaim Your Lives Conference
Leaders in the Yoga Community Speak Out Against QAnon
Bill Gates is unknowable—except to close and estranged friends, family members, his therapist if he has one. His empire sprawls; his philanthropy is tangled. He’s clearly not any one thing. But what is the one thing conspiritualists fantasize him to be? What archetypal role does he play for those who hate him?
In this meditation, Matthew zeroes in on the briefly-mentioned biographical datum that Gates was bullied as a boy to unfold his symbolic power as neuroatypical scapegoat. If we listen carefully, he argues, we’ll hear something very high-school-ish, laced with homophobia and latent violence, in the lazy defamations slung at Gates.
Is it a surprise that Trump graduated from the New York Military Academy in 1964—the same year that a horrific hazing incident cost several administrators their jobs? Is it a surprise, given what we saw in that so-called debate, that Trump’s school had written hazing into their cadet manual? No, it’s not. And when Biden pauses and smiles, and shakes his head, and his gaze falls, is he remembering what it was like to have had a stutter in an all-boys school?
We spend a lot of time on this podcast unravelling the shoddy thinking at the heart of our conspirituality and political landscapes. These 24 minutes tackles primal cruelty that is up to men to address—if they can remember it, and challenge that sad assumption that it’s simply the way of the world.
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem (Duke Schommer + Derek Beres)
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Thirty-two days out from the election and every hour reveals another layer of intensity. The more widely conspirituality and QAnon spreads, the more normalized mundane political violence becomes.
In this episode, Derek looks at how the virus of conspiracism is now overtly threatening the basic premises of voting, as Emperor Trump projects a fiction about electoral fraud, even as he loses his clothes. Matthew looks at a crucial part of this normalization: how Q himself, whoever he is, is now brandwashing, advising followers to abandon familiar Q-words. How then are resisters like Seane Corn to address this brainworm as it shape-shifts, co-opting the visuals of wellness and even the jargon of social justice? Julian steps back for a broader look, reviewing the pod’s discoveries and themes so far, and visualizing where they might lead.
We interview Mike Rains, one of the brave moderators of the 25K member subreddit QAnonCasualties, who has a lot to say about what the Q-hole feels like when it rips up hearts and homes.
Show segments
03:12 This Week in Conspirituality
56:26 Interview with Mike Rains
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem (Duke Schommer + Derek Beres)
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Show Notes
Q suggests going stealth
r/QAnonCasulties
Donate via QanonCasualties SubReddit to a real charity that does real work to help combat child trafficking
Insights into the Personalities of Conspiracy Theorists
Why Do Some People Believe in Conspiracy Theories?
People Drawn to Conspiracy Theories Share a Cluster of Psychological Features
For our inaugural bonus episode of Conspirituality Podcast, we feature a single interview: a deep dive into the demonology of QAnon and Xtian evangelicalism with Dublin-based Religious Studies scholar Jonathan O’Donnell (pronouns: they/them).
O’Donnell took Matthew through a tour of modern demons: how they show up and how believers relate to them. They also explore the amazing world of “spiritual warfare handbooks,” which have a history in US evangelicalism, are bestsellers in Q-land, and in some ways resemble new-age self-help manuals. They discuss prophecy, speaking in tongues, and the impacts of demonology on marginalized identities.
Professor O’Donnell specializes in American Religious and Cultural Studies, with a focus on the religious right and systems of dehumanization. They study Islamophobia, antisemitism, transphobia, and religious nationalism. Their current research analyses the relation between evangelical demonology, authoritarianism, and “post-truth politics” in Trump’s America.
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem (Duke Schommer + Derek Beres)
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Some wellness influencers offer compelling critiques of Big Pharma, factory farming, and psychiatric malpractice. What happens when their arguments become honeypots for snake oil? In this episode, Derek provides an overview of modern pharma practice and its discontents. Julian delves into the muddy culture of yoga and antidepressants—the bad advice, the stigma, the magical thinking. He also reviews the latest Q-adjacent content of Canadian self-help celebrity Danielle LaPorte, and checks in on Kate Northrup’s interview with Zach Bush.
Derek and Julian interview Matthew about his recent feature investigation on conspirituality power couple, Dr. Kelly Brogan and Sayer Ji. There’s lots of material that didn’t make the final copy, like how Brogan’s conspirituality could endanger the mental health of her online clients, and how her usage of Kundalini Yoga as a supplemental therapy is riddled with false historical and medical claims. Also: why didn’t Sayer Ji denounce QAnon when given the chance?
Finally, Derek digs into the podcast origin story with an interview of Jules Evans, who helped “conspirituality” become an almost-household term.
02:56 This Week in Conspirituality
19:54 Inside Kelly Brogan’s Covid-Denying, Vax-Resistant Conspiracy Machine
1:17:04 Interview with Jules Evans
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem (Duke Schommer + Derek Beres)
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Inside Kelly Brogan’s Covid-Denying, Vax-Resistant Conspiracy Machine
Popular Health Guru Sayer Ji Curates the Scientific Literature with His Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy
Matthew’s review of Brogan’s “review” of Yogi Bhajan survivor Pamela Dyson’s memoir
From Maharaj to Mahan Tantric: The Construction of Yogi Bhajan’s Kundalini Yoga
Cognitive Errors and Diagnostic Mistakes: A Case-Based Guide to Critical Thinking in Medicine
An Olive Branch Report on Yogi Bhajan, the abuser
White Bird in a Golden Cage: My Life with Yogi Bhajan
Trump Claims He Invented the Term “Fake News”—Here’ s an Interview With the Guy Who Actually Helped Popularize It
Lies, Damn Lies and Viral Content
Episode 198: The Solution to the Pandemic You Won’t Find in the Mainstream with Zach Bush, MD
“COnsp!racy Theory” labelling can block critical thinking — Danielle LaPorte
‘Conspirituality’ — the overlap between the New Age and conspiracy beliefs
Why are conspiracy theories rampant in the ‘wellness’ industry?
At this point, we can say for sure that American spiritual and wellness communities are not only vulnerable to conspiracy brainworms but they’re actively hosting and spreading them. Seane Corn joins us to discuss what to do when QAnon rhetoric and hashtags co-opts lurches through yoga communities.
But is this really unexpected from a historical point of view? Our second guest, cult researcher and historian Jared Yates Sexton joins us to talk about his new book, American Rule. He discusses the longstanding conspiracies that have influenced America since its very founding as well as the chronic problem of American exceptionalism.
We all add in our own reflections on 9/11: how close to home it came, how one of us was in a cult when it happened, and how we learn and manage fear.
03:31 This Week in Conspirituality
29:19 Interview with Seane Corn
1:05:16 Interview with Jared Yates Sexton
2:15:03 Fatherhood & Fear
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem (Duke Schommer + Derek Beres)
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Thread on Pastel QAnon
The Birth of QAmom
Wellness Influencers Are Spreading QAnon Conspiracies About the Coronavirus
Seane Corn’s anti-Q post swarmed by QAnons
Inside Kelly Brogan’s Covid-Denying, Vax-Resistant Conspiracy Machine
The Brightest Stars Shine In The Deepest Dark
Yoga-crazed Hindu nationalists murder Muslims for eating beef, believing that the cow embodies the religious gift of India’s soil. American white supremacists chug gallons of local milk to prove their lactose tolerance and their claim that they alone should occupy the Global North.
Extreme examples aside: it’s clear that key elements of the alt-right and the New Age agree that the Earth is sacred. Bountiful and healing, the Earth preserves everything lost to industrialization, Big Pharma, and globalization. Home is where the soil is. But whose home? Who’s welcome here? Who can afford it? Who’s allowed to own it, and who has to slave-labor on it? For all the supposed concern for ecology, why aren’t we seeing conspiritualists and QAnon devotees marching against carbon emissions, celebrating the carbon drops of lockdown, supporting the migrant workers who pick their arugula, or starting community gardens in their food-desert cities?
This week Matthew reviews the soft-fascist “blood and soil” themes of conspirituality culture. Derek gives some background and context on the romanticization problem with agriculture. And Julian looks at the quasi-scientific premises and promises that podcast fave Dr. Zach Bush offers in response. We also bring you an interview with farming activist John Roulac, who’s incensed at how conspirituality is ripping up progressive foodie movements. In a recent article, he called out his old friends and associates (like Mikki Willis and Christiane Northrup) for what he calls their “body-snatching” beliefs. Matthew closes with a view from Manitoulin Island.
03:20 This Week in Conspirituality
1:05:20 Interview with John Roulac
1:43:13 Grief & Silent Fire
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem (Duke Schommer + Derek Beres)
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Is the Wellness Movement Being Tainted by QAnon and the New Age Right?
John Roulac tangles with Mikki Willis
John’s projects: Kiss the Ground | Nutiva | Rebotanicals
Matthew’s feature on Pattabhi Jois, yoga guru and serial sexual abuser
When The U.S. Government Tried To Replace Migrant Farmworkers With High Schoolers
A reflection on the lasting legacy of 1970s USDA Secretary Earl Butz
Why factory farms are a “perfect storm” for disease pandemics
Brian Rose on Zach Bush
Our COVID-19 Assumptions Are Wrong — Zach Bush
Zach Bush promoting Alan Jones
The Dangers of Snake-Oil Treatments for Autism
Why White Supremacists Are Chugging Milk (and Why Geneticists Are Alarmed)
For decades, Neo-Tantra has focused on sex workshops and orgasmic bliss, overlooking the fact that the Kama Sutra is effectively a patriarchal instruction manual as well as Tantra’s grassroots origins in the lower castes in Indian society, which were responding to lofty metaphysical ideas with practical rituals everyone could partake in. From that perspective, a modern industry marketed with Shiva-Shakti figurines is yet another example of capitalist yoga in a privileged society.
Derek opens this week discussing a redpilled-lite video by Danielle LaPorte, while Julian discusses an intensely personal story related to Tantra; he also explores the role of the Aghoris. We break from Tantra talk during Matthew’s interview with Alex Auder, a veteran yoga instructor who uses comedy as a relief mechanism from the QAnon craziness in the yoga world. Matthew ends this week’s episode with a reflection on his history with Tibetan Buddhist Tantra, and how he sees echoes of its archaic elements showing up, in undigested form, in the QAnon imaginarium.
03:15 This Week in Conspirituality
1:06:46 Interview with Alex Auder
1:46:48 QAnon & Tantric Meditation
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem (Duke Schommer + Derek Beres)
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Danielle LaPorte’s video
How tantric sex trains people to have more intense orgasms, and why it’s so controversial
The Mysterious Death of a Tantric Sex Guru
Sex Messiah: A Tantric Odyssey
Not for the Faint of Heart: The Aghori and Their Unorthodox Path to Enlightenment
Reza Aslan (almost) loses his head
Yoga: An Evolving Story Of Cross-Cultural Innovation
Julian Feeld at the Hollywood Blvd QAnon rally
This week we announce and discuss a refinement in our podcast’s direction. Real talk: conspirituality has clearly become both a front and a gateway for the fever-dream of QAnon. As mainstream news outlets wake up to the sordid reality that independent journalists have been tracking for two years, we find neither stream truly conceptualizing answers or methods for recovery and healing. Going forward, we’re going to concentrate not only on critique, but also offering solutions.
Our guest this week is Lorna Liana, publisher of Entheonation. She tells Matthew about the insurgence of conspirituality in the plant medicine and ceremony world. Some neo-shamans, she says, are redpilling plant worshippers during vulnerable states. Julian and Derek chime in with their own experiences of psychedelics.
06:40 Psychedelic Evolution
35:35 Interview with Lorna Liana
1:16:00 Interview discussion
1:50:33 Rocket Fuel for the Mind
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem (Duke Schommer + Derek Beres)
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Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers
How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us about Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence
What Are the Coronavirus Risks with Ayahuasca Ceremonies?
Can Ayahuasca Protect You From Coronavirus?
Is Tobacco Antiviral (& Can It Treat COVID-19)?
Plant Ceremonies and Your Safety in the Midst of a Global Crisis
COVID-19 Denialism is Rooted in the Settler Colonial Mindset
A Neuroscientist Explains What Conspiracy Theories Do To Your Brain
The Danger of Manipulative Love-Bombing in a Relationship
The Certainty Bias: A Potentially Dangerous Mental Flaw
Dopamine, cognitive biases and assessment of certainty: A neurocognitive model of delusions
The Dopaminergic Midbrain Encodes the Expected Certainty about Desired Outcomes
Dr. Theodora Wildcroft joins us again to take us through the basics of contemporary Religious Studies. She discusses how the discipline approaches issues of ritual, value, meaning, charisma, and role-playing, while also leading us through the process by which objects, places, and people become sacred. Spoiler: it’s more about what we do than what we believe.
Wildcroft also dissects the chronic problem of conspiritualists weaponizing myths of rebellion and recovery.
Matthew gives a brief rundown on the trainwreck of Mikki Willis’s “Plandemic 2,” and also talks about the Q-map as an artistic (if delusional) landscape of comfort and connection. Derek contemplates the chemicals we don’t question while putting onto or inside of our bodies, while Julian homes in on one particular chemical: the pyramid scheme propped up by Big Essential Oil.
02:25 This Week in Conspirituality
1:01:04 Interview with Theo Wildcroft
1:51:59 Interview discussion
1:58:50 The Q-Map as Mandala
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem (Duke Schommer + Derek Beres)
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The QAnon map
How to spot a conspiracy theory – Expert guide to conspiracy theories part one
Mandala Offering – Ring Set Version
Lotsawa House: Mandala Offering
Deep State Mapping Project
Was Lewis Carroll a Pedophile? His Photographs Suggest So
Travis View on Twitter
2019 Plastic Surgery Statistics Report
Risk Associated with Bee Venom Therapy: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Class Action: Young Living ‘Nothing More Than an Unlawful Pyramid Scheme’
Multi-Level Vaccine Refusal
Very simplistic visual example of how conspiracy theories can become transnational
Deconstructing the placebo effect and finding the meaning response
The Placebo Phenomenon
The Women Making Conspiracy Theories Beautiful
Last week, we started to explore how the real issue of child trafficking is being weaponized by bad-faith actors. This week we’re joined by two experts that explain the overt and subtle impacts involved.
Regan Williams, CEO and founder of Seen & Heard, a nonprofit that provides youth in foster care with professional and personal development via the performing arts, offers a ground zero perspective of trafficked children and teens (and the people that actually care for them) being made even more invisible by conspiratorial clicktivism.
Religious Studies scholar and trauma-sensitive yoga consultant, Dr. Theo Wildcroft, joins us from England to discuss the consequences of trauma histories being hijacked for political and emotional manipulation. She offers insight into the mythic elements of conspirituality-to-Q that cannot be ignored if we want to understand how trauma is both stored and resisted.
On This Week in Conspirituality, Matthew considers the absurdity of David Wolfe accusing the medical community of not doing anything about cancer. Julian investigates anti-Semitic blood libel themes in QAnon and Derek discusses the chronic dangers of seeking utopia.
06:53 This Week in Conspirituality
54:12 Interview with Regan Williams
1:14:37 Interview discussion
1:18:27 Interview with Theo Wildcroft
2:04:42 Interview discussion
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem (Duke Schommer + Derek Beres)
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To report abuse/neglect, call the child abuse hotline: 800.540.4000 (LA county) / 800.422.4453 (National)
Epstein is a real pedophile. Why are QAnon and Pizzagate so focused on fake ones?
The Dark Virality of a Hollywood Blood-Harvesting Conspiracy
Just how anti-Semitic is QAnon?
QAnon isn’t newly anti-Semitic—it’s always been that way
Q supporters are incorrectly doxxing journalists who report on QAnon as Jewish
Nearly 600,000 people have voted for candidates who support QAnon
Here are the QAnon supporters running for Congress in 2020
QAnon Supporter Who Made Bigoted Videos Wins Ga. Primary, Likely Heading To Congress
Prominent Republicans back a conspiracy theory-promoting congressional candidate in Georgia
Argentino on Qanon’s spread to 71 countries worldwide
Trump is a lightworker sent to destroy all of the systems of the Cabal
Contrary to Lorie Ladd’s claim that Trump is the only President to ever address trafficking
The 25 women who have
Two of this podcast’s hosts have been involved in destructive cult dynamics. Matthew’s three years with Michael Roach and three years at Endeavor Academy are at the root of his cult research and journalism. Julian’s six years in the inner circle around what he describes as Ana Forrest’s incendiary and manipulative approach to yoga left him with repressed memories. Those experiences also left his family deeply scarred by some of the same Satanic Panic themes prevalent in the QAnon movement. His ongoing work advocating for critical thinking and community health is part of his recovery.
Derek describes himself as being “cult-adjacent”—not uncommon for a lifelong wellness industry professional. In this episode, he’ll interview Julian and Matthew about their cult experiences, the recovery process, and cultic dynamics in modern yoga, Buddhist, and New Age communities informing the growing field of conspirituality.
They’ll also discuss cultic organizations being ideally positioned to sell “Disaster Spirituality” (props to Naomi Klein) in times of crisis. Cult leaders understand the power of charisma, the attractiveness of transcendental ideology, and what it takes to make vulnerable people feel like every question is answerable with jargon, intrusive eye contact, and deeply deceptive shit. Matthew will ground the discussion with a synopsis of cult research, basic concepts, and useful definitions.
03:30 This Week in Conspirituality
43:10 Cult Histories
1:17:40 Cult Research Framework
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem (Duke Schommer + Derek Beres)
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Show Notes
The David Wolfe video about pedophilia and Trump
United States of Conspiracy | PBS documentary
QAnon Casualties: stories on Reddit
Steven Hassan’s “Influence Continuum,” which is helpful for assessing the health of influence
Great podcast about James Arthur Ray and the question of undue influence
Tony Robbins’ PR defends him when people are injured at his firewalking events
Excellent podcast series on Heaven’s Gate
The conviction of Keith Raniere
Peter Georgiades on the legal barriers to cult litigation
Daniel Shaw on “Traumatic Narcissism“
QAnon Anonymous covers emerging diversity and fronting tactics at a recent Hollywood Blvd “Save the Children” rally
Wayfair conspiracy theorists are overwhelming the National Human Trafficking Hotline
Review of how the Satanic Panic of the 1990s set the child abuse movement back in terms of resources and understa
A recent report by the UK’s Center for Countering Digital Hate found that anti-vaxx organizations reach 58 million people on social media. The total amount of money spent by anti-vaxx groups and advertisers targeting their followers on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube is roughly $1 billion. The majority of the money funding the most prominent anti-vaxx groups is by just two men: osteopath Joseph Mercola and fund manager Bernard Selz. All of this makes you wonder: Why is so money being used to target anti-vaxxers?
Derek interviews Imran Ahmed, founder of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, about how anti-vaxx leaders and groups are using social media to target and recruit followers. The stakes are higher than ever, as the vaccine argument has transcended autism and is threatening to endanger public health during the pandemic.
Julian considers the vaccine fears of parents as well as the shadow of the Tuskegee Syphillis Study, and how anti-vaxx alliances are targeting black communities, which could be a disastrous Trojan Horse for COVID-19, while Matthew serves up his This Week in Conspirituality segment in the epilogue, looking at how the leader of the high-demand group he was indoctrinated into over 20 years ago, led by Michael Roach, is rebooting old content as a COVID-era grift.
02:32 The History, Facts, and Fears of Vaccines
1:01:48 Interview with Imran Ahmed
1:33:40 Disaster Spirituality
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem (Duke Schommer + Derek Beres)
Support Conspirituality on Patreon Show Notes
History of Vaccines
A History of Measles in the United States
Measles Cases and Outbreaks
MMR Vaccination | What You Should Know
Mercury, Vaccines, and Autism: One Controversy, Three Histories
Aluminum in vaccines
Human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines
CDC Global Health – Polio – Our Progress
Christiane Northrup: Triangulation, regret, Gardisil, civil disobedience
How the Public Learned About the Infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study
Anti-vaccination leaders fuel black mistrust of medical establishment as covid-19 kills people of color
The Anti-Vaxx Industry: How Big Tech powers and profits from vaccine misinformation
Michael Roach pitching “meditations designed to plant seeds to eradicate the virus”
Registration page for Roach’s program
Sex and Death on the Road t
Percolating alongside racism and classism, one of the most pernicious subtexts of conspirituality propaganda is ableism. Proponents spout accusatory mantras like: “You have an immune system!,” “You’d have nothing to worry about if you were vegan!,” and, of course, “Living in fear is the real cause of disease.”
Not only do these ideas have nothing to do with virology, they also condemn everyone who is immuno-compromised, living in a food desert, or managing trauma to the margins. COVID-19 has exposed the ugliest secret of wellness culture: the glorification of the self over concern about the community.
None of this is news for disability activists. In this episode, Matthew interviews Jivana Heyman, founder of Accessible Yoga and longtime AIDS activist, about walking the anti-conspirituality line between yoga and public health. Heyman also reveals how the past and present intersect in Tony Fauci, a leading figure in AIDS research during Reagan’s tenure who is now being muzzled by Trump.
In This Week in Conspirituality, Julian looks at the fear of death through the lens of Ernest Becker and Joseph Campbell, Derek discusses free speech after Twitter removes 7,000 QAnon accounts, and Matthew tries to empathize with the “awakened” aspect of conspirituality, i.e., What have they woken up to?
02:25 This Week in Conspirituality
42:23 Interview with Jivana Heyman
1:35:52 Interview Discussion
1:44:44 Closing Thoughts
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem (Duke Schommer + Derek Beres)
Support Conspirituality on Patreon Show Notes
A Force In The Universe: Brad Ramsey
Advanced A Asthanga practice video with Pattabhi Jois
The Prophecies of Q
Twitter Removes Thousands Of QAnon Accounts, Promises Sweeping Ban On The Conspiracy
What Does Free Speech Mean?
As Predicted: Parler Is Banning Users It Doesn’t Like
Statistics & Information on Childhood Sexual Abuse
Matthew’s tribute to Jivana Heyman
As Christiane Northrup’s social media feed descends even further into the delusional zone — this week she retweeted explicitly identified QAnon content — we ask Professor Jacqueline Antonovich of Nursing Clio about the history of charisma, magic, and entrepreneurship in women’s wellness. When asked if she was surprised by Northrup’s conspirituality spiral, Antonovich was clear: “Not at all.” She carefully unpacks why.
We also look at the role of media in conspiritual thinking and discuss Northup’s enthusiastic endorsement of the movement to “make Americans free again” by becoming single-issue voters—the issue being vaccines.
01:33 This Week in Conspirituality
36:23 Interview with Professor Jacqueline Antonovich
1:41:27 Interview Discussion
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem (Duke Schommer + Derek Beres)
Support Conspirituality on Patreon Show Notes
Marshall McLuhan | The medium is the message
How Can the Press Best Serve a Democratic Society?
In 1947, the press reported on the Hutchins Commission report
Trump, QAnon and an impending judgment day: Behind the Facebook-fueled rise of The Epoch Times
Trump’s New Favorite Channel Employs Kremlin-Paid Journalist
Hundreds of hyperpartisan sites are masquerading as local news. This map shows if there’s one near you.
Make Americans Free Again | The New Normal: Citizens In Charge
Jacqueline Antonovich | Nursing Clio
Northrup’s retweet of a QAnon account boosting the red shoe conspiracy
Gilman’s “Yellow Wallpaper“
Ricki Lake’s “Business of Being Born“
On Lydia Pinkham
On Mary Putnam Jacoby
Sarah Swedburg on Louise Hay
How New Age Guru Louise Hay Harmed a Generation of Gay Men
OB/GYN Dr. Christiane Northrup has been a giant in women’s healthcare advocacy for decades. She has persuasively argued for lower-intervention childbirth, an end to circumcision, and policies that place family unity at the heart of health care. She’s known and loved for challenging her medical training with faith-based values and an intuition framed as feminine (if not feminist) and “sovereign.”
Northrup draws on astrology, feng shui, chakra theory, and “vibrational” healing as modes of resistance to what she sees as medical patriarchy. This resistance began seamlessly intersecting with COVID trutherism in April, when she started posting daily Facebook sermons to her half-million followers. The series is called “The Great Awakening” — a phrase first used to describe 18th-century American spiritual revival movements, but was recently co-opted by QAnon conspiracists to describe the inevitable triumph of Trump over the Deep State.
Northrup’s sermons, combined with her posts of Plandemic, Tony Robbins interviewing anti-vaxxers, and a podcast with “Andy” Wakefield in which she called COVID a “flu” and expressed concern about Bill Gates taking over public education, give a rich glimpse into the seduction of conspirituality in the hands of a wellness matriarch.
Most recently, Northrup has strengthened her alignment with QAnon by posting a trailer for a follow-up to a key recruiting video. With up to a dozen QAnon supporters running for office in November, Northrup is positioned to nudge middle-class white wellness women with money into a cult that believes Trump is a messianic figure.
This week’s interview is with Britt Hermes, who earned her doctorate in naturopathic medicine from Bastyr University in 2011. After three years of practice, Hermes left the profession to became its most vocal public critic. We asked her to weigh in on women’s wellness in the pandemic and the appeal of Dr. Northrup.
03:27 This Week in Conspirituality
18:11: Doctoring COVID: Christiane Northrup’s Great Truther Awakening
51:48 Interview with Britt Hermes
1:10:58 Interview Discussion
1:18:58 Closing Remarks
All music by EarthRise SoundSystem (Duke Schommer + Derek Beres).
Support Conspirituality on Patreon
Show Notes
Pharmaceutical Ethics and Grassroots Activism in the United States: A Social History Perspective
Just 50% of Americans plan to get a COVID-19 vaccine. Here’s how to win over the rest
To celebrate the Fourth, Michael Flynn posts a pledge to conspiracy group QAnon
How New Age Guru Louise Hay Harmed a Generation of Gay Men
How the ‘Plandemic’ Movie and Its Falsehoods Spread Widely Online
How Oprah helped spread anti-vaccine pseudoscience
QAnon conspiracy theory followers step out of the shadows and may be headed to Congress
Northrup’s
Manipulation Infatuation
It can be as hard to talk with your well-meaning yoga-world friend about their COVID-conspiracy beliefs as it is to talk with a family member about their devotion to Donald Trump. This isn’t an accident — but it’s not exactly by design, either. Both figures can seem trapped in filter bubbles of jargon that hypnotizes and cancels critical thinking.
In this episode, we talk with pre-eminent cult researcher Steve Hassan about his new book, The Cult of Trump, and explore the overlaps between the cults of personality that destroy political, wellness, and spiritual cultures. We discuss changes in cultic technique in the age of lockdown, and how best to maintain contact with a person transformed by manipulation. The interview with Steven begins at the 37-minute mark.
Support Conspirituality on Patreon Show Notes
Troy Casey video
UFO Conspiracy Theorists Offer ‘Ascension’ From Our Hell World for $333
The Prophecies of Q
How the ‘Plandemic’ Movie and Its Falsehoods Spread Widely Online
Anatomy of Delusion: How Otherwise Conscious People Descended into the Darkness — Stephen Dinan
Shift Network courses
Matthew on the Shift Network
The Cult of Trump Media Page
Steven Hassan’s BITE Model
Influence Continuum
“I Am Not Your Guru” — Tony Robbins documentary
“Hacking the Consumer’s Brain” — Moran Cerf
Immunity Community
Conspiritualists are compelling for numerous reasons: they’re charismatic; they claim to transcend polarized politics; they claim to speak the unspeakable in a quest for hidden truths. It makes sense that a key rhetorical instrument in their toolbox is poetry.
“The real virus is fear” is a unifying metaphor for conspiritualists, but there are others. In conspiritual-ese, the immune system is like the Christian soul: eternal, perfect, and solitary. Masks are signs of submission that symbolize the suppression of free speech and even slavery. Public health departments are bureaucracies of death. Vaccines are poisons designed to demand compliance. Vaccinators are Satanic agents compelled to enter the sacred space of the body — especially the child’s body — in order to possess it.
In this episode, Derek (cancer survivor), Matthew (pulmonary embolism survivor), and Julian (Lyme disease in remission) discuss the function of the beautiful and delusional metaphors of illness and transcendence in conspiritual-ese, applying the discoveries of Susan Sontag and Eula Biss. Maggie Levantovskaya, an Adjunct Lecturer at Santa Clara University, discusses her essay, “My Disease is Not a Metaphor.”
Show Notes
“My Disease is Not a Metaphor” — Maggie Levantovskaya
“Don’t Thank Me for My Sacrifice” — Maggie Levantovskaya
Resilience and Possibility Conversation with Zach Bush MD
Mary Baker Eddy: American Religious Leader
The Science of Mind — Ernest Holmes
“The Trouble With Medicine’s Metaphors” — Dhruv Khullar
Travis View on adrenochrome
Internalised Ableism: The Tyranny Within
Ableism and internalized ableism
“Will you Go with a War-Cry or a Whimper?” — Ben Ralston
On Immunity: An Inoculation — Eula Biss
Bali yoga retreat angers many after lying about mass gathering of chanting foreigners
Blinded by the White
On one hand, we have the CEO of Crossfit tweeting that “Floyd-19” is the real problem. (He got canceled.) On the other, COVID-truther psychiatrist Kelly Brogan is using Hopi mythology to support the fantasy of a Corona consciousness-awakening — while the Hopi themselves live within the Navajo Nation, which has the highest infection rate in the country.
WTF is going on with white wellness people?
For this episode, we’re joined by New School historian of American fitness, Dr. Natalia Petrzela, who sheds light on the historical links between physical culture and racism, and Dax-Devlon Ross, an anti-racism and civil rights educator, on what white wellness ideology does to Black people.
Show Notes
Dr. Petrzela on Ahmaud Abery
A Letter to My White Male Friends of a Certain Age — Dax-Devlon Ross
Glassman’s FLOYD-19 tweet
Buzzfeed covering Glassman’s Zoom
Dr. Petrzela tweeting on McFadden and Sandow
One City’s Struggle to Police the Police — Dax in The Washington Post
Kelly Brogan using “sovereignty”
Kelly Brogan appropriating a Hopi text
Something we didn’t cover: A Wisconsin “I Can’t Breathe” workout
A BUNCH of white spiritual dudes claiming that the “I can’t breathe” protest chant is a spell to program people for slavery to the Deep State. They advise taking strong action with deep breathing exercises and antidote mantras.
Sovereign Citizens Movement on Southern Poverty Law Center
Ben Ralston on “sovereignty”
Ralston on protests
If you have the spoons, you can wade through the comment section on the Yoga Alliance BLM post and comment thread
Pueblo women in New Mexico using “sovereignty” for solidarity
Léolo (1992)
Correlation is not causation
Right-wing conspiracy theories are being marketed in wellness communities as a form of spiritual freedom. While pattern recognition is an essential survival instinct, it’s being exploited during a time of a global pandemic, governmental collapse, and social paranoia. Tragically, so-called spiritual leaders are trafficking in propaganda while advocating for individual sovereignty.
We also discuss the history of and science behind 5G and vaccines.
Show Notes
Ivanka Trump’s graduation speech to Class of 2020
Can a Vaccine for Covid-19 Be Developed in Record Time?
Louis Pasteur, from crystals of life to vaccination
The 5G Health Hazard That Isn’t
Earnest Truther, Funny-Man Truther
To the layperson, Dr. Zach Bush’s vision of a resurrected microbiome as being the answer to modern illnesses sounds appealing. His basic argument: we’ve been weeding ourselves to death, externally and internally, depleting the biodiversity of our soils and bodies. He seems to have done typical clinical work (in mostly private settings) in internal medicine, endocrinology, and hospice care. But with no publications or experience with epidemiology, why is he being tapped by anti-vaxx activists to speak on COVID-19
Perhaps because when he runs up against the limit of his knowledge, he offers spiritual sermons. J.P. Sears does something similar, though from a different direction, without being signal-boosted by anti-vaxxers. Sears’s deeper colors show when he reaches the limits of his satire: he’s a life coach medical libertarian who’s willing to cherry-pick data and mock concerns about the immunocompromised in support of…we’re not quite sure.
Show Notes
Zach Bush interview with Del Bigtree
Zach Bush monologue with Rich Roll
JP Sears videos: Media | Response to Media | Blue Pill People
JP Sears’s podcasts: Tim Kennedy | Viral Video
Summary of Santa Clara study cited by Bush and Sears
Sayer Ji’s Instagram meme
Tim Kennedy and waterboarding
Tracking Eisenstein’s Arguments, Influence, and NetworksBarely two weeks into various stages of lockdown around the world, New Age philosopher Charles Eisenstein published a 9,000-word essay on the meaning of the pandemic. He summed up his core theme with deft wordplay at about the 7,000-word mark. After suggesting that the global crisis afforded a kind of transformative opportunity, he writes
“Now the question arises: Initiation into what? What is the specific nature and purpose of this initiation? The popular name for the pandemic offers a clue: coronavirus. A corona is a crown. ‘Novel coronavirus pandemic’ means ‘a new coronation for all.’
What was so captivating about this essay that Jack Dorsey tweeted it to the 4.5M followers on his platform? What are Eisenstein’s premises, credentials, rhetorical techniques? What are his connections to medical libertarianism, and how does he manage to endorse conspirituality while seeming to deconstruct it?
Show Notes
The Coronation — Charles Eisenstein
CORONATION UNVEILED: A Critique and Cure for Charles Eisenstein’s Fairy Tale Pandemic Essay — Jack Adam Weber
Daniel Pinchbeck’s response to The Coronation
The Conspiracy Myth — Charles Eisenstein
Covid-19 Is A Rehab Intervention: Charles Eisenstein | Rich Roll Podcast
Charles Eisenstein / Sayer Ji discussion
During COVID-19, Charles Eisenstein Invites You to Think Deeply About His Awesome Writing — Matthew Remski
Transformational Weight Loss — Charles Eisenstein
Conspirituality started with Julian and Matthew as guests on Derek’s EarthRise podcast. We’re reposting these episodes for you to hear the origins of this project.
In episode 0.2, we discuss suspect medical claims made by Kelly Brogan and Sayer Ji. We also talk about Julian’s new essay, “The Red Pill Overlap.”
Show Notes
The Red Pill Overlap
Why We Stay Asleep When COVID-19 Is Trying To Wake Us Up
What Mandatory Vaccination and the 5G Rollout Have In Common
Conspirituality started with Julian and Matthew as guests on Derek’s EarthRise podcast. We’re reposting these episodes for you to hear the origins of this project.
In episode 0.1, we discuss the anti-vax propaganda film, Plandemic, as well as the intersection between conspiracy theories and cults. We also talk about the “red pill” video by comedian JP Sears.
Show Notes
7 reasons to be very wary of “Plandemic”
What It’s Like To Believe Everything the Media Tells You: JP Sears
Blue Pill People: JP Sears