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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

8:50

When Men Lie: Listening to the MAHA Summit

Conspirituality ·

2026/10/05

Listen to the full episodeLast week, MAHA Action once again blurred the lines between activist organization and government entity, with RFK Jr, JD Vance, Dr Oz and other officials sharing the stage with dozens of corporate sponsors and private healthcare executives—and Russell Brand. Derek tunes in to this nine-hour fiasco. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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31:00

Brief: Mark Carney, Davos Catholic

Conspirituality ·

2026/10/03

Matthew examines how Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has paired an 18-month austerity rampage with approval ratings near 60%.Centralized power, new surveillance and protest laws, refugee restrictions, public-service cuts, a tripling of the military budget, climate rollbacks, a seeming refusal to protect the basics of Medicare. Why do so many people love him? Carney's appeal and ability to absorb critique rests on more than managerial competence. A devout Catholic, Carney manages to make many

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73:17

328: Canadaland Platforms Antivax Grifter

Conspirituality ·

2026/10/01

In 2013, businessman turned independent journalist Jesse Brown launched Canadaland as a podcast focused on media criticism. He grew the business to include many other podcasts, creating his own small media empire. Then October 7 happened and things took a turn. Recently, he hosted anti-vax contrarian doctor, Peter McCullough, in what he claims was a focus on media, but which really turned into a science-denying sh*t show.We’ve covered McCullough for years, especially since becoming Chief Medical

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6:24

Bonus Sample: The Pope, the Playwright, & the...

Conspirituality ·

2026/09/28

Who was behind the gunman that shot Pope John Paul II in 1981? We know the man who pulled the trigger was a Turkish member of the Grey Wolves. We know he planned to flee via the Bulgarian Embassy. We know an Italian nun ensured he didn’t get away.But had someone ordered the assassination? One possible clue is held in the answer to this next question: how did the Soviet Union collapse? We also know three unlikely heroic figures played pivotal roles: a Czechoslovakian playwright, a salt-of-the-earth

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21:02

Book Club: Man In The Mirror

Conspirituality ·

2026/09/26

When the Black, 30-year-old Michael Jackson impersonator stepped onto the F train in Manhattan on May 1, 2023, he was ranting angrily about being hungry and thirsty, willing to kill, die, or go to jail for life. His name was Jordan Neely. He was clearly in distress.Daniel Penny, a white, 24-year-old former Marine put him in a chokehold and pulled him to the ground. Neely struggled for almost 6 minutes before dying. Julian reviews Anand Girirdhardas’ new book that places this event at its center

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75:52

327: AOC Meets MAHA

Conspirituality ·

2026/09/24

Listen ad free Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been meeting with MAHA activists in an attempt to bring the coalition to the Democratic party. Recent reporting reveals that she’s been meeting (or trying to meet) with some close to RFK Jr, as well as those who have been critical of the HHS Secretary. It might be a sound political strategy, but what happens when you start courting conspiracy theorists? Derek looks into that first. Julian then looks at where MAHA currently is based on two recent Kennedy

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61:59

Drop: When Spiritual Teachers Abuse Their Power

Conspirituality ·

2026/09/22

Today's Drop is a crosspost of an interview Matthew Remski did with Brianna Patten of the Surviving Satchidananda Podcast.Patten asked him a bunch of really good questions about high control groups, both as a former member and as someone who went on to research their sociology. Matthew finds Satchidananda's Integral Yoga fascinating, because Satchidananda's ascendancy through his Woodstock headline position in 1969 initiated the inward turn of 1960s liberation movements and fostered a tradition of

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5:47

Bonus Sample: Swoletarians and the Left Manosphere...

Conspirituality ·

2026/09/21

Matthew tracks the attack on disability justice activist Beatrice Adler-Bolton after a clip from her Socialism 2026 panel — "Health Fascism, Body Politics, and the Anti-State State" — was stripped of context by a right wing rage-farmer, and made to go viral. Adler-Bolton used the word "dysgenic" ironically, as a reclamation, arguing the left shouldn't try to out-fitness fascists. The clip drew 12 million views and wound up on Rogan.Matthew unpacks what his colleague Adler-Bolton actually said, and

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35:38

Book Club: Fed Up

Conspirituality ·

2026/09/19

Harvard paleoanthropologist Daniel Lieberman returns with Fed Up: What Evolution Teaches About Food, Diet, Health, and Eating Well. In the book, he tries a variety of major diets, breaking down the latest science around each. His work, Derek argues, is a necessary corrective to the wellness influencers who promote and monetize single-diet solutions, when history and biology tell a much different story.Show Notes Fed Up: What Evolution Teaches About Food, Diet, Health, and Eating Well Learn more

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67:48

326: The War on Empathy

Conspirituality ·

2026/09/17

Humans are social animals. We’re not the strongest, fastest, or even best adapted to our environment. But what we excel at is our ability to work together, which means we’ve been able to adapt to every environment, a true outlier in the animal kingdom. And a big reason for that is our ability to empathize with others.Basically, empathy is the ability to step into someone else's shoes, understand what they are thinking or feeling, and share in that emotional experience. The main types of empathy

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6:39

Bonus Sample: What Happened to Yoga?

Conspirituality ·

2026/09/14

A recent article in The Atlantic ponders the current state of yoga. Derek weighs in based on his decades-long experiences.Show Notes What Happened to Yoga? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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42:48

Brief: The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy Theory (w/AJA...

Conspirituality ·

2026/09/12

AJA Woods (The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy) joins Matthew to trace how "cultural Marxism" mutated from Nazi "cultural Bolshevism" and the British Union of Fascists' attacks on modernist art, through Lyndon LaRouche's CIA-brainwashing lore, into Paul Weyrich and William Lind's 1990s "political correctness" rebrand, Pat Buchanan and the Tea Party's free-floating panic, Andrew Breitbart's arugula jokes, before finally landing as Christopher Rufo's anti-CRT crusade and James Lindsay's "Race

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73:02

325: Long COVID Profiteers

Conspirituality ·

2026/09/10

Conspiracy theorists have decided Novak Djokovic has long COVID — despite no evidence — because he's become an anti-vax icon courted by RFK Jr. and Dr. Oz. So we thought it was high time for a long COVID update.Derek looks at a new Boston Children's Hospital research on viral reactivation, as well as the findings of a 2026 meta-analysis pooling 200,000+ participants. Matthew surveys the Canadian LC landscape, where insurance-industry money is quietly funding McGill's Institute for Transforming

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12:01

DROP: Kennedy Chooses Erectile Dysfunction Over...

Conspirituality ·

2026/09/08

Heading into the holiday weekend, RFK Jr terminated almost all grants dedicated to the Office of Minority Health. Now, $38 million over four years will be redirected from postpartum screenings and assistance for Black and Native American families to "research" on erectile dysfunction, testosterone, and sperm counts. Derek reports on this disturbing news, as well as how the kratom industry appears to be influencing Kennedy's decisions. Show Notes HHS Cancels Infant Mortality, Postpartum Grants

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9:33

Bonus Sample: How Oprah and Art Bell Red-Pilled...

Conspirituality ·

2026/09/07

Listen to the full episode The 1990s were a special time in American media. Female-coded, liberal-leaning, daytime TV talk shows like the Oprah Winfrey Show normalized past-life regression, alien abduction, and Satanic Ritual Abuse for housewives. At the same time, male-coded, conservative-leaning, night-time AM-radio shows like Art Bell’s Coast to Coast did the same for their husbands and brothers on the graveyard shift at budget hotels or driving enormous trucks on long stretches of open

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27:08

Book Club: The Nerd Reich

Conspirituality ·

2026/09/05

Support the podcast and listen ad-freeGil Duran's exceptional new book, The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy, explains how technofascists like Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Curtis Yarvin, JD Vance, and Marc Andreessen are not-so-quietly dismantling America as we know it. Derek discusses this science fiction nightmare we’re now all living through. Show Notes The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy Gil Durán and Wajahat Ali: The Rise of "The Nerd

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46:14

324: Then They Came for Dolly

Conspirituality ·

2026/09/03

Listen ad-free The irreplaceable Dolly Parton died on August 25 after a brief battle with cancer. Social media was filled with loving tributes to an incredible artist and devoted philanthropist. A minority also felt the need to use her death to platform their own issues, including a cohort common on our beat: the anti-vaxxers. We’re going to cover that. But we’re also going to reflect on Parton’s incredible life, because she spent so much of it uplifting others. Learn more about your ad

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5:22

Bonus Sample: Piker, the Zhongshan Suit, and Left...

Conspirituality ·

2026/08/31

Listen to the full episodeThere’s a lot going on when Hasan Piker wears a Zhongshan suit and praises Maoism. Matthew uses Wendy Brown's 1999 essay "Resisting Left Melancholy", which cites Walter Benjamin, Freud, and Stuart Hall to argue that campist rhetoric on the left, whether earnest or ironic, can signal unmourned loss more than conviction, and that nostalgic attachments to revolutionary pasts can choke off engagement with present possibility. Brown argues that left melancholy displaces its

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36:59

Book Club: Plastic Shaman

Conspirituality ·

2026/08/29

During James Arthur Ray’s 2009 Spiritual Warrior retreat in Sedona, the self-proclaimed spiritual teacher exhorted participants to “play full-on” in order to overcome their limiting beliefs and fear of death. After having their heads shaved and enduring a gruelling 36-hour “vision quest,” Ray packed the spiritual warriors into a makeshift “sweat lodge,” where temperatures reached 120 degrees.Three people died. Eighteen were hospitalized. Ray fled the scene, taking cover at a nearby luxury resort

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70:43

323: Joe Rogan Defects?

Conspirituality ·

2026/08/27

Support the podcast and listen ad-free Someday in the future, Joe Rogan may ask Jamie to be his mirror, and facilitate the next and most important psychedelic experience of his life: a walkthrough of his craven MAGA and MAHA boosterism, and what it said about his soul. On his ayahuasca trip, Anthony Fauci will come to him in the gown of the Angel Gabriel and offer him penance but also forgiveness— and take his microphone away. Not today, folks. We only get to reflect on Rogan making the next-most

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