Derek steps back from conspiracies and wellness this week to discuss something very healing and personal to him: music. Specifically, how music has shaped his career, as well as the story behind the music you hear every week on this podcast. Show NotesEarthRise SoundSystem on SpotifyEarthrise SoundSystem vs Nina Simone: Come YeBole 2 HarlemPete KuzmaGlobal Beat Fusion: The History of the Future of Music -- -- --Support us on PatreonPre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Becam...
Jul 11, 2022•9 min
Our guest today, Jennings Brown, is a bright light in an increasingly chaotic cult-content economy. His 2018 podcast on Teal Swan, The Gateway, produced with Gizmodo, sets a high-watermark standard for research, fairness, and sensitivity. A lot has happened since that pod dropped: #MeToo, MAGA, QAnon, COVID, and now a post-reality Supreme Court in which Justice Thomas publishes a concurrence in which he states that COVID vaccines use the tissues of aborted fetuses. All of which is to say: we don...
Jul 07, 2022•2 hr 51 min
We can't understand Teal Swan without understanding the Satanic Panic. And we can't really understand that historical disaster with out feeling our way into the mysteries of memory, fantasy, shame, and terror.Many of you will have heard about therapists interfering in a family constellation by insinuating the client has has memories of abuse to uncover, and that they can’t go forward in their lives without doing that work. This is the bread and butter of Swan's technique, with the result being t...
Jul 04, 2022•10 min
Rosaries made of shell casings. A breakaway Unification Church sect that holds rituals with gilded ARs. JP Sears on the gun range. The unholy American trinity of conservative politics, religious extremism, and gun culture is deep into its liturgical calendar. And it looks like conspiritualist influencers in the yoga and wellness space are setting up their juice bars outside the temple of the gun. Is Christiane Northrup LARPing when she talks about murdering political enemies? What would Mikki Wi...
Jul 01, 2022•1 hr 26 min
Matthew introduces Julian to the solipsism of an old Catholic catechism. Julian remembers meditating on non-duality. What spaces in our brains do these exercises create? Did we need those spaces for safety, or to hide from ourselves and the world? What happens to these spaces when we no longer need them? If we learned how to take pleasure in “cognitive closure” through religion or spirituality, can we use that skill forever, but detached from the ideologies that want to steal that fire? -- -- --...
Jun 27, 2022•10 min
If the world has become too much to bear—and the bots know it from your search history— you will likely find Teal Swan. She will appear, an angel of the algorithms, part icon and part anime avenger. Against a backdrop of flowing water or turning constellations, she will gaze into your despair. She will speak in a drone at once hypnotic and relieving, giving words to feelings you thought were taboo. At 3am, this might feel like mystical luck, but it’s no accident. Swan is open about recruiting su...
Jun 23, 2022•2 hr 4 min
After becoming global leaders in gun manufacturing in the 16th century, Japan banished all guns from their country for two centuries. How did this happen? And what were the results? Well, even today, the nation of 127 million experiences under 10 gun deaths every year. Derek looks back at this period in history to find out what happens when a society seems to move backward when in reality progress is made. He also looks at the psychology of warfare while noting that as bad as society can become,...
Jun 20, 2022•8 min
Half-a-million Facebook followers. Hundreds of videos in a series called “The Great Awakening.” Christiane Northrup, the matriarch of New Age women’s wellness, warns her followers about fake viruses, and tells them to avoid sex with their vaccinated partners. She stumps alongside QAnon celebrities, shovels campaign contributions to Trump, and dotes over sovereign citizen sheriffs. To ease your symptoms of ascension, she offers bath recipes of alfalfa greens and Dr. Bronner’s soap. You can have a...
Jun 16, 2022•2 hr 41 min
Julian recently attended his first Catholic funeral and found himself equal parts supportive friend and atheist anthropologist. This week, Matthew draws on his Catholic upbringing and experience as church organist (for close to 1,000 funerals) to help unpack this experience. In hindsight, it turns out that the rote blandness of organized religion may serve communities more honestly than the monetized performative charisma of New Age ritual. The conversation touches on the mythological and social...
Jun 13, 2022•10 min
Aubrey Marcus really wants to not be a cult leader. He really wants Fit For Service to not be labeled a cult. He’s come out and said so, in a bold but vague response to criticism of his content from our podcast. Matthew takes him at his word, and puts on his cult research hat to give some pointers on how Aubrey can avoid abusing his power. Key bits of advice include: rejecting high intensity recruitment techniques, not depicting the world outside Fit For Service as “upside down” or insane, and n...
Jun 09, 2022•1 hr 20 min
An audio essay from Matthew about how anti-trans ideology can so curdle the soul that an otherwise progressive eco-activist—Derrick Jensen of Deep Green Resistance—can blow up his entire career over it, disrupting the very thing he says he lives for, and destroying the movement he spent years building up.The story starts more than a decade ago, but comes to its peak absurdity, for Matthew at least, on Facebook. He posted some thoughts about Jordan Peterson freaking out over that woman on the cov...
Jun 06, 2022•10 min
We've gone deep on yoga communities infected by conspiracy theories. We've looked at essential oils and supplements influencers peddling in misinformation. There are channelers and astrologers and chiropractors. But there's another world we've only mentioned in passing: martial arts practitioners, which turn out to be another influential vector for disinformation. This week, Stephan Kesting, longtime BJJ black belt and instructor (and so much more) joins Derek to look at the conspiratorial frame...
Jun 02, 2022•1 hr 9 min
Matthew and Julian have to thank Kelly Brogan for hanging out on an episode of Aubrey Marcus's podcast, where she lays bare the emotional avoidance and cruelty that conspirituality attempts to sublimate—or dispel the guilt of.Here's the pull quote for the ages:So when I am sick, right, chronically sick, what do I get? I get compassion built in to my life from others who pity me. Right? And who offer me that surrogate hit of love. I get to say no without having to actually learn to assert my boun...
May 30, 2022•9 min
Is humanity doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past? This week, Julian traces a timeline from the bright-eyed early days of the internet to the dark message boards where QAnon emerged—and that still foment white supremacist mass shootings. to the dizzying infinite scroll on TikTok. Each new evolution of social media exploits innate human vulnerabilities more effectively, delivering more potent strains of deceptive manipulation to receptive young minds. No surprise, then, that a crew of talente...
May 26, 2022•2 hr 56 min
Julian and Matthew decompress after the interview with Gavin Ryan and discuss the "alt-med treadmill" and what it means to never quite know where the threshold of evidence lies. -- -- --Support us on PatreonPre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | JulianOriginal music by EarthRise SoundSystem Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
May 23, 2022•9 min
Cortney and Shana can’t remember exactly how they first became aware of the New Age promises and anxieties that would come to dominate every aspect of their lives. Their mom brought it into the house and their daily rhythms bit by bit.As kids in the early 1980s, they would fall asleep to visualizations by the self-help guru Wayne Dyer, on audiocassette. Or mom would read passages from Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramahansa Yogananda, after tucking them into bed. Cortney remembers an eerie photo...
May 19, 2022•1 hr 29 min
As the crew is in the final stages of submitting their forthcoming book, Julian and Derek reflect on how yoga has evolved in their personal lives. In Part 2, they talk about yoga in aging bodies, the pursuit of philosophy, and leaving the damn cell phone out of yoga studios. -- -- --Support us on PatreonPre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | JulianOriginal music by EarthRise SoundSyst...
May 16, 2022•9 min
Since day one, we've been covering medical disinformation on this podcast, always wondering where it would move next. Our collective breaths were stolen when learning about the seemingly inevitable overturning of Roe v Wade last week—and the extensive implications that could have for American society.Mother Jones senior editor, Kiera Butler, has been reporting on medical disinformation in parenting groups for years. Her most recent piece points out the next potential freedom to be stripped from ...
May 12, 2022•45 min
As the crew is in the final stages of submitting their forthcoming book, Julian and Derek reflect on how yoga has evolved in their personal lives. In Part 1, they discuss the origins of their yoga practices, what led them to teaching, and some ideas about yoga philosophy in general. -- -- --Support us on PatreonPre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | JulianOriginal music by EarthRise S...
May 09, 2022•9 min
After we published episode 98 on “Placebo Joe” Dispenza, an Australian artist named Gavin Ryan posted a comment to Facebook in response:“My wife was full of this stuff, when she stopped taking all the treatments that had finally turned her breast cancer around, right up to the day she died of it. Still fully convinced she was going to heal herself by sheer force of wishful thinking.” We reached out, and Gavin agreed to an interview.Fey was 47 years old when she died under the coconut palms and s...
May 05, 2022•1 hr 2 min
Manifestation workshops. MLM downlines. The supplement grift. Cash is king everywhere in the conspirituality sphere, even—especially—when disguised in the jargon of spiritual-ese. Derek and Julian step back and discuss the cash grab impulse, as well as talk about their own feelings on money and its value. -- -- --Support us on PatreonPre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | JulianOrigin...
May 02, 2022•9 min
In this conversation, Beatrice Adler-Bolton—disability justice advocate and co-host of Death Panel Podcast—says something twice:"Under capitalism, you’re only entitled to the survival you can buy." Her forthcoming co-authored book is called, provocatively, Health Communism. Part of its argument is that we have to imagine a society in which everyone is entitled to the survival we can share.How disquieting it is that the natural instinct we have as individuals to ask: "What is this going to cost m...
Apr 28, 2022•1 hr 24 min
Derek and Julian discuss the literary influences and yogic practices that led them to yoga in the first place, while also discussing what spirituality in a post-pandemic world could look like. -- -- --Support us on PatreonPre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | JulianOriginal music by EarthRise SoundSystem Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Apr 25, 2022•10 min
In July 2020, just as we were finding our sea legs with this podcast, Imran Ahmed joined to discuss the state of disinformation occurring around the world. As the founder of the UK’s Center for Countering Digital Hate, he had just produced a report that found anti-vax organizations were reaching 58 million people on social media—and this was well before the COVID vaccines were developed. The total amount of money spent by anti-vax groups and advertisers targeting their followers on Facebook, Ins...
Apr 21, 2022•2 hr 36 min
The Sermon of the Sardines is etched into our very souls. Picture the scene, as dreamboat doctor Zach Bush recounts his shimmering story of swimming off the coast of Tulum with thousands of tiny heroic fish, for Rich Roll’s Tuscany retreat participants. In this week’s Bonus episode Matthew and Julian connect the dots between Zach’s quivering amphibious ecstasy, his fascist notions of holy sacrifice in warfare via “non-empathic presence,” how he praises his hospice staff for using reiki as oppose...
Apr 18, 2022•10 min
Listeners: there’s a revolution going on. Legions of Twitter counselors and Instagram therapists has risen up to offer unsolicited sermons on cults, cult leaders, and cult recovery. With COVID closing down the studios, every third yoga teacher has become an expert in trauma. They’re starting Facebook groups. They’re selling courses. They’re doing their Family Systems work out in the open, displaying heroic levels of vulnerability. We’re just waiting for the first QAnon recovery MLM to launch on ...
Apr 14, 2022•1 hr 29 min
Since early on in this conspirituality experiment, Derek has been using the catchphrase that is the title of this week's bonus episode. Julian joins in to discuss exactly what the phrase means in the landscape of conspiritualists, who the most egregious offenders are, and the origin story of the term. If you think your coffee is moldy or those glasses are really blocking blue light, think again. -- -- --Support us on PatreonPre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Heal...
Apr 11, 2022•8 min
If you get treated by someone who says they’re a doctor, but they’re not, can they still have a placebo effect? That’s the question we’d like to ask Dr. Joe Dispenza, who’s not a doctor, but who plays one on the internet, treating one and all with the placebo of his bafflegab about Quantum healing and TimeSpace.Placebo Joe. Who is he? How do you take the measure of a Quantum Man? We’ll shine our browsers into the slit experiment and observe a particle here, a wave there. The particles of video c...
Apr 08, 2022•2 hr 41 min
Matthew and Julian draw back the curtain to take you behind the scenes of the book-writing process. They step back to consider the pantheon of conspiritualists we’ve covered over the last two years; the kaleidoscope of themes they represent, and the key moments they’ve had on the big cultural stage as the pandemic has unfolded. Who among them is worthy of being cast in the rogue’s gallery we will include in the book that will officially document all of our work over almost 100 episodes now? -- -...
Apr 04, 2022•8 min
This week we’re “just asking questions.” You probably recognize that quip from Joe Rogan, of course, but today’s focus is another actor and comedian turned popular podcaster, Russell Brand. As with Rogan, who he recently said he loved being compared to, Brand is amassing an increasingly large following—trust us, he’ll remind you of that number at the top of every episode—thanks to his high-energy solo rants about the conspiracy of, well, seemingly everything. But what’s Russell really saying? We...
Mar 31, 2022•1 hr 10 min
