Conspirituality
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 trafficking. In the process, spiritual beliefs that have nurtured creativity and meaning are transforming into memes of a quickly-globalizing paranoia. Conspirituality Podcast attempts to bring understanding to this landscape. A journalist, a cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic discuss the stories, cognitive dissonances, and cultic dynamics tearing through the yoga, wellness, and new spirituality worlds. Mainstream outlets have noticed the problem. We crowd-source, research, analyze, and dream answers to it.
Episodes
May 10, 2025 • 33 mins
In 2022, Oregonians passed Measure 111, which amends the state constitution to declare access to affordable healthcare a right for every citizen. As it happens, this was the first ballot Derek voted on when moving to the state.
Now that the long journey to universal healthcare is a reality in Oregon, what does that actually entail? Derek is joined by two members of the nonprofit organization, Health Care for All Oregon: Collin St...
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May 7, 2025 • 63 mins
Cancer, as physician and author Siddhartha Mukherjee writes, is the emperor of all maladies. The disease—the over 200 different diseases all falling under this umbrella term—has been with us as long as we’ve been us. If anything is truly ancient, it is the cancer cells that are in all of our bodies, just waiting to be turned on if the conditions are right, or if our genes dictate the inevitability.
Deep in wellness land, cancer is...
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May 5, 2025 • 6 mins
Gen X went from leaning slightly right in 2016 to become, as one analysis puts it, “the bedrock of Trumpism.” Derek meditates on what happened to his generation by reading from four different thought pieces on the topic.
Show Notes
Wait, What Is Really Up With Gen X’s Politics?
Is Gen X a Bunch of Trumpers? Maybe That’s the Wrong Question.
How Gen X Became the Trumpiest Generation
How Gen X Went from Raging Against the Machine...
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May 3, 2025 • 27 mins
The White House Correspondents’ Dinner was a little different this year. No president. No comedian. The event featured a mea culpa from an Axios journalist who discussed the media’s complicity in failing to expose Biden’s mental decline. Meanwhile, Substack promoted an alternative parallel event called “Not The White House Correspondents’ Dinner” with an email that announced, “a new media order is emerging.” Legit—or just another c...
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April 30, 2025 • 65 mins
Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government in Ontario has leased the public space of OP to the Therme Spa company, which promises to bring wellness and democracy to the good citizens of Toronto, for a price.
Bruce Van Dieten and Ann-Elizabeth Samson of Ontario Place for All join Matthew to discuss the history and possible future of Toronto's cherished public space.
Bruce is "a retired busybody with nothing better to do than...
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April 28, 2025 • 7 mins
Part 2 of Matthew’s conversation with historian Craig Johnson (PhD Berkeley), who hosts Fifteen Minutes of Fascism, which covers the global rise of the radical right. He’s the author of an excellent new book, How to Talk to Your Son about Fascism, a guide for parents and educators on keeping young men out of the extreme right wing.
Today we tackle strategy. To debunk or not to debunk? How do you derail the coolness of fascism? Ho...
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April 26, 2025 • 46 mins
Historian Craig Johnson (PhD Berkeley) hosts Fifteen Minutes of Fascism, which covers the global rise of the radical right. He’s the author of an excellent new book, How to Talk to Your Son about Fascism, a guide for parents and educators on keeping young men out of the extreme right wing.
In this first of a two-part interview, Matthew and Craig discuss definitions of fascism, why it appeals to young men (or how masculinity is so...
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April 24, 2025 • 79 mins
Someone’s got dirt on RFK Jr. MAHA voters went MAGA because Bobby said he was going to end vaccine mandates—their code for ending vaccines, period. No longer would food be dyed and oils be made of seeds. Everyone would get free gym memberships. America’s chronic disease epidemic would end overnight, as he’s repeatedly claimed.
Then Mr Kennedy goes to Washington only to declare that antisemitism is a public health crisis? And to s...
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April 21, 2025 • 6 mins
When the aliens landed, they told a young musician and wannabe race car driver that he was the chosen one, and they were the real gods. He should build them an embassy with a UFO landing pad in order to prepare humanity for their arrival. They taught him the secrets of sex meditation and cloning DNA as a way to keep switching bodies and never die.
Not much in his story was original, but this was the 1970s, so free love hippies fl...
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April 19, 2025 • 36 mins
When cultural and psychological anthropologist Katie Rose Hejtmanek set out to study Crossfit, she knew she had to throw herself into it fully. For seven years, she traveled to “boxes” around the world while committing herself to her local Brooklyn box. What she uncovered was a rabid fan base that deeply values community and a business model that offers a refreshing response to unfettered capitalism—as well as the misogyny, racism,...
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April 17, 2025 • 59 mins
"In order to have the future we want, we have to build and invent more of the things we need."
That’s the central claim of Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s new book, Abundance. They argue that Democrat-run cities and states have suffered self-inflicted wounds that are causing a mass exodus to red states, where life is simply more affordable. To stop the bleeding, Dems need to take action on a bold new vision that cuts through red t...
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April 14, 2025 • 6 mins
It's been quite the week at HHS with Robert F Kennedy Jr in charge. Derek considers what's been going on: Bobby's announcement that he's going to "determine" the cause of autism by September; his social media marketing-driven visit to grieving families in Texas; his pivot on the MMR vaccine; and his recommendation to the CDC that fluoride be removed from public water supplies.
Show Notes
RFK Jr. says HHS will determine the cause ...
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April 12, 2025 • 38 mins
Jay Bhattacharya, Covid contrarian and co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, is now the Director of the NIH. The day before beginning his new job, he gave his first official interview to Bari Weiss on her podcast, Honestly. Derek and Julian discuss.
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April 10, 2025 • 74 mins
There’s a mystery of violence swirling in and amongst the kids these days. Especially boys. What could it be? Snapchat? Video games? Andrew Tate? A hit Netflix series points to issues, and policy. But is it pointing in the right direction?
Today we’ll look at “Adolescence”: the origin story, the strengths and liabilities of its one-take technique, and its deceptively conservative messaging. Should it be shown in Parliament? Schoo...
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April 7, 2025 • 6 mins
Part Two: Matthew remembers the snow job of “The Sound of Music.” Also: more on Sophie Scholl, introducing the Edelweiss Pirates, the “adult gaze”, what trusting kids means, notes from Emma Goldman and Janusz Korczak, and excerpts from a poem by Aku Päiviö, father of Jules, who traveled from Northern Ontario to Spain in 1937 to volunteer in the International Brigade.
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When fascism rises, and some young people are drawn into i...
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April 5, 2025 • 47 mins
But the parents? Meh.
When fascism rises, and some young people are drawn into its orbit, because everyone from Jordan Peterson to Andrew Tate has figured out how to exploit resentment at the failures of capitalism, we have an opportunity to give our kids a lot more than moralistic calls for a return to normalcy, compliance, warnings about screen time, striving to be better students, doing more sports, and not making too much of a...
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April 3, 2025 • 58 mins
"If Americans want to change their government, they're going to have to get over their dictator-phobia."
That's neo-reactionary philosopher Curtis Yarvin in 2012, when he outlined a strategy that's eerily similar to how Trump and Musk are now destroying our government. The "dark enlightenment" blogger, long a transgressive darling of the New Right, has in the last two months enjoyed a fresh round of mainstream exposure.
We lo...
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March 31, 2025 • 6 mins
What is an oligarchy, exactly? Is the US entering a period similar to post-Soviet Russia in the 1990s? What do Russian oligarchs have to do with proven interference in the 2016 US election?
Julian digs into Russian history to explore parallels with modern-day America. Meet Vladislav Surkov, the architect of both Putin’s 25-year rule over what Surkov has dubbed “sovereign democracy,” and the global propaganda strategies generating...
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March 29, 2025 • 43 mins
Derek and Julian discuss Robert Paxton's 2004 book, The Anatomy of Fascism, in light of 2025 America.
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March 27, 2025 • 60 mins
McGill University science communicator, Jonathan Jarry, was recently given hundreds of hours of Zoom calls between alt-med salesman, Joseph Mercola, and a supposed clairvoyant that goes by Bahlon. Jonathan joins us to discuss what he found.
Show Notes
Brad Schimel Admitted to Having "Psychologically Beat the Daylights Out" Of His 8-Year-Old Daughter - MeidasTouch News
Rallying Anti-Musk Donors, Liberal Judge Raises $24 Million in K...
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