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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:

Bonus Sample: Luciano's Good Death Oct 24, 2022

Show notes

A departure today, as Matthew eulogizes his teacher and friend Luciano Iacobelli.
From the opening:
This story may be a little personal and indulgent, but I’ll take a risk on it because I think it hints at an answer to a question we often get on the podcast about our own beliefs in the existential or spiritual categories.
We spend a lot of time eviscerating bog-standard hypocrisy in the economy of spirituality. Listeners resonate with this, but the project is also depressing, and in the parasocial contract they form with us, finding out that we still believe in something, or that something still provides relief—this becomes important.
It’s never a comfortable question to answer in the abstract. It's a gift when something comes along that shows instead of tells.
Show Notes
Conversation with Luciano Iacobelli
SEED Part One – Michael Barker
IN MEMORIAM: Remembering Luciano Iacobelli – Accenti Magazine

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125: Deliver Us From “Evil” (w/Amy Berg) Oct 20, 2022

Show notes

What is the state of the documentary film in the age of manipulative online propaganda? In the hands and eyes of a documentarian like Amy Berg we find a journalistic commitment to the truth combined with the artistry of compelling and intimate story-telling. Along the way, her projects are guided by an obsession with justice. In two cases—that of the West Memphis Three, and more recently the murder trial of Adnen Syed— her film-making played a role in changing the real-world narrative; leading to the release of those wrongfully convicted via cultural bias, moral panic, and conspiracy theories. In other instances Amy's work has embodied investigative journalism to show how real conspiracies hide the awful abuse of innocents, while protecting the powerful. We ask her how she measures her instincts against the evidence, how she gains the trust of people who have been ignored for decades, how she managed to log days of interview time with an abusive ex-priest, and how she keeps her mental health intact amidst all the uncertainty.
In This Week in Conspirituality, Matthew covers an example of the co-optation of trauma-informed jargon by women in the land of the Three Percenters.
Show Notes
Pro-Trump brand is fined by FTC for incorrect ‘Made in the USA’ labels
The Lion: Sean Whalen Is Empowering Thousands to Take Accountability for Their Lives
Aubrey Marcus's "Code of the Sentient Savage"

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Bonus Sample: Swan Song Series 8 | Girl, Interrupted (pt 2) Oct 17, 2022

Show notes

The second part of Julian and Matthew's long look at the 1999 film Teal Swan was reportedly obsessed with as a teen. Girl, Interrupted is a freewheeling adaptation of a 1993 memoir by Susanna Kaysen about the 18 months she spent undergoing treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder in a Massachusetts psychiatric facility in the late 1960s.
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.
In this second episode, we explore several characters that Swan may have (and may yet) identify with, discuss the awkwardness of portraying mental health narratives on the big screen, and what it would really take for such an intense film to be digestible for typical teenagers. Matthew ends with a meditation on immersive/claustrophobic media—which Swan goes on to master—compared with the relief of developing a meta-view capable of inhabiting many stories, as opposed to imitating one.
Show Notes
SENECA THE YOUNGER, HERCULES FURENS - Theoi Classical Texts Library
Hercules (Seneca)
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
Brittany Murphy: Inside Her Sudden Death at 32 That Still Confounds Hollywood

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124: No Bad Idea Ever Dies (w/Thomas Lecaque) Oct 13, 2022

Show notes

For the prophet and the revolutionary alike, the time is always now. Gird up your loins brave heroes, and show your true faith! The signs portend that The Last World Emperor is rising to do battle against the AntiChrist. The time is always now, but in that flat circle of iterative history, no bad idea is really new under the Black Sun—it's just been engineered to go more viral.
Our guest today is history professor Thomas Lecaque, who writes about how medieval ethnonationalist holy war is woven into hugely popular video games, right-wing political rhetoric, and even how assault weapons are marketed. Julian talks with him about the Hobbit-fetish of new Italian PM and heir to Mussolini, Giorgia Meloni, as well as the American right’s obsession with the Templar Knights, and the troubling midterm election trend of open White Christian Nationalism.
For TWIC, Matthew muses on the overlaps between conspirituality and neo-fascism, but first Derek reports on the battle between testicular cuisine and buttery coffee.
Show Notes
Manclan Episode 1: Liver King vs the Soy Boys
Cornell Expert Warns Against Megadosing Vitamins
Dietary Supplements Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report

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Bonus Sample: Methylene Blues Oct 10, 2022

Show notes

Methylene blue will give you more energy! It’s neuroprotective! Your skin will never look better! Your bunghole will never be bluer!
This week, Derek investigates one of biohacking’s hottest trends: a textile dye that does, in fact, have medical applications—just not the ones optimizers are promoting, and optimizing. He’ll look into this organic compound’s history, how it’s being marketed by the butter coffee guy, and finally, reading from Aubrey Marcus’s latest newsletter on blue buttholes.
Show Notes
So You Want to Pop Into a Hyperbaric Oxygen Chamber to Rid Yourself of Wrinkles?
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy: Get the Facts
When Medicines Go Rogue, Part 1: Methylene Blue

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UNLOCKED: Swan Song Series 4 | Michelle Remembers: Context & History Oct 08, 2022

Show notes

There's no Teal Swan without the Satanic Panic. And there's no Satanic Panic without the 1980 publication of Michelle Remembers, by Lawrence Pazder and Michelle Smith.
In this first of three segments on this melted book, Matthew and Julian cover its historical, cultural, and mass media context. We start with a review of a 1985 20/20 episode called “The Devil Worshippers” for a taste of how mainstream outlets hosted cranks like Pazder, giving him a hall pass on evidence, and overlooking how his Catholic fetishes and paranoias played a huge role in the fictions he spun.
The post Vatican 2 context is crucial, especially as we bear witness to the current political triumphs of Trad-Cath propaganda and politics in our post-Roe, QAnon -fried world. For help, we look to an excellent essay by social historian Bernard Doherty about the genre and elements of the Catholic Horror Film, which begins with Rosemary's Baby in 1968. This reactionary genre attempted to respond to modernizing—or postmodernizing, as Jordan Peterson might say—changes in Church doctrine.
Bottom line? The Satanic Panic largely begins in and is sustained by Catholic-flavoured conspirituality anxiety about secularization, sex, babies, and abortion.
CORRECTIONS: My dad informs me that I've made some Pope mistakes! Pius X was the last legitimate Pope according to the sedavacantists, and John XXIII, not Paul XXIII, opened the Vatican 2 proceedings. Thx dad. MR
Show Notes
Michael Hobbes and Sarah Marshall cover Michelle Remembers with great skill.
"20/20" the Devil Worshippers - May 16, 1985
West of Memphis movie review & film summary
Mel Gibson: The man without a pope
The Smoke of Satan on the Silver Screen: The Catholic Horror Film, Vatican II, and the Revival of Demonology | Journal for the Academic Study of Religion

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123: The Red-Pilled "Academic" Who Named Our Podcast Oct 06, 2022

Show notes

Mystery topic today. Emergency episode. Breaking story. Amazing if true! Totally transformative plot twist. You gotta listen through for the big reveal, and then hit smash for more.
Spoiler alert: QAnon was foreshadowed by Pizzagate, but Pizzagate was foreshadowed by a moral panic in London, England that was driven in part by someone the three of us are karmically bound to, for good or ill, forever.
But first, Derek’s got a This Week in Conspirituality segment on the boom times for pseudoscience telehealth. Psychic healing for Zoom, as he calls it.
Show Notes
Network of right-wing health care providers is making millions off hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, hacked data reveals
The Anti-vax founder of America’s Frontline Doctors now has a license to practice in Florida
US cardiologist makes false claims about Covid-19 vaccination
Hoaxed
Teal Swan allegations documents
Re P and Q (Children: Care Proceedings: Fact Finding)
Jacqui Farmer's "Hampstead Research"
Illuminati Party! - Reasons Not to Be Scared of the Illuminati.
Charlotte Ward’s conspirituality.org About page
Full article: The Emergence of Conspirituality
Hoaxtead Research
Charlotte writing as Jacqui on conspirituality.org
Charlotte Ward denounces ‘Hampstead psy op’ | HOAXTEAD RESEARCH
Charlotte Ward - Academia.edu
Ward cites Icke

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Original music by EarthRise SoundSystem

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Bonus Sample: Swan Song Series 7 | Girl, Interrupted (pt 1) Oct 03, 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 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
Brittany Murphy: Inside Her Sudden Death at 32 That Still Confounds Hollywood

-- -- --
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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122: Timeline Retox: Biohacking and Fascism and Stuff Sep 29, 2022

Show notes

The book is filed. Our mental health is in check. And, as it turns out, Matthew found a new guru. We return to trio work by investigating his fellow Canadian's cure for, uh, anything, or maybe something, as well diving into two biohacking conferences and the conspiritualist's new favorite fascist on the block.
Show Notes
Tip of the iceberg: erectile dysfunction and COVID-19 | International Journal of Impotence Research
Will in the News, TV & Internet Culture
Umberto Eco Makes a List of the 14 Common Features of Fascism | Open Culture
The Cruelty Is the Point
Alessio Di Giulio's Racist Selfie With Roma Woman Enrages Italy
Meloni holding melons
CPAC: The Whole World is Watching - Giorgia Meloni
Dal rugby allo yoga, tutto lo sport di Giorgia Meloni
Pierre Poilievre rubs his old wood

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Bonus Sample: A Course in Monstrosities Sep 26, 2022

Show notes

If you tune into your favorite Instagram wellness influencer or financial life coach, you’ll learn that money is really a state of mind—right? Thinking the right thoughts is the truest judge of character, and therefore indicative of your bottom line. This week Derek looks at research from behavioral economics, which found the perceived relationship between wealth and morality dates back to post-WWII America—and has damaged the poorest among us for generations. He weighs evidence from this field, which looks at the real societal and political causes of wealth disparity, against the metaphysical bullshit that proponents of the “mindset creates wealth” uber-text, A Course in Miracles, try to sell you.
Show Notes
Why we shouldn’t push a positive mindset on those in poverty
The Causal Effects of Place on Health and Longevity

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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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