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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

8:16

Bonus Sample: The Monetization of MAHA

Conspirituality ·

2025/12/22

Listen to the full episodeRFK Jr trademarked MAHA in a giant swath of categories, including many he now advocates for in his position as Secretary of HHS. After making $100,000 in licensing fees, he transferred the trademark to his anti-vax compatriot, Del Bigtree, before it was transferred again to former Kennedy security lead, Gavin de Becker. Currently being used by a variety of MAHA-based organizations, the opportunity to monetize MAHA, the brand, could be directly affected by Kennedy’s

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34:25

Brief: Dr Mike vs MAHA

Conspirituality ·

2025/12/20

Dr Mike has become one of the most effective debunkers of science misinformation. His second appearance on the uber-popular show, Jubilee's Surrounded, pitted him against 20 fans of RFK Jr. Derek and Julian discuss the debate, as well as the value of Jubilee in an oversaturated media environment.Show Notes 1 Doctor vs 20 RFK Jr. Supporters (ft Doctor Mike) Surrounded Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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66:22

288: Conspirituality Live with Dr Jessica Knurick

Conspirituality ·

2025/12/18

Derek sits down with Dr Jessica Knurick at the Eudemonia Summit for this special live recording. They discuss combating health misinformation online, what MAHA gets right and wrong, whether or not "nutritionist" should be a protected term, and Jessica's possible political ambitions.Show Notes Dr Jessica Knurk on Substack | Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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5:31

Bonus Sample: Marx’s “Atheism” vs. the Capitalist...

Conspirituality ·

2025/12/15

Listen to the full episodeMatthew explores Marx’s “opium of the people” passage by placing it back into the philosophical and political project it came from. Marx was not attacking religion in some essential way, but criticizing the conditions that make religion necessary as a consolation. The problem is not faith itself, but the suffering — inequality, exploitation, alienation — that gives rise to the instinct for spiritual escape. Marx’s atheism was not a New Atheist-type negation but a

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40:49

Brief: Demonic Karl Marx ATTACKS Private Property and...

Conspirituality ·

2025/12/13

Matthew examines how Karl Marx has long been framed as a demonic threat to religion and private property — a tactic that sidesteps Marx’s actual critique of capitalism. J. Edgar Hoover, Ronald Reagan, and a raft of Evangelical blowhards cast communism as satanic and civilization-ending, a narrative now accelerating through Trump-era rhetoric, and Project 2025. Capital is difficult to rebut directly, so detractors often attack Marx himself, calling him godless or deranged. Jordan Peterson and Paul

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58:54

287: She Did Nuzzi RFK Jr Coming

Conspirituality ·

2025/12/11

How does an elite Millennial politics reporter wind up having phone sex with and giving campaign advice to the 70-year-old emerging fascist she’s reporting on? Most of that should stay between Olivia Nuzzi and her therapist. What we do know is that American Canto, Nuzzi’s new book, is a memoir (or maybe novel) made for the conspirituality age, in which raging toxic roided-up hypocritical male charisma is always the center of attention. The domineering ghoul is the pole star of interest and

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5:58

Bonus Sample: “Joe Rogan of The Left” Glazes China

Conspirituality ·

2025/12/08

Listen to the full episode hereHasan Piker just spent two weeks in The People’s Republic of China. The famous streamer is often invoked as being a potential “Joe Rogan of The Left,” who might bring young voters, especially working class men, back into the Democratic Party. But Piker’s livestreams from China raise controversial questions. Is he whitewashing Chinese human rights abuses? Was he paid by their government to propagandize his combined 5 million viewers? How else to explain first-class

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28:41

Brief: Have Tech Bros Killed Psychedelics?

Conspirituality ·

2025/12/06

"Immortality influencer" Bryan Johnson recently livestreamed his second-ever psilocybin trip "for science." But was it, really? Derek and Julian break down the performative nature of this stunt and discuss the growing right-wing influence on psychedelics culture.Show Notes Bryan Johnson Has Discovered Shrooms, and He Really Wants You to Know It Silicon Valley’s Man in the White House Is Benefiting Himself and His Friends How the Right Coopted Psychedelics Learn more about your ad choices

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68:18

286: RFK Jr’s Great Crusade

Conspirituality ·

2025/12/04

RFK Jr is one of the greatest perpetrators of a firehose of falsehoods that we’ve ever covered. The stakes were raised when he was installed as head of America’s public health system. A new longform article in The Atlantic offers an inside look at the history and current thinking of this man, as insightful for what it offers as telling for what it omits. We discuss the role of journalism in an age defined by propaganda. Show Notes Scoop: The new #2 at CDC is a top ivermectin prescriber who ended

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5:53

Bonus Sample: How Does Andrew Wakefield Keep Getting...

Conspirituality ·

2025/12/01

Listen to the full episode. With the CDC recently updating its website with anti-vax propaganda under the direction of RFK Jr, disgraced and disbarred physician, Andrew Wakefield, is back in the news. In fact, Senator Ron Johnson even tweeted out that he deserves an apology. He must be relying on short attention spans, given all the ways Wakefield manipulated the “study” that showed a link between vaccines and autism—even though the study itself found no such proof. Derek revisits the retracted

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34:24

Brief: Black Friday’s Wellness Extravaganza

Conspirituality ·

2025/11/29

Derek and Julian survey all of the incredible, life-changing deals going down this weekend in Wellnesslandia.Show Notes Influencers made millions pushing ‘wild’ births – now the Free Birth Society is linked to baby deaths around the world Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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71:18

285: Can Peter Attia Live Forever?

Conspirituality ·

2025/11/27

In the wildly popular biohacking and longevity space, Peter Attia is often cited as one of the leading luminaries. His straightforward, science-backed approach seems to cut through the noise in a space dominated by fit bros and wellness grifters who always seem to have a product to sell. But the man who dropped out of residency at Johns Hopkins to found a private clinic focused on longevity has his share of critics, who are a bit suspicious about his self-experimentations—and the millions he makes

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4:49

Bonus Sample: Graeber vs Bannon, Anarchism vs...

Conspirituality ·

2025/11/24

This bonus episode is Part 2 of Graeber vs Bannon, Anarchism vs Leninism. I start in the 1870s with Marx and Bakunin fighting over the joys and traumas of the Paris Commune. Marx sees it as an imperfect but historic prototype of a workers’ transitional state, cut down before it could consolidate power. Bakunin reads it as a betrayal of anarchist principles — too willing to replicate the machinery it meant to overthrow. Out of that conflict comes a rift that still haunts us: should revolution be

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43:28

Brief: Graeber vs Bannon, Anarchism vs Leninism (Part 1)

Conspirituality ·

2025/11/22

In this first of a two-part series, I dig into a century-long debate within revolutionary politics—one that now shapes the fault lines between MAGA authoritarianism and the fragmented resistance against it. How did the American far right end up using Leninist strategy more effectively than the American left? And what does that say about our own movements—our blind spots, our strengths, and inherited illusions? In 2013, Steve Bannon called himself a Leninist. In 2016, he openly called for the

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72:12

284: When Prophecy-Science Fails (w/Thomas Kelly)

Conspirituality ·

2025/11/20

In 1954 a doomsday alien cult headed up by Chicagoland housewife Dorothy Martin was waiting for the cataclysmic flood that would herald the arrival of spaceships to transport her and her followers to safety. When the hour came and went and nothing happened, she and her followers made up a Bible’s worth of excuses, saying that the group's penitence and piety had saved them, and so the failure of the prophecy was actually a validation of their new religion. And even though its central claim had been

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7:02

Bonus Sample: Temple of Blood & Fire

Conspirituality ·

2025/11/17

They offered initiation into ancient Christian mysticism, ritual communion with the spirits, an understanding of reincarnation, and the destined transition to inhabiting a "solar-body" in the Sirius star-system. But it all ended in murderous blood sacrifice and fire—and 74 dead believers.What is this dark preoccupation with sacrifice and ritual killing in the name of metaphysical belief? Grotesque to modern ears, yet quite commonplace historically. Julian covers the late 20th-century French cult,

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28:13

Brief: Does Calley Means Get Anything Right?

Conspirituality ·

2025/11/15

RFK Jr's senior advisor and supplements salesman, Calley Means, has repeatedly fabricated the story of Abraham Flexner and the birth of the modern medical system. Derek looks into his historical revisionism and what it could mean for the MAHA movement.Show Notes Medical Education in America: Abraham Flexner The Great Influenza: John Barry The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: Roy Porter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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66:40

283: Guys

Conspirituality ·

2025/11/13

Back in June, we published an episode about the "Speaking with American Men" (SAM) project, a $20 million initiative designed by political consultants to understand and win back young men (18-29) who increasingly voted for Donald Trump. We talked about this cringey, inauthentic approach to compete over the influence of manosphere figures like Jordan Peterson and Andrew Huberman, who exploit a perceived "meaning crisis" with pseudo-intellectual and often reactionary messages. Instead of what? We

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5:57

Bonus Sample: MAHA Inaction

Conspirituality ·

2025/11/10

Listen to the full episodeThe nonprofit organization (and its adjoined Super PAC), MAHA Action, is leading semi-regular Zoom calls featuring a host of wellness influencers and RFK Jr appointees, including Jillian Michaels, Dr Oz, and Russell Brand. Derek listens into a recent call to see just what they're saying. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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43:05

Brief: Taylor Swift Goes MAGA?

Conspirituality ·

2025/11/08

Taylor Swift: Nazi sympathizer, freshly-minted racist, MAGA trad wife. Or so proponents of a recent conspiracy theory would have it. For years, the most successful female recording and performing artist of her generation (and therefore of all time) has used “easter eggs” as part of her marketing. Hidden messages in music videos and lyric sheets, oblique references in social media posts, and puzzles as merchandise marketing gimmicks have all contributed to a parasocial sense of intimacy and insider

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