What do we worry more about: the far-right beliefs of trolls, or the coding skills of the trolls? The split focus on Marco Elez and Elon Musk—are they Nazis, or hackers, or Nazi hackers?— highlight two prongs of emergent fascism. The ideological/aesthetic/psychological on one side, and the technocratic on the other. We can call them the manners and the machine. First, Matthew unpacks a century-old thesis by an OG fascist that says totalitarian regimes take shape when both are working together, b...
Feb 24, 2025•6 min
Education / Public service alert: Matthew critically reviews six books that define fascist eras and recount how they have been opposed. A kind of “here we are, now what?” episode that hopefully interrupts the doomscroll with the sobriety of some practical considerations. Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny (2017) Robert Paxton, Anatomy of Fascism (2004) Paul Mason, How to Fight Fascism (2018) Mark Bray, Antifa: The Antifascist Handbook (2017) Curzio Malaparte: Technique de Coup d’Etat (1931) Spencer Suns...
Feb 22, 2025•35 min
Raw Milk. Raw Water. Raw Meat. Mallory DeMille returns to break down the raw trend in wellness. We look at the science and cultural implications behind it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Feb 20, 2025•59 min
The eighth installment of Matthew’s Five Big Questions Posed to an Extremely Thoughtful Person. Friend of the pod Blair Hodges joins Matthew to talk about how he’s transformed the teachings of his Mormon upbringing into inspiration for social justice, how he grapples with the limits of the nuclear family as he thinks about community building, and why James Baldwin is so important to him. Blair has degrees in journalism, religious studies, and disability studies from the University of Utah and Ge...
Feb 18, 2025•27 min
“You don’t get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, start a religion.” With those words, prolific sci-fi pulp fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard prophesied the course of his life’s work. The 1950s saw the emergence of UFO- and alien channeling-based spiritual groups, as postmodern religious syncretism transformed supposedly ancient angels and demons into benevolent and/or terrifying aliens. No iteration of this fantasy has been more financially fruitful, culturally impactful, contro...
Feb 17, 2025•6 min
Given how much shit the zone is being flooded with right now, you might have missed Donald Trump screaming about the supposed mistreatment of white South Africans recently. Last week, he said “certain classes of people” were being treated “very badly.” The trigger was a bill signed by South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, a former anti-Apartheid activist, trade union leader, and successful businessman—three qualities Trump doesn’t really understand. Like the Trump administration, we have our...
Feb 15, 2025•26 min
As of recording time, RFK Jr has not yet been confirmed to the HHS Secretary position by the Senate. That might change by publication date. But if we were setting odds on this confirmation, we’d say put your money on Bobby. So, WTF. Bobby Brainworms will be in charge of US public health, and its influence around the world. Our years of reporting on him have been defeated by the influencer noise of the MAHA Mamas. But we. Will. Carry. On. Julian reviews the misinfo docket. Derek runs down the bur...
Feb 13, 2025•1 hr 5 min
Derek meditates on a recent conversation about the left-right divide between Ezra Klein and James Pogue. Show Notes MAGA’s Big Tech Divide: Ezra Klein Show Going Back to Cincinnati — James Pogue Inside the New Right, Where Peter Thiel Is Placing His Biggest Bets — James Pogue Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Feb 10, 2025•7 min
In the spring of 2017, Jordan Peterson first went viral by writing this in Canada’s National Post: I will never use words I hate, like the trendy and artificially constructed words “zhe” and “zher.” These words are at the vanguard of a post-modern, radical leftist ideology that I detest, and which is, in my professional opinion, frighteningly similar to the Marxist doctrines that killed at least 100 million people in the 20th century. Remember that horseshit, or things like it? Did you guffaw be...
Feb 08, 2025•45 min
Edward Snowden is largely only a public name thanks to Glenn Greenwald’s reporting, for which he was one of the contributors to a Pulitzer Prize-winning series for The Guardian in 2014. For a while, Matt Taibbi was considered the heir to Hunter Thompson when his gonzo journalism tore open the 2008 financial crisis and gave the public the term “vampire squids.” Yet in more recent years, both men have swerved right: Glenn became a darling on Fox News and Taibbi was recruited by Elon Musk as one of...
Feb 06, 2025•1 hr 4 min
Part 2 of Matthew’s sit down with sex-work veteran and social justice advocate Esme Providence Brown to discuss New Age / wellness antifeminist, Kelly Brogan, and how her craven politics bolster the permission structure for Trumpian misogyny. They track her political and aesthetic journey from labcoat wearer to wellness pole dancer to BDSM cosplayer—a spiral through deepening layers of appropriation, disavowal of responsibility, and cringe-tastic ideas. Esme concludes with some deep insights on ...
Feb 03, 2025•6 min
When asked if he thought Mark Zuckerberg’s effective ending of fact checking was in response to threats that he would “put him in jail for a very long time,” Trump replied, “Probably. Yeah, probably.” A week later, TikTok voluntarily disabled their app for users, then put up an announcement saying that Trump was going to bring them back. Julian talks to digital disinformation expert Renee Diresta about the massive Big Tech realignment with MAGA, which now means Meta, X, and TikTok may become mor...
Feb 01, 2025•29 min
What the ever loving fuck. That’s our intro today. But we do have a structure. Julian’s going to review the Executive Order chaos, including the pardoning and deputizing of fascist street gangs. Derek’s going to explain what the ever loving fuck it means for health agencies to turn off access to health data. And I’ll look at two Xtian responses to fascism: one hypocritical and one poetic… but maybe toothless. Show Notes Freed Capitol riot ringleaders regroup - and vow 'retribution' Learn more ab...
Jan 30, 2025•56 min
Full episode available here. The alien from Venus in George King’s head said: “Prepare yourself. You are to be the voice of interplanetary parliament.” It’s 1952 and the Englishman has been meditating deeply. Eight days later, a famous yogi from India materializes to explain what’s going on. These experiences became the basis for the Aetherius Society—an organization that still has 35 chapters around the planet today. They claim the world’s governments are covering up their communication with a ...
Jan 27, 2025•6 min
On Jan 10, the Oregon Nurses Association launched the largest healthcare strike in Oregon state history. Some 5k frontline caregivers from 8 Providence hospitals and 6 clinics have been holding the line in freezing temperatures as they fight for basic rights that their employer—a Catholic nonprofit healthcare system whose C Suite members make millions of dollars every year—refuses to give them. Derek discusses why such strikes, and unions in general, are so important as the new administration ta...
Jan 25, 2025•34 min
One of the top podcasts in the world—even beating out Rogan for a few hours—is popularizing a well-meaning intervention for non-speaking autistic people. Unfortunately, that intervention happens to be a proven failure, and may set autistic and disability rights discourse back by decades. Filmmaker Ky Dicken’s The Telepathy Tapes podcast delves into the world of Facilitated Communication, in which non-speaking people are believed to miraculously gain access to complex written language after lives...
Jan 23, 2025•1 hr 16 min
The seventh installment of Matthew’s Five Big Questions Posed to an Extremely Thoughtful Person. Sam Adler-Bell is a journalist, political theorist, and co-host of one of Matthew’s favourite podcasts, Know Your Enemy—a show about the American right. They discuss the normalization of genocide, the stark comforts of Freud and Janet Malcolm, the relief of DW Winnicott, how we can’t avoid playing the role of our own mothers, and also good advice from his dad, a labour lawyer who knows something abou...
Jan 21, 2025•33 min
Twitter Files journalist Alex Berenson recently published two articles claiming that Moderna covered up a child's death from a Moderna Covid booster trial—and the FDA is complicit. Children’s Health Defense then hosted him on their TV program to learn more about this outrageous scandal. Do Berenson's claims hold up? All Derek did was click on the links in his own article to discover the "truth." He looks at this phenomenon through the lens of the 2020 book, Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticis...
Jan 20, 2025•4 min
We know Bryan Johnson gobbles 100 pills a day. He pumps his son’s plasma through his veins. He does light therapy on his junk and wants to live forever. But do we understand how Johnson’s fascinations reflect his Mormon heritage? No. No we don’t. That’s why we called our very own Salt Lake City expert, Blair Hodges, host of the Relationscapes podcast. Blair joins Matthew to discuss Johnson’s transhumanism, which has roots in the LDS but has also led him away from it. They cover the spirituality ...
Jan 18, 2025•48 min
In January, 2023, Bloomberg published an article about how tech entrepreneur turned longevity stan, Bryan Johnson, spends $2 million a year in an attempt to live forever—or at least until age 200, as the goalposts shift. Then a Netflix documentary, Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever, dropped on January 1, taking a deep dive into Johnson’s quest and complex personal life. A strange thing happened along the way: Johnson felt much more personable and relatable than ever before to many vie...
Jan 16, 2025•1 hr 6 min
A one-time drop of Derek's new podcast, Clarity Lab, the official podcast of Siris Health, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit building a free educational platform and curating social media channels that feature experts presenting health and science in a clear, compelling manner. Celery juice. Coffee enemas. Ozone therapy. The list of pseudoscientific cancer "treatments" is endless. Yet they all risk pushing people in vulnerable positions toward untenable "cures." Dr Andrea Love joins Derek Beres to discuss t...
Jan 14, 2025•36 min
Matthew sits down with sex-work veteran and social justice advocate Esme Providence Brown for the first of two chinwags about our famous New Age / wellness antifeminist, Kelly Brogan, and how her craven politics bolster the permission structure for Trumpian misogyny. They track her political and aesthetic journey from labcoat-wearer to wellness pole dancer to BDSM cosplayer—a spiral through deepening layers of appropriation, disavowal of responsibility, and cringe-tastic ideas. This is only Part...
Jan 13, 2025•6 min
UCSF epidemiology and biostatistics professor Vinay Prasad's star rose when he compared the US response to Covid-19 to the beginnings of the Third Reich in October, 2021. Though a less famous contrarian than others in the MAHA sphere, the hematologist-oncologist has honed his social media trolling over the past few years, always ready for a fight, evidence be damned. Derek and Julian look at two recent videos that signal Prasad might be angling for a position in a potential RFK Jr-run HHS—and al...
Jan 11, 2025•36 min
Like it or not, 2025 is here. What happens in post-truth America when formerly fringe conspiracy theorists, religious extremists, pseudoscience-peddlers, and wannabe authoritarians become a government—now weaponized against their personal enemies, both foreign and domestic? Should political analysis take a page from academics who study professional wrestling? We each offer our views on what's ahead. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jan 09, 2025•58 min
George van Tassel was the original UFO contactee. He claimed to have been visited by aliens from Venus in 1953, which led to him hosting thousands of people at the annual Interplanetary Spacecraft Convention for almost 20 years. He channeled “Ashtar, ”a figure still popular in “Galactic Federation” conspiritualist circles today, and spent 25 years building a time machine based on telepathic communications with aliens. Julian unpacks the wild story of van Tassel’s airstrip, the Mojave Desert’s Gi...
Jan 06, 2025•6 min
Journalist and author Josie Reisman says we can’t understand the Trump era without understanding his life-long pro-wrestling fandom, and his bonds with one of his closest friends, WWE tycoon Vince McMahon. Reisman argues that McMahon’s invention of “neokayfabe,” in which storylines and real life are purposefully and artfully confused, blurs the distinction between fact and fiction. It makes consumers, followers, and voters complicit in creating a spectacle of cruelty. It’s the kind of argument t...
Jan 04, 2025•46 min
British entrepreneur and investor Steven Bartlett launched his podcast, Diary of a CEO, in 2017. He quickly found an audience in the tech world, which gave him access to a wide range of celebrities and businesspeople from various domains. By 2024, the podcast became one of the top 5 in the world, netting Bartlett and his team a reported $25M this year alone. Yet as Bartlett’s star rose, his guest list began becoming more and more suspect. Pertinent to our beat, contrarian wellness influencers an...
Jan 02, 2025•1 hr 18 min
Happy New Year’s Eve! The sixth installment of Matthew’s Five Big Questions Posed to an Extremely Thoughtful Person. Writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit is the author of more than 20 books on feminism, western and indigenous history, popular power, social change and insurrection, wandering and walking, hope and disaster. Show Notes Rebecca Solnit Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dec 31, 2024•28 min
Ozempic might be all the rage among people who want to lose weight, but wellness influencers and MAHA acolytes are raging against the antidiabetic medication. Derek investigates recent statements by RFK Jr and Calley Means and holds up their claims to the data we can all see online. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dec 30, 2024•6 min
We've been highly critical of The Free Press in the past, but a recent memoir-article about grappling with a familial history of polio by Jana Kozlowski stood out. Derek and Julian take no issue with the piece, which was an emotional plea to understand the ravages of polio and the efficacy of vaccines. The comment section is another thing. Show Notes Polio Ravaged My Family. Forget Its Horror at Your Peril. The First Five Errors in the Moth in the Iron Lung Book The First Five Errors in Dissolvi...
Dec 28, 2024•39 min
