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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:

130: Can We Stop Abusing Fat People? (w/Aubrey Gordon) Nov 24, 2022

Show notes

Well jeez. What can we say? We're totally honored to host and learn from Aubrey Gordon, author and co-host of Maintenance Phase. She gives us the rundown on anti-fat bias, its links to racism, the soft eugenics of the BMI, the insincere "concern" of the slender, and the intellectual and moral dead end of "being fat is a choice." We also get into some psychothinalysis. Oh yes we do.
It's super inspiring to interview someone with a deep command of crucial material, plus the ability to pivot in startling directions, plus the skill to listen as fluently as they speak, plus all that warmth and welcome and empathy and accessibility. Thanks Aubrey!
Show Notes
Your Fat Friend website
What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat
“You Just Need to Lose Weight” AND 19 OTHER MYTHS ABOUT FAT PEOPLE—Preorder
Maintenance Phase
Correction section: The NHS was limiting care for fat people and smokers *before* the pandemic (The Guardian), but backed off of that stance *during* the pandemic (NYT) before naming weight loss as one of its primary COVID strategies (Time Magazine).

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Bonus Sample: The Courage to Heal Pt. 2 Nov 21, 2022

Show notes

Matthew and Julian sit down for the second of a two-part examination of the 1988 bestseller at the heart of the recovered memory movement. This is episode 10 of the Swan Song Series.

Show Notes
Controversy Behind the False Memory Syndrome Foundation
The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse
Truth and reconciliation
Cases That Have Resulted in Convictions
Why The Courage to Heal Isn't on My Recommended Reading List
Creating Hysteria
25 Years of Trauma Treatment Networker 2014

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UNLOCKED: Michelle Remembers: Literal Symbols Nov 19, 2022

Show notes

The homestretch of our study of Michelle Remembers zeroes in on the literal symbols—and symbols gone literal—of the Satanic Panic. (This is episode 6 of the Swan Song Series.)
Archetypes, gore, anxieties about sex and babies and filth: Lawrence Pazder mined it all, using modes of abstraction and dehumanization as old as religion itself to weave a story he claimed was all about Michelle—but was really an exercise of his own fetishes.
Michelle Smith could have received proper care for her understandable stresses. She could have offered up her feelings and sensations and images from dreams for discussion and contemplation, and an actual therapist would have held that material safely for her to explore. But in Pazder, Smith found someone who wasn’t interested in common human complexity. He was interested in cosmic warfare, and the role he could LARP within it.
But Pazder was so blind to his craven narcissism that he couldn’t help but tell on himself. In the final passage we analyze, Pazder records Smith demanding to end therapy. “If I could tear out my tongue,” she says, “I would never have to speak again.” But in the very next paragraph, the man who is forcing her to “remember” symbolically tears out her tongue, rejecting her plea to end the sessions, interpreting her demand as though it were coming from Satan himself.
She imagines herself getting in a car and driving and driving, anywhere. Away from this psychiatrist who wanted to be an exorcist, away from his story, perhaps to find her own.
Show Notes
HIGHEST GAME IN TOWN
‘I See His Blood Upon the Rose’
How to Lose Weight (Weight Loss and Obesity) - Teal Swan
The Cause of Obesity - Teal Swan Articles

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129: White Christian Nationalism (w/Philip Gorski & Samuel Perry) Nov 17, 2022

Show notes

American-style white Christian Nationalism tells of a promised land given by God to the Puritan settlers. Their divine mandate for political dominance sanctifies a violent history that stretches from the 1690's all the way through to modern right-wing politics.
Our interview today is with sociologists, Philip Gorski and Samuel Perry, authors of The Flag and The Cross. We discuss their study of Christian Nationalism as a white supremacist phenomenon that has always leaned into conspiracism and a primordial obsession with blood purity and blood sacrifice.
With the dreaded midterm elections now in our rearview, Derek covers the Muscular Christian masturbation rules of bro-science influencer Ben Greenfield, while we reflect on the prophesied red wave that never crashed.
Show Notes
The Flag and the Cross—Gorski and Perry
Is Christian nationalism growing or declining? Both.
Most Republicans Support Declaring the United States a Christian Nation
Rally Urges US Midterm Voting Connected to Christianity
Ben Greefield: How I Practice The Spiritual Disciplines, Practical Ways To Build Your Spiritual Muscles, Listener Q&A On God, Religion, Reincarnation, Masturbation & Much More.

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Bonus Sample: Kanye, Candace & The Christian Billionaires Nov 14, 2022

Show notes

Antisemitism is in the news again, as Candace Owens defends Kanye West and Kyrie Irving, while her boss, Ben Shapiro shakes his head in dismay. In this Bonus special report, Julian looks into the Assembly of Yahweh family, which funds conservative new media giants, The Daily Wire and PragerU.
How do we make sense of the racial and religious tensions created by the strange bedfellow alliances of right-wing propaganda?

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128: The Trauma of Caste (w/Thenmozhi Soundararajan) Nov 10, 2022

Show notes

An ancient text at the root of the culture that gave birth to the yoga tradition says that if an outcaste person—a Dalit—dares to learn the holy language of Sanskrit, they must be tortured. Molten lead must be poured into their ears. Their tongue must be cut out.
In the Ramayana, a Shudra (caste oppressed) who dared to practice yoga was murdered so that the sickly child of a priestly family might regain his health. In the Mahabharata, an Adivasi (South Asian Indigenous) boy is commanded to cut off his own thumb for the sin of being self-taught and skilled above his station. The pious are told that these obscene retributions maintain the divine order.
Indian wisdom traditions have globalized to the extent that its evangelists have laundered the spiritualization of caste-based violence, and hidden its history from erstwhile progressives. Many of those evangelists have either been caste privileged, or caste apologists. The yoga they constructed for export has become a form of soft power, serving Hindu nationalist objectives.
The Trauma of Caste: A Dalit Feminist Meditation on Survivorship, Healing, and Abolition by Thenmozhi Soundararajan puts this history under a microscope. It pulls back the curtain on the carceral impacts of terms like dharma and karma, and concepts like purity, pollution, and reincarnation.
In terms of our work here at Conspirituality, Soundararajan's text cuts through the romantic Orientalism used by influencers, cult leaders, and nationalists to exploit emotional vulnerabilities. It also points to—and updates—a vision of spiritual practice first articulated by the Dalit leader B. R. Ambedkar, rooted in the ancient Buddhist call to compassion and equality.
Show Notes
The Trauma of Caste by Thenmozhi Soundararajan
Thenmozhi Soundararajan: Transmedia Artist, Theorist & Futurist
B. R. Ambedkar

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Bonus Sample: Swan Song Series 9 | Courage to Heal Pt. 1 Nov 07, 2022

Show notes

Matthew and Julian sit down for the first of a two-part examination of the 1988 bestseller at the heart of the recovered memory movement—which played a central role in validating Satanic Panic testimonials.
The basic premise of The Courage to Heal, by creative writing instructors Ellen Bass and Linda Davis, is that memories of childhood abuse, especially child sexual abuse, can be recovered and articulated by survivors who are given the proper space, tools, and validation. The book explores how this be facilitated within the context of journaling, writing poetry, and writing memoir, and what the therapeutic benefits of full confessional articulation can be.
While countless people affirm that this book was a lifeline during a time in which recovery resources for child abuse survivors were rare, there are substantial problems with the book's method, claims about memory, dodgy sources, and endorsement of outright Satanic Panic propaganda.
Show Notes
Controversy Behind the False Memory Syndrome Foundation
The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse
Truth and reconciliation
Cases That Have Resulted in Convictions
Why The Courage to Heal Isn't on My Recommended Reading List | HealthyPlace
Creating Hysteria
25 Years of Trauma Treatment Networker 2014

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

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UNLOCKED: Swan Song Series 5 | Michelle Remembers: Themes & Framing Nov 05, 2022

Show notes

In the second of three episodes on Michelle Remembers, we recap its Catholic contexts, and Lawrence Pazder's quest to transcend the limitations of psychiatry through mystical nightmares. We then explore the front matter: how Pazder introduces his project (and himself), and the ambivalent endorsement of Remi de Roo, Archbishop of Victoria. In Pazder's many clerical alliances, a crucial theme is established: the rapprochement between psychiatry and the priesthood, in which the former submits to the latter to restore the reality of the supernatural.
We also look at the pre-emptively defensive intro penned by the publisher, Thomas B. Congdon Jr. He claimed to have verified the substance of the book through interviews, and thought that Pazder and Smith were very earnest and forthcoming people when he hosted them for editorial meetings. Okay sure.
Show Notes
Remi De Roo
Thomas B. Congdon, Editor of Best Sellers Like 'Jaws,' Dies at 77
The Beginning of a Community

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127: Doing Good in Impossibly Bad Times (w/Rebecca Carter-Chand, Mark Roseman & Peter Staudenmaier) Nov 03, 2022

Show notes

Mark Roseman opens Lives Reclaimed, his compelling history of the “Bund”—a leftist communitarian group that resisted fascism and protected Jews during the Reich—with a quote from Michael Ondaatje’s novel The Cat’s Table: “That was a small lesson I learned on the journey. What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power.” Roseman, a professor of Jewish and German Studies at University of Indiana at Bloomington, joins Matthew to paint a picture of methodical, relational, and spiritual resistance to the speed and terror of fascism. At the center of the conversation is the quandary of how the Bund made generative use of many of the same naturalistic and spiritualist ideals and practices that were central to the physical culture of fascism. Joining the panel are Peter Staudenmaier, professor of modern Germany history at Marquette, and Rebecca Carter-Chand, historian at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Peter and Rebecca add their expertise on the tangled ferment of religious and ideological passions in the background of Nazism, and how persistent, even through the worst of times, our flickers of altruism and empathy can be.
But before all that: we’ll cover the Q-pilled assassination attempt on Nancy Pelosi that has left Paul Pelosi in urgent care, and far-right media scrambling to overwrite the facts.
Show Notes
Lives Reclaimed — Roseman
Dr. Rebecca Carter-Chand — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Dr. Peter Staudenmaier - History
The Futurist Manifesto Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
The Awful Truth: Paul Pelosi Was Drunk Again, And In a Dispute With a Male Prostitute Early Friday Morning.
Pelosi attack suspect David DePape shared conspiracy theories
Criminal complaint: David Depape
Depape’s archived site
Pelosi attacker was immersed in 2020 election conspiracies

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Bonus Sample: Shurka Tank Oct 31, 2022

Show notes

Imagine a technology so powerful it's been directly downloaded from spirit during a Scorpio eclipse. This revolutionary tool can cure burn victims, remove cysts from dogs, and endow you with ultimate productivity. Thanks to phase conjugation, this bioenhanced scalar tech will change the way you view medicine and healing forever—provided you don't have any expectations and remain open to source, that is. And whatever any of that means, Derek will try to decipher—and fail, though some other aspects become clearer in the process.

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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

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