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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

5:58

Bonus Sample: The OG New Age Grifter: Madame Blavatsky

Conspirituality ·

2024/09/02

Born in 1831, Helena “Madame” Blavatsky pioneered the New Age grift. The Russian aristocrat plagiarized her books while claiming to be channeling the “Masters of Ancient Wisdom” to tell a dodgy heroic back-story. She founded the Theosophical Society in New York, claimed to have learned a secret Tibetan language, and laid the foundation for alien channelers and Woo-Anon. She also inspired the Nazis.In this debut episode from a series on the pseudoscience New Age roots of today’s conspirituality

en

33:49

Brief: Trump’s Impending Ego Implosion (w/ Daniel Shaw)

Conspirituality ·

2024/08/31

Dems are laughing about Donny Dentures or #TrumpisDone, but the reality inside his head, and Mar a Lago, will be very grim, and there will be a lot of collateral damage.Mental health titans like Robert Lifton have reached the consensus that Trump has been mentally ill for a long time. They’ve diagnosed him with “narcissistic personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, paranoid personality disorder, delusional disorder, malignant narcissist,” and so on. Such patients meet predictable ends

en

65:54

221: The Dangers of Dr Google (w/Dr Jonathan Stea)

Conspirituality ·

2024/08/29

In one survey, 82% of young people aged 18-25 searched the internet for mental health advice. Another survey of university students found that 44% report using the internet to learn about sadness, anxiety, or confusion. Regardless of what mental health experts advise, people of all age groups are turning to the internet and social media for help.What are the potential risks and rewards of using these platforms to try to communicate credible mental health science? And what happens when you’re

en

6:56

Bonus Sample: The Next Plandemic Grift

Conspirituality ·

2024/08/26

Peter McCullough recently shared a ton of misinformation about mpox while speaking to Drew Pinsky; both men work for The Wellness Company, a supplements company that weaponizes anti-vax misinformation to sell products. Mikki Willis uses the Hero's Journey as a guide to dealing with mpox—and falsely represents Joseph Campbell's work. Russell Brand and Bret Weinstein claim mpox is a government psyop and nothing more.Derek looks at the conspiritualist fervor bubbling up around what's turning out to be

en

38:31

Brief: Dictatorship for Dummies

Conspirituality ·

2024/08/24

ProPublica recently got a hold of 25 Project 2025 training videos—over 14 hours worth of content revealing the policies the Heritage Foundation would like to see implemented if Donald Trump regains the White House. Derek and Julian break down one of the most egregious.Show Notes Inside Project 2025’s Secret Training Videos Undercover in Project 2025 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

en

79:28

220: Swifties for Trump (and Other AI Lies)

Conspirituality ·

2024/08/22

Did you hear that Taylor Swift is supporting Donald Trump for president? That’s right: last week, the former president shared photos of fans rocking “Swifties for Trump” t-shirts on Truth Social. Trump seemed pleased, replying to his online following of 24 billion people: “I accept.” Yet something seemed off. Just like photos of Trump surrounded by seven-fingered Black Americans smiling on city stoops, these Swiftie endorsement photos were AI generated. As it turns out, AI is playing a more

en

5:08

Bonus Sample: Introducing the Conspirituality Relief...

Conspirituality ·

2024/08/19

A short break-the-fourth-wall reflection from Matthew on his new regular series for our main feed, starting in September. The Conspirituality Relief Project will provide regular timeline-cleanser interviews in which super interesting guests reflect on hope, faith, resilience, and building community in hard times. You know, all of the things that conspirituality itself promises to do, but can’t, or won’t. Every guest gets thirty minutes, and the same five questions: What terrifies you most in

en

35:07

Brief: Big Dad Energy

Conspirituality ·

2024/08/17

An unexpectedly cheerful followup to “JD Vance Taps into Parental Rage.” The alt titles today could be: “Tim Walz Taps into Parental Goals,” or “Disarming the Disinfo of the Right is Great, But Have You Tried Dad Jokes?” Across social media, liberal millennial women are tagging Tim Walz as the return of the dad they lost to Fox News. Matthew digs into that graveyard with a survey of the tools that we’ve used to examine the nature and function of patriarchal bullshit as it dominates conspirituality,

en

81:58

219: Dems Learn to Sh*tpost

Conspirituality ·

2024/08/15

Eight years ago, they called us cucks, libtards, and globalists. We were corrupted by cultural Marxism, teaching our kids to hate themselves. Four years ago they gloated over drinking liberal tears. They called us sheeple, groomers, vampires, pedos. We made up a pandemic so that we could brew up a kill shot, and force it on everyone after making ourselves soy-boy sick. We were exposing our kids to trans strippers in the library and showing them how to use buttplugs in kindergarten. When our children

en

5:12

Bonus Sample: JD Vance’s Dictator Fetish

Conspirituality ·

2024/08/12

Tech billionaire Peter Thiel claims “freedom and democracy are incompatible.” Mentor and $15M donor behind JD Vance’s political career, Peter Thiel also has an influence: Mencius Moldbug, computer programmer and lead philosopher of the “Dark Enlightenment,” or “neoreactionary” movement. Moldburg says, “if Americans want their government to change, they’re going to have to get over their dictator phobia.” Erstwhile pen-name of Curtis Yarvin, “Moldburg” is openly anti-democratic, advocating for

en

36:40

Brief: Stealing Democracy for Jesus

Conspirituality ·

2024/08/10

Ziklag’s ultra-wealthy network of Christian donors is spending nearly $12M to mobilize Republican voters in order to secure a Trump victory this November. ProPublica found that their plan involves purging 1M+ people from the voter rolls in key swing states. Unsurprisingly, this is yet another Christian nationalist group with ties to Project 2025.Here’s the thing: Ziklag is classified as a 501c3 charity organization, which means they’re breaking longstanding rules of nonprofit governance. Will they

en

79:00

218: Meet the Sexvangelicals (w/Julia Postema &...

Conspirituality ·

2024/08/08

You’re an eight year-old girl. The purity culture of your evangelical church, ruled by men but policed by women, has you worried that the spaghetti straps on your summer top might be sinful. You learn from the women around you how to defer, serve, please, keep your voice girl-like forever, and use it to both signal obedience but also piously request relief from sexual aggression. You’re a seven year-old boy. The holy laws of gender in your church dictate that when you’re the only male present at

en

5:18

Bonus Sample: The "Crisis" of Meaning

Conspirituality ·

2024/08/05

Scroll through masculinity influencer social media feeds and you're constantly told there's a "crisis of meaning." But is that really true? Has a shared meaning ever reflected the totality of any population?Derek turns this idea over in his head by looking at the mythology of the hero's journey. But first, he provides some inspirational messages from the White Dudes for Harris call last week, where perhaps a new and empowering sense of masculinity is taking hold. Show Notes White Dudes for

en

32:03

Brief: JD Vance Taps into Parental Rage

Conspirituality ·

2024/08/03

The “childless cat lady” thing is as ridiculous as JD Vance is. But it’s not stupid. It’s tapping into something powerful, because it’s shameful.Vance’s fantasy that childless cat ladies are miserable in their lives is another case of every accusation being a projection. In actuality, he’s speaking to that swath of parents out there in general—and particularly on the right—who are actually miserable in their lives, regretting their choices, wondering why God saddled them with 4-5-6 kids in a

en

78:54

217: Childless Cat Lady

Conspirituality ·

2024/08/01

If something real occurs in this timeline, but no conspiracy theorist is there to FUBAR it, does it actually happen? An old man, weakened by COVID, picks up an old-timey phone handset on a Delaware Saturday to tell a childless cat lady that the reins of destiny are now in her hands. A staffer clicks “post” at 1:46pm, and X lights up with something real… that throws an instant shadow of insanity. Biden is too sick to have posted, they say. He’s dead, they say. He has staged or suffered a coup. And

en

4:01

Bonus Sample: Imaginary Children: “God’s Word on...

Conspirituality ·

2024/07/29

This is the second episode in “Conspirituality and the Imaginary Children,” an occasional series on how children, as symbols (but not persons with their own internal lives) are at the center of conspirituality anxiety and discourse. The title is taken from a pamphlet published by Ralph Drollinger, a former professional basketball player from San Diego who founded a 501c3 called Capitol Ministries in 1996 to facilitate prayer meetings and study guides for congresspeople in Washington, and state

en

27:14

Brief: Bret Weinstein: “The Biden Psy-Op”

Conspirituality ·

2024/07/27

A tale of two tweets: Dark Horse podcast cohost and “conspiracy hypothesizer” Bret Weinstein took to Twitter twice this month, first dropping a video claiming that RFK Jr becoming Donald Trump’s running mate would make them “assassination proof,” then later floating the idea that an AI Joe Biden really phoned into Kamala Harris’s first conference as the presumptive presidential nominee. Or…is Biden even alive?Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

en

74:56

216: J.D. Vance, Conspiracy Hobbit

Conspirituality ·

2024/07/25

Just two days after surviving an assassination attempt, Donald Trump announced JD Vance as his VP pick. Vance has made a dramatic U-turn from calling Trump a "reprehensible idiot" and "America's Hitler" in 2016. But who is this 39 year old, really—who after less than two years of on-the-job experience, is now almost a heartbeat away from leading the free world?Well, not unlike other right-wing populists in Europe and at home, Vance has an idiosyncratic political affinity for JRR Tolkien. We might

en

7:05

Bonus Sample: Project 2025 on Worker's "Rights"

Conspirituality ·

2024/07/22

Project 2025's plan for workers is clear: crush unions, eliminate minority protections, curtail reproductive health care benefits, and make the workplace biblical again.Derek and Julian unpack the details of another insane chapter from Project 2025's 920-page manifesto that describes their vision for the reduced rights of the working class. According to their own statements, a Trump presidency would set these and other disastrous plans in motion from day one. Show Notes Conspirituality 187: Project

en

46:59

Brief: Cult of the Lamb Anti-Cult School? (w/Riley...

Conspirituality ·

2024/07/20

We cover conspiracy theories, spiritual abuse, and religious and right-wing extremism. We cover showmen and charismatics suffering from King Victim Complex. Last week we had to study a goddam assassination attempt. But sometimes we get to peek into the worlds that younger people are making within our cursed digital environments, and we realize they might be laughing at some of the problems that fill us olds with despair right out of existence. Gaming journalist and Master of Divinity Riley MacLeod

en

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