

Conspirituality
Derek Beres, Matthew Remski, Julian Walker
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.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Nov 5, 2022 • 1h 36min
UNLOCKED: Swan Song Series 5 | Michelle Remembers: Themes & Framing
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 NotesRemi De RooThomas B. Congdon, Editor of Best Sellers Like 'Jaws,' Dies at 77The Beginning of a Community-- -- --Support us on PatreonPre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | JulianOriginal music by EarthRise SoundSystem Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nov 3, 2022 • 2h 4min
127: Doing Good in Impossibly Bad Times (w/Rebecca Carter-Chand, Mark Roseman & Peter Staudenmaier)
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 NotesLives Reclaimed — RosemanDr. Rebecca Carter-Chand — United States Holocaust Memorial MuseumDr. 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 theoriesCriminal complaint: David DepapeDepape’s archived sitePelosi attacker was immersed in 2020 election conspiracies-- -- --Support us on PatreonPre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | JulianOriginal music by EarthRise SoundSystem Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oct 31, 2022 • 8min
Bonus Sample: Shurka Tank
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. -- -- --Support us on PatreonPre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | JulianOriginal music by EarthRise SoundSystem Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oct 27, 2022 • 1h 25min
126: Light Language TikTok (feat Mallory DeMille)
Listeners: today’s episode marks a turning point for us all here at Conspirituality HQ. Humbled by a recent quantum download, we realize that we have for too long been relying on our critical faculties. For too long we have insisted that words mean things. Our poisoned irony has calcified our throat chakras and burned your ears to the point you may never trust a spiritual influencer again. Today we release our addiction to meaning, our fetish for precision in words. We begin to trust the inner babbler of heart-language. We hearken to the oracles, the speakers in tongues, the oompa loompa doompety doos, the glossalalics who trimper the ainions with seedgly refurns. Our hope is that with their help, we can begin to scrize the colong of wolfile stenoses.But we cannot enter this new world of activated communication alone. Our guide today is correspondent Mallory DeMille, who comes to us from the land of TikTok, where Light Language has gone viral, and is making bank, bank, bankity bing bong bank.Show NotesMallory on Instagram | TwitterKundun - Nechung oracle Blonk performs Ursonate with real-time typographySofia for anxiety: Reply to @jennam1127 anxiety reliefSofia: “Removing Darkness”Sofia helping with everyone’s kidneysSofia’s light language was “opened up” by ayahuascaSofia has her activations turned into tie dye wraps so awesome“Become a Light Language Practitioner” with SofiaSofia provides light language for lonelinessSheryl presents: Light Language LoveSheryl needs you to sit TF downSheryl’s waiverLily on -- -- --Support us on PatreonPre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | JulianOriginal music by EarthRise SoundSystem Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oct 24, 2022 • 5min
Bonus Sample: Luciano's Good Death
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 NotesConversation with Luciano IacobelliSEED Part One – Michael BarkerIN MEMORIAM: Remembering Luciano Iacobelli – Accenti Magazine-- -- --Support us on PatreonPre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | JulianOriginal music by EarthRise SoundSystem Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oct 20, 2022 • 1h 30min
125: Deliver Us From “Evil” (w/Amy Berg)
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 NotesPro-Trump brand is fined by FTC for incorrect ‘Made in the USA’ labelsThe Lion: Sean Whalen Is Empowering Thousands to Take Accountability for Their LivesAubrey Marcus's "Code of the Sentient Savage"-- -- --Support us on PatreonPre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | JulianOriginal music by EarthRise SoundSystem Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oct 17, 2022 • 9min
Bonus Sample: Swan Song Series 8 | Girl, Interrupted (pt 2)
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 NotesSENECA THE YOUNGER, HERCULES FURENS - Theoi Classical Texts Library Hercules (Seneca)Girl, Interrupted — Susanna Kaysen1607: Growing up with Teal Swan - Diana Hansen RiberaMad, Bad, and Sad: Women and the Mind Doctors by Lisa AppignanesiBrittany Murphy: Inside Her Sudden Death at 32 That Still Confounds Hollywood-- -- --Support us on PatreonPre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | JulianOriginal music by EarthRise SoundSystem Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

7 snips
Oct 13, 2022 • 1h 60min
124: No Bad Idea Ever Dies (w/Thomas Lecaque)
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 NotesManclan Episode 1: Liver King vs the Soy Boys Cornell Expert Warns Against Megadosing VitaminsDietary Supplements Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report-- -- --Support us on PatreonPre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | JulianOriginal music by EarthRise SoundSystem Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oct 10, 2022 • 4min
Bonus Sample: Methylene Blues
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 NotesSo You Want to Pop Into a Hyperbaric Oxygen Chamber to Rid Yourself of Wrinkles?Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy: Get the FactsWhen Medicines Go Rogue, Part 1: Methylene Blue-- -- --Support us on PatreonPre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | JulianOriginal music by EarthRise SoundSystem Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oct 8, 2022 • 1h 46min
UNLOCKED: Swan Song Series 4 | Michelle Remembers: Context & History
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. MRShow NotesMichael Hobbes and Sarah Marshall cover Michelle Remembers with great skill. "20/20" the Devil Worshippers - May 16, 1985West of Memphis movie review & film summaryMel Gibson: The man without a popeThe 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-- -- --Support us on PatreonPre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | JulianOriginal music by EarthRise SoundSystem Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices