This week could have been worse; what comes now must get better. If we’ve learned anything over these six months, it’s that QAnon is to conspirituality as Trump is to the political status quo. We can debunk or vote out the fever dream, but the virus will remain. In our first post-election episode we take stock of work yet to do. Derek checks in on QAnon mysticism. Julian speaks on the populism and language games that horseshoe right and left together, and how strong communities cannot afford hor...
Nov 06, 2020•2 hr 3 min
Derek talks with Dr. Ali Haider about being on the frontlines of COVID-19. Dr. Haider is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Tufts University Medical School. He received his medical degree from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Dr. Haider is board-certified in Internal Medicine, Cardiovascular Diseases, Echocardiography, Nuclear Cardiology, Interventional Cardiology, and vascular ultrasound. He is well versed in all aspects of cardiology, and his areas of interest include corona...
Nov 02, 2020•33 min
When we started this project six months ago, we could feel the cliff-edge of the election on the horizon. We could sense that our footholds of community, reasonable conversation, and consensus reality were eroding. As veterans of spirituality and wellness spaces, we’ve always known that the reality has never lived up to the hype. But the intensification of conspirituality themes, incubating during lockdown into the peak fever-state of QAnon, has made this period especially demoralizing. What do ...
Oct 29, 2020•2 hr 18 min
Coming off of Conspirituality 22 with Rebekah Borucki, Matthew casts a wider net over Hay House’s cultural influence in two parts: a brief survey of some of their top authors, and then an examination of a root text in the Hay House world: A Course in Miracles . ACIM’s corrupt and emotionally manipulative philosophy is the basis for the work of authors Marianne Williamson and Gabby Bernstein, overlapping almost perfectly onto “The Work” of Byron Katie. Louise Hay, for one, was fond of quoting it....
Oct 26, 2020•44 min
Author and publisher Rebekah Borucki joins the Conspirituality team as our first co-host for this episode. She’s got a story to tell: the culture of her publisher, Hay House, was so resistant to taking a position on the racist attitudes of some of their leading cash-cow authors that she ditched her contract and her job with the company as a diversity mentor. We’ll be talking about the money and politics of New Age media, as well as editorial standards, ghostwriting, cult apologetics, and the res...
Oct 22, 2020•1 hr 46 min
More than 20 years ago, Richard Vaughan wrote Matthew a very kind and perceptive letter, asking him to reconsider whether his participation in a Buddhist cult would forever alienate him from the real world, and his real friends. Matthew reads this letter here. It’s on his mind not only because there are so many people who are now struggling with having lost friends and family members, but also because Richard—only 55, and a hero of Canadian queer literature—has been missing for a week. Show Note...
Oct 19, 2020•11 min
We still can’t believe alt-health Bali retreat rockstar Sacha Stone called for the “evisceration” of public officials last week. Are conspiritualists really crossing over into militancy? Are the products of wellness so boring, and are the markets so saturated, that messianic influencers have no choice but to up the ante? Stone’s recent interview guest, Christiane Northrup, recently invoked the sacred power of the Sheriff as the highest law in the land for anti-lockdown folks who believe they’re ...
Oct 15, 2020•1 hr 40 min
Who’s right, who’s confused, who’s noble, who’s the bad guy? Nothing exists in a cultural vacuum. The emergence of yoga as a hugely popular and lucrative phenomenon in the West is no exception. In this bonus episode, Julian discusses a recent article that was posted, and enthusiastically liked, shared, and commented upon in sincere solidarity by yoga folks contributing to the conspirituality zeitgeist. This despite the article being written by a respected brown scholar and activist and posted by...
Oct 12, 2020•27 min
The reality of a second COVID wave started back in the Spring. Now that With over half of American states are experiencing increased cases, the conspiracy theories are surging. At least 32 White House staff and allies, as well as the president and his wife, have tested positive, likely originating in an unmasked close-quartered super-spreader Rose Garden celebration of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett. As Trump poses for wheezing conquering hero propaganda following his questionable retur...
Oct 08, 2020•2 hr 22 min
Bill Gates is unknowable—except to close and estranged friends, family members, his therapist if he has one. His empire sprawls; his philanthropy is tangled. He’s clearly not any one thing. But what is the one thing conspiritualists fantasize him to be? What archetypal role does he play for those who hate him? In this meditation, Matthew zeroes in on the briefly-mentioned biographical datum that Gates was bullied as a boy to unfold his symbolic power as neuroatypical scapegoat. If we listen care...
Oct 05, 2020•25 min
Thirty-two days out from the election and every hour reveals another layer of intensity. The more widely conspirituality and QAnon spreads, the more normalized mundane political violence becomes. In this episode, Derek looks at how the virus of conspiracism is now overtly threatening the basic premises of voting, as Emperor Trump projects a fiction about electoral fraud, even as he loses his clothes. Matthew looks at a crucial part of this normalization: how Q himself, whoever he is, is now bran...
Oct 01, 2020•1 hr 44 min
For our inaugural bonus episode of Conspirituality Podcast, we feature a single interview: a deep dive into the demonology of QAnon and Xtian evangelicalism with Dublin-based Religious Studies scholar Jonathan O’Donnell (pronouns: they/them). O’Donnell took Matthew through a tour of modern demons: how they show up and how believers relate to them. They also explore the amazing world of “spiritual warfare handbooks,” which have a history in US evangelicalism, are bestsellers in Q-land, and in som...
Sep 28, 2020•55 min
Some wellness influencers offer compelling critiques of Big Pharma, factory farming, and psychiatric malpractice. What happens when their arguments become honeypots for snake oil? In this episode, Derek provides an overview of modern pharma practice and its discontents. Julian delves into the muddy culture of yoga and antidepressants—the bad advice, the stigma, the magical thinking. He also reviews the latest Q-adjacent content of Canadian self-help celebrity Danielle LaPorte, and checks in on K...
Sep 24, 2020•2 hr 8 min
At this point, we can say for sure that American spiritual and wellness communities are not only vulnerable to conspiracy brainworms but they’re actively hosting and spreading them. Seane Corn joins us to discuss what to do when QAnon rhetoric and hashtags co-opts lurches through yoga communities. But is this really unexpected from a historical point of view? Our second guest, cult researcher and historian Jared Yates Sexton joins us to talk about his new book, American Rule . He discusses the l...
Sep 17, 2020•2 hr 27 min
Yoga-crazed Hindu nationalists murder Muslims for eating beef, believing that the cow embodies the religious gift of India’s soil. American white supremacists chug gallons of local milk to prove their lactose tolerance and their claim that they alone should occupy the Global North. Extreme examples aside: it’s clear that key elements of the alt-right and the New Age agree that the Earth is sacred. Bountiful and healing, the Earth preserves everything lost to industrialization, Big Pharma, and gl...
Sep 10, 2020•1 hr 56 min
For decades, Neo-Tantra has focused on sex workshops and orgasmic bliss, overlooking the fact that the Kama Sutra is effectively a patriarchal instruction manual as well as Tantra’s grassroots origins in the lower castes in Indian society, which were responding to lofty metaphysical ideas with practical rituals everyone could partake in. From that perspective, a modern industry marketed with Shiva-Shakti figurines is yet another example of capitalist yoga in a privileged society. Derek opens thi...
Sep 03, 2020•2 hr 16 min
This week we announce and discuss a refinement in our podcast’s direction. Real talk: conspirituality has clearly become both a front and a gateway for the fever-dream of QAnon. As mainstream news outlets wake up to the sordid reality that independent journalists have been tracking for two years, we find neither stream truly conceptualizing answers or methods for recovery and healing. Going forward, we’re going to concentrate not only on critique, but also offering solutions. Our guest this week...
Aug 27, 2020•2 hr 8 min
Dr. Theodora Wildcroft joins us again to take us through the basics of contemporary Religious Studies. She discusses how the discipline approaches issues of ritual, value, meaning, charisma, and role-playing, while also leading us through the process by which objects, places, and people become sacred. Spoiler: it’s more about what we do than what we believe. Wildcroft also dissects the chronic problem of conspiritualists weaponizing myths of rebellion and recovery. Matthew gives a brief rundown ...
Aug 20, 2020•2 hr 16 min
Last week, we started to explore how the real issue of child trafficking is being weaponized by bad-faith actors. This week we’re joined by two experts that explain the overt and subtle impacts involved. Regan Williams, CEO and founder of Seen & Heard, a nonprofit that provides youth in foster care with professional and personal development via the performing arts, offers a ground zero perspective of trafficked children and teens (and the people that actually care for them) being made even m...
Aug 13, 2020•2 hr 19 min
Two of this podcast’s hosts have been involved in destructive cult dynamics. Matthew’s three years with Michael Roach and three years at Endeavor Academy are at the root of his cult research and journalism. Julian’s six years in the inner circle around what he describes as Ana Forrest’s incendiary and manipulative approach to yoga left him with repressed memories. Those experiences also left his family deeply scarred by some of the same Satanic Panic themes prevalent in the QAnon movement. His o...
Aug 06, 2020•1 hr 53 min
A recent report by the UK’s Center for Countering Digital Hate found that anti-vaxx organizations reach 58 million people on social media. The total amount of money spent by anti-vax groups and advertisers targeting their followers on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube is roughly $1 billion. The majority of the money funding the most prominent anti-vax groups is by just two men: osteopath Joseph Mercola and fund manager Bernard Selz. All of this makes you wonder: Why is so money being used to targ...
Jul 30, 2020•1 hr 57 min
Percolating alongside racism and classism, one of the most pernicious subtexts of conspirituality propaganda is ableism. Proponents spout accusatory mantras like: “You have an immune system!,” “You’d have nothing to worry about if you were vegan!,” and, of course, “Living in fear is the real cause of disease.” Not only do these ideas have nothing to do with virology, they also condemn everyone who is immuno-compromised, living in a food desert, or managing trauma to the margins. COVID-19 has exp...
Jul 23, 2020•1 hr 56 min
As Christiane Northrup’s social media feed descends even further into the delusional zone — this week she retweeted explicitly identified QAnon content — we ask Professor Jacqueline Antonovich of Nursing Clio about the history of charisma, magic, and entrepreneurship in women’s wellness. When asked if she was surprised by Northrup’s conspirituality spiral, Antonovich was clear: “Not at all.” She carefully unpacks why. We also look at the role of media in conspiritual thinking and discuss Northup...
Jul 16, 2020•2 hr 1 min
OB/GYN Dr. Christiane Northrup has been a giant in women’s healthcare advocacy for decades. She has persuasively argued for lower-intervention childbirth, an end to circumcision, and policies that place family unity at the heart of health care. She’s known and loved for challenging her medical training with faith-based values and an intuition framed as feminine (if not feminist) and “sovereign.” Northrup draws on astrology, feng shui, chakra theory, and “vibrational” healing as modes of resistan...
Jul 09, 2020•1 hr 32 min
It can be as hard to talk with your well-meaning yoga-world friend about their COVID-conspiracy beliefs as it is to talk with a family member about their devotion to Donald Trump. This isn’t an accident — but it’s not exactly by design, either. Both figures can seem trapped in filter bubbles of jargon that hypnotizes and cancels critical thinking. In this episode, we talk with pre-eminent cult researcher Steve Hassan about his new book, The Cult of Trump , and explore the overlaps between the cu...
Jul 02, 2020•1 hr 59 min
Conspiritualists are compelling for numerous reasons: they’re charismatic; they claim to transcend polarized politics; they claim to speak the unspeakable in a quest for hidden truths. It makes sense that a key rhetorical instrument in their toolbox is poetry. “The real virus is fear” is a unifying metaphor for conspiritualists, but there are others. In conspiritual-ese, the immune system is like the Christian soul: eternal, perfect, and solitary. Masks are signs of submission that symbolize the...
Jun 25, 2020•1 hr 42 min
On one hand, we have the CEO of Crossfit tweeting that “Floyd-19” is the real problem. (He got canceled .) On the other, COVID-truther psychiatrist Kelly Brogan is using Hopi mythology to support the fantasy of a Corona consciousness-awakening — while the Hopi themselves live within the Navajo Nation, which has the highest infection rate in the country. WTF is going on with white wellness people? For this episode, we’re joined by New School historian of American fitness, Dr. Natalia Petrzela , w...
Jun 18, 2020•1 hr 25 min
Right-wing conspiracy theories are being marketed in wellness communities as a form of spiritual freedom. While pattern recognition is an essential survival instinct, it’s being exploited during a time of a global pandemic, governmental collapse, and social paranoia. Tragically, so-called spiritual leaders are trafficking in propaganda while advocating for individual sovereignty. We also discuss the history of and science behind 5G and vaccines. Show Notes Ivanka Trump’s graduation speech to Cla...
Jun 11, 2020•1 hr 16 min
To the layperson, Dr. Zach Bush’s vision of a resurrected microbiome as being the answer to modern illnesses sounds appealing. His basic argument: we’ve been weeding ourselves to death, externally and internally, depleting the biodiversity of our soils and bodies. He seems to have done typical clinical work (in mostly private settings) in internal medicine, endocrinology, and hospice care. But with no publications or experience with epidemiology, why is he being tapped by anti-vax activists to s...
Jun 04, 2020•1 hr 13 min
Barely two weeks into various stages of lockdown around the world, New Age philosopher Charles Eisenstein published a 9,000-word essay on the meaning of the pandemic. He summed up his core theme with deft wordplay at about the 7,000-word mark. After suggesting that the global crisis afforded a kind of transformative opportunity, he writes “Now the question arises: Initiation into what? What is the specific nature and purpose of this initiation? The popular name for the pandemic offers a clue: co...
May 28, 2020•1 hr 15 min
