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 of autism by September RFK Jr. says he plans to tell CDC to stop re...
Apr 14, 2025•6 min
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Apr 12, 2025•38 min
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? Schools? Does it tell us much about the kids it is worried about? Does i...
Apr 10, 2025•1 hr 14 min
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. ____ When fascism rises, and some young people are drawn into its orbit, because everyone from Jordan Peterson to Andrew Tate has ...
Apr 07, 2025•6 min
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 ruckus (as Marco Rubio calls it). The kind of parenting that limi...
Apr 05, 2025•48 min
"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 look at a man who has the ear of those who are reshaping our world at bre...
Apr 03, 2025•58 min
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 our post-truth ecosystem of disinformation and conspiracies. There...
Mar 31, 2025•6 min
Derek and Julian discuss Robert Paxton's 2004 book, The Anatomy of Fascism, in light of 2025 America. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mar 29, 2025•44 min
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 Key Court Contest - The New York Times Here are claims about Wisco...
Mar 27, 2025•1 hr
The Wellness Company is now selling retatrutide, a weight loss drug currently undergoing stage 3 trials by Eli Lilly. An anti-vax company that uses fear-based marketing to push supplements appears to be overstepping legal lines. Yet will they be held accountable in an RFK Jr-led HHS? Derek looks at private market healthcare propaganda from Ronald Reagan to Kennedy, showing how health is not the real goal of MAHA. But if they can sell untested products to fat and chronically ill patients along th...
Mar 24, 2025•6 min
Julian covers the recent Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference in London. Headlined by Jordan Peterson, featuring Konstantin Kisin, Ayan Hirsi Ali, Jonathan Pageau, and Eric Weinstein, the conference positioned itself as an inspiring cultural gathering focused on reclaiming Western values. Behind the scenes, a hedge-fund billionaire new media baron, conservative libertarian think tank, shady funding source in Dubai, and an evangelical English aristocrat use the prestige of ARC an...
Mar 22, 2025•41 min
Trump administration Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, recently stated the American economy is going to need a "detox" period. And so today we look at peak the conspirituality convergences between biological and political purification projects. Quinn Slobodian, professor of international history at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, joins Matthew in the final segment to offer his big picture view on the Kings of Pain. Show Notes Johns Hopkins to lose 2,000 jo...
Mar 20, 2025•1 hr 7 min
Click here to hear the full episode on Patreon. Second of Matthew’s two-part examination of why the hell questions of force, non-violent resistance with and without force, unarmed violence and property damage, and armed violence are so incredibly hard to talk about in a culture thick with spiritual and political bypassing. Are we capable of understanding the difference between morality and strategy? Part 1 focused on philosophy and psychology while today the focus will be on definitions and tact...
Mar 17, 2025•6 min
First of Matthew's two-part examination of why the hell questions of force, non-violent resistance with and without force, unarmed violence and property damage, and armed violence are so incredibly hard to talk about in a culture thick with spiritual and political bypassing. Are we capable of understanding the difference between morality and strategy? Part 1 focuses on philosophy and psychology while Part 2 focuses on definitions and tactics. Together, both parts will push back on conspiracism a...
Mar 15, 2025•43 min
Lately a lot of folks (including us) have been doing the fascism comparisons. The questions we ponder this week: How long it takes for fascism to fully dig its roots in, how varied is the opposition along the way, and what role does the media play? Show Notes 165: Outrage Machine (w/Tobias Rose-Stockwell) 16 October 1919 | Hitler Archive Konrad Heiden Fritz Gerlich, publicist and prophet – how did he resist the Nazis? Fritz Gerlich Nazi Germany’s Schriftleitergesetz: The End of Freedom of the Pr...
Mar 13, 2025•1 hr 20 min
Subscribe for full episode The MAGA attack on government jobs, takeover of government agencies, and purge of supposed “DEI” and “woke” professionals has a long history in the US. Julian uses old-timey newsreels, biographies, and events in the public record to trace the lines from 1919 to today, making stops at the so-called Red Summer’s “race riots,” Red Scare communist panics, Hollywood Blacklist, and Lavender Scare that fired thousands for being presumed gay. Unrelated to any of this completel...
Mar 10, 2025•6 min
MAHA's response to the measles outbreak has been horrific, though expectable. Yet RFK Jr's op-ed, in which he advocated for the MMR vaccine, ripped apart his coalition—briefly. Derek looks at the responses to Bobby's moment of clarity, then contemplates what MAHA really wants now that their champion is the bureaucracy. Show Notes Dr Jessica Knurick’s video Vitamin A For Measles: Kevin Klatt Measles is not a harmless illness — complications include brain damage, immune amnesia, and death Learn mo...
Mar 08, 2025•30 min
This week we’re looking at how folks who associated themselves with the magical and morbid QAnon memes about the “coming storm” that would destroy the Deep State have become that storm, mainly by talking about it, and are now in the position to congeal an even Deeper State characterized by more repression and control. They’re doing it both as conspiracists and as conspiracy theorists would predict: as rich guys pretending to be oppressed. This opens up the question of “Have we been here before i...
Mar 06, 2025•1 hr 6 min
Former "race realist" Richard Hanania recently published an article on The Free Press claiming that all those Nazi salutes the right is waving high in the sky is really "just trolling." Derek disagrees. Show Notes Enough — John Ganz I Can Explain Why the Nazi Salute Is Back — Richard Hanania Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mar 03, 2025•6 min
Is life worse for women now than in the 1950s? In a recent interview for The Free Press, author Louise Perry and journalist Bari Weiss muse on just how much women have lost since premarital sex was normalized, the pill reduced sex to consequence-free hedonism, and Roe v Wade rendered abortion as common as going to the dentist. Perry calls this “re-paganization,” delivering an eloquent longing for a lost golden age of female subservience as Weiss nods along and smiles. It’s all very heterodox. Or...
Mar 01, 2025•35 min
Trump has decreed it’s the Gulf of America, and Google agrees, at least for US users. Rep Buddy Carter has introduced HR 1161, the Red White and Blueland Act of 2025 to rename Greenland. And then, of course, there's making Canada the 51st state. Pay attention to shit like this: it's a magic spell. Trump is speaking in the old language of the Discovery Doctrine. That’s what we’ll excavate today. Show Notes Zizian Killing Spree and Arrests Zizian leader denied bail Roko’s Basilisk and Zizian belie...
Feb 27, 2025•1 hr 7 min
What do we worry more about: the far-right beliefs of trolls, or the coding skills of the trolls? The split focus on Marco Elez and Elon Musk—are they Nazis, or hackers, or Nazi hackers?— highlight two prongs of emergent fascism. The ideological/aesthetic/psychological on one side, and the technocratic on the other. We can call them the manners and the machine. First, Matthew unpacks a century-old thesis by an OG fascist that says totalitarian regimes take shape when both are working together, b...
Feb 24, 2025•6 min
Education / Public service alert: Matthew critically reviews six books that define fascist eras and recount how they have been opposed. A kind of “here we are, now what?” episode that hopefully interrupts the doomscroll with the sobriety of some practical considerations. Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny (2017) Robert Paxton, Anatomy of Fascism (2004) Paul Mason, How to Fight Fascism (2018) Mark Bray, Antifa: The Antifascist Handbook (2017) Curzio Malaparte: Technique de Coup d’Etat (1931) Spencer Suns...
Feb 22, 2025•35 min
Raw Milk. Raw Water. Raw Meat. Mallory DeMille returns to break down the raw trend in wellness. We look at the science and cultural implications behind it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Feb 20, 2025•59 min
The eighth installment of Matthew’s Five Big Questions Posed to an Extremely Thoughtful Person. Friend of the pod Blair Hodges joins Matthew to talk about how he’s transformed the teachings of his Mormon upbringing into inspiration for social justice, how he grapples with the limits of the nuclear family as he thinks about community building, and why James Baldwin is so important to him. Blair has degrees in journalism, religious studies, and disability studies from the University of Utah and Ge...
Feb 18, 2025•27 min
“You don’t get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, start a religion.” With those words, prolific sci-fi pulp fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard prophesied the course of his life’s work. The 1950s saw the emergence of UFO- and alien channeling-based spiritual groups, as postmodern religious syncretism transformed supposedly ancient angels and demons into benevolent and/or terrifying aliens. No iteration of this fantasy has been more financially fruitful, culturally impactful, contro...
Feb 17, 2025•6 min
Given how much shit the zone is being flooded with right now, you might have missed Donald Trump screaming about the supposed mistreatment of white South Africans recently. Last week, he said “certain classes of people” were being treated “very badly.” The trigger was a bill signed by South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, a former anti-Apartheid activist, trade union leader, and successful businessman—three qualities Trump doesn’t really understand. Like the Trump administration, we have our...
Feb 15, 2025•26 min
As of recording time, RFK Jr has not yet been confirmed to the HHS Secretary position by the Senate. That might change by publication date. But if we were setting odds on this confirmation, we’d say put your money on Bobby. So, WTF. Bobby Brainworms will be in charge of US public health, and its influence around the world. Our years of reporting on him have been defeated by the influencer noise of the MAHA Mamas. But we. Will. Carry. On. Julian reviews the misinfo docket. Derek runs down the bur...
Feb 13, 2025•1 hr 5 min
Derek meditates on a recent conversation about the left-right divide between Ezra Klein and James Pogue. Show Notes MAGA’s Big Tech Divide: Ezra Klein Show Going Back to Cincinnati — James Pogue Inside the New Right, Where Peter Thiel Is Placing His Biggest Bets — James Pogue Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Feb 10, 2025•7 min
In the spring of 2017, Jordan Peterson first went viral by writing this in Canada’s National Post: I will never use words I hate, like the trendy and artificially constructed words “zhe” and “zher.” These words are at the vanguard of a post-modern, radical leftist ideology that I detest, and which is, in my professional opinion, frighteningly similar to the Marxist doctrines that killed at least 100 million people in the 20th century. Remember that horseshit, or things like it? Did you guffaw be...
Feb 08, 2025•45 min
