Conspirituality
Conspirituality is a podcast that critically examines the intersection of New Age spirituality, wellness culture, and conspiracy theories. Hosted by journalist Derek Beres, cult researcher Matthew Remski, and philosophical skeptic Julian Walker, it explores how charismatic influencers exploit followers with ideas ranging from anti-vaccine rhetoric to QAnon. The show aims to bring understanding to the blurring of alt-right and New Age ideologies, analyzing the cultic dynamics and cognitive dissonances in these communities.
Episodes
315: Lifestyles of the Rich and Optimized
Wellness for everyone. That’s how virtually every wellness event pitches their offering. If the everyman and woman did these practices or ingested these products or adopted these mindsets, we’d all be better off as a species.
Yet what happens when the wellness event in question is hosted in an expensive resort town on the French Riviera and features top-tier celebrities like Oprah Winfrey speakin
Bonus Sample: Why Does JD Vance Think Catholic Social Teaching is Cool?
JD Vance calls Catholic Social Teaching (CST) a "fully integrated theory of a good human life" — and he's not wrong that it sounds good. So how’s he going to weaponize it?
Matthew traces why CST's moral critique of capitalism, innovated by Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum (1891), is tailor-made for Vance's political project. CST may be sincere about human dignity, but it actively suppresses structural a
Brief: Tulsi Gabbard & the Cult Leaders in the News
Has former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s career been scripted and controlled by the strange leader of a breakaway Hare Krishna group? Chris Butler formed the Science of Identity organization in the seventies. Gabbard’s parents joined when she was two years old.
Gabbard claims Butler has no influence on her political life, yet bombshell reporting by the Washington Post piece un
REWIND: Tulsi Gabbard’s Krishna Consciousness (w/Nitai Joseph)
Recent reporting in the Washington Post found that Tulsi Gabbard has been taking policy guidance from her guru. We revisit our episode from May 2023, where we lay out Gabbard's lifelong involvement in this cult:
What does it mean for a prominent American politician to come into power as the sleeper cell of an eccentric Hindu-American cult? Does she act independently, or has her God-man got her on
314: JD Vance Rebrands as Church Dad for Prez
As the gases slowly leak from Trump’s orifices and IV holes, the bright flame of his inspiration to MAGA Christians is fading. Did he drain the swamp? Prosecute the pedophiles? Save the Holy Land? Lower gas prices? Give all the grill dads better health care? What was all the speaking in tongues for?
JD Vance has an answer for the MAGA faithful: another memoir, another rebrand that turns to the de
Bonus Sample: RFK Jr Reboots Reaganomics
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RFK Jr has been one of the loudest champions of the Trump's work requirements for Medicaid and SNAP recipients. While he frames it in the language of health, he's really just reviving a generations-old argument first made by Ronald Reagan.
Derek digs into the archival tapes to deliver the goods.
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Brief: Conspirituality Viewed Through Neofeudalism and Vectoralism
Matthew applies three interlocking frameworks to the conspirituality phenomenon—and to the podcast itself. Drawing on Jodi Dean's theory of neofeudalism, Yanis Varoufakis's technofeudalism, and McKenzie Wark's vectoralism, he argues that conspirituality is an epistemic crisis—a problem of bad information spreading through inadequately critical communities—but also a structural product of platform
313: The Resurrection of JP Sears
A decade ago, JP Sears built a large following poking fun at yogis and wellness types with his “ultra spiritual life” videos. Then Covid came and Sears took a hard right turn. In fact, he credits the pandemic with “opening his eyes” to many of the world’s problems—in his eyes, that means Anthony Fauci, vaccines, and transgender “ideology.”
Sears is one of the very first people we covered on this
Bonus Sample: Candace Owens and MAGA’s Russia Kink
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Influential right-wing pundit turned celebrity conspiracy-peddler, Candace Owens, just visited Russia for the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. While at “Russia’s Davos” she marvelled at the cleanliness and beauty of Moscow, explained that Americans were never given any real reason why Putin invading Ukraine was bad, and deflected questions about her potentia
Book Club: Food Intelligence
In the first edition of the Conspirituality Book Club, Derek dives into Food Intelligence: The Science of How Food Both Nourishes and Harms Us by Julia Belluz and Kevin Hall, PhD.
First, he looks at how RFK Jr and Jay Bhattacharya forced Hall out of his nutrition research position at the NIH in 2025. Then he covers some of the book's most intriguing findings, including:
Why most people don'
312: The Next Plague
A plague is coming. We don’t know when or which one, but we do know that since humans started gathering in groups numbering in the thousands, plagues became a consistent feature of existence. So a plague is always on the horizon, and public health is the response of a healthy society.
How healthy is America right now? Given that a recent NY Times investigation found that RFK Jr is laser-focused o
Bonus Sample: Liberation Theology or Magical Thinking?
Matthew investigates whether Pope Leo XIV's appeals to Liberation Theology represent genuine solidarity with the poor or a sophisticated form of spiritual bypassing.
Drawing on Ole Jakob Løland's analysis of Francis's papacy, Remski traces how Rome has metabolized Liberation Theology into compatibility with 135 years of Catholic Social Teaching by absorbing its pastoral language while suppressin
Brief: Collapse at the FDA
The FDA is bleeding out Covid contrarians. Marty Makary, Vinay Prasad, Tracy Beth Høeg—all gone. Jonathan Howard returns to discuss why so many RFK Jr's friends have reached the end of their bureaucratic road.
Show Notes
FDA Swaps Top Drug and Vaccine Regulators in Staff Overhaul
F.D.A. Commissioner Marty Makary Resigns After Weeks of Pressure
No One Should Care About or Trust Anything Dr. Mar
311: AI, Pope Leo, & The Antichrist
Leo the XIV wrote a big letter about a hyperobject. Many thoughts and debates are triggered. Today we’ll look at what the hell an encyclical is, the Vatican's decade-long conversation with Silicon Valley about coding morally-sound AI, and the broken and laundered echoes of Liberation Theology in Leo’s text.
Show Notes
Rerum Novarum, Leo XIII, May 15 1891
Catholic Church largest non-governmental
Bonus Sample: Journalism In An Age of Fascism
Derek reports on the role of journalism after attending the News and Documentary Emmy Awards in New York City last week.
Show Notes
2026 News & Documentary Emmy Awards | NEWS NIGHT (LIVE)
You Might Have Already Fallen for MAHA’s Conspiracy Theories
Student awarded CBS News scholarship explains why he called out network at event: ‘I had to do it’
Jorge Ramos, who's anchored the news for nearl
Brief: My Neighbourhood Data Center Conspiracy
Matthew investigates the under-construction STACK data centre at 3650 Danforth Avenue in Scarborough, two miles from his home, tracing what he finds through concentric circles of capital, neglect, hype, and deception.
When complete, the 56MW hyperscale facility will draw the power of 50K Ontario homes. But it was built without public consultation, environmental monitoring, or any info on who the
310: The Bait & Switch Complex
In the early 20th century, some retailers would advertise a product at an attractively low price to lure customers into the store, claim the item was out of stock or of poor quality then pressure customers to buy a more expensive alternative. The practice became known in the public vernacular as "bait and switch" in the 1920s.
This week, we look at three modern bait and switches pertinent to our
Bonus Sample: Poetry As Resistance & Embodied Spirituality
Across continents and centuries outsider poets have made a bold stand for the life of the body, contemplative ecstasy, sexual liberation, and the sacredness of nature, often in the face of religious and political repression.
From Rajasthan to New York, Ancient Persia to London, and Swansea in Wales to Balkh in Afghanistan, ecstatic poets have broken taboos around sex, death, gender, social caste
Brief: Living with Prediabetes
In February, Derek and his wife, Callan, were surprised to discover she was diagnosed with prediabetes. They didn't know that Asian American adults are at a higher risk of Type 2 diabetes than others without the traditional risk factors. Callan joins to discuss how the diagnosis changed her life, her frustrations with the healthcare system, and how she's navigating her new reality.
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309: Crybully Christians in the White House
The Trump DOJ's 565-page report from the Task Force for Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias is one of the strangest federal documents in American history. It’s a crybully tome, arguing that the most powerful religious majority in the United States is its most persecuted minority.
Julian examines the FACE Act allegations, the FBI-Catholic surveillance controversy, and the selective history propping u
Bonus Sample: Liberals Punching Left
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In this contribution to an ongoing co-host conversation, Matthew argues that the liberal centre's habit of punching left is a historically conditioned class strategy. From FDR's New Deal—designed to inoculate capitalism against socialism—through Hayek, Buckley, the Birchers, Limbaugh, and the Obama-era "socialist medicine" smear, liberals have accepted the premises of R
Brief: Spirituality After Atheism?
It’s normal to feel lost after leaving a cult, transitioning out of fundamentalist religion, or abandoning conspiracy theories. Whether you’ve left behind, you may be asking, "What now?"
Britt Hartley joins Julian to talk about her new book, No Nonsense Spirituality: All The Tools No Belief Required, and her recent run-in with the hardcore atheist community, which calls her work “nonsense.” The
308: The AI Slop Machine is Worse Than You Think [feat Mallory DeMille]
Two months ago, we recorded Episode 291: My Chinese Buddhist Israeli AI Guru, surveying the growing field of AI slopfluencers churning out wellness supplements via Amazon affiliate links. At the time, we weren’t clear on who was behind these accounts. Then Mallory DeMille went down a YouTube and TikTok rabbit hole and found the men making millions from these accounts. Today we’re going to look at
Bonus Sample: What's Left?
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Derek considers the online debates over leftism and liberalism in the context of coalition building.
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Brief: Antifascist Dad (Audiobook Excerpt)
Matthew reads the Introduction from Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times.
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307: Conspiracy Reflex Syndrome
As Cole Allen sprinted into the news cycle, social media accelerated to cover the story—and the conspiracy-beast in the basement flexed his fast-twitch muscle fibers. The now third assassination attempt on Donald Trump (this time at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner) had to be staged. What else could explain it? The one time Trump shows up, an assassin is waiting for him. What are the odds?
Bonus Sample: Hasan, Contrapoints, Ezra Klein, & The Dem Civil War
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The Democratic Party is in free fall. Still suffering the aftershocks of the 2024 election, a civil war is brewing internally between those who want to build coalitions that can win elections and those who see radicalization as the only way forward.
In April, debate about whether Dems should embrace hugely popular leftist streamer Hasan Piker,or distance themselves fro
Brief: Women 3, Manosphere 0
On the Whatever Podcast livestreams, alpha debate bros browbeat insecure betas and deride token guest female sex workers while possibly ignorant they're helping promote their OnlyFans accounts. But recently, three steely-eyed women have snuck in, decoded the matrix and fought their way up to stare down the ultimate boss—a chain-smoking, greasy-haired, foul-mouthed Christian nationalist named Andre
306: Antifascist Wellness
Two-thirds of the Conspirituality staff have new books out: Matthew's AntiFascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times and Derek's Well Enough: Finding Health Despite the Wellness Industry. Julian "interviews" the co-hosts about themes of each book and their intersections with Conspirituality.
But first, Derek discusses Glucose Goddess's recent partnership with medical d
Bonus Sample: Leo and Restless Hearts in Algeria
In April 2026, Pope Leo XIV, deep in a public feud with President Trump over the Iran war, made his first trip to Africa. He chose Algeria: the birthplace of Augustine, the spiritual founder of his order. Algeria is demanding reparations from France for 132 years of colonial rule and 1.5 million dead. It’s parliament declared French colonization a "state crime" just four months before Leo landed.
Brief: Well Enough (Book Excerpt)
Derek reads two chapters from his recently published memoir, Well Enough: Finding Health Despite the Wellness Industry. In Chapters 3 & 4, he discusses his work as a patient monitor looking after suicidal patients in an emergency room, then ending up in an emergency room himself after having a full-blown panic attack.
Show Notes
Well Enough: Finding Health Despite the Wellness Industry
Learn mor
305: AI’s Cultish Leader
Ronan Farrow is at it again. The reporter has a new feature in The New Yorker, written alongside staff writer Andrew Marantz, about OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. In many ways, the 16,000-word investigation is a meditation on the existential risks of AI being placed in the hands of a few powerful men, and in this case a possible sociopath.
Today we discuss the article and then zoom out on broader questio
Bonus Sample: How the Self is Made...and Unmade
Derek looks into behavioral economics to better understand the fluidity of the "self," finding that recent research aligns with a very old Buddhist concept.
Show Notes
What Does Extreme Wealth Do To the Brain?
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Brief: Pope Leo vs AI Slop Jesus Trump
Donald Trump's shitpost attack on Pope Leo XIV, followed within the hour by an AI slop icon of himself as Jesus, has cracked open the evangelical-Catholic coalition that has anchored American conservatism for fifty years.
Matthew walks through Leo's escalating confrontation with Trump, from his November 2025 immigration remarks to his Palm Sunday Isaiah citation ("your hands are full of blood"),
304: Twisted Tantric Yogi
Consider the bright-eyed students who signed up for tantric yoga and sacred sexuality courses through their local yoga studios, only to eventually find they were sending the guru photos of themselves in bikinis to see if they qualified for a private initiation ceremony.
What's unique about today's guru, Gregorian Bivolaru, is how his organization's in-depth courses reached into over 30 different
Bonus Sample: The Philosopher, The King, & The Holy Man
When the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini received Western media in a small French village in 1978, he sat cross-legged in his robes and black turban under an apple tree in the garden. They described him as “on another planet,” with “eyes of steel,” and compared him to an Eastern sage or ascetic guru.
French philosopher Michel Foucault, most famous for his penetrating analysis of power, knowledge (and p
Brief: Is There a "Deep Self"
Billionaire tech bro Marc Andreessen recently claimed introspection is a pathology. Derek and Julian discuss the Trump advisor's claims while the investor continues making bank from defense technology.
Show Notes
The Mind is Flat: Nick Chater
The Mind is Flat | Nick Chater | Talks at Google
Susan Blackmore Review of The Mind is Flat
The Tell-Tale Brain: VS Ramachandran
Consciousness and the
303: When Men Gather
New Yorker writer Charles Bethea recently decided to attend men’s retreats—well, at least those who would admit him. His expose on the modern men’s movement got us thinking about what’s happening over those very expensive three-day weekends, as well as the inspiration behind these groups dating back to the seventies. And even how a movement tracing back to the work of Robert Bly was co-opted by th
Bonus Sample: A Course in Miracles Reconsidered (w/Joseph Baker)
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If you heard Matthew’s Brief from March 28, you’ll know longtime Conspirituality listener Joseph Baker died on Feb 4 at the age of 51.
Matthew recorded this conversation with Joseph on January 9, 2024. They explore Matthew’s allergy to A Course in Miracles and Joseph’s devotion to it.
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Brief: Mikki Willis and Russell Brand Rewrite History
Mikki Willis recently joined Russell Brand to discuss a whole host of issues, including rather suspect rewritings of the histories of AIDS and Covid-19. Derek and Julian discuss.
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302: The Disinformation Dozen: Wuhan Drift
Early in this podcast we covered the Disinformation Dozen, 12 wellness influencers and contrarian health figures responsible for spreading the lion’s share of vaccine misinformation on major social media platforms.
On a recent MAHA Action weekly call, Tony Lyons got the group back together for a victory lap after a court settlement seemed to justify their actions. Or did it?
We break down the c
Bonus Sample: Peptides: Wellness’s Experimental Jab
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The wellness industry has been repeating marketing strategies used by the fashion and diet book industries for decades. Influencers are just exploiting novelty-seeking cognitive behaviors deeply embedded in human psychology.
Derek reviews today’s product du jour, peptides, by first looking into those dopamine-seeking behaviors, then exploring the history and present of
Brief: Eulogy for Joseph Baker, Faithful Listener
Matthew eulogizes longtime Conspirituality listener Joseph Baker, who died on February 4 at the age of 51. They became online friends when Joseph reached out to say that maybe Matthew was being too harsh with people who found inspiration in A Course in Miracles. Expecting an irritating exchange, Matthew came to know an incisive political thinker who managed to radiate hope and forgiveness, and lea
301: Gen X Meets the Manosphere
Did we all need a streaming manosphere documentary? Many did. Did we need one made in the GenX stop-and-mug slacker analysis-avoiding style of Louis Theroux? Debatable. Today we review Theroux’s Inside the Manosphere: its aesthetic mimicry of manosphere style, a potential ethics issue, how monetizing misogyny interacts with the gigwork incentives of OnlyFans, how all the bravado covers for legitim
Bonus Sample: The New Age Muslim Apocalyptic Prophet
From a repurposed orphanage in the North of England, Abdullah Hashem tells his audience in five languages, across two satellite TV companies, and multiple social media channels that he is the successor of Jesus and Mohammed, the “one true Pope” for Christians. In his carefully staged and ominously lit “basilica,” he lectures to his 200 residential followers (who emulate his idiosyncratic fashion s
Brief: The Book Men Actually Need
There's been talk about the "male loneliness epidemic" for years. Yet what about women? Derek reviews economist Corinne Low's recent book, Having It All, in light of this question, contrasting it with Scott Galloway's recent self-help book for men. The contrasts between the books couldn't be clearer.
Show Notes
Having It All: What Data Tells Us About Women's Lives and Getting the Most Out of You
300: Farming Ballerinas
When Hannah and Daniel Neeleman recently went on camera to explain their position on raw milk, they assured their 22 million-plus following that they were going to follow regulations—with a bit of a grudge. The couple behind Ballerina Farm wasn’t going to let a little bacteria get in the way of their farming operations, so they’ll just focus on pasteurized products.
While not associated with MAHA
Bonus Sample: Anxiety is The Pitt(s)
The Pitt recently exposed fans to the complexities and reality of panic attacks. Derek uses that moment in the exceptional show to discuss his own longstanding struggle with anxiety, exploring the latest science and interventions for dealing with them.
Show Notes
Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Panic Disorder in Adults
Management of generalized anxiety disorder and panic disorder in general he
Brief: The Stepford Wives Conference
Turning Point USA's Women’s Leadership Conference returns to Dallas in June. Derek and Julian take a look inside.
Show Notes
Antifeminist women’s summit: ‘The kitchen is where the real revolution starts’
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299: American Jihad
As black rain falls from the smoke-choked skies of Tehran, the US and Israel continue their war against the Islamic Republic of Iran. From the start, Trump officials have seemed only to disagree on both the murky rationale and the objectives of their mission.
Meanwhile, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation has been flooded with reports of commanding officers rallying their troops with apoca
Bonus Sample: Michael Parenti Went to a Yoga Ashram
Matthew found out that the late Marxist historian Michael Parenti went on a yoga retreat at the Sivananda Ashram in the Bahamas. He clocked the BS immediately—unlike Matthew when he showed up in spaces like that decades later. Was political training the difference?
Show Notes
Michael Parenti "The Political Uses of Religion" Denver, Colorado 4.18.87
How a #MeToo Facebook Post Toppled a Yoga Ic
Brief: Bishop Bootlicker Barron
Matthew digs into the fascism-enabling political theology of Bishop Robert Barron and the rightward slide of Big Catholic media. From his early admiration of Thomas Merton—carefully stripped of his antiwar and anti-capitalist passion—to his praise for Jordan Peterson, Marco Rubio, and Charlie Kirk, Barron repackages Red Scare tropes in the language of beauty, civility, and “religious liberty.”
An
298: MAHA’s Glyphosate Meltdown [feat Mallory DeMille]
Despite saying “I believe glyphosate causes cancer” a few weeks ago, RFK Jr quickly pivoted when his boss declared an executive order calling for the ramping up of glyphosate under a 75-year-old defense production act that also happens to give immunity to Bayer, the parent company of Monsanto.
MAHA activists immediately went into a frenzy, shocked that their tallow daddy would betray them like th
Bonus Sample: On Death & Being Human
Cult leaders, religious fanatics, dictators, and charlatans all have one thing in common: they exploit our fear of death. Humans act out “immortality projects” in the form of religion, culture, and political ideologies as unconscious ways to override the terror we feel at our uniquely self-aware knowledge that we will one day die. Where the orthodox priest promises eternal life, the cult leader m
Brief: Re-reading Casey Means
Casey Means was grilled by some Senators at her hearing for nomination of Surgeon General on Wednesday. Others lobbed softballs. Derek revisits the book that made her a star on the MAHA circuit, Good Energy, to detail all the misleading claims and outright misinformation.
Show Notes
Well, That Didn’t Sound Like Casey Means
Casey Means, Critic of Mainstream Medicine, Poised to Become Nation’s T
297: The Epstein Satanic Panic
It’s hard for some people to accept that the normalized and unbridled accumulation of wealth and power is a selection process for apex predators, who wind up having overwhelming influence over the systems that enabled them.
The metaphysical reflex can provide a lot of relief: Epstein was uniquely evil, so different from the rest of us that he engaged in supernatural acts. He was a cosmic raider i
Bonus Sample: MAHA’s Silence is Deafening
MAHA isn’t a health movement. It’s a marketing engine driving activist propaganda. Derek looks at Tony Lyons, one of MAHA’s key architects, and his recent strategic memo sent to Republican leadership about how to use MAHA talking points to retain power in the midterm elections.
Show Notes
Tony Lyons’s strategic memo to GOP leadership
Examining Who Benefits From Kennedy’s Anti-Science MAHA Push
Brief: Toxic Masculinity & The Epstein Files
In the wake of the DOJ’s dump of 3 million documents from the FBI’s Epstein investigation, journalists, content creators, and everyday people are forming narratives and schema for what it all means.
Social media is flooded with survivor stories, overwhelming disgust, rage and grief, and reports of anxiety, sleep disturbance, and difficulty functioning in the world (mostly from women). Pizzagate a
296: The Chopra Files
Deepak Chopra is all over the Epstein files. Are we surprised? Nope. But we are interested in the various layers of his entanglement and what they say about the ethics and politics at play in the shadow of Big Wellness.
Show Notes
Self-Help Guru Sorry He Got Busted for Vile Epstein Emails
Deepak Chopra: New Age Guru, UCSD Prof – and Epstein Confidant
God Is A Construct, Cute Girls Are Real': B
Bonus Sample: Mark Carney’s Secular Catholicism
Mark Carney is a devout Catholic, and his economic vision came from a challenge posed by Pope Francis. Matthew walks through the contradictions of Carney’s economic spirituality.
Show Notes
Values by Mark Carney | Penguin Random House Canada
Pope Francis says he wasn't offended by 'communist crucifix' gift
The Catholic Case for Communism - America Magazine
Pope Francis: “If I See the Gosp
Brief: Mark Carney’s Nice But Canada Sells Arms to ICE
Matthew pokes at the contradictions behind Prime Minister Mark Carney’s polished Davos attempt to distance Canada from U.S. chaos, while Canadian companies continue profiting from the U.S. domestic terror regime.
Drawing on reporting by Rachel Gilmore, Matthew looks at how Canada’s “middle power” liberalism masks deep complicity with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement through arms, surveil
295: The Attia Files
Over 1,000 children and women were potentially victims of Jeffrey Epstein's trafficking and sexual abuse. It is not clear how deeply Peter Attia was enmeshed in Epstein's core activities, but we do know he belonged to an important tier of his operation: the influencer-celebrity-intelligentsia set that legitimized him as a sophisticate across a wide range of disciplines.
We revisit Attia in light
Bonus Sample: Armed Struggle
In the wake of ICE murders, some are calling for more protestors with guns, or at least to prepare to meet fire with fire. Julian examines the history of armed struggle in South Africa and Northern Ireland, as well as the arguments for nonviolent vs militant political movements.
Is there a way back from the turning point at which people recruit their friends and families into neighborhood militi
Brief: MAHA is a Supplements Grift
Two new MAHA-approved bills would force insurance companies to cover supplements and shield homeopathic manufacturers from any liability while allowing them to make more health claims. As Derek argues, this is what Kennedy has always been aiming for: shuffle as many alt-med products into circulation as possible while ensuring they don't need any of those pesky regulations pharmaceuticals must endu
294: ICE Resistance
Prior to last month’s killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, many white American citizens felt obligated to use their privilege to actively disrupt unjust ICE activities in their cities. But the stakes just got higher for everyone.
In the wake of these tragic deaths, we look at how the MAGA propaganda machine dehumanizes opposition and demands loyalists not trust the evidence of their own eyes a
Bonus Sample: An Ode to Curiosity
When videos surfaced of Alex Pretti kicking an ICE vehicle's taillight 11 days before his murder, claims that the video was AI dominated social media. Some commenters even posted articles that stated the opposite of what they thought they said.
Derek explores the necessity of curiosity when coming across information that contradicts what you want to hear. First, he explores it through his love of
Brief: Did MAHA Put MAGA In Power?
The silence of MAHA influencers around the murder of Renee Good (and ICE generally) has been excessively loud. Yet that’s expected from the coalition that voted for Donald Trump in order to install RFK Jr at this point. Many believe “health isn’t political” while refusing to accept or acknowledge what their vote has empowered.
Dr Jonathan Howard, a neurologist and psychiatrist at NYU Langone’s Mu
293: Trump and Fascist Dementia
As Trump surges his Gestapo and threatens to annex new territory, his brain is collapsing. He’s sundowning on Truth Social, nodding off in meetings, slurring words, slurping at the saliva pooling in his mouth. His insults and aggressions are as constant and predictable as his arms are, reaching out for handholds.
Up until this point, discourse on the mental health of this decrepit fascist leader
Bonus Sample: Simone Weil: We Have Obligations Before We Have Rights
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Simone Weil was skeptical about the project of “rights.” They argued that obligations come before rights, and that rights only become real when obligations are recognized and lived.
Weil believed the French Revolution made a foundational error by grounding society in rights rather than eternal obligations, creating a contradiction that still haunts liberal democracies
Brief: Prospirituality Predictions for 2026
If conspirituality names the ways religion and spirituality are weaponized to justify power, prospirituality points to religious traditions doing the opposite: grounding resistance, ethical clarity, and solidarity in moments of crisis.
So: is there a growing prospirituality response to fascism, genocide, climate collapse, and AI-driven labor precarity? Matthew argues that yeah, there’s some good
292: Women of Jan 6 (w/ Noelle Cook)
Noelle Cook’s The Conspiracists: Women, Extremism, and the Lure of Belonging is the first ethnography of conspirituality, and it comes via someone who was able to really embed themselves in a volatile culture and find its emotional logic. She’s our guest today.
Cook focuses on the travails of two middle-aged women following the January 6 Capitol riot. By spending years befriending and talking wit
Bonus Sample: Oil, Power, and Theocracy
In 1953 the CIA and MI6 participated in a coup d’etat in Iran. That true sentence (and what usually follows) can create an oversimplified distortion of history—and present. But Iran is in the news again with the biggest protests since the 1979 Islamic Revolution bringing millions to the streets. The regime unsurprisingly cracked down hard: at least 2,700 protesters have been killed and 18,000 arre
MAHA’s Selective Skepticism
Whole milk is back! The war on protein is over! Mainline meat!
Derek investigates the new inverted pyramid and everything lacking in the new dietary guidelines.
Show Notes
The New Dietary Guidelines and the “Flipped Pyramid”
Several of Kennedy’s Dietary Advisers Have Ties to Meat and Dairy Interests
Carotenoid bioavailability is higher from salads ingested with full-fat than with fat-reduced
291: My Chinese Buddhist Israeli AI Guru
“Train your mind gently, not to deny what is hard, but to see what is still good” implores the monk sharing spiritual messages to his 2.5 million Instagram followers. Clad in an orange robe—well, sometimes a blue robe, sometimes grey or yellow—the little man of unknown descent speaks knowledge from a temple constructed from just about every Asian country imaginable. As it turns out, the creators o
Bonus Sample: Overwelled
From Andrew Huberman's Goop collab and Mel Robbins' protein shots to MAHA flipping the long-defunct food pyramid and making meningitis great again, the first full week of 2026 was off to quite a start. Derek covers the week that made heads spin.
Show Notes
Andrew Huberman is Optimizing Turkey Chili
Mel Robbins is Selling Protein Shots
What to Know About the New Childhood Vaccine Schedule
Hea
Brief: Censorship Industrial Complex
Marco Rubio’s office published an official press release last month titled “Announcement of Actions to Combat the Global Censorship Industrial Complex.” The memo discusses the decision to impose visa restrictions on five individuals due to their “organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose.”
One of those individuals is Imran A
290: Trump Derangement Science
What do fascists need to do to convince their rank and file that they’re the smartest in the room? They invent new science to trash the old science they didn’t like. First, we look into how RFK Jr is “making the proof” for all his scientific endeavors, then unpacking a new proposal from the AZ state sena Janae Shamp about how she’s going to get to the bottom of the clinical diagnosis of Trump Dera
Bonus Sample: What My Late Mom Would Have Thought About Jordan Peterson
Matthew reflects on the fifth anniversary of his mother’s death and revisits how her life, trauma, and values helped him understand the appeal—and fatal flaw—of Jordan Peterson’s worldview. Toughness can be an expression of love without becoming a politics of cruelty.
Show Notes
33: Manipulating the Hero’s Journey
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Brief: Class Wars on Christmas
Have you seen the “Grinch prank” video trend? Bad parenting, yes. But also a nod to the conflicts, ancient and modern, embedded in Christmas.
Contrary to what Bill O’Reilly would tell you, there has never been a “war on Christmas.” Rather, Christmas itself has always been a battleground over love, dignity, and resources. What we’re really fighting over is who gets care in systems built on scarci
289: Big Wellness’s Nicotine Gambit [feat Mallory DeMille]
In 1965, the US passed the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act, the reason every pack of cigarettes has a warning label informing you about the potentially harmful effects. Since then, numerous regulations, educational drives, and taxation initiatives have made smoking less appealing and harder to do.
In the contrarian wellness space, nicotine has become the alkaloid du jour. Forget ci
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