Imagine that you’re 25 years old. You grew up Irish, gay, and online. When the Orlando Pulse massacre explodes, you go to YouTube for the news. You watch Milo Yiannopolous and Gavin McInnes fake-kiss in front of the police-taped club and say that the Muslims are coming to kill all gay people. YouTube’s algorithm spins you downward into anti-Islamic content. Before long, you’ve left your marketing job with a mission: to make slick propaganda videos for some of the most despicable alt-right ghouls...
Mar 11, 2021•2 hr 19 min
Humans will never be cats. In his new book, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life , the philosopher John Gray argues that we can learn a lot about how to live from them—namely, how to calm our anxiety around existential distress. In this sample of a Patreon bonus episode, Derek shares what he’s learned from his three cats, as well as how Gray’s advice applies to the conspiratorial-minded (i.e. metacognition gone awry). -- -- -- Support us on Patreon Pre-order Conspirituality: How New A...
Mar 08, 2021•8 min
Two episodes in our catalog haunt this podcast. In episode 6, Steve Hassan advised listeners to treat people under the undue influence of QAnon and conspirituality with welcome and respect. Castigation won’t work. Shame will make things worse. He told this story about how his elderly neighbor brought him homemade cookies when he finally returned home after years in the cult of Rev. Moon. No questions asked—just cookies. But in episode 10, Imran Ahmed pointed out that any engagement of disinforma...
Mar 05, 2021•1 hr 26 min
One-hundred-and-twenty seekers filled the LA hotel ballroom. We sought the life-changing experience that could only happen by holding in our pee, being religiously on-time, and taking full responsibility for creating the lives we said we wanted, but hadn’t achieved… yet. -- -- -- Support us on Patreon Pre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat : America | Canada Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | Julian Original music by EarthRise SoundSyst...
Mar 01, 2021•5 min
Around 2015, the alt-right movement erupted online to both provoke and monetize MAGA momentum and distort and defame the real-world progress symbolized in Barack Obama and agitated by Black Lives Matter. Young white supremacist poster-boy Richard Spencer and edgy internet crypto-racists like Lauren Southern, Mark Cernovich, and Gavin McInnes led the viral charge, racking up subscribers while lining their pockets on the side. Daniel Lombroso of The Atlantic embedded with their ilk from 2016-18, c...
Feb 25, 2021•2 hr 9 min
One of the precious bright spots for our family in this long dark winter of COVID has been outdoor skating. Other than the walking trails, it’s the only thing that the city has kept open. I take our boys, 4 and 8, while my partner is working. The older one has developed a speed-skater’s stride. He’s not crossing over yet as he turns, but he’s close to it. The younger one has amazed us all with learning to glide easily in this, his first winter on skates… As per the city regulations, we stay mask...
Feb 22, 2021•10 min
What are we learning about conspiracies, conspiracy theories, and those who hold them? How are we maintaining our optimism that facts are real, that they can be discovered, and shared? How will we continue to communicate with those who are confused? In this episode, we continue our rich conversation on the proximity of conspiracism and spiritual paths and the ways in which we fall into and climb out of fever dreams. In the Jab, Julian looks at concerns about vaccines and pregnancy. In a Ticker s...
Feb 18, 2021•1 hr 59 min
The medium of social media is both relatively new and socially challenging. But this doesn’t mean we can’t have healthy debates. In this sample from our Monday Patreon bonus episode, Derek investigates three areas of research about how—and why—we need robust and progressive debates on our platforms. 1. Your brain on political arguments . 2. How to become a master negotiator . 3. Can social media be fact-checked? A new study offers one way of doing so. -- -- -- Support us on Patreon Pre-order Con...
Feb 15, 2021•7 min
Many of us came to yoga and wellness spaces to heal or flee from the alienation of modernity. We wanted something untouched by our cities and factories and labs; something that reminded us of a world we never really knew. “Nature” was in such short supply that we had to invent it to colonize it anew, in exotic lands and mystical beasts: the deer whose antler gave longevity, the cow whose milk strengthened our family bonds. How many of us knew that our fetish for the “natural” could lead towards ...
Feb 11, 2021•2 hr 15 min
In this sample of our weekly Patreon bonus episode, Julian travels back in time to the 80s. He finds that when it comes to the fear of diabolical evil, the appeal of conspiracy patterns, and the missionary zeal of cults, everything old is new again. *Content Warning: Briefly contains one disturbing account of ritual abuse and one reference to suicide. -- -- -- Support us on Patreon Pre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat : America | Canada Follow us on I...
Feb 08, 2021•7 min
Today we forge ahead with part 2 of Matthew’s interview with Kundalini Yoga scholar Philip Deslippe and journalist Stacie Stukin on the tragic past, chaotic present, and future relevance of the cult of Yogi Bhajan. Matthew looks at Guru Jagat’s (Katie Griggs’s) pseudo-Tibetan mystical poem dedicated to her ex-con mentor, Harijiwan (Stephen Hartzell), whose current wife, Mandev, is about 30 years his junior and makes RA MA propaganda films. Will RA MA survive lockdown with COVID-busting mantras? ...
Feb 04, 2021•2 hr 25 min
Episodes 36 & 37 cover how Guru Jagat (Katie Griggs) and her Venice Beach RAMA Institute have pivoted in the COVID era to a new area of focus: anti-lockdown, anti-“woke” rhetoric, anti-masking, and anti-vax propaganda. As the center of her own weather system in the wider Kundalini Yoga / 3HO cult, this serves Griggs in a number of ways, from driving engagement to obscuring 2020’s revelations of just how criminal her umbrella organization is. Cults will never let a good crisis go to waste. Ba...
Feb 01, 2021•12 min
What happens when a charismatic yogalebrity rises to prominence in LA’s fashion and wellness scene, gets exposed as an inheritor of a notorious cult, and then gets sideswiped by a pandemic? Meet Katie Griggs, aka “Guru Jagat,” who, instead of reassessing her channelled “downloads” from the charlatan rapist Yogi Bhajan and lending a hand to public health, has chosen to boost her online game with COVID contrarianism and by platforming David Icke. Our guests this week are Philip Deslippe and journa...
Jan 29, 2021•2 hr 18 min
We decided to release this Monday patron bonus episode publicly after receiving a great response on Patreon. Julian draws heavily on the work of neurologist and author V.S. Ramachandran in an attempt to explore Conspirituality after the Capitol insurrection. How might an understanding of synesthesia, epilepsy, super-stimuli, hyper-reality, and fascism help us make sense of the overlap between the QAnon fantasy timeline and real world blood and guts? -- -- -- Support us on Patreon Pre-order Consp...
Jan 26, 2021•44 min
Joe Biden was inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States yesterday, proving the long-awaited QAnon prophecy false. It’s the perfect time to talk about where mystical or deceptive knowledge comes from, how it works, and what happens when it fails. We may never know who Q was, but we can take a close look at a core feature of conspirituality technique: the transmission of secret knowledge. Welcome to our channeling episode. Today we discuss three Q-adjacent channellers: JZ Knight, Lori...
Jan 22, 2021•2 hr 43 min
It’s been eight days since the Capitol was ransacked by a mob of MAGA supporters, Proud Boys, ex-military with tactical gear, and Nazis wearing disgustingly anti-Semitic t-shirts. The death count is six (for now), with a second police officer dying by duty-related suicide on Saturday. As more footage streams in—and the FBI says there’s still more to come—it will get uglier. So what have our conspiritualists been up to? We’ll run it down this week. Quick story: not a single one has walked back an...
Jan 15, 2021•1 hr 55 min
Christiane Northrup addresses her followers as “angel warriors.” JP Sears counsels his supplement customers to never “outsource their own truth.” Mikki Willis says he was once a “hero of the left”, and now tells audiences that he’s willing to die for the truth of his message. It’s all very grand, and it doesn’t come from nowhere. Trendy spiritualities of the privileged and disconnected have always focused on the heroic triumph of the individual, which has made them easily co-optable by the right...
Jan 08, 2021•2 hr 24 min
A rough tally of our labor from the inception of this podcast in May puts us at over 1,100 hours of treading water in the content sea of JP Sears, Mikki Willis, Christiane Northrup, and the rest of the gang. Are we getting our bearings yet? Will we see land soon? This episode is centered on Part 2 of Matthew’s discussion with Charles Eisenstein — a bellwether for the possibility that wellness and spirituality culture can communicate clearly about conspirituality. In the discussion and analysis t...
Dec 31, 2020•2 hr 51 min
As two coronavirus vaccines roll out we’re being flooded with more disinformation than ever. Wellness gurus are cashing in on home-made “natural” remedies by spreading unjustified fears about this vaccine, and vaccines in general. This week, we look at Dr. Christiane Northrup’s “line in the sand,” Mikki Willis revealing that he recently helped out the kids of Covington High and Kyle Rittenhouse, JP Sears getting retweeted by Donald Trump, and the QAnon breeding ground that is the MMA. During The...
Dec 24, 2020•2 hr 42 min
This episode dropped for our Patreon supporters on the darkest day of the year. We’re unlocking it as a holiday gift to all of our listeners. In this meditation, Matthew reflects on the roots and implications of “blazes of light” that punctuate the speech of both spiritualists and conspiritualists, from the spaces of patriarchal religious ritual to the claustrophobia of the manosphere. One key question: How does the manosphere shape conspirituality and its emotional disorders? This is a tour thr...
Dec 22, 2020•1 hr 6 min
Who gets to take up space in critical times? How do we orient ourselves toward expertise? In a culture dominated by “experts” on social media, do charismatics outperform fact-checkers? This episode marks a milestone for our podcast, as Matthew interviews Charles Eisenstein, whose essay “The Coronation” has cast a long shadow on our ongoing critique of how New Age and spiritual spaces interact with public health. It’s a respectful but robust conversation about the limits of what laypeople can kno...
Dec 17, 2020•2 hr 11 min
Here’s an episode that’s been micro-brewing for a while: Bro Science: where conspirituality meets the manosphere. We’ve even got a working definition! Here’s a taste. Bro Science is junk science spewed by men who believe their charisma is a substitute for training. It brags, mocks, overreaches. It’s self-serving and self-interested. It can carry hints of toxic masculinity: entitlement, unearned confidence, no qualms about taking up space, repressing emotion or hiding it behind humour or grandios...
Dec 11, 2020•2 hr 25 min
This week we inaugurate “The Conspirituality Ticker,” a weekly bullet-point rundown on the ongoing pandemic of influencers who spread medical misinformation to sell disaster spirituality. We’ll also continue with “The Jab”, our segment on conspirituality-driven vaccine hesitancy. The big news this week is the resurrection of Jordan Peterson. After surviving a medically-induced coma in a Russian rehab facility, and then COVID on top of that, Peterson has re-emerged, weakened but resolute, as both...
Dec 04, 2020•1 hr 55 min
Do famous people become famous for staying in their lane? Do some find fame by carving out a lane that never existed before? What is the disruptive promise of charisma in this wellness space, which draws consumers burdened by a double disillusionment? They arrive, disillusioned by conventional medicine and conventional religion. What can the charismatic influencer offer them, and how do they do it? In this last free bonus episode, Matthew explores the charismatic logic of wellness, in which yoga...
Nov 30, 2020•1 hr 16 min
Though we’re all staying put this holiday season, we continue to super-spread our conspirituality vibes. This week we’re fielding listener questions for our first-ever non-Patreon AMA. During this episode, we’ll be talking about our own spiritual beliefs, finding meaning in crisis, Matthew being canceled, and more. For a holiday treat, Matthew interviews friend of the pod, the fabulous Alex Auder, about what it means to satirize free-birth influencer @bauhauswife, who’s putting the fash back int...
Nov 26, 2020•2 hr 5 min
Diversity has lost some of its strength as a term in our bifurcated world, and yet in nature diversity has always mattered. Our apprehension of using the word points to our further alienation of nature—and ourselves. Derek discusses the power of diversity in three realms he has spent decades studying: international music, fitness, and psychedelics. He also contemplates why diversity matters when considering the growing influence of conspiritualists. -- -- -- Support us on Patreon Pre-order Consp...
Nov 23, 2020•45 min
Trump’s personal pastor Paula White seizes the podium to speak in tongues and prophesize that angels from Africa will certify her master’s electoral victory. Evangelical Kenneth Copeland laughs maniacally at the devilish proposition that Biden has won. They both yearn to squeeze some drop of ecstasy from the husk of conservative politics. How much of the emotional terrorism rolling through these times is the return of the repressed? In our weekly reporting, Derek looks at Australian chef Pete Ev...
Nov 20, 2020•2 hr 14 min
As more of the world has gained access to mobile internet, populism, and the perception (rightly or wrongly) of government, corruption has steadily increased. But what is “populism?” How do populist ideas on both the Right and Left identify “the people” and their enemies? With the size of the online megaphone and Balkanized social media audiences, what role does the word magic of emotionally-manipulative language play in perpetuating division, even when claiming to do otherwise? Show Notes Vox E...
Nov 16, 2020•28 min
On Election night, Mikki Willis, JP Sears, Del Bigtree, and the conspirituality glitterati gathered in Austin for a prayer meeting for Donald Trump. Willis pitched his new documentary and complained about Marxist professors pied-pipering children towards BLM before a new-age preacher sold allotments in a new alt-health ranch community in Texas. Derek covers this ultimate reveal of the conspirituality grift: predict the apocalypse, then sell off-grid cribs on a five-acre manmade lagoon. Fill the ...
Nov 13, 2020•2 hr 37 min
Mark Walsh, the proprietor of The Embodiment Conference, was recently challenged by cultural somaticist Tada Hozumi in an Open Letter, penned by Hozumi in lieu of accepting the invitation to speak at the Conference. Hozumi proposed that Walsh look more closely at the exclusionary economy of his ambitious project — specifically, at how it centers white men as the heroes of the somatic techniques that colonialism handed them. The letter, dignified and sincere, offered a concise and workable framin...
Nov 09, 2020•46 min
