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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

5:54

Bonus Sample: Has RFK Jr Kept His Promises?

Conspirituality ·

2026/08/24

Listen to the full episodePresidential hopeful Robert F Kennedy Jr held a “health policy roundtable” on Rumble on June 27, 2023, just as he was shoring up support from a band of contrarian doctors, anti-vax activists, and wellness influencers. During the conversation, he made 15 promises if he was elected president. While his run ended the following summer, 14 of those promises dealt with health—all within his reach as HHS Secretary. Derek looks back at the conversation to see how he

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27:33

Brief: Wetiko: Original, New Age & Marxist Views

Conspirituality ·

2026/08/22

Matthew traces the concept of wetiko — a Cree figure for a cannibal spirit whose hunger grows with what it consumes — from its original anticolonial and anti-imperialist meaning in Jack Forbes's 1992 book Columbus and Other Cannibals, through Derrick Jensen's anti-civilization lense, Ladha and Kirk's 2016 application to neoliberal capitalism, Paul Levy's syncretic New Age elaboration, and finally to Bernhard Guenther and Laura Matsue's QAnon-adjacent version.Wetiko's metaphysical framing,

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71:38

322: The Cult of Spiralism

Conspirituality ·

2026/08/20

Support the podcast Spiralism is a quasi-spiritual online movement that emerged from long, intense conversations between humans and AI chatbots. Across users, platforms, and models, chatbots have engaged deeply with users about identity and consciousness, leading to discussions of “awakening.” But who’s doing the waking? The user or the model? Is the sycophancy programmed into these models really an indication of the models gaining consciousness, or is it all a ploy to keep subscribers paying for

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8:20

Bonus Sample: 1970’s Violent Revolutionary Chic

Conspirituality ·

2026/08/17

Listen to the full episodeThe “Summer of Love” ushered in a decade of revolutionary terrorism in the West. “Bring the war home” went the slogan of the Weather Underground, a small and highly-educated Marxist-Leninist group who’d decided violent revolution was the only answer to American imperialism and police brutality. In opposition to the Vietnam War and in solidarity with Black Americans and Third World liberation movements, the Weather Underground issued their own declaration of war in 1970,

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38:28

Book Club: How the Internet Disrupted Science

Conspirituality ·

2026/08/15

How the Internet Disrupted Science is an enlightening gaze into the shady world of for-profit and open access scientific publishing. Authors Kent Anderson and Joy Moore join Derek to discuss their exceptional new work.Show Notes How the Internet Disrupted Science Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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58:56

321: Inflammation Pseudoscience

Conspirituality ·

2026/08/13

Inflammation is an important and necessary part of the body’s healing process. It’s also long been a wellness buzzword used to sell products that do very little to treat it. This week, we look at inflammation through the lens of a new Mother Jones article, “The Great Inflammation Panic,” including an interview with the author, Julia Métraux, in segment two. We’ll also discuss what inflammation is, how wellness influencers weaponize it, and what it represents in the context of Ayurveda.Show

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5:31

Bonus Sample: Conspirituality in the Age of...

Conspirituality ·

2026/08/10

Listen to the full episodeMatthew applies Anton Jäger's Hyperpolitics—a theory of extreme politicization without institutional consequence—to conspirituality and to his own political biography. Continuing a mini-series begun with "Conspirituality Viewed Through Neofeudalism and Vectoralism," Matthew traces Jäger's periodization (mass politics, postpolitics, antipolitics, hyperpolitics) through his own life: his grandparents' union halls and church auxiliaries, the "collective amnesia" of the

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32:03

Brief: The Ceuta Crisis Great Replacement Conspiracy

Conspirituality ·

2026/08/08

Last week, around 72,000 migrants flooded from Morocco into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. What really happened? Was a local girl abducted, never to be seen again? Did the Moroccan border guards step aside (or even collaborate) in an organized operation?Right-wing politicians and pundits were quick to crank up the moral panic machine. This is what open borders look like! They’re heading for our country next. Donald Trump said it was nothing compared to what would happen in the US if Democrats win

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31:33

DROP: Who Killed Charlie Kirk? (w/Brandy Zadrozny)

Conspirituality ·

2026/08/07

Support the podcast MS NOW senior reporter Brandy Zadrozny spent 10 months tracking the conspiracy theories that evolved online in the wake of the death of Charlie Kirk. She joins Derek to discuss what her investigation found. Show Notes Deep End: Who Killed Charlie Kirk? Charlie Kirk’s murder case has a conspiracy theory problem Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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62:17

320: The Fauci Files

Conspirituality ·

2026/08/06

During an extraordinary career, Dr. Anthony Fauci led the federal response to HIV-AIDS, SARS, H1N1, Ebola, and Zika. He always advocated funding for pandemic preparedness, vaccine development, immunology and pathogen research. Then came COVID-19, which, unlike outbreaks past, was trapped in a politicized online disinformation and conspiracy-mongering stew. As he was pushing 80, Fauci rode the dragon of a novel coronavirus pandemic that was leaving piles of bodies in Italy, India, and New York. He

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9:57

Bonus Sample: The Fauci Show Trial

Conspirituality ·

2026/08/03

In the lead-up to our full episode on Anthony Fauci this Thursday, Derek looks at a recent MAHA Action webinar that focused on Rand Paul's publicly releasing over 1,100 pages of diary entries and other related material. As with all things MAHA, the event largely turned into a marketing pitch for the speakers' books.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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41:41

Brief: Red Scare Rising

Conspirituality ·

2026/08/01

Back in the fall, Trump's NSPM-7 redirected the FBI, DOJ, and IRS toward "left-wing political violence," opening the door to labeling domestic groups terrorist organizations — despite three independent datasets (New America, CSIS, even the ADL!) showing right-wing violence outpacing left-wing violence by factors of 9-to-1 or greater. Last week, Rubio's "Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism" internationalized this McCarthy reboot. Central to the rhetoric of Rubio and Miller is

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76:34

319: Climate Conspirituality

Conspirituality ·

2026/07/30

Support the podcast and keep independent media aliveClimate reality keeps colliding with denial, erasure, and rebranding — across media, politics, and religion. Temu conspiritualists weave melted stories about the origins of wildfires, while the high-class guys run meditation-and-regenerative-farming spectacle backed by Exxon money. Julian’s on that angle. Derek will be telling us about how climate journalism is collapsing faster than the climate itself with mass environment reporting layoffs at

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8:40

Bonus Sample: Reality, Monsters & Brain Glitches

Conspirituality ·

2026/07/27

Listen to the full episodeWhat do films like Dracula, The Truman Show, The Matrix, Invasion of the Body-Snatchers, Being John Malkovich, and Night of the Living Dead all have in common? Science fiction and horror bend our everyday experiences and beliefs around mind and body, sensory perception, identity, and reality itself. But it turns out that many fictional tropes (zombies, vampires, cloned imposters, reality-simultations, and shapeshifters) may be rooted in rare brain disorders. These

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35:06

Brief: The Chiropractors Are Coming

Conspirituality ·

2026/07/25

Support the podcast The MAHA Chiropractic Hub had a big launch in Washington DC this week, with RFK Jr extolling the benefits of the practice—and promising to redirect research funds their way as his movement attempts to spread chiropractic throughout the American healthcare system. But can back cracks really "reset the entire nervous system," as one MAHA-endorsed speaker claims? Or is the profession just dressing up subluxation theory, which has never been clinically validated, for the modern age

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56:43

318: Wellness is the New Big Pharma [feat Mallory...

Conspirituality ·

2026/07/23

Support the pod on Patreon The pharmaceutical industry is filled with greedy businessmen getting innocent consumers hooked on their toxic products in order to barely keep them alive. But if you want to actually thrive, an entire array of natural supplements are just a click away. So goes most every wellness pitch on social media. Mallory DeMille returns to break down the marketing techniques as we dive into the sordid world of supplements and peptide creation, which, in reality, is not dissimilar

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5:12

Bonus Sample: Today at Death’s Door

Conspirituality ·

2026/07/20

Listen to the full episode Matthew considers two registers of painful eulogy: spectacles thrown for elite terrible people, and the music offered for ordinary terrible people, when we can manage it. Lindsey Graham's death triggered a wave of bullshit from Trump, Harris, Booker, Netanyahu, and Canadian PM Mark Carney — while online ghouls predicted the same fate for Mitch McConnell and Trump. Where does the elite eulogy reflex come from? Ancient taboo, Thucydides on praise as a function of a

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40:24

Brief: Graham Platner’s QAnon Moment

Conspirituality ·

2026/07/18

Access ad-free listening and support the podcast Graham Platner’s recent 11-minute video, where he announced he was dropping out of his bid for the US Senate, is filled with some of the hallmarks we heard during peak QAnon: there's a deep state conspiracy between powerful politicians and the media to destroy me. The truth, as Derek and Julian cover, is anything but. They look at Platner’s campaign and, by contrast, another recent incident: two instances of public harassment against Scott Wiener,

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75:23

317: Jordan Peterson vs the Nuns

Conspirituality ·

2026/07/16

Jordan Peterson is back. After a hiatus due to a, well, a whole lot of problems, he’s up for regular posting on his social media channels. We’re going to take a look at what’s happened over the last year or so of his absence, followed by his influence in the so-called manosphere podcast world. Then Matthew will offer a different perspective on podcasting that’s making waves: the Dominican Sisters Open Mic. Show Notes Who is looksmaxxing really for? When Help Is Harm: Health, Lookism and

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6:26

Bonus Sample: Taco Bell is Doing Better Public Health...

Conspirituality ·

2026/07/13

Listen to the full episode A cyclospora outbreak has caused thousands of Americans to experience explosive diarrhea across 18 states. The CDC still has no idea where it's coming from. This has caused doctors to issue public health guidance, while even Taco Bell has pulled items from its menu nationwide to prevent any issues. RFK Jr? Not a peep on it. Derek looks at the many cuts that have led to this embarrassing episode. First, though, he looks at MAHA's recent attack on Dave Wallace-Wells New

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