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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

4:36

Bonus Sample: The Raw Truth About Health

Conspirituality ·

2024/12/09

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

en

41:16

Brief: Freeing the Well-Trained Wife (w/Tia Levings)

Conspirituality ·

2024/12/07

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

en

62:14

235: MAHA Mamas (feat Mallory DeMille)

Conspirituality ·

2024/12/05

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

en

6:09

Bonus Sample: Deep State Religion

Conspirituality ·

2024/12/02

An essay from Matthew on how MAGA religiosity obscures the religious nature of liberalism, and how both obscure the underlying religion of capitalism. Inspired by Walter Benjamin, who in 1921 wrote: One can behold in capitalism a religion, that is to say, capitalism essentially serves to satisfy the same worries, anguish, and disquiet formerly answered by so-called religion. Capitalism is a pure religious cult, perhaps the most extreme there ever was. Within it everything only has meaning in direct

en

45:18

Brief: The $100M Free Press

Conspirituality ·

2024/11/30

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

en

72:56

234: Trump’s Conspiracist Cabinet

Conspirituality ·

2024/11/28

Since the election, Democratic voter disbelief and despair has alternated between grief and rage. We watched some erstwhile vociferous critics of Trump in the legacy media, like Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, kiss the ring and bend the knee, while others adopted a contorted posture of seeming legitimization, like NPR hosting Leonard Leo for a nice long sit-down interview. Meanwhile, the big egos of MAGA 2.0 seem to rise like Soviet propaganda banners over the American landscape. Trump has

en

19:09

Relief Project #4: Rob Schenck

Conspirituality ·

2024/11/26

Matthew here with the fourth installment of Five Big Questions Posed to an Extremely Thoughtful Person. Rob Schenck joined me in Episode 199 to discuss his deradicalization from the Evangelical anti-abortion movement. Today he joins me to discuss some things he’s learned about hope, faith, resilience and building community in hard times. Show Notes Costly Grace - Rob Schenck 199: Inside Anti-Abortion Christian Nationalism (w/Rob Schenck) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit

en

6:00

Bonus Sample: The UFOs Are Being Censored!

Conspirituality ·

2024/11/25

The climate denialist who exposed the so-called “censorship industrial complex” returns, this time at another congressional hearing. Michael Shellenberger has come to blow the whistle on Big Government’s UFO cover-up. Nancy Mace, Lauren Boebert, and Anna Paulina Luna alternate between showing off their knowledge of fantastical History Channel “documentaries” and playing bad cop interrogators. Reverse-engineered UFO’s! Recovered alien “biologics!” Interdimensional beings! Organic machines that defy

en

38:07

Brief: How to Fire a Billionaire

Conspirituality ·

2024/11/23

AG1 built a billion-dollar brand in large part by tapping into the fitness and wellness podcast and YouTube markets. Recently, AG1’s founder, Chris Ashenden, resigned after a decades-old real estate scam in his native New Zealand came to light. While Chris has mentioned it in passing, he’s always claimed to have paid full reparations for his crime—and it was a crime. Turns out that he hasn’t paid it all, as uncovered by New Zealand journalists Jonathan Milne and Mike Wesley-Smith. They join Derek to

en

78:18

233: DC’s Catholic Power Center (w/Gareth Gore)

Conspirituality ·

2024/11/21

Josemaria Escriva founded Opus Dei, an ultra-conservative, high-demand, secretive Catholic organization in Madrid, Spain, after receiving a supposed vision from God in 1928. His small inner circle initially initiated university students into strict obedience, celibacy, medieval practices of self-flagellation, and deceptive recruitment techniques to convert their friends. Operating outside of the mainstream church, Opus Dei rose to prominence under Spain's authoritarian dictator, Francisco Franco

en

5:56

Bonus Sample: Thinking About "Holism"

Conspirituality ·

2024/11/18

A personal journey through health describing what led Derek to focus on health, science, and healthcare as a career and, eventually, this podcast.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

en

17:38

Brief: Post-Election Online Survivor Group Dynamics

Conspirituality ·

2024/11/16

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

en

71:16

232: Gaslighting The Election

Conspirituality ·

2024/11/14

Once upon a time, there was a golden age. A time when the news media was fair and balanced, unbiased and honest. But we've lost all that to the corrupting influence of big money, political correctness, and woke censorship. Blame the radical left. Not to worry: the online charisma of heterodox new media figures like Bari Weiss and her plucky, centrist, truth-telling little start-up, The Free Press, has come to Make Journalism Great Again. Yet their supposed heterodoxy is neither neutral nor

en

5:36

Bonus Sample: “What will happen?” (asks a 12 year-old)

Conspirituality ·

2024/11/11

Matthew got The Question on the morning after the election. At that moment, he came up with nothing but a hug. But then he chewed on it for days, and came up with eleven things to consider. So here are some notes for possible conversations with tweens about anxiety, bullies, fascism, friends, mutual aid, and love. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

en

28:31

Brief: Tucker Carlson's Daddy Issues

Conspirituality ·

2024/11/09

Derek discusses Tucker Carlson advocating for corporal punishment as a way to discipline children in his appearance at the Turning Points USA MAGA rally. This is an unlock from a recent Patreon bonus, with a new intro from Matthew. Show Notes Stephen Colbert: Tucker Carlson’s Weird Daddy Issues Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

en

69:32

231: New Age Bible, Postmodern Novel (w/ Sheila Heti)

Conspirituality ·

2024/11/07

Rapid-response electoral punditry is not our lane. So, while we gather our feelings and thoughts, Matthew hosts novelist Sheila Heti for a discussion of her encounter with A Course in Miracles, and what she discovered when she investigated its origin story for Harper’s Magazine.Was Helen Schucman, the book’s “scribe”, mentally ill? Was she unduly influenced by her boss at Columbia Medical School, William Thetford, who once worked for the CIA’s MKUltra programme, and with whom she was clearly in

en

6:00

Bonus Sample: Elections on 3 Continents

Conspirituality ·

2024/11/04

Having lived under Apartheid in South Africa, voted in the UK, and now staring down this terrifying US election, Julian reflects on the political differences between the three countries.Stay tuned for some hopeful poetry at the end. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

en

25:30

Brief: No Really, They’re Coming For Your Pets

Conspirituality ·

2024/11/02

Recently, “holistic veterinarian” Marcie Fallek, whose latest book, “Little Miracles Everywhere: My Unorthodox Path to Holistic Veterinary Medicine," is the #1 bestseller on Amazon in the Alternative Holistic Medicine category, appeared on Children's Health Defense's daily morning show.During “Pet Vaccines and Holistic Vet Care" she spreads the same sort of vaccine misinformation and fear-mongering that RFK Jr's nonprofit has become infamous for. All of which made Derek realize that yes, they're

en

92:07

230: How Did We Get Here?

Conspirituality ·

2024/10/31

With days left before the most consequential US election in our lifetime, we reflect on the last 4.5 years of this podcast while expressing our hopes–and our own reporting goals—for the future.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

en

31:33

Relief Project #3: Michelle Cassandra Johnson

Conspirituality ·

2024/10/29

Matthew here with the third installment of Five Big Questions Posed to an Extremely Thoughtful Person. Michelle Cassandra Johnson was an early guest on our show and helped us lay the groundwork for understanding the reality and impacts of racism in the worlds of wellness and new spirituality. She’s an author, activist, and racial equity trainer. Her latest book, A Space For Us: A Guide For Leading Black, Indigenous, and People of Color Affinity Groups, was published by Beacon Press in August 2023

en

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