Conspirituality - TopPodcast.com

View Top 200 Chart

Back to Rankings Page

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: Unmasking Liana Shanti (w/Jennings Brown) Apr 22, 2023

Show notes

Jennings Brown is becoming the Dr. Who of cult journalism. Every few years he pops up on a very different planet in the cultiverse, and tries to repair the timeline.

These days he’s deep into the story of a cult leader who seems to have no “presence” at all. Liana Shanti has managed to recruit about 180 women into her lucrative fever dream of Satanic Panic, recovered memories, starvation diets, and family destruction—all from behind a keyboard and a podcast microphone.

Who is Liana Shanti, and why isn’t she Liane Wilson any more?

Show Notes

Inside Liana Shanti’s Lemurian Mystery School — Jennings Brown

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

150: Spiritual Influencer Theory Apr 20, 2023

Show notes

Julian and Matthew go big-picture in this tour through all the elements that construct and drive spiritual Influencers.

At the center of the parasocial storm is charisma, which covers over the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of wellness content. Charisma is the only real currency in unregulated spaces. It’s compensatory, and very anxious.

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

Bonus Sample: From Rabbit Hole to Research (w/Jaigris Hodson) Apr 17, 2023

Show notes

Our Listener Story this week comes from Dr. Jaigris Hodson, Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair for Digital Communication for the Public Interest at Royal Roads University in Victoria, British Columbia.

Dr. Hodson shares her pandemic journey with inflammatory breast cancer, and how, even as a misinformation researcher, she was vulnerable to the hope sold by alt-health grifters. After completing treatment, she turned her research attention to cancer misinformation, and is now innovating research methods for analyzing how emotion drives misinformation consumption and virality.

Show Notes

Jaigris Hodson | Royal Roads University

The Podcast: Digital Public Interest Collective

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

Brief: The Promises & (Mostly) Perils of Ketamine Therapy Apr 15, 2023

Show notes

Though not specifically a psychedelic — ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic — ketamine therapy is being touted as a depression treatment and, for some, a new form of spiritual healing. And indeed, some of the results are promising. But with Ketamine Wellness Centers and Field Trip Health both shutting down ketamine clinics across the country, leaving clients scrambling to find relief. Are these psychedelic entrepreneurs placing too much emphasis on scaling and shareholders and not enough on healing, even though their marketing efforts claim the opposite?

Derek looks into the sordid developments of ketamine therapy, including the botched trials that ultimately received FDA approval.

Show Notes

Ketamine infusion: The new therapy for depression, explained

New analysis claims the FDA rushed ketamine’s approval for depression treatment

Excessive drinking costs $249 billion. Can one dose of ketamine curb alcoholism?

‘I’m terrified’: Patients scramble for treatment after 13 ketamine clinics shut down

How ketamine-fueled dreams can promote a spiritual approach to mental health and therapy

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

149: Spiritual Heartbreak Apr 13, 2023

Show notes

“I would pursue transcendence and live with its inevitable close cousins, disappointment and heartbreak, for most of my life.” So writes “Steven” (not his real name) in the first of our six spiritual heartbreak stories from our Patreon supporters.

“The spiritual by-passing of folks like Marianne Williamson and Eckhart Tolle kept me spinning in a cycle of abuse and unable to see clearly enough to end an abusive marriage with a Unitarian minister.” That’s from Katherine—story number three.

And in our final story, Lynn writes: “I will say even though I've been through a really awful trauma and still have to deal with that residue, I am now happier than I've ever been in my life. I enjoy just being a simple person now, without the ever exhausting pressure of having to perform my religion, to awaken my consciousness.”

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

Bonus Sample: JP Sears’s Woke CBD Grift Apr 10, 2023

Show notes

JP Sears is selling CBD. His new company, Awaken, recently sent out a marketing email extolling the benefits of CBD. Derek looks at the science behind the claims.

Show Notes

CBD is everywhere. But is it a scam?

Inverted U-Shaped Dose-Response Curve of the Anxiolytic Effect of Cannabidiol during Public Speaking in Real Life

Pioneering UAMS Study Warns of CBD Supplements’ Harm to Gut Health

Can Cannabis Help Your Gut?

The Impact of Cannabidiol on Human Brain Function: A Systematic Review

Cannabis, Cannabinoids, and Sleep: a Review of the Literature

Does CBD Help With Insomnia?

Cannabidiol (CBD): What we know and what we don't

Antioxidative and Anti-Inflammatory Properties of Cannabidiol

Cannabidiol (CBD): a killer for inflammatory rheumatoid arthritis synovial fibroblasts

A single dose of cannabidiol reduces blood pressure in healthy volunteers in a randomized crossover study

Immune Responses Regulated by Cannabidiol

Can CBD Benefit Your Immune System?

CBD and Heart Health

Efficacy and Safety of Cannabidiol and Tetrahydrocannabivarin on Glycemic and Lipid Parameters in Patients With Type 2 Diabetes: A Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled, Parallel Group Pilot Study

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

Brief: The Spirituality of Vaccine & Mask Panics Apr 08, 2023

Show notes

Why do so many inflammatory culture war issues crystallize around vaccines and masks? What is so compelling about these forms of public health and mutual aid, that they become central to the right-wing imagination?

For some, straight-up libertarianism might be a sufficient answer: the knee-jerk allergy to being asked to do anything as a social player. And beneath that might lie conspiratorial notions of Fauci being a Red, Bill Gates monetizing polio, or George Soros controlling Congress.

Matthew argues that even those are surface stories, covering over a trembling anxiety about the status of the body in relation to the State, and God.

Show Notes

Rudolf Steiner on Traditional Childhood Illnesses and Vaccines

Biss, Eula. On Immunity: An Inoculation. Minneapolis: Graywolf, 2015

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

148: Marianne Williamson and Asshole Jesus Apr 06, 2023

Show notes

Is Marianne Williamson’s promotion of A Course in Miracles any more relevant to her political persona than Biden’s Catholicism? If it demonstrably informs her every instinct and communication (as we expect it would given she sermonizes out of it every day), then yes, it is. If it leads her to suggest that meditation can help contain nuclear waste, divert hurricanes, heal the “scam” of clinical depression, or “boost the immune system” against COVID19, then yes, it is.

Is it sexist to highlight Williamson’s reported history of interpersonal abusiveness, when male politicians get away with far worse? There is definitely a double standard to resist. But when a candidate builds a political persona on being a love-and-light wayshower, it’s important to evaluate what that actually looks like ground-level. It’s also important to consider whether immature behavior might be a plausible outcome of following the Jesus of A Course in Miracles, who is a huge asshole.

Finally: if Williamson is the only candidate out there talking about reparations and M4A, is it reactionary to dismiss her on religious or behavioral grounds? Not if you’re actually interested in a functional progressive politics, free from magical thinking and charismatic bafflement.

Show Notes

Williamson’s COVID meditation, Facebook Live

Read: Pope Francis’ May prayer to Mary for the end of the pandemic | America Magazine

Marianne Williamson’s ‘abusive’ treatment of 2020 campaign staff, revealed - POLITICO

Marianne Williamson is a controversial AIDS-crisis figure for gay men.

MARIANNE'S FAITHFUL | Vanity Fair | June 1991

Project Angel Food Rocked by Feuds

The Divine Miss W — People

The Power, the Glory, the Glitz - Los Angeles Times

Marianne Williamson Bows Out as Pastor - Beliefnet

Marianne Williamson's Democratic debate performance raised eyebrows. But she's no friend of the left.

Marianne Williamson responds to Politico article alleging abuse toward staff - BBC News

Here Are The Presidential Candidates Women Have Been Donating To

Marianne Williamson on Her Insurgent Campaign Against Joe Biden ❧ Current Affairs

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

Bonus Sample: The Final Battle Apr 03, 2023

Show notes

Why did Trump kick-off his 2024 presidential campaign in Waco, Texas? Who were the Branch Davidians, anyway?

Julian unpacks the incendiary streams of far-right anti-government militia history and religious apocalypticism that our former president is tapping into as he faces legal jeopardy. It all goes back almost 300 years to the original Great Awakening that QAnon and New Age channelers tried to remix in 2020.

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

147: The Censorship Megaphone Mar 30, 2023

Show notes

Listen… Can you hear it?

All across the propagandist right and the free speech center, there's a new rallying cry: it's time to fight the “censorship industrial complex!”

Researching and documenting digital disinformation—and coordinating to combat its malevolent agendas—is now all being described as a pseudo-academic scam, a hoax covering up an authoritarian liberal campaign of vile and secretive censorship. Now, as it turns out, this gnashing of teeth and shedding of tears at the cruel injustice of social media censorship, and the swift, brutal cancellation of anyone daring to go against the mainstream narrative is actually not new.

We’ll look at the broader topic today, as well as some specific variations on the victim of censorship gambit, which uncannily often precedes being handed an even bigger megaphone.

Show Notes

Conspirituality + Glassbox Media

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

Related Podcasts