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Conspirituality — Philosophy
Conspirituality

Dismantling New Age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy-mad yogis. At best, the conspirituality movement attacks public health efforts in times of crisis. At worst, it fronts and recruits for the fever-dream of QAnon. As the alt-right and New Age horseshoe toward each other in a blur of disinformation, clear discourse, and good intentions get smothered. Charismatic influencers exploit their followers by co-opting conspiracy theories on a spectrum of intensity ranging from vaccines to child trafficking. In the process, spiritual beliefs that have nurtured creativity and meaning are transforming into memes of a quickly-globalizing paranoia. Conspirituality Podcast attempts to bring understanding to this landscape. A journalist, a cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic discuss the stories, cognitive dissonances, and cultic dynamics tearing through the yoga, wellness, and new spirituality worlds. Mainstream outlets have noticed the problem. We crowd-source, research, analyze, and dream answers to it.

Copyright: © 2023 Conspirituality

Latest Episodes:

Brief: Is It Fascism? Mar 29, 2025

Show notes

Derek and Julian discuss Robert Paxton's 2004 book, The Anatomy of Fascism, in light of 2025 America.

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250: The Mercola Tapes Mar 27, 2025

Show notes

McGill University science communicator, Jonathan Jarry, was recently given hundreds of hours of Zoom calls between alt-med salesman, Joseph Mercola, and a supposed clairvoyant that goes by Bahlon. Jonathan joins us to discuss what he found.

Show Notes

Brad Schimel Admitted to Having "Psychologically Beat the Daylights Out" Of His 8-Year-Old Daughter - MeidasTouch News

Rallying Anti-Musk Donors, Liberal Judge Raises $24 Million in Key Court Contest - The New York Times

Here are claims about Wisconsin’s Supreme Court candidates — and the facts

Ahead of Wisconsin Supreme Court election, Elon Musk PAC offers cash for pledge - WPR

Trump backs Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate in hotly contested race - ABC News

Billionaires become a focus of the 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court race

Brad Schimel Begins Campaigning With Anti-MLK Advocate Charlie Kirk - MeidasTouch News

Exclusive Videos Show Dr. Joe Mercola’s Dangerous Ideas Whipped up by Alleged Medium

Brief: RFK's Health Propaganda Roundtable

Terminated HHS grants

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Bonus Sample: The War on Fat People Mar 24, 2025

Show notes

The Wellness Company is now selling retatrutide, a weight loss drug currently undergoing stage 3 trials by Eli Lilly. An anti-vax company that uses fear-based marketing to push supplements appears to be overstepping legal lines. Yet will they be held accountable in an RFK Jr-led HHS?

Derek looks at private market healthcare propaganda from Ronald Reagan to Kennedy, showing how health is not the real goal of MAHA. But if they can sell untested products to fat and chronically ill patients along the way, all the better.

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Brief: Jordan Peterson’s Shady Billionaire Backers Mar 22, 2025

Show notes

Julian covers the recent Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference in London. Headlined by Jordan Peterson, featuring Konstantin Kisin, Ayan Hirsi Ali, Jonathan Pageau, and Eric Weinstein, the conference positioned itself as an inspiring cultural gathering focused on reclaiming Western values.

Behind the scenes, a hedge-fund billionaire new media baron, conservative libertarian think tank, shady funding source in Dubai, and an evangelical English aristocrat use the prestige of ARC and its celebrity figureheads to popularize a very specific political, economic, and religious agenda.

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249: Kings of Pain Mar 20, 2025

Show notes

Trump administration Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, recently stated the American economy is going to need a "detox" period. And so today we look at peak the conspirituality convergences between biological and political purification projects.

Quinn Slobodian, professor of international history at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, joins Matthew in the final segment to offer his big picture view on the Kings of Pain.

Show Notes

Johns Hopkins to lose 2,000 jobs after Trump’s $800m cut in USAid funding

Young scientists see career pathways vanish as schools adapt to federal funding cuts

Report: mRNA vaccines are in RFK Jr’s crosshairs; funding in question

FDA Makes Flu Vaccine Recommendations Without Convening Advisors

HHS sends all employees a $25,000 voluntary buyout offer

Exclusive: US CDC plans study into vaccines and autism, sources say

USDA gears up for MAHA dietary guidelines update

Musk Said No One Has Died Since Aid Was Cut. That Isn’t True.

Watch CNBC's full interview with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent

Why we must teach medical students about the role of physicians during the Holocaust | AAMC

Teaching Hard Truths About Medicine and the Holocaust | Journal of Ethics | American Medical Association

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Bonus Sample: Antifascist Woodshed 2.1 (Punching Nazis?) Mar 17, 2025

Show notes

Click here to hear the full episode on Patreon.

Second of Matthew’s two-part examination of why the hell questions of force, non-violent resistance with and without force, unarmed violence and property damage, and armed violence are so incredibly hard to talk about in a culture thick with spiritual and political bypassing. Are we capable of understanding the difference between morality and strategy?

Part 1 focused on philosophy and psychology while today the focus will be on definitions and tactics. Together, both parts will push back on conspiracism about the identities, motives, and methods of antifascists. Both will present slices of the rich discourse on violence and non-violence from antifascist history, including clarifying definitions of key terms. Both will open a space to think carefully about what intensities of self and community defense are both useful and tolerable in the fight against fascism.

Today we’ll get into the very thick weeds of how the “strategic nonviolence” research of Gene Sharp, Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan is framed as empirical, but may be way more about idealizing Gandhi than about facts on the ground.

Huge list of references for each!

Show Notes

Stopping the Press: The Threats to the Media Posed by the Second Trump Term | The New Yorker

What the FBI Has Done, and Kash Patel Could Do - Columbia Journalism Review

Hakeem Jeffries cracks down on Trump speech disruptions

Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer Got Punched—You Can Thank the Black Bloc | The Nation

Aamer Rahman: Is it really ok to punch nazis?

$16.5M settlement reached in class-action lawsuit over mass arrests during 2010 G20 summit | CBC News

Meditations at the ringed fence around G20 Toronto - rabble.ca

Remaining Human: A Buddhist Perspective on Occupy Wall Street - Michael Stone

Brief: The Outside Agitator Conspiracy Trope (w/Dr. Peniel Joseph) — Conspirituality

Anti-fascists linked to zero murders in the US in 25 years | Donald Trump | The Guardian

40 Ways to Fight Fascists: Sunshine

rules for radicals | saul d. alinsky

198 METHODS OF NONVIOLENT ACTION | — Gene Sharp

She Interrupted a Town-Hall Meeting and Was Dragged Out by Private Security - The New York Times

Martin Luther King Jr. had a much more radical message than a dream of racial brotherhood

The Enigma of Frantz Fanon | The Nation

Frantz Fanon and the struggle against colonisation | MR Online

Frantz Fanon and the Paradox of Anticolonial Violence – Solidarity

Frantz Fanon—a vital defence of violence by the oppressed - Socialist Worker

Land and Freedom (1995 Ken Loach) [ENG Sub] (starting at the collectivization debate scene)

Full Spectrum Resistance — McBay

The Failure of Nonviolence | The Anarchist Library

Beyond Violence and Nonviolence | ROAR Magazine

Debunking the myths around nonviolent resistance | ROAR Magazine

Social movements and the (mis)use of research: Extinction Rebellion and the 3.5% rule

Responding to Domestic Terrorism: A Crisis of Legitimacy - Harvard Law Review

Domestic Terrorism: Definitions, Terminology, and Methodology — FBI

676 | United States Sentencing Commission

Activists use 'Tesla Takedown' protests to fight job cuts by Musk and Trump | Reuters

Tesla vehicles destroyed, vandalized since Musk began role at White House, authorities say - ABC News

Anti-DOGE protests at Tesla stores target Elon Musk's bottom line | AP News

Tyre Extinguishers: A Night Out with the Climate Activists Sabotaging SUVs

Leaflet | Tyre Extinguishers

Tesla Stocks Tumble as Elon Musk’s Political Role Grows More Divisive - The New York Times

Internal Memos: Senior USAID Leaders Warned Trump Appointees of Hundreds of Thousands of Deaths From Closing Agency

Beyond Violence and Nonviolence | ROAR Magazine

Violence Will Only Hurt the Trump Resistance | The New Republic

Why Not Riot? Interview with Author Ben Case - CounterPunch.org

10 Lessons on Filmmaking from Director Ken Loach

BBC Taster - How to Make a Ken Loach Film

Land and Freedom (1995 Ken Loach) [ENG Sub]

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Brief: Antifascist Woodshed 2 (Punching Nazis?) Mar 15, 2025

Show notes

First of Matthew's two-part examination of why the hell questions of force, non-violent resistance with and without force, unarmed violence and property damage, and armed violence are so incredibly hard to talk about in a culture thick with spiritual and political bypassing. Are we capable of understanding the difference between morality and strategy?

Part 1 focuses on philosophy and psychology while Part 2 focuses on definitions and tactics. Together, both parts will push back on conspiracism about the identities, motives, and methods of antifascists. Both will present slices of the rich discourse on violence and non-violence from antifascist history, including clarifying definitions of key terms. Both will open a space to think carefully about what intensities of self and community defense are both useful and tolerable in the fight against fascism.

Part 2 gets into the very thick weeds of how the “strategic nonviolence” research of Gene Sharp, Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan is framed as empirical, but may be way more about idealizing Gandhi than about facts on the ground. Drops Monday on Patreon.

Huge list of references for each!

Show Notes

Stopping the Press: The Threats to the Media Posed by the Second Trump Term | The New Yorker

What the FBI Has Done, and Kash Patel Could Do - Columbia Journalism Review

Hakeem Jeffries cracks down on Trump speech disruptions

Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer Got Punched—You Can Thank the Black Bloc | The Nation

Aamer Rahman: Is it really ok to punch nazis?

$16.5M settlement reached in class-action lawsuit over mass arrests during 2010 G20 summit | CBC News

Meditations at the ringed fence around G20 Toronto - rabble.ca

Remaining Human: A Buddhist Perspective on Occupy Wall Street - Michael Stone

Brief: The Outside Agitator Conspiracy Trope (w/Dr. Peniel Joseph) — Conspirituality

Anti-fascists linked to zero murders in the US in 25 years | Donald Trump | The Guardian

40 Ways to Fight Fascists: Sunshine

rules for radicals | saul d. alinsky

198 METHODS OF NONVIOLENT ACTION | — Gene Sharp

She Interrupted a Town-Hall Meeting and Was Dragged Out by Private Security - The New York Times

Martin Luther King Jr. had a much more radical message than a dream of racial brotherhood

The Enigma of Frantz Fanon | The Nation

Frantz Fanon and the struggle against colonisation | MR Online

Frantz Fanon and the Paradox of Anticolonial Violence – Solidarity

Frantz Fanon—a vital defence of violence by the oppressed - Socialist Worker

Land and Freedom (1995 Ken Loach) [ENG Sub] (starting at the collectivization debate scene)

Full Spectrum Resistance — McBay

The Failure of Nonviolence | The Anarchist Library

Beyond Violence and Nonviolence | ROAR Magazine

Debunking the myths around nonviolent resistance | ROAR Magazine

Social movements and the (mis)use of research: Extinction Rebellion and the 3.5% rule

Responding to Domestic Terrorism: A Crisis of Legitimacy - Harvard Law Review

Domestic Terrorism: Definitions, Terminology, and Methodology — FBI

676 | United States Sentencing Commission

Activists use 'Tesla Takedown' protests to fight job cuts by Musk and Trump | Reuters

Tesla vehicles destroyed, vandalized since Musk began role at White House, authorities say - ABC News

Anti-DOGE protests at Tesla stores target Elon Musk's bottom line | AP News

Tyre Extinguishers: A Night Out with the Climate Activists Sabotaging SUVs

Leaflet | Tyre Extinguishers

Tesla Stocks Tumble as Elon Musk’s Political Role Grows More Divisive - The New York Times

Internal Memos: Senior USAID Leaders Warned Trump Appointees of Hundreds of Thousands of Deaths From Closing Agency

Beyond Violence and Nonviolence | ROAR Magazine

Violence Will Only Hurt the Trump Resistance | The New Republic

Why Not Riot? Interview with Author Ben Case - CounterPunch.org

10 Lessons on Filmmaking from Director Ken Loach

BBC Taster - How to Make a Ken Loach Film

Land and Freedom (1995 Ken Loach) [ENG Sub]

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

248: What Side Are You On? Mar 13, 2025

Show notes

Lately a lot of folks (including us) have been doing the fascism comparisons.

The questions we ponder this week: How long it takes for fascism to fully dig its roots in, how varied is the opposition along the way, and what role does the media play?

Show Notes

165: Outrage Machine (w/Tobias Rose-Stockwell)

16 October 1919 | Hitler Archive

Fritz Gerlich, publicist and prophet – how did he resist the Nazis?

Nazi Germany’s Schriftleitergesetz: The End of Freedom of the Press - Arolsen Archives

The illegal press – Verzetsmuseum

The Liberal Media Always Fails Against Fascism — Robert Evans

Can a news media that doesn’t really oppose fascism ever cover it well?

Against Normalization: The Lesson of the “Munich Post” | Los Angeles Review of Books

The Newspaper Axis: Six Press Barons Who Enabled Hitler

Fascist-Sympathizing Newspaper Barons Were the Blueprint for Today’s Right-Wing Media

Media's Failure in Times of Crisis: Election Coverage in the Interwar Period

How Journalists Covered the Rise of Mussolini and Hitler | Smithsonian

How Britain's Nazi-loving press baron made the case for Hitler | The Times of Israel

Wahl-Jorgensen, K. (2016). Is there a “postmodern turn” in journalism? In C. Peters and M. Broersma (Eds), Rethinking Journalism (pp. 97-111). London: Routledge.

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Bonus Sample: Sex, Lies, & Communist Spies Mar 10, 2025

Show notes

Subscribe for full episode

The MAGA attack on government jobs, takeover of government agencies, and purge of supposed “DEI” and “woke” professionals has a long history in the US. Julian uses old-timey newsreels, biographies, and events in the public record to trace the lines from 1919 to today, making stops at the so-called Red Summer’s “race riots,” Red Scare communist panics, Hollywood Blacklist, and Lavender Scare that fired thousands for being presumed gay.

Unrelated to any of this completely useless and repressive paranoid bigotry, actual Soviet spies were being apprehended and prosecuted—even then everything was not on the level. The prosecutors had their own hidden skeletons and shady bedfellows, even as they claimed the patriotic moral high ground.

At the heart of this history is a lineage of men who never let truth get in the way of gaining, and wielding, power and cruelty. Julian uncovers a surprisingly direct lineage of dirty-tricks demagogue succession, from Woodrow Wilson to A. Mitchell Palmer, to J. Edgar Hoover, to Joe McCarthy, to Roy Cohn, to Roger Stone, to our current president.

Editorial Note: The Paul Robeson clip that starts the episode is a re-enactment by James Earl Jones for the Zinn Education Project. It uses the transcript of Robeson’s 1956 appearance before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee.

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Brief: MAHA's Soft Eugenics Mar 08, 2025

Show notes

MAHA's response to the measles outbreak has been horrific, though expectable. Yet RFK Jr's op-ed, in which he advocated for the MMR vaccine, ripped apart his coalition—briefly.

Derek looks at the responses to Bobby's moment of clarity, then contemplates what MAHA really wants now that their champion is the bureaucracy.

Show Notes

Dr Jessica Knurick’s video

Vitamin A For Measles: Kevin Klatt

Measles is not a harmless illness — complications include brain damage, immune amnesia, and death

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