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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: Fascia Facts vs Fictions (w/David Lesondak) Jan 13, 2024

Show notes

The online pseudoscience clearing house, Human Garage, treats fascia as a cure-all to nearly every disease imaginable. Yet as today's guest, David Lesondak, Senior Structural Integrator and Fascia Specialist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s Center for Integrative Medicine and author of the bestselling Fascia: What It Is and Why It Matters, tells Derek, they begin with a little bit of truth before going full Quantum nonsense.

David breaks down fascia this week: what it is, how it functions in the body, and why fascia pseudoscience is so dangerous.

Show Notes

David Lesondak's website

The Tissue That Connects Our Muscles May Be a Key to Better Health

Harvard scientists closer to solving centuries-old heart mystery

Human Garage: Manifesting Through Fascia

Human Garage: Anti-Gravity - Full Spinal Decompression

Human Garage: Autoimmune Diseases

Human Garage: Erectile Dysfunction

Human Garage: Anal Sphincter Release

Human Garage: Ileocecal Valve

Human Garage: Trauma Stored in Fascia

Human Garage: Trauma Release Maneuver

Human Garage: Fascia Work Cures Hives

Human Garage: Fascia Facial Release for Acne

Human Garage: Heart is a Vortex

Human Garage: Movement Instead of Medicine

Human Garage: Faith Healing

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188: Everybody Wants to Save the Children (feat Esme Providence Brown) Jan 11, 2024

Show notes

What happens when white knights role-play at saving all the children? What impacts do they have on the actual realities faced by trafficked children and adults? And how does their propaganda—rolled out in blockbuster trauma porn events like Sound of Freedom—stigmatize and endanger adult sex workers, especially those who are already marginalized? Esme Providence Brown returns as our correspondent to run it down.

Brown retired from professional sex work in 2021 after twenty-year career in Manhattan. She first joined us on Episode 169 to talk about the strange overlaps between sex work and the neo-tantra yoga movement. In this richly-researched report and discussion with Matthew, she examines the history of and present-day ramifications of anti-trafficking movements—projects that often scapegoat women who are secretly desired but publicly hated.

“Everybody wants to save the children,” Brown says, “but very few people want to step into the tangled web of what this actually means or the history of how ‘salvation’ movements - hobbled by grandiosity, white knighthood, and patriarchal ignorance—have incurred collateral damage while failing in their ultimate mission of liberation.”

Show notes for this one are extensive, and won’t fit into most pod apps. You can find them here.

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Bonus Sample: Chris Rufo Wants America to Return to 1776 Jan 08, 2024

Show notes

Rightwing activist Chris Rufo recently led the charge in helping oust Claudine Gay from the Harvard presidency. While the charge is plagiarism—a charge Gay herself acknowledged—the reason for Rufo’s intense focus on her has little to do with academic pedigree.

Rufo, a former vegetarian yogi, is leading the right-wing charge against DEI trainings, LGBTQ+ rights, and any mention of critical race theory. Rolling off his "victory" of Gay's resignation, he's published a blog post that he hopes will become the guiding manifesto for the "New Right." As Derek breaks down, this means returning America back to 1776 in many ways.

Show Notes

The New Right Activism

How We Squeezed Harvard to Push Claudine Gay Out

Claudine Gay: my part in her downfall

Bill Ackman’s wife is accused of plagiarizing part of her dissertation

Contracts Between Hungarian Nonprofit and Christopher Rufo, Others, Raise Foreign Agent Concerns

The Plagiarism War Has Begun

A lesson in persuasion — Loretta Ross

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Brief: RFK Jr’s New Director of Propaganda Jan 06, 2024

Show notes

On January 6, 2021 Del Bigtree took the stage at the MAGA Health Freedom Rally a few blocks away from where Donald Trump had just instigated a riot. He joked about how the former president was a hard act to follow.

But he dug deep and persevered by stringing together key dog whistles of Trumpian disinformation and resentment: public health officials are corrupt, COVID is a scam, and the election was probably stolen.

Such performances have gotten Bigtree’s Highwire show nuked by YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. But they’ve also made him wealthy, and with his new appointment as RFK Jr’s new Director of Communications, his political star is now rising.

Matthew runs down what we know about Bigtree, and what he thinks this appointment will bring.

Show Notes

An Important Message To The Medical Freedom Community from Del Bigtree

RFK Jr. hires top anti-vaccine activist as campaign communications director

The Disinformation Dozen — Center for Countering Digital Hate | CCDH

Brief: RFK's Health Propaganda Roundtable — Conspirituality

Brief: RFK Jr Loses New Age Support Over Israel — Conspirituality

Pandemic Profiteers — Center for Countering Digital Hate | CCDH

Tracy Beanz - The HighWire

How three conspiracy theorists took 'Q' and sparked Qanon

Anti-Vaxxer Del Bigtree’s Unhinged Quest for Unvaccinated Blood Leads Him to Mexico

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187: Project 2025: An Authoritarian Conspiracy Jan 04, 2024

Show notes

Last year, the Heritage Foundation published a 920-page document that lays out the conservative organization’s road map for the next Republican president’s first four months in office, which could very well be Donald Trump. Project 2025 rests on four pillars devoted to the implementation of the unitary executive theory—basically, all levers of the American government bowing down to the executive branch. If this sounds like a roadmap to authoritarianism, that’s because it is.

With 54 conservative and religious organizations signing on and over 450 contributors, as well as untold millions in dark money, Heritage is leading the charge with this anti-abortion, anti-LBGTQ+, anti-DEI, anti-civil liberties game plan. To date, they’ve interviewed thousands of prospective candidates for the next administration, with the goal of hiring tens of thousands of subservient bureaucrats ready to implement this Christian Nationalistic plan.

Today we break down what the document says and how it could rapidly erode American democracy. And if that sounds like hyperbole, it isn’t.

Show Notes

The Power Worshippers | Katherine Stewart

Behind the Curtain — Scoop: The Trump job applications revealed

The Conservative Plan to Take Over the Country (you need to know about this)

The '3.5% rule': How a small minority can change the world

Dr. Kevin Roberts | Catholic Citizens Annual Banquet

Living a Life of Catholic Integrity in a Hostile World | Roger Severino

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Bonus Sample: Secular Person of Faith: pt 2 (w/Brad Onishi) Jan 01, 2024

Show notes

Friend of the pod and Straight White American Jesus host Brad Onishi returns to pick up with Matthew where they left off in their discussion of post-religious spirituality. They discuss what happens after disenchantment, the spirituality of boredom, and why, as we hurtle into the coming chaos of 2024, it’s good to keep an eye out for new allies in unlikely places.

This is Part Two of two-part conversation. Look for Part One in your pod feeds, dated December 30.

Show Notes

Straight White American Jesus

Axis Mundi Media

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Brief: Secular Person of Faith: pt 1 (w/Brad Onishi) Dec 30, 2023

Show notes

Friend of the pod and Straight White American Jesus host Brad Onishi joins Matthew for a New Year’s discussion of post-religious spirituality. Onishi fills out the details on a nascent identity that many of you might resonate with: the “secular person of faith.” They talk about the false choice of Max Weber’s fork in the road: that either we commit to the sciences or languish in the churches. They discuss Jeffery Kosky’s idea of “disenchantment with disenchantment.” And they try to figure out what Thomas Altizer was going on about when he proposed a “Christian Atheism.”

This is Part One of two-part conversation. Part Two drops Monday, New Year’s Day, on Patreon.

Show Notes

Straight White American Jesus

Axis Mundi Media

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186: Coaches Coaching Coaches Dec 28, 2023

Show notes

Life coaching is big business. The life coaching industry was worth $1.5 billion in 2022 and is considered one of the fastest growing industries in America. The International Coaching Federation reported more than 26,000 coaches in North America in 2020. Yet those numbers are hard to qualify given that you don’t need certifications or training to become a life coach or, as we explore today, coaching of most any sort. Life coaches, business coaches, fertility coaches, “quantum” coaches: every industry has an increasing number of people who want to tell you how to do your job effectively, magically, or quantumally.

Who really benefits from this supposed gold rush of “MULTI 6 FIGURE BUSINESS COACH”, “Multi 8 fig biz mentor”, and “high ticket biz coach helping women scale to 20-30k months”? And has the dilution of the term "coach" damaged credentialed coaches with decades of experience?

Mallory DeMille returns to talk about the coaches who coach coaches industry: marketing tactics, parallels to multilevel marketing, and the glut in the coaching industry.

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Bonus Sample: Under the Xmas Starship Dec 25, 2023

Show notes

The joys of Xmas, the wonder of parenting, the complexities of family, the distinctions between religions and cults, and the compassionate dignity of locating the sacred in our mortal humanity. Julian offers an atheist reflection on the holidays that is equal parts heartwarming, thought-provoking, and (perhaps) inspiring.

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Brief: Cop(Out)28 (w/Maya Lilly) Dec 23, 2023

Show notes

COP28, the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference, recently took place in the UAE. The controversial conference included 2,500 fossil fuel industry lobbyists and featured billionaires flying into Dubai on private jet. Yet, as Maya Lilly—a film, television, and digital media producer who focuses on activist documentary storytelling—tells Derek, it's one of the few places that so many nations and world leaders meet to discuss climate change. And, she says, the financial incentives exist to make even the richest men salivate. Governments just need the political will, and citizens need to vote more climate-forward legislators into office.

Show Notes

Maya Lilly’s Curated Climate Reading List

Earth on verge of five catastrophic climate tipping points, scientists warn

Right-wing media use COP28 to dismiss climate-related deaths

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