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PODCAST

Conspirituality

Derek Beres, Matthew Remski, Julian Walker

Dismantling New Age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy-mad yogis. 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

society & culture philosophy

All Episodes

34:23

Brief: The FDA Amateur Hour Podcast

Conspirituality ·

2025/05/31

Marty Makary and Vinay Prasad claim they're going to open the "black box" at the FDA, an agency they're now both employed at. So they started a podcast. It's not the first official FDA podcast, but it certainly fits into the contrarian ethos both men have cultivated since 2020. Derek and Julian listen in to see how much of that box is actually being opened.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

en

67:00

259: MAHA is Project 2025’s Trojan Horse

Conspirituality ·

2025/05/29

We’ve been talking about RFK Jr for years, and even dedicated an entire chapter to him in our 2023 book—and we’re going to keep covering him. Since his power and influence has only grown, and since he’s now in charge of America’s entire health apparatus, there’s no way to avoid it. This week we catch up on the last few months of MAHA. Derek looks into why he believes Kennedy’s apparatus, despite claims of being about health, is really a cover for Project 2025’s deregulatory agenda. Julian discusses

en

7:04

Bonus Sample: A Master Class in Wellness Propaganda

Conspirituality ·

2025/05/26

Calley Means is one of RFK Jr’s top advisors. Alongside Tucker Carlson, Means has claimed responsibility for shepherding Kennedy into Trump’s camp. Does this former business school graduate Heritage Foundation intern and business school graduate really care about the nation’s health? Derek listens to a recent interview with Politico and finds the deregulatory ethos that underlies all of Project 2025 is alive and well in MAHA.Show Notes Full interview with Calley Means | POLITICO Health Care

en

34:43

Brief: The Gospel of MAHA Apologetics

Conspirituality ·

2025/05/24

After being confirmed as Secretary of HHS, RFK Jr started installing his cabal of wellness influencers and contrarian doctors across the government's many public health agencies. And that means they have to apologize for their boss. Derek and Julian listen in on some of the most outrageous takes so far.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

en

80:13

258: Pope Bob Vs. Trump World

Conspirituality ·

2025/05/22

The most annoying convert TradCath in the world, JD Vance, whose cherubic face belies all his bootlicking aggression, gets his moment with Pope Bob. Usha stands behind him in a black mantilla. He hands the pontiff an oversized envelope: an invitation from Donald and Melania to a White House dinner. Bob smiles guardedly as he takes it and without looking at it, setting it on his desk. “I’ll read that at some point,” Vance sputters, “of course, of course.” The scene is set for the Church-State

en

6:07

Bonus Sample: Beyond Violence and Nonviolence (Part 2)

Conspirituality ·

2025/05/19

Matthew is back today for more with Ben Case: profiling Gene Sharp and the (non)politics of strategic nonviolence, plus his strange funding sources. Also: why did Erica Chenoweth speak out against antifascist Trump protesters in January of 2017, and suggest their research proved that property damage and scuffles with the police would ruin any opposition movement to Trump? Also: where does the funding come from for all this bad research? Gene Sharp worked for the Department of Defense, and today,

en

47:48

Brief: Beyond Violence and Nonviolence (Part 1)

Conspirituality ·

2025/05/17

You may have grown up with the term “nonviolence” shining like a pole star over every discussion of how we accomplish socio-political change. But what does it really mean? And who defines violence for that matter—beyond the police, the courts, and others in power?Today, the theory of non-violence has grown beyond its Gandhian, spiritual aspiration roots, while retaining an irrational faith and offering a distorted view of resistance history. It is now a think-tank-approved, purportedly

en

74:31

257: AI Gurus

Conspirituality ·

2025/05/15

The chat bot flashes its elipsis at the bottom of the screen. What is it thinking, what does it want from you, what do you want from it? Beneath those pixels lies a sea of mined data and lightning storms of electricity heating up servers in barren deserts. What will it find for you in the past labor of the generations? According to a stunning new article in Rolling Stone, it will find whatever the fuck makes you feel like a god—incuding all the NewAge pablum it has scarfed down—because oops,

en

5:42

Bonus Sample: The UFO Race-War Apocalypse is Coming!

Conspirituality ·

2025/05/12

It begins with a failed human sacrifice in Detroit in 1932. Some would say it actually starts with an evil god-scientist who created the first white people—white devils, really—some 6,000 years ago. Either way, the Nation of Islam has had an important cultural and political presence for almost a century in America.Today’s installment of Julian’s Roots of Conspirituality series covers the incredible real world history of this extremist new religious movement, as well as its outlandish sci-fi

en

33:10

Brief: What Will Universal Healthcare Actually Require?

Conspirituality ·

2025/05/10

In 2022, Oregonians passed Measure 111, which amends the state constitution to declare access to affordable healthcare a right for every citizen. As it happens, this was the first ballot Derek voted on when moving to the state. Now that the long journey to universal healthcare is a reality in Oregon, what does that actually entail? Derek is joined by two members of the nonprofit organization, Health Care for All Oregon: Collin Stackhouse, the Social Media Coordinator, and Rebecca Schoon, an

en

63:20

256: Quacks, Cancer, and Kangen Water (feat Mallory...

Conspirituality ·

2025/05/08

Cancer, as physician and author Siddhartha Mukherjee writes, is the emperor of all maladies. The disease—the over 200 different diseases all falling under this umbrella term—has been with us as long as we’ve been us. If anything is truly ancient, it is the cancer cells that are in all of our bodies, just waiting to be turned on if the conditions are right, or if our genes dictate the inevitability. Deep in wellness land, cancer is something entirely different. It’s avoidable if you stop consuming

en

6:55

Bonus Sample: How Did Gen X Go MAGA?

Conspirituality ·

2025/05/05

Gen X went from leaning slightly right in 2016 to become, as one analysis puts it, “the bedrock of Trumpism.” Derek meditates on what happened to his generation by reading from four different thought pieces on the topic.Show Notes Wait, What Is Really Up With Gen X’s Politics? Is Gen X a Bunch of Trumpers? Maybe That’s the Wrong Question. How Gen X Became the Trumpiest Generation How Gen X Went from Raging Against the Machine to Swallowing Misinformation While “Doing Their Own

en

27:54

Brief: The New Media Order

Conspirituality ·

2025/05/03

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner was a little different this year. No president. No comedian. The event featured a mea culpa from an Axios journalist who discussed the media’s complicity in failing to expose Biden’s mental decline. Meanwhile, Substack promoted an alternative parallel event called “Not The White House Correspondents’ Dinner” with an email that announced, “a new media order is emerging.” Legit—or just another conspiracy touting MAGA sham?Julian reports on the proceedings of

en

65:16

255: A MAHA Wellness Scam at Ontario Place

Conspirituality ·

2025/05/01

Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government in Ontario has leased the public space of OP to the Therme Spa company, which promises to bring wellness and democracy to the good citizens of Toronto, for a price. Bruce Van Dieten and Ann-Elizabeth Samson of Ontario Place for All join Matthew to discuss the history and possible future of Toronto's cherished public space. Bruce is "a retired busybody with nothing better to do than to lodge burrs under the saddles of politicians who see us as

en

7:47

Bonus Sample: How To Talk To Your Son About Fascism...

Conspirituality ·

2025/04/28

Part 2 of Matthew’s conversation with historian Craig Johnson (PhD Berkeley), who hosts Fifteen Minutes of Fascism, which covers the global rise of the radical right. He’s the author of an excellent new book, How to Talk to Your Son about Fascism, a guide for parents and educators on keeping young men out of the extreme right wing. Today we tackle strategy. To debunk or not to debunk? How do you derail the coolness of fascism? How do we theorize the agency of kids becoming political actors? How do

en

46:32

Brief: How To Talk To Your Son About Fascism (Pt 1)

Conspirituality ·

2025/04/26

Historian Craig Johnson (PhD Berkeley) hosts Fifteen Minutes of Fascism, which covers the global rise of the radical right. He’s the author of an excellent new book, How to Talk to Your Son about Fascism, a guide for parents and educators on keeping young men out of the extreme right wing. In this first of a two-part interview, Matthew and Craig discuss definitions of fascism, why it appeals to young men (or how masculinity is socially constructed), irony poisoning, and whether fascism can be

en

79:46

254: The Great MAHA Purity War of 2025

Conspirituality ·

2025/04/24

Someone’s got dirt on RFK Jr. MAHA voters went MAGA because Bobby said he was going to end vaccine mandates—their code for ending vaccines, period. No longer would food be dyed and oils be made of seeds. Everyone would get free gym memberships. America’s chronic disease epidemic would end overnight, as he’s repeatedly claimed. Then Mr Kennedy goes to Washington only to declare that antisemitism is a public health crisis? And to say that the MMR vaccine is the most effective way to prevent measles

en

6:01

Bonus Sample: God is a Cloned Alien Love-Machine!

Conspirituality ·

2025/04/21

When the aliens landed, they told a young musician and wannabe race car driver that he was the chosen one, and they were the real gods. He should build them an embassy with a UFO landing pad in order to prepare humanity for their arrival. They taught him the secrets of sex meditation and cloning DNA as a way to keep switching bodies and never die. Not much in his story was original, but this was the 1970s, so free love hippies flocked to his French commune—then it all turned to shit. Somehow

en

36:19

Brief: The Cult of Crossfit

Conspirituality ·

2025/04/19

When cultural and psychological anthropologist Katie Rose Hejtmanek set out to study Crossfit, she knew she had to throw herself into it fully. For seven years, she traveled to “boxes” around the world while committing herself to her local Brooklyn box. What she uncovered was a rabid fan base that deeply values community and a business model that offers a refreshing response to unfettered capitalism—as well as the misogyny, racism, and militarized Christian themes that inform this beloved and

en

59:08

253: The Politics of Abundance

Conspirituality ·

2025/04/17

"In order to have the future we want, we have to build and invent more of the things we need." That’s the central claim of Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s new book, Abundance. They argue that Democrat-run cities and states have suffered self-inflicted wounds that are causing a mass exodus to red states, where life is simply more affordable. To stop the bleeding, Dems need to take action on a bold new vision that cuts through red tape to improve people’s lives and address the crises in housing,

en

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