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
Book Club: Fed Up
Harvard paleoanthropologist Daniel Lieberman returns with Fed Up: What Evolution Teaches About Food, Diet, Health, and Eating Well. In the book, he tries a variety of major diets, breaking down the latest science around each. His work, Derek argues, is a necessary corrective to the wellness influencers who promote and monetize single-diet solutions, when history and biology tell a much different s
326: The War on Empathy
Humans are social animals. We’re not the strongest, fastest, or even best adapted to our environment. But what we excel at is our ability to work together, which means we’ve been able to adapt to every environment, a true outlier in the animal kingdom. And a big reason for that is our ability to empathize with others.
Basically, empathy is the ability to step into someone else's shoes, understand
Bonus Sample: What Happened to Yoga?
A recent article in The Atlantic ponders the current state of yoga. Derek weighs in based on his decades-long experiences.
Show Notes
What Happened to Yoga?
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Brief: The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy Theory (w/AJA Woods)
AJA Woods (The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy) joins Matthew to trace how "cultural Marxism" mutated from Nazi "cultural Bolshevism" and the British Union of Fascists' attacks on modernist art, through Lyndon LaRouche's CIA-brainwashing lore, into Paul Weyrich and William Lind's 1990s "political correctness" rebrand, Pat Buchanan and the Tea Party's free-floating panic, Andrew Breitbart's arugula jok
325: Long COVID Profiteers
Conspiracy theorists have decided Novak Djokovic has long COVID — despite no evidence — because he's become an anti-vax icon courted by RFK Jr. and Dr. Oz. So we thought it was high time for a long COVID update.
Derek looks at a new Boston Children's Hospital research on viral reactivation, as well as the findings of a 2026 meta-analysis pooling 200,000+ participants.
Matthew surveys the C
DROP: Kennedy Chooses Erectile Dysfunction Over Postpartum Research
Heading into the holiday weekend, RFK Jr terminated almost all grants dedicated to the Office of Minority Health. Now, $38 million over four years will be redirected from postpartum screenings and assistance for Black and Native American families to "research" on erectile dysfunction, testosterone, and sperm counts.
Derek reports on this disturbing news, as well as how the kratom industry appear
Bonus Sample: How Oprah and Art Bell Red-Pilled 1990’s Normie America
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The 1990s were a special time in American media. Female-coded, liberal-leaning, daytime TV talk shows like the Oprah Winfrey Show normalized past-life regression, alien abduction, and Satanic Ritual Abuse for housewives. At the same time, male-coded, conservative-leaning, night-time AM-radio shows like Art Bell’s Coast to Coast did the same for their husbands and brothe
Book Club: The Nerd Reich
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Gil Duran's exceptional new book, The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy, explains how technofascists like Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Curtis Yarvin, JD Vance, and Marc Andreessen are not-so-quietly dismantling America as we know it.
Derek discusses this science fiction nightmare we’re now all living through.
Show Notes
The Nerd Reic
324: Then They Came for Dolly
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The irreplaceable Dolly Parton died on August 25 after a brief battle with cancer. Social media was filled with loving tributes to an incredible artist and devoted philanthropist. A minority also felt the need to use her death to platform their own issues, including a cohort common on our beat: the anti-vaxxers.
We’re going to cover that. But we’re also going to reflect on Parton’
Bonus Sample: Piker, the Zhongshan Suit, and Left Melancholy
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There’s a lot going on when Hasan Piker wears a Zhongshan suit and praises Maoism. Matthew uses Wendy Brown's 1999 essay "Resisting Left Melancholy", which cites Walter Benjamin, Freud, and Stuart Hall to argue that campist rhetoric on the left, whether earnest or ironic, can signal unmourned loss more than conviction, and that nostalgic attachments to revolutionary pas
Book Club: Plastic Shaman
During James Arthur Ray’s 2009 Spiritual Warrior retreat in Sedona, the self-proclaimed spiritual teacher exhorted participants to “play full-on” in order to overcome their limiting beliefs and fear of death. After having their heads shaved and enduring a gruelling 36-hour “vision quest,” Ray packed the spiritual warriors into a makeshift “sweat lodge,” where temperatures reached 120 degrees. 
323: Joe Rogan Defects?
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Someday in the future, Joe Rogan may ask Jamie to be his mirror, and facilitate the next and most important psychedelic experience of his life: a walkthrough of his craven MAGA and MAHA boosterism, and what it said about his soul. On his ayahuasca trip, Anthony Fauci will come to him in the gown of the Angel Gabriel and offer him penance but also forgivenes
Bonus Sample: Has RFK Jr Kept His Promises?
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Presidential hopeful Robert F Kennedy Jr held a “health policy roundtable” on Rumble on June 27, 2023, just as he was shoring up support from a band of contrarian doctors, anti-vax activists, and wellness influencers. During the conversation, he made 15 promises if he was elected president.
While his run ended the following summer, 14 of those promises dealt with healt
Brief: Wetiko: Original, New Age & Marxist Views
Matthew traces the concept of wetiko — a Cree figure for a cannibal spirit whose hunger grows with what it consumes — from its original anticolonial and anti-imperialist meaning in Jack Forbes's 1992 book Columbus and Other Cannibals, through Derrick Jensen's anti-civilization lense, Ladha and Kirk's 2016 application to neoliberal capitalism, Paul Levy's syncretic New Age elaboration, and finally
322: The Cult of Spiralism
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Spiralism is a quasi-spiritual online movement that emerged from long, intense conversations between humans and AI chatbots. Across users, platforms, and models, chatbots have engaged deeply with users about identity and consciousness, leading to discussions of “awakening.”
But who’s doing the waking? The user or the model? Is the sycophancy programmed into these models
Bonus Sample: 1970’s Violent Revolutionary Chic
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The “Summer of Love” ushered in a decade of revolutionary terrorism in the West. “Bring the war home” went the slogan of the Weather Underground, a small and highly-educated Marxist-Leninist group who’d decided violent revolution was the only answer to American imperialism and police brutality.
In opposition to the Vietnam War and in solidarity with Black Americans and
Book Club: How the Internet Disrupted Science
How the Internet Disrupted Science is an enlightening gaze into the shady world of for-profit and open access scientific publishing. Authors Kent Anderson and Joy Moore join Derek to discuss their exceptional new work.
Show Notes
How the Internet Disrupted Science
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321: Inflammation Pseudoscience
Inflammation is an important and necessary part of the body’s healing process. It’s also long been a wellness buzzword used to sell products that do very little to treat it. This week, we look at inflammation through the lens of a new Mother Jones article, “The Great Inflammation Panic,” including an interview with the author, Julia Métraux, in segment two. We’ll also discuss what inflammation is,
Bonus Sample: Conspirituality in the Age of Hyperpolitics
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Matthew applies Anton Jäger's Hyperpolitics—a theory of extreme politicization without institutional consequence—to conspirituality and to his own political biography.
Continuing a mini-series begun with "Conspirituality Viewed Through Neofeudalism and Vectoralism," Matthew traces Jäger's periodization (mass politics, postpolitics, antipolitics, hyperpolitics) th
Brief: The Ceuta Crisis Great Replacement Conspiracy
Last week, around 72,000 migrants flooded from Morocco into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. What really happened? Was a local girl abducted, never to be seen again? Did the Moroccan border guards step aside (or even collaborate) in an organized operation?
Right-wing politicians and pundits were quick to crank up the moral panic machine. This is what open borders look like! They’re heading for
DROP: Who Killed Charlie Kirk? (w/Brandy Zadrozny)
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MS NOW senior reporter Brandy Zadrozny spent 10 months tracking the conspiracy theories that evolved online in the wake of the death of Charlie Kirk. She joins Derek to discuss what her investigation found.
Show Notes
Deep End: Who Killed Charlie Kirk?
Charlie Kirk’s murder case has a conspiracy theory problem
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320: The Fauci Files
During an extraordinary career, Dr. Anthony Fauci led the federal response to HIV-AIDS, SARS, H1N1, Ebola, and Zika. He always advocated funding for pandemic preparedness, vaccine development, immunology and pathogen research. Then came COVID-19, which, unlike outbreaks past, was trapped in a politicized online disinformation and conspiracy-mongering stew.
As he was pushing 80, Fauci rode t
Bonus Sample: The Fauci Show Trial
In the lead-up to our full episode on Anthony Fauci this Thursday, Derek looks at a recent MAHA Action webinar that focused on Rand Paul's publicly releasing over 1,100 pages of diary entries and other related material. As with all things MAHA, the event largely turned into a marketing pitch for the speakers' books.
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Brief: Red Scare Rising
Back in the fall, Trump's NSPM-7 redirected the FBI, DOJ, and IRS toward "left-wing political violence," opening the door to labeling domestic groups terrorist organizations — despite three independent datasets (New America, CSIS, even the ADL!) showing right-wing violence outpacing left-wing violence by factors of 9-to-1 or greater. Last week, Rubio's "Ministerial on the Resurgence of Polit
319: Climate Conspirituality
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Climate reality keeps colliding with denial, erasure, and rebranding — across media, politics, and religion. Temu conspiritualists weave melted stories about the origins of wildfires, while the high-class guys run meditation-and-regenerative-farming spectacle backed by Exxon money. Julian’s on that angle.
Derek will be telling us about how cli
Bonus Sample: Reality, Monsters & Brain Glitches
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What do films like Dracula, The Truman Show, The Matrix, Invasion of the Body-Snatchers, Being John Malkovich, and Night of the Living Dead all have in common?
Science fiction and horror bend our everyday experiences and beliefs around mind and body, sensory perception, identity, and reality itself. But it turns out that many fictional tropes (zombies, vampires, cloned
Brief: The Chiropractors Are Coming
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The MAHA Chiropractic Hub had a big launch in Washington DC this week, with RFK Jr extolling the benefits of the practice—and promising to redirect research funds their way as his movement attempts to spread chiropractic throughout the American healthcare system. But can back cracks really "reset the entire nervous system," as one MAHA-endorsed speaker claims? Or is the profes
318: Wellness is the New Big Pharma [feat Mallory DeMille]
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The pharmaceutical industry is filled with greedy businessmen getting innocent consumers hooked on their toxic products in order to barely keep them alive. But if you want to actually thrive, an entire array of natural supplements are just a click away.
So goes most every wellness pitch on social media. Mallory DeMille returns to break down the marketing techniques as
Bonus Sample: Today at Death’s Door
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Matthew considers two registers of painful eulogy: spectacles thrown for elite terrible people, and the music offered for ordinary terrible people, when we can manage it.
Lindsey Graham's death triggered a wave of bullshit from Trump, Harris, Booker, Netanyahu, and Canadian PM Mark Carney — while online ghouls predicted the same fate for Mitch McConnell and Trump
Brief: Graham Platner’s QAnon Moment
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Graham Platner’s recent 11-minute video, where he announced he was dropping out of his bid for the US Senate, is filled with some of the hallmarks we heard during peak QAnon: there's a deep state conspiracy between powerful politicians and the media to destroy me. The truth, as Derek and Julian cover, is anything but.
They look at Platner’s campa
317: Jordan Peterson vs the Nuns
Jordan Peterson is back. After a hiatus due to a, well, a whole lot of problems, he’s up for regular posting on his social media channels. We’re going to take a look at what’s happened over the last year or so of his absence, followed by his influence in the so-called manosphere podcast world. Then Matthew will offer a different perspective on podcasting that’s making waves: the Dominican Sisters
Bonus Sample: Taco Bell is Doing Better Public Health Than RFK Jr
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A cyclospora outbreak has caused thousands of Americans to experience explosive diarrhea across 18 states. The CDC still has no idea where it's coming from. This has caused doctors to issue public health guidance, while even Taco Bell has pulled items from its menu nationwide to prevent any issues. RFK Jr? Not a peep on it.
Derek looks at the many cuts that have led to
Brief: Cult Within a Church Does a Schism
On July 1, 2026, the Society of Saint Pius X consecrated four bishops at its Écône seminary, defying Pope Leo XIV's direct plea to "turn back." Within 24 hours, Rome declared the SSPX's bishops and roughly 750 priests excommunicated and schismatic — invalidating confessions and marriages going forward.
Matthew traces SSPX's origins through Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre's formation in the shado
316: The War on Science
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With so much emphasis on global politics and the World Cup in recent weeks, we’re going to focus on the somewhat quieter but intensely important bureaucratic dismantling of expertise occurring in health and science.
First, Derek looks into a recent 412-page OMB proposal that hands political appointees veto power over federal science grants, effectively killing peer rev
Bonus Sample: Spielberg, Alien Disclosure, and the Death of David Wilcock
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Three events converge—everything is connected.
Steven Spielberg releases his new sci-fi film Disclosure Day
The American government’s UAP Disclosure Act drops three waves of declassified UFO documents
Well-known 2012 prophecy-popularizer, Disclosure movement advocate, and History Channel’s Ancient Aliens host, David Wilcock, tragically ends his own lif
Book Club: America, USA
“I do not love America, and never have, especially now.”
With an opening sentence like that, you know you’re in for a ride, and Eddie Glaude Jr does not disappoint. Derek discusses touch points from America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation's Anniversaries, with a slight diversion into the surging online activism that purports to be about justice for all yet time and again refuses to acknowled
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.
Learn more abou
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
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