When she’s not talking to her angel guides, Christiane Northrup says that taking Vitamin D is better than the HPV vaccine for preventing cervical cancer. When Kelly Brogan isn’t denying germ theory, she’s telling thousands of women in her online programmes to stop taking not only their SSRIs, but also birth control and Tylenol. When Naomi Wolf isn’t explaining to Steve Bannon where women’s liberation went wrong, she’s worried that vaccinated women are poisoning non-vaccinated women just by walki...
Feb 15, 2024•51 min
Selling enemas to replace psych meds, or treat cancer, or cure autism is some dangerous shit. But Matthew has a tingling sense that the wellness enema craze promises more than false health benefits. Perhaps the coffee might be an artisanal distraction from a more existential promise: a ritual of cleansing and muscular control for a world that feels filthy, guilty, and in absolute chaos. A way of returning to a crucially innocent time when you learned to hold it all in, then given permission to l...
Feb 12, 2024•6 min
Wellness influencers are quite capable of inventing and spreading health misinformation. When it comes to culture war issues, however, they're incapable of generating original thoughts. So it shouldn't surprise anyone that they simply parrot talking points created by the likes of Chris Rufo and Bari Weiss, especially when it comes to their uninformed critiques of DEI and CRT efforts. Author, lawyer, and social impact consultant Dax-Devlon Ross takes Derek on a journey through the life of a DEI f...
Feb 10, 2024•41 min
This episode has been brewing for some time. This week we ask: which hole is coffee really supposed to go in? Because, in the contrarian and conspiratorial wellness world, a growing number of influencers advocate for your morning java to go where the sun doesn't shine. If that's not alarming enough, they claim coffee enemas will treat autism, cancer, parasites, and much more. Mallory DeMille is here to finally flush out this nonsense. Head to factormeals.com/conspirituality50 and use code conspi...
Feb 08, 2024•1 hr 2 min
Project 2025 is the libertarian conservative Heritage Foundation’s systematic governance plan for the next Republican president. The 920-page plan aims to implement the "unitary executive theory," which would give all of the power of the US government to the executive branch. This week, Derek and Julian investigate the chapter on US media agencies and the GOP's plan to create a true state-sponsored media beholden exclusively to the president. Head to factormeals.com/conspirituality50 and use cod...
Feb 05, 2024•6 min
From the Supreme Court to Project 2025, reactionary Catholics are on the frontlines of this year’s war on democracy. Many of them bend the knee to an Italian redpilled Vatican diplomat: Cardinal Carlo Maria Viganò. Who is this guy, and who let him onto the internet? In 2018, Viganò rebranded Pizzagate for Catholics, by accusing Pope Francis and his progressive allies of supporting “homosexual networks, which are now widespread in many dioceses, seminaries, religious orders,” and “act under the c...
Feb 03, 2024•45 min
The internet has changed not only how we communicate with each other, but how we understand the world. All technologies reorient how we navigate the world. This one just feels, at times, so disorienting—especially if you are, like the three of us today, extremely online. That’s the title of Washington Post columnist Taylor Lorenz’s recent book. Taylor has been covering internet culture since starting in social media for the Daily Mail in 2011, which led to positions as a technology reporter for ...
Feb 01, 2024•52 min
Project 2025 is the libertarian conservative Heritage Foundation’s systematic governance plan for the next Republican president. The 920-page plan aims to implement the "unitary executive theory," which would give all of the power of the US government to the executive branch. This week, Derek and Julian break down the dystopic chapter on the Department of Health and Human Services, written by the anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ+ Catholic nationalist, Roger Severino. Learn more about your ad choices. V...
Jan 29, 2024•7 min
Do people radicalized into conspiracism or cults ever admit their errors? When the prophecy fails and evidence shows they were wrong, do they come clean or double-down? Julian checks in on some of the legacy conspiritualists profiled in our book—Russell Brand, Dr. Christiane Northrup, Mikki Willis, JP Sears, and Lorie Ladd—to see what their online messaging around Christmas and the New Year tells us. These figures drove the anti-vax, Covid denial, QAnon virality, and rightward political trend in...
Jan 27, 2024•46 min
Science evolves, often through fits and starts. Yet for most of medical history, there’s been one consistent theme: most science has been conducted on male bodies. And this has created a range of problems for women. Thankfully, says Cat Bohannon, that’s changing. As more women and BIPOC are entering the STEM fields, we’re undergoing a renaissance in our understanding of a more inclusive and expansive science. On today’s episode, the author of Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of H...
Jan 25, 2024•1 hr 10 min
Julia Tucker is a professional church organist in Savannah, Georgia. She grew up homeschooled in a TradCath home presided over by a father who is now a minor celebrity on the reactionary right. In this Listener Story, she discusses her long strange trip out of Catholic revanchism, the unexpected freedoms of homeschooling, sneaking around in sacristries, why she believes that figures like Bishop Strickland and the Catholics heading up Project 2025 are more ominous and effective than Evangelical l...
Jan 22, 2024•7 min
Dr. Taslim Alani-Verjee joined us last January for a Brief on Jordan Peterson’s professional status as a shitposting registered psychologist. She returned for Episode 141 on whether it makes sense that the Canadian Medical Assistance in Dying act is fuelling conspiracy theories about state neglect. Today she returns, as a psychologist and as a practicing Muslim, to discuss with Matthew how it feels to see her community drawn into culture war territory over sex ed and gender issues. Matthew also ...
Jan 20, 2024•47 min
Nothing will stop Republicans from lining up behind Trump. But the left? It's in crisis. Fragmented. Perhaps in times of great flux fascists reflexively double-down while progressives slide into a cloud of self-doubt. There, strange bedfellows are sometimes found in the dark. To help us understand this territory—what it is and how to navigate it—we're joined by journalist, professor, and documentarian, Jeff Sharlet. His books, The Undertow: Scenes From a Slow Civil War and The Family: The Secret...
Jan 18, 2024•57 min
Control the Court. Overturn Roe. Funnel anonymous donations and shady gifts. Deregulate for Jesus. Roll back the cultural clock. Celebrate. Rinse and Repeat. Leonard Leo’s libertarian Catholic agenda has made him a preeminent power-broker in right-wing American politics. He’s reshaping society while enjoying the pipeline of cash and influence that connects billionaire GOP mega-donors and the SCOTUS judges he helped install. Julian tracks how Leo’s Federalist Society used Trump as part of a decad...
Jan 15, 2024•9 min
The online pseudoscience clearing house, Human Garage, treats fascia as a cure-all to nearly every disease imaginable. Yet as today's guest, David Lesondak, Senior Structural Integrator and Fascia Specialist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s Center for Integrative Medicine and author of the bestselling Fascia: What It Is and Why It Matters, tells Derek, they begin with a little bit of truth before going full Quantum nonsense. David breaks down fascia this week: what it is, how it ...
Jan 13, 2024•35 min
What happens when white knights role-play at saving all the children? What impacts do they have on the actual realities faced by trafficked children and adults? And how does their propaganda—rolled out in blockbuster trauma porn events like Sound of Freedom—stigmatize and endanger adult sex workers, especially those who are already marginalized? Esme Providence Brown returns as our correspondent to run it down. Brown retired from professional sex work in 2021 after twenty-year career in Manhatta...
Jan 11, 2024•1 hr 29 min
Rightwing activist Chris Rufo recently led the charge in helping oust Claudine Gay from the Harvard presidency. While the charge is plagiarism—a charge Gay herself acknowledged—the reason for Rufo’s intense focus on her has little to do with academic pedigree. Rufo, a former vegetarian yogi, is leading the right-wing charge against DEI trainings, LGBTQ+ rights, and any mention of critical race theory. Rolling off his "victory" of Gay's resignation, he's published a blog post that he hopes will b...
Jan 08, 2024•6 min
On January 6, 2021 Del Bigtree took the stage at the MAGA Health Freedom Rally a few blocks away from where Donald Trump had just instigated a riot. He joked about how the former president was a hard act to follow. But he dug deep and persevered by stringing together key dog whistles of Trumpian disinformation and resentment: public health officials are corrupt, COVID is a scam, and the election was probably stolen. Such performances have gotten Bigtree’s Highwire show nuked by YouTube, Facebook...
Jan 06, 2024•26 min
Last year, the Heritage Foundation published a 920-page document that lays out the conservative organization’s road map for the next Republican president’s first four months in office, which could very well be Donald Trump. Project 2025 rests on four pillars devoted to the implementation of the unitary executive theory—basically, all levers of the American government bowing down to the executive branch. If this sounds like a roadmap to authoritarianism, that’s because it is. With 54 conservative...
Jan 04, 2024•1 hr 21 min
Friend of the pod and Straight White American Jesus host Brad Onishi returns to pick up with Matthew where they left off in their discussion of post-religious spirituality. They discuss what happens after disenchantment, the spirituality of boredom, and why, as we hurtle into the coming chaos of 2024, it’s good to keep an eye out for new allies in unlikely places. This is Part Two of two-part conversation. Look for Part One in your pod feeds, dated December 30. Show Notes Brad Onishi Straight Wh...
Jan 01, 2024•7 min
Friend of the pod and Straight White American Jesus host Brad Onishi joins Matthew for a New Year’s discussion of post-religious spirituality. Onishi fills out the details on a nascent identity that many of you might resonate with: the “secular person of faith.” They talk about the false choice of Max Weber’s fork in the road: that either we commit to the sciences or languish in the churches. They discuss Jeffery Kosky’s idea of “disenchantment with disenchantment.” And they try to figure out wh...
Dec 30, 2023•41 min
Life coaching is big business. The life coaching industry was worth $1.5 billion in 2022 and is considered one of the fastest growing industries in America. The International Coaching Federation reported more than 26,000 coaches in North America in 2020. Yet those numbers are hard to qualify given that you don’t need certifications or training to become a life coach or, as we explore today, coaching of most any sort. Life coaches, business coaches, fertility coaches, “quantum” coaches: every ind...
Dec 28, 2023•1 hr 7 min
The joys of Xmas, the wonder of parenting, the complexities of family, the distinctions between religions and cults, and the compassionate dignity of locating the sacred in our mortal humanity. Julian offers an atheist reflection on the holidays that is equal parts heartwarming, thought-provoking, and (perhaps) inspiring. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dec 25, 2023•8 min
COP28, the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference, recently took place in the UAE. The controversial conference included 2,500 fossil fuel industry lobbyists and featured billionaires flying into Dubai on private jet. Yet, as Maya Lilly—a film, television, and digital media producer who focuses on activist documentary storytelling—tells Derek, it's one of the few places that so many nations and world leaders meet to discuss climate change. And, she says, the financial incentives exist to ...
Dec 23, 2023•30 min
In this annual meditation and reflection, the trio consider the past year's significant happenings in conspirituality, discuss their biggest influences, identify 2024's most pressing challenges, and offer what gives them each hope as we transition into 2024. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dec 21, 2023•1 hr 32 min
In November, the comedian Matt Rife released his first Netflix special, "Natural Selection." Early in the show he made a joke about domestic violence that many people took offense to. Since then, he’s clapped back at a number of people on social media (including a six-year-old boy), published a fake apology that linked to helmets for people with disabilities, and has been praised by many right-wing pundits, including the focus of today’s bonus episode, Jordan Peterson. Derek looks at the escalat...
Dec 18, 2023•6 min
Amy Carlson’s metallic blue body was covered in glitter, wrapped in a sleeping bag, and draped in Christmas lights when police found her on the night of April 16, 2021. The 45-year-old leader of the “Love Has Won” cult weighed just 75 pounds; her eyes had been removed. Carlson, known as “Mother God,” proselytized along with her followers by livestreaming around the clock, preaching a QAnon-themed spirituality that they monetized by selling colloidal silver and New Age tchotchkes. When her body w...
Dec 16, 2023•54 min
Measles was declared eliminated in the US in 2000. Fast forward to 2019 and the nation experienced the largest number of cases since 1992. Globally, there were 207,000 measles deaths that year, a 50% increase since 2016. The anti-vax boom time was still to come. Andrew Wakefield, Del Bigtree, and RFK Jr. massively increased their exposure and salaries during Covid via pseudoscientific fear-mongering and promiscuous political alliances. Scott Kennedy’s new documentary, Shot in the Arm, details th...
Dec 14, 2023•59 min
Matthew follows up on his interview with Mike Lewis about Bishop Strickland with thoughts about: 1) Building a bridge with progressive elements of a religion that claims 1.36 billion people globally, as it goes through another surge of paranoia and reactionary radicalization, and 2) Building a bridge into a personal past Show Notes Vatican II: It's about that 'fresh air' | National Catholic Reporter The Smoke of Satan on the Silver Screen: The Catholic Horror Film, Vatican II, and the Revival of...
Dec 11, 2023•6 min
Why did Trump kick-off his 2024 presidential campaign in Waco, Texas? Who were the Branch Davidians, anyway? Julian unpacks the incendiary streams of far-right anti-government militia history and religious apocalypticism that our former president is tapping into as he faces legal jeopardy. It all goes back almost 300 years to the original Great Awakening that QAnon and New Age channelers tried to remix in 2020. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dec 09, 2023•39 min
