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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: RFK's Health Propaganda Roundtable Jul 08, 2023

Show notes

On June 26, presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy, Jr hosted a "health policy roundtable" on Rumble. His guests included Joe Mercola, Sherri Tenpenny, Mikki Willis, and a host of other anti-vax luminaries. Very little policy was discussed, though RFK put forward plenty of ideas about executive orders, including blackballing scientists and researchers behind FDA-approved drugs and censoring scientific journals. Derek breaks down some of the more egregious moments.

Show Notes

Health Policy Roundtable on Rumble

Joe Rogan's worst misinformation yet, with RFK Jr.

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161: The Timeline is Chaotic (Conspirituality Audiobook Excerpt) Jul 06, 2023

Show notes

Matthew narrates the first three sections of the audiobook, Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat.

More information on our book here.

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Bonus Sample: From Pranams to Pogroms Jul 03, 2023

Show notes

Derek discusses the new Conspirituality book with filmmaker and podcaster Mike Hull at Powell's Books on June 26, 2023.

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Brief: RFK Jr Flirts with Body Fascism (w/Natalia Petrzela) Jul 01, 2023

Show notes

Friend of the pod and historian of American fitness culture, Natalia Petrzela, joins Matthew to shed light on a new development in RFK Jr’s campaign to disrupt the Democratic Party: his recent workout campaign videos from the barbell patio of Gold’s Gym in Venice beach.

Topics include the iconic status of Gold’s, why Bobby Muscles is in Wranglers rather than lycra, how he’s both drawing on and distorting the Kennedy fitness legacy, body mastery as the ultimate American frontier, political pissing contests, the ableist “sweatwashing” of complex health policy problems, the body-shaming of soft, flabby, unpatriotic liberals, and how the whole scene—pumped by biohackers and tech bros—has some alarming political echoes.

Show Notes

Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America’s Exercise Obsession

Matthew’s Twitter thread on Bobby Muscles echoing body fascism.

"Go, you chicken fat, go!" — Meredith Wilson

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160: Empire of Lies (w/Sofia Cherici & Jan Zabka) Jun 29, 2023

Show notes

Chaos in Russia! Wagner’s pagan neo-Nazis. Is conspirituality unique to a failing American empire in the internet age? Does it require Californian New Age spirituality, with conspiracy theories that weave around alternative medicine, for-profit pharma with no social safety net, and the reactionary politics of White Christian Nationalism?

This week, Julian explores a different version of Conspirituality. This form translates QAnon for a European audience and calls for a return to the golden age of the Russian empire, but also to an ancient pre-Christian Slavic identity united across borders in pagan faith.

Show Notes

The Everyday Religious Life in Wagner PMC, via Observatoire

Candance Rondeaux on Wagner, Pan-Slavism, al-Qaeda

Jan Zabka’s piece on QAnon in Czech/Slovakia, Prophets of Freedom and Doom

Sofia Cherici’s piece on QAnon’s cross-cultural evolution, Translating QAnon

Marlene Laurelle on the Rodnoverie Movement

Fake News sites centered in Veles, Macedonia had Russian and American ties

A Photographer and an Artist Walk into a Fake News Factory from Coda Story

Original Book of Veles forgery

Main interstitial music: Bus Ride to Gulu — Pete Kuzma

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Bonus Sample: God Seemed Like A Dumb Reason to Break Up Jun 26, 2023

Show notes

Today in our Listeners’ Stories installment, Lynn Short joins her partner Justin to discuss how they met, grew up in, and grew out of a branch of “Gnosis,” a theosophical cult founded in the 1950s by Samael Aun Weor in Columbia.

Weor was a classic old-school spiritual pervert, with 60-plus (likely ghostwritten) books to his name, and a passion for meddling in his followers’ sex lives.

Lynn and Justin describe what it was like to wake up to each other again—and to normal lives—after 17 years of practicing non-orgasmic sex and missionary work. A unique and hopeful look into a relationship that survived coercive influence—a bond that didn’t become a trauma bond.

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Brief: An Atheist's Guide to Spirituality Jun 24, 2023

Show notes

“It’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong," wrote Richard Feynman. But does curiosity end where awareness cuts off? Derek explores the positive and negative sides of the spiritual search, especially in light of the burgeoning eco-spiritual movement.

Show Notes

I’m “spiritual but not religious.” Here’s what that means for a physicist

How to hold onto a sense of wonder

‘Big Earth energy’: A new era of nature spirituality is here

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159: Cults & Cultures Jun 22, 2023

Show notes

To celebrate book launch month, we started a little “takeaway” series two weeks ago. First, Derek led us through “Science and Sensibility,” in which he shared some really good practices for science literacy, along with examples of how conspirituality maximizes social stress and struggling medical systems to exploit wellness consumers.

Last week, Julian addressed the aching questions asked by those in love with the positive gifts of contemplative practice, but who now see the cognitive fallacies and naive psychology at play in many spiritual communities.

This week, Matthew sets pseudoscience and spiritual bypassing into the social context of cultic relationships, reviewing some of the tortured dynamics we monitored during COVID, laying out a few cult-resistant hygiene rules, some pointers on avoiding stigmatization, and asking tough questions about where the whole cult discourse thing is going in this parasocial era.

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Bonus Sample: Devouring Dragons Jun 19, 2023

Show notes

The exiled cult leader, the MAGA mastermind, the Chinese con-artist billionaire, and the CCP. Insatiable dragons, all. Each claims to be at war with evil, as their fiery propaganda melts the minds of far-right media consumers. Julian connects the dots on these overlapping stories of life in the “Dharma-ending times.”

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158: Spirituality Without the Con Jun 15, 2023

Show notes

We've spent three years tracking the slide from online wellness influencer to red-pilled conspiracy promoter, from yoga and breath work teacher to anti-vax ivermectin slinger, from vegan raw chocolate aficionado to anti-immigrant, transphobic, election denial. Turns out, the roots of this phenomenon run deep.

Along the way we've gotten a lot of praise, plenty of pushback, and a slew of sincere and heartbroken questions about what may be left for those in love with the positive gifts of contemplative practice and community, who now see the pitfalls we've pointed out. We speak to these today.

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