Conspirituality

A recent uptick in Holocaust-related memes around the COVID vaccine is fueling further anti-Semitic thought and behavior. Derek investigates a crop of wellness influencers guilty of this charge.-- -- --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

Dale Beran dives into the world of online chaos, discussing the origins of troll armies that inadvertently assisted in Trump's election. The conversation explores the evolution of online platforms, the impact of technology on mental health, societal responsibility in a 'garbage world,' toxic ideologies on platforms like 4chan, and the allure of extreme ideologies for structure and meaning in a disillusioned world.

QAnon emerged out of a perfect storm of evolving technology, social psychology, and global crisis. But it exploited pre-existing neural architecture already easily hijacked by addictive drugs, junk food, porn, persuasive marketing, and cultish religions. It also relied on how mobile social media, running on cellular and wifi technology, amplifies and speeds up the algorithmic impact of hyper-contagious cultural memes on the material world. Maybe 5G was the real threat all along?Julian explores our conspiritualist tendencies toward patternicity and apophenia, which can be super-stimulated by well-adapted memes, complex puzzles, and grandiose in-group purpose—and suggests a possible antidote.-- -- --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

It takes patience, empathy, and a steady hand to paint a detailed landscape of the politics and culture that connect anti-feminism to ethnonationalism to the broader obsessions of conspirituality.Dr. Annie Kelly’s scholarship in these spaces reveals a network of “subversion anxieties”: that patriarchy will be replaced by social justice autocrats, that the privileged will be brought low, that feminism will destroy hetero freedoms and pleasures, that human bodies will become cyborgs, that collectivism will replace capitalism. As our guest host this week, she’ll be our tour guide through the last decade of hot internet garbage, and explain how she’s kept her manners and wits intact enough to gain the trust of QAnon moms on the front lines of the U.K.’s anti-lockdown movement. We’ll also talk about her new brilliant podcast “Vaccine: The Human Story,” which takes the history of smallpox and its eradication as an object lesson for the COVID era.On the vaccine tip, our brief Ticker will address how the yoga world showed its anti-vax ass by trolling a Yoga Journal writer who dared to argue that getting vaccinated was a practice of non-violence.Show NotesWolf Terry: Getting the COVID-19 Vaccine Was My Act of AhimsaMatthew Remski: How Yoga Journal Set Off an Anti-Vax BacklashKelly: Opinion | The Housewives of White SupremacyKelly: The alt-right: Reactionary rehabilitation for white masculinityQAA Episode 110: Mothers For QAnon w/ Annie Kelly by QAnon AnonymousKelly: Vaccine, the Human StoryAnti-Vaxxers Could Be Helping Create Deadlier Versions of Covid-- -- --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

A closer look at the content and constellations of Josh Rainer Goldstein, who livestreams himself eating raw meat.Presented in three parts: An analysis of how the content is self-centered, ableist, misogynistic, and contribute to structural racism and epistemological confusion. An exploration of the deeply Freudian aspects of Goldstein’s account: its frenzied death wish expressed in an oral/anal fetish of raw meat and body perfectionism. The larger psychoanalytic question is: why are these displays gratifying to his followers? What does Goldstein allow them to feel, without shame? Part of it giving absolution for reactionary behaviours that feel good: consuming huge quantities of meat, and fantasizing about being surrounded by dozen babies on a homestead. In this part we also meet Goldstein’s mom. A letter that confesses how warmly I feel towards Goldstein: towards the understandable needs that get hijacked by the politics he’s gotten messed up in. How can we control what we’re exposed to, after all? Show NotesEating Raw Meat, Dreaming of Fatherhood — Matthew Remski on MediumGoldstein’s raw lamb mukbang.“You own your land. You defend your land.”-- -- --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

Are you crypto-curious? This past year has shown that an increasing number of people are dreaming of becoming crypto millionaires. But what is blockchain and this strange new digital currency and, more pertinent to this podcast, how are conspiritualists trying to exploit it, even when they don’t understand what “it” is?Matthew drills Derek, who worked in blockchain for over two years with two different companies, on the basics, before Derek interviews David Morris, the Chief Insights Columnist at Coindesk who also just happens to have a longtime interest in MLMs and cults. Matthew also reviews the 1996 essay, “The Californian Ideology,” the famous 1995 study of the bizarre Silicon Valley-fueled fusion of cultural bohemianism and free-market utopia rhetoric. In the Ticker, Julian reconsiders the definition of free speech in an age of digital misinformation through the lens of anti-vax champion RFK, Jr, Vandana Shiva, and returning Conspirituality champion, Russell Brand.Show NotesThe Lesson of Bitconnect: Promoters Can Be LiableChina’s Anti-Crypto Crackdown Is Different This TimeOf Course China Is Anti-Bitcoin: Look What Happened to Jack MaBiden’s New FTC Chair Could Be a Big Web 3.0 Ally23-year old who kept QAnon onlineItaly’s Five Star Techno-UtopiansRFK’s Children’s Health Defense article on Brand and ShivaSeeds of Doubt New Yorker article about Vandana ShivaStanford U. Letter on Shiva’s Anti-Science Rhetoric“Bill Gates Agenda” viral articleGates New Agriculture Non-ProfitBarbrooke and Cameron, 1995: THE CALIFORNIAN IDEOLOGYRichard Brautigan, 1967: All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace-- -- --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

Derek investigates a recent NY Times essay by Michael Pollan as an entry point to discuss big questions in psychedelics and conspirituality: How do we honor indigenous traditions as psychedelics are legalized (and monetized)? What dangers lie ahead as pharmaceutical companies and charismatic influencers exploit psychedelics for profit and power? How can we create psychedelic rituals that suit our current time and societal temperament?Show NotesHow Should We Do Drugs Now?Is This Peter Thiel–Backed Startup Trying to Monopolize the Astral Plane?-- -- --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

What should a global network of popular and private schools do when faced with evidence that the foundation of their pedagogy was laid by a racist, proto-fascist pseudoscientist? What should they do when it becomes clear that they are evangelizing while pretending to teach secular humanism? These are the sticky questions raised by Dr. Jennifer Sapio in today’s interview with Matthew. Sapio taught for three years at the Austin Waldorf School. She was hired from her secular training, but gradually found herself drawn into what she calls an “inherently racist cult.” Her mentors pushed her towards accepting the 19th-century babblings of Rudolf Steiner, who, among other exploits, read the “Akashic Records” to learn why the spirit world disapproved of vaccines. They discuss the long shadows of racist and metaphysical nonsense that hang over the otherwise wholesome project of Waldorf education. In the Ticker, Derek and Julian review a recent episode of Ben Shapiro’s podcast, in which he mutually masturbates with Russell Brand to consummate their brands, but they don’t quite come together.Show NotesThe Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 116The gun control debate is complex, but there are things we can doMovement against critical race theory is deeply necessaryDr. Thomas Cowan: Viral video claiming 5G caused pandemic easily debunkedDr. Sapio’s Waldorf memoir: Waldorf Schools Are Inherently Racist CultsAustin Waldorf School, Tuitions & FeesProf. Staudenmeier: “Anthroposophy and Ecofascism”Protesting too much: Myths about Waldorf educationMatthew on: The “Akashic Records” to “Do Your Research” PipelineAPTN: Residential Schools ArchivesNYT: Unmarked Graves at Residential Schools in Canada: What to KnowAnishnabek.ca: An Overview of the Indian Residential School SystemWoops. -- -- --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

Julian reflects on unchosen racial complicity and how moments of moral courage in the face of oppressive power can reveal one’s true colors. He traces the history of Apartheid as it intersects with the stories of his youth in South Africa.-- -- --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

How do we avoid being the subject of—and feeding the market for—trauma porn? If anyone knows, it’s India Oxenberg, who in less than two years (while under the unforgiving glare of a media firestorm) went from cult victim to survivor to anti-cult activist. Matthew sits down with her to discuss her recovery journey: learning to box, learning to love food, learning about “the strong yes” from her therapist. They also discuss the behind-the-scenes expertise that went into the documentary series India starred in and co-produced: Seduced. In the Ticker, Derek wonders why wellness influencers are falling back on bad habits as the world reopens while Julian tracks how Bret Weinstein’s cries of censorship exponentially boost the exposure of his anti-vax, pro-Ivermectin science hipsterism.Show NotesHow Dangerous Is the Delta Variant, and Will It Cause a COVID Surge in the U.S.?Sah D’Simone: Transmission Hotline6 facts about economic inequality in the U.S.The Pandemic Is Turning the Natural World Upside DownWith almost 50 million Americans traveling on July 4 weekend, you may need to pack your patienceJune 28 Ivermectin Systemic Review and Meta-AnalysisSlavoj Zizek — Is Jordan Peterson the real Postmodernist?SEDUCED: INSIDE THE NXIVM CULTA Timeline of the Nxivm Sex Cult CaseJudge Says Allison Mack ‘Willingly Enslaved, Destabilized and Manipulated’ Women-- -- --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