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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:

Relief Project #7: Sam Adler-Bell Jan 21, 2025

Show notes

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 about long, uncertain, but always worthwhile battles for the common good.

Show Notes

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Bonus Sample: Calling Out Bullsh*t Jan 20, 2025

Show notes

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 Skepticism in a Data-Driven World.

Show Notes

Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World

Alex Berenson’s article

Children’s Health Defense interview

The Lancet study on Covid vaccination in children

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Brief: Tech-Bro Mormonism (w/Blair Hodges) Jan 18, 2025

Show notes

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 of his money, whether he’s trying to become a living god, and how his home gym has some distinctive Mormon temple elements. Also: is Bryan really as polite as he seems, or is he hiding

Blair has degrees in journalism, religious studies, and disability studies from the University of Utah and Georgetown University. He directed communications for the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Studies at Brigham Young University before moving to the nonprofit sector. He has served as communications director for Volunteers of America, Utah and RMHC of the Intermountain Area. He’s currently working on a research project on the history of intellectual disabilities in Mormon thought.

Show Notes

Relationscapes—Blair Hodges

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240: Bryan Johnson’s Impossible Blueprint Jan 16, 2025

Show notes

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 viewers. Given the Bloomberg journalist is one of the producers, is this the latest propaganda piece by a supplements-pushing huckster, or is Johnson tapping into something much older and deeper about the human condition?

Show Notes

How to Be 18 Years Old Again for Only $2 Million a Year

Politico piece on Mayor Karen Bass and LA Fires

Anna Merlan on LA Fire conspiracies

Ally Carter Diddy-List Fire Conspiracy Theory Shared by Former Bush Official

Nutritionist Reviews The Blueprint Supplements

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Clarity Lab: Fighting Cancer Misinformation Jan 14, 2025

Show notes

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 the dangers of cancer misinformation, as well as why the field of cancer research is so complex—and rewarding.

Dr Andrea Love is an immunologist and microbiologist, as well as subject-matter expert in infectious disease immunology, cancer immunology, and autoimmunity. She writes the Immunologic newsletter.

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Bonus Sample: Kelly Brogan’s Divine Dungeon: Pt 1 (feat/Esme Providence Brown) Jan 13, 2025

Show notes

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 One!

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Brief: Vinay Prasad’s Pick-me Campaign Jan 11, 2025

Show notes

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 all the misinformation he continues to spread.

Show Notes

BMJ's Systematic Review on Quarantine Measures

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239: Conspiracy Of Dunces Jan 09, 2025

Show notes

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.

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Bonus Sample: The Giant Rock Interplanetary Spacecraft Convention Jan 06, 2025

Show notes

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 Giant Rock, and how the FBI may have been involved in his mysterious death and subsequent disappearance of his cellular rejuvenation equipment.

This is part of a series of free-standing episodes that excavates the history of pseudoscience and conspiracism beneath contemporary New Age spirituality.

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Brief: Trump the Babyface, Trump the Heel (w/Abraham Josie Reisman) Jan 04, 2025

Show notes

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 that once seen, can’t be unseen. It helps explain the contradictory and performative politics of Trump—and how, under his leadership, the administrative state may not be destroyed by fascism directly, but by a theatre of cynicism and catharsis that will allow the latent fascism of the American Empire to explode.

Show Notes

Welcome to Neokayfabe

Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America — Abraham Josephine Riesman // Writer

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