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:

Bonus Sample: Growing Up in Scientology (w/Sarah) Dec 19, 2022

Show notes

Sarah grew up in the Church of Scientology. But she also grew up in a small town. And, in a neurodiverse family.
We come from so many places. Exploitative, hierarchical, hypocritical. Generous, tender, and odd.
It is an honor to present this installment of Listeners' Stories. We're tickled to learn that Sarah's awakening from Scientology was quickened by that South Park episode. And we're humbled to learn about how her mother, despite being deeply enmeshed in a coercive cult, still managed to kindle both compassion and common sense in her children.

-- -- --
Support us on Patreon
Pre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada
Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | Julian
Original music by EarthRise SoundSystem

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

133: Grifts That Keep on Taking (w/Kevin Klatt) Dec 15, 2022

Show notes

Remember way back to the beginning of this podcast, shortly after “Plandemic” dropped, when wellness influencers immediately began selling supposed “immune supporting” supplements? That trend has only intensified in recent months, with grifters like Peter McCullough and Mikki Willis getting in on the supplement game. In part three of his trilogy on supplements, Derek talks with dietician Kevin Klatt about what supplements are actually good for—as well as how this unregulated industry is monetizing fears around future viruses.
They also discuss the wild west of nootropics, supposed brain-enhancing substances that don’t scare you about pandemics, but instead make you believe that with just a little more optimization you’ll be the most perfect you possible…until another product drop, that is. To discuss the world of lack that other influencers capitalize on, we’ll discuss the annual A Fest, a TED-style wellness gathering for millionaires that banks on you never actually feeling content in your life, but instead chasing a promise of unachievable eternal betterment.
Show Notes
Inside the Wellness Festival for Millionaires

Human Rights Watch: Jordan

Kevin Klatt on Instagram | Twitter

-- -- --
Support us on Patreon
Pre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada
Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | Julian
Original music by EarthRise SoundSystem

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

Brief: The Right-Wing Machinery of Stochastic Terror Dec 13, 2022

Show notes

In this special report, Julian examines how the machinery of right-wing propaganda engineers the necessary conditions for stochastic terror. The recent waves of dehumanizing anti-LGBTQ bigotry heighten the probability of extremist violence. When it happens—as in November's tragic mass-shooting at Club Q, pointing this out leads right-wing media to quickly accuse the left of exploiting tragedy. Worse still, we're supposedly defending "groomers" and "child mutilation."

Meanwhile literal swastika flag-waving Nazis, as well as Proud Boys, Patriot Front, and other armed militia-types are increasingly showing up outside LGBTQ venues across the country. Terrorists deliberately sabotaged a North Carolina power grid, in an act many believe was designed to stop a drag show. Forty thousand people were without power for four days in early December as a result.

At the epicenter of this latest toxic culture war shock-wave is The Daily Wire. Funded by idiosyncratic religious fundamentalists who believe abortion and homosexuality are not only sins, but should be crimes—their roster of edgy, slickly produced personalities, like Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Candace Owens, and now, Jordan Peterson, all go hard on the ugliest characterizations, both of LGBTQ people, and of the teachers and doctors who care for them. Julian shows how they have picked up on James Lindsay's outrageous conspiracy claim of a "handshake agreement" between communists and pedophiles, and how the "grass roots" moral panic org. with super PAC funding, Moms for Liberty, is hijacking school boards in Red states and Blue.

-- -- --

Support us on Patreon

Pre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada

Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | Julian

Original music by EarthRise SoundSystem

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

Bonus Sample: Leaving S-Factor pt. 2 (w/Jessica Hopper) Dec 12, 2022

Show notes

Those who fly high, fall hard. Pole dance company S-Factor crashed and burned in 2021 amidst a stack of complaints. Detractors said the company was conducting unlicensed group therapy, cosplaying enlightenment by co-opting the labour of sex workers, and whitewashing issues of racial equality.
Created by former actor Sheila Kelley, S-Factor monetized pole dancing as a path of feminist and spiritual awakening.
In Part 2 of this Listener Story, Matthew speaks to Jessica Hopper about her 13 years learning and teaching in the now-defunct company. Hopper paints a picture of a confusing, high-demand group, and tells us how she made her way out.

NOTE: During our discussion, Jessica recounts a tense all-hands S-factor staff meeting to discuss PR strategy at a crucial moment as the company cracked-up over issues of white fragility. I wasn't able to secure a recording of that call before my interview with Jessica, or since. But after we recorded, I did confirm what Jessica reports about it with 3 of the other participants on that call. MR
Show Notes
Stripped Down: The Undoing of Hollywood's Favorite Pole-Dancing Studio —Hollywood Reporter.
"Strip Down, Rise Up" | Official Trailer | Netflix
Faces of Fierce Femininity—online conference organized by Kelly Brogan
Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema—Laura Mulvey, 1975

-- -- --
Support us on Patreon
Pre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada
Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | Julian
Original music by EarthRise SoundSystem

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

UNLOCKED: Girl, Interrupted (pt 1) Dec 10, 2022

Show notes

Julian and Matthew take a long look at the 1999 film Teal Swan was reportedly obsessed with as a teen. Girl, Interrupted is a bold adaptation of a 1993 memoir by the writer Susanna Kaysen about the 18 months she spent undergoing treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder in a Massachusetts psychiatric facility in the late 1960s. This is episode 7 of the Swan Song Series.
This study is provoked by a memory recounted by Swan's childhood friend, Diana Hansen Ribera, that Swan identified with the character of Lisa Rowe in the film. Angelina Jolie won an Oscar for her searing performance of Rowe, a sociopath.
Show Notes
Girl, Interrupted — Susanna Kaysen
1607: Growing up with Teal Swan - Diana Hansen Ribera
Mad, Bad, and Sad: Women and the Mind Doctors by Lisa Appignanesi | Goodreads
Brittany Murphy: Inside Her Sudden Death at 32 That Still Confounds Hollywood
Girl, Interrupted at her Music. Vermeer. 1660.
It’s the painting from whose frame a girl looks out, ignoring her beefy music teacher, whose proprietary hand rests on her chair. The light is muted, winter light, but her face is bright. I looked into her brown eyes and I recoiled. She was warning me of something—she had looked up from her work to warn me. Her mouth was slightly open, as if she had just drawn a breath in order to say to me, “Don’t!” I moved backward, trying to get beyond the range of her urgency. But her urgency filled the corridor. “Wait,” she was saying, “wait! Don’t go!” — Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted

-- -- --
Support us on Patreon
Pre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada
Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | Julian
Original music by EarthRise SoundSystem

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

132: Ye, Balenciaga, & Twilight Zone Propaganda (w/Francesca Tripodi) Dec 08, 2022

Show notes

We didn't have tracking BDSM Easter eggs in fashion shoots or Ye’s Jew-hating Christofascism on our bingo card. But here we are, covering a cluster of cursed images and hypomanic clips.
We’ll stare right at the train wreck this week, but we refuse to feel hopeless. Because we can always learn—in this case about how the psychic and bodily impacts of this churn of bizarre hatred relate to the function of propaganda. And we can always be inspired by people who slow down and do the hard work of understanding the spectacle.
From our side of the progressive aisle, it's easy to assume that consumers of Ye and conspiracy theories are gullible cultural dopes. But our guest today, sociologist and media scholar at UNC, Chapel Hill, Francesca Tripodi says "not so fast!" To understand how right-wing propaganda functions, she spent months consuming a conservative digital news-diet and went undercover in hard-right circles.
Show Notes
Kanye "Ye" West—The Emperor w/No Clothes (TimbahOnToast)
Balenciaga and the long history of "shockvertising"
Jewish Allies Denounce Trump's Dinner w/Antisemites
Masked Ye West Praises Hitler on Alex Jones' InfoWars
Proud Boy Founder Gavin McInnes Hosts Ye West
QAA 210: Balenciaga, Ye, Club Q

-- -- --
Support us on Patreon
Pre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada
Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | Julian
Original music by EarthRise SoundSystem

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

Bonus Sample: Leaving S-Factor pt. 1 (w/Jessica Hopper) Dec 05, 2022

Show notes

Those who fly high, fall hard. Pole dance company S-Factor crashed and burned in 2021 amidst a stack of complaints. Detractors said the company was conducting unlicensed group therapy, cosplaying enlightenment by co-opting the labour of sex workers, and whitewashing issues of racial equality.
Created by former actor Sheila Kelley, S-Factor monetized pole dancing as a path of feminist and spiritual awakening.
In this second installment of Listener Stories (part 2 next week), Matthew speaks to Jessica Hopper about her 13 years learning and teaching in the now-defunct company. Hopper paints a picture of a confusing, high-demand group, and tells us how she made her way out.
Show Notes
Stripped Down: The Undoing of Hollywood's Favorite Pole-Dancing Studio —Hollywood Reporter.
"Strip Down, Rise Up" | Official Trailer | Netflix
Faces of Fierce Femininity—online conference organized by Kelly Brogan
Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema—Laura Mulvey, 1975

-- -- --
Support us on Patreon
Pre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada
Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | Julian
Original music by EarthRise SoundSystem

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

Brief: Digging up the Hampstead Hoax (w/Alexi Mostrous) Dec 03, 2022

Show notes

Matthew checks in with investigative journalist Alexi Mostrous on his fantastic work digging up the Hampstead Hoax.

Show Notes

Hoaxed — Tortoise Media

Re P and Q (Children: Care Proceedings: Fact Finding)

Jacqui Farmer's "Hampstead Research"

Charlotte Ward’s conspirituality.org About page

Hoaxtead Research

-- -- --

Support us on Patreon

Pre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada

Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | Julian

Original music by EarthRise SoundSystem

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

131: Parasite Cleanses are Full of Sh*t (feat Mallory DeMille) Dec 01, 2022

Show notes

Did you know, right now, as you sit there listening to this, your body is filled with parasites that need to be cleansed? Of course, that’s if you live in America, since every other country on the planet cleanses four times a year. Seriously. We heard it on TikTok.
Scrolling through the gutters of TikTok is challenging for us Gen Xers, and so our TikTok correspondent, Mallory DeMille, has done the dirty work for us. After laying out an all-too-common supplement scam, she looks at the shitty world of parasite cleanses where budding influencers snap strange shots of their feces before scaring you into their downline. I’ll also preview a bit of my upcoming conversation with dietician Kevin Klatt, who’s been tracking this TikTok trend with dismay as well. He’ll bring the science while Mallory breaks down the techniques.
Show Notes
Mallory DeMille on Twitter
Kevin Klatt on Instagram
Parasite cleanses are ‘modern snake oil.’ Experts explain why.
Mason Kuhr on TikTok
Stampede Network on TikTok
Kim Rogers on TikTok

-- -- --
Support us on Patreon
Pre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada
Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | Julian
Original music by EarthRise SoundSystem

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

Bonus Sample: The Super Best Most Pure Immune-Boosting Supplement Ever (Until Next Week) Nov 28, 2022

Show notes

Are you ready for the bestest, purest immunity-boosting supplement in the history of the world? No, not that one. Only I have discovered what really works, and I'll share it with you this week.
Ok, not quite, but Derek looks at a recent JAMA study that found many of the top 30 supplements sold on Amazon don't contain what they claim. He opens by looking at Mikki Willis's latest best supplement ever, as well as a naturopath and her binder filled with detoxing supplement protocols.
Show Notes
Wellness influencers don't understand history
Does Z-Stack multivitamin work to boost the immune system, and is it safe?
Analysis of Select Dietary Supplement Products Marketed to Support or Boost the Immune System

-- -- --
Support us on Patreon
Pre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada
Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | Julian
Original music by EarthRise SoundSystem

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

Related Podcasts