The FDA is bleeding out Covid contrarians. Marty Makary, Vinay Prasad, Tracy Beth Høeg—all gone. Jonathan Howard returns to discuss why so many RFK Jr's friends have reached the end of their bureaucratic road. Show Notes FDA Swaps Top Drug and Vaccine Regulators in Staff Overhaul F.D.A. Commissioner Marty Makary Resigns After Weeks of Pressure No One Should Care About or Trust Anything Dr. Marty Makary Says Ever Again My Sincere Message to Dr. Jay Bhattacharya: Welcome Aboard and Good Luck. We A...
Jun 06, 2026•31 min
Leo the XIV wrote a big letter about a hyperobject. Many thoughts and debates are triggered. Today we’ll look at what the hell an encyclical is, the Vatican's decade-long conversation with Silicon Valley about coding morally-sound AI, and the broken and laundered echoes of Liberation Theology in Leo’s text. Show Notes Rerum Novarum, Leo XIII, May 15 1891 Catholic Church largest non-governmental landowner Magnifica Humanitas full text Paragraph 177: memory of past complicity in slavery Thiel’s An...
Jun 04, 2026•1 hr 21 min
Derek reports on the role of journalism after attending the News and Documentary Emmy Awards in New York City last week. Show Notes 2026 News & Documentary Emmy Awards | NEWS NIGHT (LIVE) You Might Have Already Fallen for MAHA’s Conspiracy Theories Student awarded CBS News scholarship explains why he called out network at event: ‘I had to do it’ Jorge Ramos, who's anchored the news for nearly 4 decades, is leaving Univision Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
Jun 01, 2026•7 min
Matthew investigates the under-construction STACK data centre at 3650 Danforth Avenue in Scarborough, two miles from his home, tracing what he finds through concentric circles of capital, neglect, hype, and deception. When complete, the 56MW hyperscale facility will draw the power of 50K Ontario homes. But it was built without public consultation, environmental monitoring, or any info on who the tenants will be. Its financing and ownership details track back through a web of investment firms wit...
May 30, 2026•38 min
In the early 20th century, some retailers would advertise a product at an attractively low price to lure customers into the store, claim the item was out of stock or of poor quality then pressure customers to buy a more expensive alternative. The practice became known in the public vernacular as "bait and switch" in the 1920s. This week, we look at three modern bait and switches pertinent to our beat. First, Julian looks at “free speech patriot” Chud the Builder’s slimy social media tactics. The...
May 28, 2026•1 hr 6 min
Across continents and centuries outsider poets have made a bold stand for the life of the body, contemplative ecstasy, sexual liberation, and the sacredness of nature, often in the face of religious and political repression. From Rajasthan to New York, Ancient Persia to London, and Swansea in Wales to Balkh in Afghanistan, ecstatic poets have broken taboos around sex, death, gender, social caste, and religious dogma. In a follow-up to last week’s interview with Britt Hartley of No-Nonsense Spiri...
May 25, 2026•6 min
In February, Derek and his wife, Callan, were surprised to discover she was diagnosed with prediabetes. They didn't know that Asian American adults are at a higher risk of Type 2 diabetes than others without the traditional risk factors. Callan joins to discuss how the diagnosis changed her life, her frustrations with the healthcare system, and how she's navigating her new reality. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
May 23, 2026•25 min
The Trump DOJ's 565-page report from the Task Force for Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias is one of the strangest federal documents in American history. It’s a crybully tome, arguing that the most powerful religious majority in the United States is its most persecuted minority. Julian examines the FACE Act allegations, the FBI-Catholic surveillance controversy, and the selective history propping up the Christian-founding thesis. Derek traces the freethinker and secularist tradition the report eras...
May 21, 2026•57 min
Listen to the full episode In this contribution to an ongoing co-host conversation, Matthew argues that the liberal centre's habit of punching left is a historically conditioned class strategy. From FDR's New Deal—designed to inoculate capitalism against socialism—through Hayek, Buckley, the Birchers, Limbaugh, and the Obama-era "socialist medicine" smear, liberals have accepted the premises of Red Scare attacks, because doing so served their own interest in disciplining the actual left. The res...
May 18, 2026•5 min
It’s normal to feel lost after leaving a cult, transitioning out of fundamentalist religion, or abandoning conspiracy theories. Whether you’ve left behind, you may be asking, "What now?" Britt Hartley joins Julian to talk about her new book, No Nonsense Spirituality: All The Tools No Belief Required , and her recent run-in with the hardcore atheist community, which calls her work “nonsense.” The ex-Mormon practices Sufi mysticism, holds an MA in theology, and is writing her doctoral dissertation...
May 16, 2026•43 min
Two months ago, we recorded Episode 291: My Chinese Buddhist Israeli AI Guru, surveying the growing field of AI slopfluencers churning out wellness supplements via Amazon affiliate links. At the time, we weren’t clear on who was behind these accounts. Then Mallory DeMille went down a YouTube and TikTok rabbit hole and found the men making millions from these accounts. Today we’re going to look at what they’re doing, how they’re doing it, and the cultural and racial dynamics at play in their slop...
May 14, 2026•58 min
Listen to the full episode Derek considers the online debates over leftism and liberalism in the context of coalition building. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
May 11, 2026•8 min
Matthew reads the Introduction from Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times . Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
May 09, 2026•43 min
As Cole Allen sprinted into the news cycle, social media accelerated to cover the story—and the conspiracy-beast in the basement flexed his fast-twitch muscle fibers. The now third assassination attempt on Donald Trump (this time at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner) had to be staged. What else could explain it? The one time Trump shows up, an assassin is waiting for him. What are the odds? How about the guy who just calmly kept eating his salad? A highly suspicious AI video showed a securi...
May 07, 2026•58 min
Listen to the full episode The Democratic Party is in free fall. Still suffering the aftershocks of the 2024 election, a civil war is brewing internally between those who want to build coalitions that can win elections and those who see radicalization as the only way forward. In April, debate about whether Dems should embrace hugely popular leftist streamer Hasan Piker,or distance themselves from him dominated the discourse. A week later, two popular online personalities of the left—acclaimed tr...
May 04, 2026•6 min
On the Whatever Podcast livestreams, alpha debate bros browbeat insecure betas and deride token guest female sex workers while possibly ignorant they're helping promote their OnlyFans accounts. But recently, three steely-eyed women have snuck in, decoded the matrix and fought their way up to stare down the ultimate boss—a chain-smoking, greasy-haired, foul-mouthed Christian nationalist named Andrew Wilson. Julian features and celebrates the insurgent grit and intelligence of these three women, w...
May 02, 2026•28 min
Two-thirds of the Conspirituality staff have new books out: Matthew's AntiFascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times and Derek's Well Enough: Finding Health Despite the Wellness Industry . Julian "interviews" the co-hosts about themes of each book and their intersections with Conspirituality. But first, Derek discusses Glucose Goddess's recent partnership with medical device company, Dexcom. Show Notes The Sweet Embellishments of the Glucose Goddess Well Enough: Finding...
Apr 30, 2026•1 hr 11 min
In April 2026, Pope Leo XIV, deep in a public feud with President Trump over the Iran war, made his first trip to Africa. He chose Algeria: the birthplace of Augustine, the spiritual founder of his order. Algeria is demanding reparations from France for 132 years of colonial rule and 1.5 million dead. It’s parliament declared French colonization a "state crime" just four months before Leo landed. Before visiting with any Catholics, Leo laid a wreath at an anticolonial martyrs' monument, removed ...
Apr 27, 2026•6 min
Derek reads two chapters from his recently published memoir, Well Enough: Finding Health Despite the Wellness Industry . In Chapters 3 & 4, he discusses his work as a patient monitor looking after suicidal patients in an emergency room, then ending up in an emergency room himself after having a full-blown panic attack. Show Notes Well Enough: Finding Health Despite the Wellness Industry Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
Apr 25, 2026•22 min
Ronan Farrow is at it again. The reporter has a new feature in The New Yorker , written alongside staff writer Andrew Marantz, about OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. In many ways, the 16,000-word investigation is a meditation on the existential risks of AI being placed in the hands of a few powerful men, and in this case a possible sociopath. Today we discuss the article and then zoom out on broader questions in AI: who is it for, how is it being used, and can it be reined in? Show Notes Sam Altman May Co...
Apr 23, 2026•1 hr 22 min
Derek looks into behavioral economics to better understand the fluidity of the "self," finding that recent research aligns with a very old Buddhist concept. Show Notes What Does Extreme Wealth Do To the Brain? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Apr 20, 2026•5 min
Donald Trump's shitpost attack on Pope Leo XIV, followed within the hour by an AI slop icon of himself as Jesus, has cracked open the evangelical-Catholic coalition that has anchored American conservatism for fifty years. Matthew walks through Leo's escalating confrontation with Trump, from his November 2025 immigration remarks to his Palm Sunday Isaiah citation ("your hands are full of blood"), his Holy Thursday liberation theology thread on "imperialist occupation," and the Good Friday Station...
Apr 18, 2026•28 min
Consider the bright-eyed students who signed up for tantric yoga and sacred sexuality courses through their local yoga studios, only to eventually find they were sending the guru photos of themselves in bikinis to see if they qualified for a private initiation ceremony. What's unique about today's guru, Gregorian Bivolaru, is how his organization's in-depth courses reached into over 30 different countries, delivering a steady stream of young, starry-eyed women to be abused by him in Paris. A new...
Apr 16, 2026•1 hr 11 min
When the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini received Western media in a small French village in 1978, he sat cross-legged in his robes and black turban under an apple tree in the garden. They described him as “on another planet,” with “eyes of steel,” and compared him to an Eastern sage or ascetic guru. French philosopher Michel Foucault, most famous for his penetrating analysis of power, knowledge (and punitive coercion) was there as well. He called the holy man “an old saint in exile” who had no person...
Apr 13, 2026•9 min
Billionaire tech bro Marc Andreessen recently claimed introspection is a pathology. Derek and Julian discuss the Trump advisor's claims while the investor continues making bank from defense technology. Show Notes The Mind is Flat: Nick Chater The Mind is Flat | Nick Chater | Talks at Google Susan Blackmore Review of The Mind is Flat The Tell-Tale Brain: VS Ramachandran Consciousness and the Brain: Stanislas Dehaene This Is Your Brain on Music: Dan Levitin Musicophilia: Oliver Sacks Learn more ab...
Apr 11, 2026•39 min
New Yorker writer Charles Bethea recently decided to attend men’s retreats—well, at least those who would admit him. His expose on the modern men’s movement got us thinking about what’s happening over those very expensive three-day weekends, as well as the inspiration behind these groups dating back to the seventies. And even how a movement tracing back to the work of Robert Bly was co-opted by the right-wing “alpha male” crowd. Today we discuss Bethea’s article in the context of modern men’s gr...
Apr 09, 2026•1 hr 9 min
Listen to the full episode If you heard Matthew’s Brief from March 28, you’ll know longtime Conspirituality listener Joseph Baker died on Feb 4 at the age of 51. Matthew recorded this conversation with Joseph on January 9, 2024. They explore Matthew’s allergy to A Course in Miracles and Joseph’s devotion to it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
Apr 06, 2026•5 min
Mikki Willis recently joined Russell Brand to discuss a whole host of issues, including rather suspect rewritings of the histories of AIDS and Covid-19. Derek and Julian discuss. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Apr 04, 2026•23 min
Early in this podcast we covered the Disinformation Dozen, 12 wellness influencers and contrarian health figures responsible for spreading the lion’s share of vaccine misinformation on major social media platforms. On a recent MAHA Action weekly call, Tony Lyons got the group back together for a victory lap after a court settlement seemed to justify their actions. Or did it? We break down the court case, then hear from the influencers who continue to inflate their own sense of self-importance wh...
Apr 02, 2026•1 hr 6 min
Listen to the full episode The wellness industry has been repeating marketing strategies used by the fashion and diet book industries for decades. Influencers are just exploiting novelty-seeking cognitive behaviors deeply embedded in human psychology. Derek reviews today’s product du jour, peptides, by first looking into those dopamine-seeking behaviors, then exploring the history and present of these amino acid chains everywhere in wellness downlines. Show Notes Everyone’s Doing Peptides. Is It...
Mar 30, 2026•8 min
