Conspirituality

In 2017, Charles Eisenstein addressed the SAND (Science And Non-Duality) Conference on our "obsession with measurement." A clip of that talk, published in 2019, put forward the question Is Science a Religion? Charles answered yes, offering a number of supposed parallels.

Only—most of them don't hold water. Derek responds to his talk, breaking down Charles's analysis point-by-point. He also bookends the episode with clips from a thinker who brilliantly drew parallels between science and religion without conflating them: Oliver Sacks.

Show Notes

Is Science a Religion? — Charles Eisenstein

Oliver Sacks on Humans and Myth-making 

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Up to this point, we’ve understood Charles Eisenstein as the poet-philosopher of conspirituality, lending his Burning Man ritual workshop chops to the antivax faux-freedom movement. Out of deference to his apparent sensitivity and respectable writing skills, we’ve given him the benefit of the doubt—we even invited him on this show for two episodes to see whether we could find common ground. We didn’t.

In our last Bonus episode, Julian tracked how Eisenstein has accelerated and intensified his rhetoric. Today, we’ll see how he’s fortifying his money networks, and starting to say the quiet parts out loud. He’s no longer “just” dog-whistling violence and QAnon.

We’re reviewing a recent video he’s co-produced with Onnit multimillionaire and Austin bro-poet Aubrey Marcus. It’s an anime rendition of the ending of his 2013 bestseller, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible. In the book, Eisenstein presents “The Gathering of the Tribe” as a kind of personal mythology. As he levels up to the big leagues, this story about belonging to a group of blessed alien shamans sent to wake up humanity carries clear real-world literalness—and a culty vibe.

If the high-end video doesn’t convince you, a tape from a hipster New Year’s Eve party in Ithaca NY might do the trick. As he holds guru-court for All the Big Questions, Eisenstein tells an Iraq vet that he has special gifts to deploy against the (fictional) building of COVID concentration camps in Rhode Island. Then he says he hopes the “pedophile elite” will just stop. Sound familiar?

Eisenstein’s content is poetic and vague. Its implications are plausibly deniable. It pours out through an endless stream of radiant and inscrutable essay drops. He has mastered the cryptic prompt that either speaks to your soul, to your appetite for disrupting public health, or to your recent tactical training regimen. Who can really tell? His skill is to stand beside and above it all. He can avoid being pinned down. It’s almost as if he’s not really there, but only reflecting the zeitgeist of our broken moment. It’s time to just name him for what he is: New Age Q.

Show Notes

A Gathering of the Tribe | POWERFUL Short Film by Charles Eisenstein w/ Jon Hopkins & Aubrey Marcus

A Gathering of the Tribe | Reality Sandwich (original, 2009)

A Gathering of the Tribe (full version Charles’s site)

Interview with Charles Eisenstein | Inner World Press | Shift in Consciousness Ezine

In the Miracle (Eisenstein essay, 2009)

Charles Eisenstein at Resonance NYE

The Man Behind th

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Charles Eistenstein has had quite the pandemic. Essays read by millions, retweeted by Jack Dorsey, quoted by Ivanka Trump, held up as the poet philosopher of conspirituality—hell, he’s even been on the podcast!

Julian tracks the transformative arc of malformed ideas garnished with spiritualized language that has made Eisenstein the romantic mascot of anti-vax, Covid-contrarian wellness. This is how he finds himself now poised to become the mythic storyteller-in-residence of an emerging Austin-based cult of psychedelic bro science and “medical freedom.”

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On the day after the Winter Solstice, as the world tucked in for an Omicron staycation, a news flash came over the wire. Yoga International—one of the largest yoga media companies in the world—had been acquired by Gaia—one of the largest pseudoscience, pseudointellectual, conspiracy theory platforms in the world. While the CEO of Yoga International immediately assured nervous content providers that the platform will remain editorially independent, only time will tell.

What we do know is that countless print articles written by earnest yogis and thousands of hours of classes created by earnest yoga instructors will now share space with David Icke, an antisemitic conspiracy theorist who believes lizard people have coopted world governments—and that’s only the start.

The acquisition predicts even more brain-melting in yogaland, exposing even more vulnerable and credulous seekers to a dumpster fire of meaning dressed up in a simulation of spirituality. Julian covers some Gaia history. Derek makes us suffer through some Gaia content. Matthew opens by tracking the century-long descent of yoga media to this conspiritualistic nadir.

Show Notes

Rob Price Interview on Gaia and Conspiracy Theories

Gaia Acquires Yoga International, a Leading Digital Yoga Service

Yoga guru in compromising position / Celebrity instructor Rodney Yee faces allegations of misconduct with students

The Case against Swami Rama of the Himalayas

How to Respond to Sexual Abuse Within a Yoga or Spiritual Community

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In 1969, Swami Vishnudevananda pioneered what has become a life transition ritual for the GenX and Millennial precariat: the Yoga Teacher Training (YTT) Programme. He was a cult leader rapist who thought yoga would help the world understand messages sent by UFOs. Not exactly confidence-inspiring.

Not every YTT programme is bad—today's bonus host Matthew has worked in some good ones for over a decade. But on the whole, we're talking about an industry that has graduated up to 500K ppl over 50 years through a pseudo-educational process that has greased the epistemological pipeline towards conspirituality.

YTTs are unregulated by any academic or professional consensus. They are driven by the anxious charisma of urban yoga studio entrepreneurs who need to sell big-ticket products to counter the rising overheads of the gentrification they're helping to drive. Their curricula offers a pastiche of uncited resources. They pad contact hours with sermons and meditation sessions. 

The typical YTT training manual is an unironic postmodern meat-grinder in which Iron Age philosophy and high school anatomy are blended with quotes from Carl Jung and Rumi. As an example, Matthew looks at a Jivamukti Yoga School manual from a 2007 training hosted at Omega Institute.

Again: not all YTTs are bad, or lead to QAnon. But the ritual and charismatic pedagogy that most offer has a lot in common with the sacrament of redpilling—albeit more socially acceptable and aspirational. 

Conspirituality went viral in 2020. It's time to ask whether the YTT industry compromised a culture's immunity to it.

Show Notes

Hello, YogAnon! Selfish Care Rituals | by Matthew Remski | Medium

How a #MeToo Facebook Post Toppled a Yoga Icon | by Matthew Remski | GEN

Shielded for Decades, a Leader of Sivananda Yoga Finally Comes Under Fire for Alleged Abuse | GEN

John of Fraud. How did slack journalism and New Age… | by Matthew Remski | Medium

Practice and All Is Coming – Matthew Remski

Jivamukti sexual harassment lawsuit says the yoga studio is a cult.

Jivamukti, Dark and Light: Holly Faurot, Sharon Gannon, and David Life Speak Out - Decolonizing Yoga

Terry Eagleton in the New Statesman Re

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"When we don't avoid people who think differently than we do, we gain an opportunity for growth and national renewal." So opens Red State Christians: Understanding the Voters Who Elected Donald Trump, a fascinating and insightful book by Lutheran pastor and journalist Angela Denker. 

Denker spent years on the road talking to Christians who voted for Donald Trump—listening to their motives and writing honestly, but not uncritically, about their reasoning. To her surprise, she discovered a much more diverse coalition than you’d likely imagine—just like the Left is not the monolith that conservatives sometimes paint. From abortion rights and racial issues to immigration and football, Denker offers an inside look at the American mindset.

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Derek investigates the origins of language through thinkers like David Crystal, Michael Corballis, and others, to investigate how two popular figures—Deepak Chopra and Rick Warren—sell their spiritual wares. Their patterns reveal the model many conspiritualist influencers use today.

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The global pandemic response is a microcosm of the global climate collapse response. In both  we get to see what’s really under the hood when the pressure is on. In the face of endless and relentless odds and near-constant demoralization, what stories do we turn to, what bonds do we form, and who do they help?

Climate journalist emeritus George Monbiot joins Matthew to discuss the never-ending road of empathy and activism, and what happens on that road when otherwise brilliant and sensitive people “lose their mirror,” or sense of responsibility to the commons. What happens when they aestheticize grief. What happens when they have enough privilege to fetishize renunciation.

Their discussion orbits around the recent conspirituality spiral of a writer who has been  a hero to many in the realm of climate literature and consideration. Paul Kingsnorth has recently converted to Romanian Orthodox Christianity... and vaccine skepticism. He's also wondered aloud whether the virus is not "a delicious little sign from God" that humanity deserves punishment.

Show Notes

The Dark Mountain Manifesto

Earth Talk: Five years on a mountain - Paul Kingsnorth and Dougald Hine

Is there any point in fighting to stave off industrial apocalypse? | Paul Kingsnorth and George Monbiot | The Guardian

After the failure of Cop26, there is only one last hope for our survival | George Monbiot 

The Vaccine Moment, part one - by Paul Kingsnorth

The Vaccine Moment, part two - by Paul Kingsnorth 

The Vaccine Moment, part three - by Paul Kingsnorth

George Monbiot on Twitter: "I've read Paul Kingsnorth's anti-vaccine essay on Substack, and I suspect it might contribute to quite a few deaths. Why? Because his writing is elegant and powerful, but some of his facts are simply wrong. Here's a very small sample: Thread/" 

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In the 1990s, Westerners searching for enlightenment flocked to India. The pilgrimage represented an affirmation of status and authority in the burgeoning yoga economy. Julian reflects on his three months in the “middle circle” of the Osho Ashram in Pune, where he chased a destiny seeded years before in a South African basement. As an earnest yet skeptical seeker passing though cultic territory, he points out the overlaps between meaningful experience and group indoctrination.

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While Americans were transforming esoteric strains of yoga into a commodifiable industry in 1980, a young naval officer named Steve Bannon was picking up theosophical texts in metaphysical bookstores and practicing Zen meditation in secret while stationed in Hong Kong. He was wary of his countrymates liberal explorations of Eastern philosophies, aware of the nationalistic roots upon which these “mystical” systems were founded. Then he stumbled into Traditionalism, a perennial philosophy that consumed all world religions, as popularized by the likes of French metaphysicist René Guénon and Italian antisemitic conspiracy theorist Julius Evola.

This week we welcome Benjamin Teitelbaum, an Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology and International Affairs at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and author of the book, War for Eternity: The Return of Traditionalism and the Rise of the Populist Right. Teitelbaum gained access to leading right-wing figures around the world, including Steve Bannon. He’s got their number and brings receipts. Get ready for a long, strange trip.

Show Notes

The rise of the traditionalists: how a mystical doctrine is reshaping the right

Covid-19 Is the Crisis Radical ‘Traditionalists’ Have Been Waiting For

The People Who Pray for the Apocalypse | Benjamin Teitelbaum | The Glenn Beck Podcast

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Matthew responds to the robust feedback on the Sam-Harris-is-a-highbrow-conspiritualist bonus, and then stretches the terms around harm in the conspirituality sphere in another way, by looking at the spectrum of agency offered by different wellness/spirituality products. He interrogates the premise implicit in some of our reporting that the cognitive errors and magical thinking of alt-health and New Age paradigms are all on a slippery slope to ruin. TLDR: isn’t it always more about sociology than ideology?

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When Mike Flynn posted a video on July 4, 2020 in which his family recited QAnon slogans, it cemented the disgraced former National Security Advisor and U.S. Army lieutenant general as a MAGA patriot super-hero. On September 17, just 14 short months later, Flynn took the stage, bathed in light at the Lord of Hosts Church in Omaha, Nebraska to lead a political prayer that was a fiery angelic call-to-arms. But, oops! It turns out that this prayer traces back to New Age doomsday cult leader, Elizabeth Clare Prophet. Now the Q-faithful have turned on their hero, accusing him of being in league with the Satanic cabal. We’ll ask today’s guest host, Sean Prophet—who happens to be the eldest son of that cult leader—how he got out, and how we got here.

Show Notes

The Radical Secular podcast with Sean Prophet

Relevant episodes:

9: QAnon and Conspirituality: with Matthew Remski - 08.24.20

16: Before Q, There Was CUT: with Joe Szimhart - 10.19.20

22: Getting out of Cults and Harmful Religions - Bonus Episode

54: Blavatsky, the I Am, and The Summit Lighthouse - 07.19.21

Black Sun Journal » Happy Birthday, Mom!: 2006 Article by Sean Prophet on final interaction with Elizabeth Clare Prophet

Church Universal and Triumphant - Nightline - May 17th 1990

CUT/Summit Lighthouse on Oprah 5 with Streiker and Hassan

QAnon Fall Out from Mike Flynn using I Am Prayer

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Derek shares a story from his time as a Lululemon brand ambassador to highlight the toxic merging of spiritual practices and consumerism. Not only does he detail Lulu's post-Chip Wilson pivot in an attempt to "own yoga," he also explores the histories of branding, money, and markets in an attempt to understand how we arrived at the influencer culture that dominates social media today. 

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We've talked a lot on this podcast about the selfie sermon: the kind of iPhone video native to Instagram influencers. Easily weaponized by conspiritualists, this sermon is equal parts intimate confessional, prophecy download, and motivational coaching, directly transmitted from your favorite self-anointed maverick expert. Social media seems perfectly designed for such hypnotic performances and spiritual darshans. But in the brick-and-mortar world, yoga teachers have long blurred the line between acting and teaching, space holding and theater, and ritual ceremony and fitness. If all the world's a stage, as Shakespeare had it, the wooden planks of the yoga studio—and the digital platforms built in ether—demand that teachers embrace a role, adopt a script, and sell a story to their audience. What we want to know is: where does the performance end and yoga begin, or perhaps more to the point, is there even a difference?

Our guest host today is Jill Miller, who many listeners will know from her hugely influential body of work in yoga and movement as founder of Tune-Up Fitness. She's also a former actor, which played an important role in her transition to full-time yoga instructor. We're going to start today with an excerpt from her 2017 TED-style talk that she gave in Toronto titled, “Lights, Camera, Yoga."

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Kyle Rittenhouse walks away from the courthouse while Ahmaud Arbery's killers were found guilty and "QAnon Shaman," Jacob Chansley, was received significant jail time. Our opinions on each of these cases are likely determined by our political affiliations, which in turn are a reflection of how we think about morality, crime, and punishment.

Julian draws on scientific research into how genetics and the brain shape our politics, thought experiments in moral philosophy, and the work of moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt.

As he questions whether or not any of us have freely chosen to be the good ones, he wonders if a way out of our toxic polarization might be found through understanding the underlying  moral values and emotional reactions that drive one another's political beliefs.

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COVID has been a recruiting windfall for hate groups in Canada, with new alliances and networks forged between white supremacists, xenophobes, and ethnonationalists in the fire of accelerated conspiracism. Joining Matthew to map out this landscape are street-level anti-hate activists Elizabeth Simons, the deputy director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, Dan Collen, a researcher with the Neuberger Holocaust Education Center's Online Hate Education and Research Project, and Morgan Yew, a video journalist and DJ from Kamloops, whose coverage of Toronto's anti-lockdown protests has been rich and revealing.

We cover a lot in this one: the “irony poisoning” white nationalist recruiting tactics that target 14 year-old boys, the rogue’s gallery of extremists wreaking havoc at anti-lockdown rallies, racists trying on “sovereign citizen” pseudolaw in the courts, and their craven appropriation of Indigenous rights discourse when they lurch into “Pretendian” territory. We’ll also look at the People’s Party of Canada, and discuss why it is not very smart to write it off as QAnon foolishness.

Content Warning: analysis of hateful views, including notes from a white supremacist recruiting manual that is instructing followers on how to indoctrinate children.

Show Notes

Canadian Anti-Hate Network

Dan Collen’s fantastic articles on Medium: dancollen.medium.com

Morgan Yew’s awesome Twitter feed

Canadian Anti-Semites and Far-Right Conspiracy Theorists Try New Tactic: Aligning with Indigenous Communities

Mediasmarts

Learning for Justice | Education Resources

Wisdom2Action – Facilitate Change. Strengthen Communities.

The 519- nonprofit promoting 2SLGBTQ+ inclusion serving Toronto - The 519 - Space For Change - The519

Egale Canada - nonprofit promoting 2SLGBTQ+ inclusion serving Canada Home - Egale

CASSA - Council of Agencies Serving South Asians - http://cassa.on.ca/

The Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre - https://www.holocaustcentre.com/

Chinese Canadian National Council for Social Justice - https://ccncsj.ca/

Timeline cleanse. Some of Morgan’s video nurturance journalism.

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Bonus episode, piloted by Matthew.

There is a subtle form of conspirituality that rides on the familiar dialectic of political cynicism and spiritual promise—but it's dressed for a button-down salon dinner in Harvard Square. No crystals in sight, no essential oils wafting through the room.

Sam Harris isn’t sounding the alarm about the Cabal or the Illuminati: his bugaboos are Islam, or “wokeism,” or “cancel culture.”

And he isn’t saying that starseeds will save the day, or that a Great Awakening is upon us. He’s not so low-brow.

His salvation product is meditation, which he says can validate his political insights. And hey, there's an app for that!

Show Notes

Celebrity Crusaders For Empire

Towards a geopolitics of atheism

Why the arguments of the 'New Atheists' are often just as violent as religion

Harris daydreaming about a nuclear strike

Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web

Will the "University of Austin" ever actually exist?

Sam Harris & Charles Murray

Harris. “A Few Points of Confusion.”

Decoding the Gurus: Sam Harris & Meditation is all you need

Gurometer— Kavanaugh and Browne

Buddhist Studies Has a Whiteness Problem

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Conspiracy theories flourish during uncertain times. They're always with us, passed down through generations like alternate histories, yet they’re constantly reinvented when collective stress levels peak. Julian reports on the QAnon spin-off group that’s been camped out in Dallas’s Dealey Plaza for two weeks, hoping to catch a glimpse of a pantheon of resurrected dead celebrities. In light of the Astroworld concert tragedy, which killed 10 people, being interpreted as a ritual Satanic sacrifice on social media, Derek wonders if conspiracies are just how we process everything now. Matthew points out the legitimate reasons conspiracy theorists have for their paranoia while warning against the media's tendency to titillate by misusing the terminology of cult research. And he also reads a bit from Paradise Lost. A conversational recap week as we’re working on some Big Shows in the next few weeks.

Show Notes

Riots, deaths, sexual assault: Maybe Woodstock was always a nightmare

The Bizarre Travis Scott Claims Show That Conspiracies Are Just How We Process Things

TikTok and QAnon Panic Over ‘Satanism’ Conspiracies at Deadly Travis Scott Concert

QAnon’s Refuse to Leave Dallas After JFK Jr. Fails to Appear

Inside The QAnon Cult Waiting for JFK Jr.

On The Ground At Dealey Plaza

Twitter videos/thread on Michael Brian Protzman

What Biden is keeping secret in the JFK files

QAnon Influencer Recruiting Secretary of State Candidates

Academic Research on Conspiracy Theories in Times of Social Crisis

Karen Douglas PhD on The Psychology of Conspiracy Theories

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Privilege is often blind and rampant across societies. But is the term also overused?

Derek looks at two examples of privilege in wellness spaces, the danger of its overuse, and a possible reframing of how to approach the topic. 

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To prepare this curative episode, we listened carefully to alternative health consumers for many hours, taking an exhaustive history of life challenges on physical, mental, and emotional planes. We scanned the symptoms against our compendium of disease states and prescribed the precise substances that would mirror them.

Then, we took minuscule audio samples from our podcasting apothecary — skepticism, melancholy, and empathy. We mixed these, diluted them a thousand times, to the point at which they became completely inaudible. Then we shook them up and down while chanting the spell of this bespoke remedy: Conspiritualitis investigarium.

Please don’t try to turn up your volume on this episode. You can’t actually hear it, and that’s what makes it so powerful.

But seriously folks. Welcome to our long-awaited homeopathy show — and not a week too soon. NFL’s leading quarterback Aaron Rodgers has just admitted to endangering the entire league by opting to be “immunized” via homeopathy rather than complying with the league’s vaccination requirements. (He’s also a lying liar.) There are reports of homeopaths selling COVID19 remedies — through both small ops in the U.S., and federally-approved dispensers in India, where Narendra Modi’s Hindu Nationalists mingled sugar pills with astrology to help disguise their negligent pandemic response.

Derek takes us on a tour through the strange history of this medicine that isn’t there, and interviews Jonathan Jarry of the McGill Office for Science and Society on why it haunts us. Julian contextualizes homeopathy against the broader “Complementary and Alternative Medicine” landscape. And Matthew wonders about the uses of magic.

Show Notes

A brief history of homeopathy

Vaccines and Homeopath

Homeopathy: A History

Berlin Wall pills: a cure for emotional trauma – or royal-endorsed quackery

Jonathan Jarry's homeopathy video

Jonathan's articles for McGill University

Homeopathy And Its Founder: Views Of A British Researcher

MEASURING MYTHOLOGY: Startling Concepts in NCCAM Grant

$2.5 billion spent, no alternative cures found

Complementary And Alternative Medicine

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Are emotions really separate from rationality? Is trusting science similar to religious faith? Do poetry and mythic archetypes disclose a reality beyond the material world? What might characters like Mr. Spock reveal about logical thinking?

Julian explores the relationships between scientific and religious world views through the lenses of emotions, metaphors, and the brain. He draws on clips from neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, philosopher Julia Galef,  linguist George Lakoff, biology professor Robert Sapolsky, and neurologist Vilayanur Ramachandran.

Show Notes

This Time With Feeling: David Brooks and Antonio Damasio

40/40 Vision Lecture: Neurology and the Passion for Art

George Lakoff - How Does Philosophy Illuminate the Physical World?

24. Schizophrenia

The Straw Vulcan, Julia Galef Skepticon 4

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There is no avoiding the fact that conspirituality plays out against a backdrop of racially-charged politics and the echoes of colonialism. And from the beginning of this podcast project we’ve tackled things like the origins of yoga and wellness being tangled up with European fascist movements and racist eugenics. We’re speaking from and into a culture that is predominantly white, and has the disposable income to afford boutique health ideologies. We know it’s naturally allergic to the project of public health. We know that it ignores the social determinants of health — because if it didn’t, it couldn’t sell its green-smoothie-based hero’s journeys.

But reporting on race and conspirituality is only going to get harder. In this episode, Matthew reviews a new volume of essays that might help. A Field Guide to White Supremacy, edited by Drs. Kathleen Belew and Ramon Gutierrez, brings together a pile of resources for journalists and policy-makers who want to engage thoughtfully with issues of equality. And he interviews Dr. Belew on best practices, The Great Replacement conspiracy theory, and why there are no “lone wolves.”

In a debrief discussion, Derek and Julian join in to puzzle out the complexities of reporting on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. platforming Black anti-vax activists, how the sources of vax-hesitancy shown by Aaron Rogers and Kyrie Irving might be coming from different places, and how to think empathetically about vaccine hesitancy in Black liberation movements.

Show Notes

Kathleen Belew

A Field Guide to White Supremacy by Kathleen Belew, Ramon A. Gutierrez

RFK Jr is one of the Disinformation Dozen, and He has actively courted and collaborated with Black communities and leaders

Twitter thread of Barclay's Center protest clips

The Creator Of 'The Punisher' Wants To Reclaim The Iconic Skull From Police And Fringe Admirers

Kyrie Irving hints at redpilling followers on IG

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Okay, maybe the title is overstated. But, as Matthew explores in this bonus episode: what are the contours of social comfort and habitus — supported by faith and ritual — that haunt any layperson's relationship to science? When the pressure is on, be it acute or existential, do we really display "critical thinking" — or are we really skilled at post-hoc rationalizing choices that embody the social status we wish to identify with?

What are the psychosocial scents that waft from institutional actors vs. influencers, and what does it say about history and personal experience that one or the other is inviting, or terrifying?

Finally: both Steve Hassan and Lee McIntyre have proposed that careful 1:1 conversations can re-establish interpersonal trust with the indoctrinated. But when we're talking about making vulnerable populations less susceptible to pseudoscience and conspiracy theories, is this really sufficient? Or must we consider broader forms of social atonement, like reparations?

Show Notes

Sapolsky: Religious Ritual is OCD

B.C. health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry on COVID-19

333,000 children were abused within France's Catholic Church, a report finds

Santa Claus and Dr. Tam have a video chat 

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What happens when a philosopher of science shows up at a flat earth conference to test out his theories about changing people's minds? This story catapults you into Lee Mcintyre’s new book, How to Talk to a Science Denier.

As anti-vaccine and anti-quarantine protests flare up around the world, and the pandemic drags us all through financial and emotional destruction, discussing science communication has become more necessary than ever. Mcintyre's 2018 book, Post-Truth, examined the manipulative world of “alternative facts.” As a sort of addendum, his latest charts a boots-on-the-ground course to understanding and engaging with false beliefs. Julian's interview with Lee is the main focus of today's episode. After we run the interview, the crew debriefs and discusses.

Show Notes

Talking to science deniers and sceptics is not hopeless

When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions

Santa Claus and Dr. Tam have a video chat

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It's been over a century since Dale Carnegie began teaching the importance of extroversion, bringing with it a cultural shift that champions an aggressive social and work style. Gone were the days of championing introspection.

Derek explores his own relationship with introversion in Yogaland, wondering how a quiet form of self-investigation that often champions the loud and bombastic on social media. The influence of the extrovert has dominated many domains, but none more insidiously than the wellness influencers feigning compassion in an attempt to influence people but not necessarily win friends.

Show Notes

People Aren’t Meant to Talk This Much

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

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What happens when MLM sales and neoliberal life coaching collide with a yoga charisma that oozes with pseudofeminism? Where do we even begin? Exploitation. Heartbreak. Toxic mimicries of therapy, mentorship, political awareness, and community.

In this investigative report, Matthew digs into the background of a recent article posted to Medium called “Open Letter to Elena Brower.” He interviews the author, Tatum Fjerstad, who Brower mentored from 2014 to 2016, and Liz Fullen, who worked as Brower’s unpaid yoga class assistant for approximately three years. He’ll also play excerpts from a legally-recorded Zoom call in which Brower gives non-consensual “coaching” to a stranger.

Friend of the pod Dr. Natalia Petrzela joins the story to recount her personal brush with the Handel Coaching Method. Brower is a Handel “expert coach”, and has merged the Method with her yoga training to produce peak cognitive-dissonant messaging:

You’re fabulous, but you're fucked. You’re already perfect and you know what’s right for you, but you have a lot of work to do, and I can show you how to do it.

Other themes include “performative therapy abuse”, the perils of unlicensed therapy, and how the power pyramids that hide in plain sight may be more vulnerable than we know, especially when we begin to talk about them clearly.

Show Notes

Open Letter to Elena Brower. CW: spiritual and emotional abuse | by tatum fjerstad | Sep, 2021 | Medium

mlmtruth.org's killer list of research and resources

New Presidential Diamond announcement: Brower

Conspirituality Instagram post on "Performative Therapy Abuse"

Yoga Teachers Are Not Doctors, Doctors Are Not Priests

IYNAUS independent investigation of Manouso Manos

The American Yoga ReVolution with Iyengar disciples Manouso Manos and Patricia Walden

“Betrayal of Trust”: 1991 Mercury News Investigation of Sexual Assault Allegations Against Manouso Manos — by Bob Frost

The Yoga Mogul: John Friend, Creator of the Anusara School

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With a new variant of QAnon circulating through white evangelical churches, protests against masks and vaccines are becoming more aggressive around the world. In Germany, a gas station attendant who asked a customer to mask-up was shot dead this week, and a Maryland man allegedly killed his pharmacist brother and sister in law, believing that they were poisoning people with vaccines.

Demonstrations have turned violent in Australia; in New York, a mobile-free Covid-test site was up-ended. In LA, Beverly Hills protest organizer Shiva Bagheri was caught on video punching a breast cancer patient outside a clinic and harassing parents and kids as they walked into an elementary school, yelling that vaccines are a form of child-rape.

For this week’s Bonus, Julian looks at these developments through the lens of research on radicalization and fascist political movements. While Westboro Baptist Church tip-toes right up to the edge of violence with their hateful fundamentalist activism, the anti-abortion movement has included terrorism in the form of bombing, kidnapping, and murder.

But it’s not all bad news. This episode ends with data from a recent study on what supports de-radicalization, as well as a hopeful personal account of how compassionate online interactions led one woman to exit a hate group she was born into, and advocate now for tolerance.

Show Notes

What does Radicalisation Look Like? Four Visualisations of Socialisation into Violent Extremism

Watch a Beverly Hills Anti-Vaxxer Scream at School Kids Vaccines Are ‘Rape’

‘It’s evil’: Jim Acosta reacts to Trump’s remark during interview

The Link Between the Capitol Riot and Anti-Abortion Extremism

What Do Former Extremists and Their Families Say About Radicalization and Deradicalization in America?

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Meat is toxic. Dairy is toxic. Eggs? As dangerous as cigarettes. Garlic stokes the hormones. Avoid nightshades at all costs. Organic or bust. Eat according to your blood type. Eat according to your chronotype. Cacao resonates with the frequency of the sun, but never, ever add sugar to it. Sugar is toxic. Juice cleanses lead you to your highest self.

If you’re exhausted already, so are we. This week, Derek anchors our look at how the wellness world disguises eating disorders as purity tests and pathways to “clean” eating. He opens up about his 15-year-battle with orthorexia, an eating disorder he believes to be rampant in yoga and wellness, as well as the broader fitness world, where men hide their own eating disorders with protein shakes and ketogenic fasting. Matthew adds kitchen notes from the spiritual cult front lines.

Julian talks with Chelsea Roff, founder of Eat Breathe Thrive, about her own struggles with food before discussing her decade of experience working with eating disorder victims in Yogaland. Derek then chats with Dr. Jason Nagata about the challenges of treating boys and men in clinical settings, and what to do about a phenomenon so many suffer from yet so few are able to find a language for.

Show Notes

This Is What It’s Like For Men With Eating Disorders

Eating Disorders in Teens Have ‘Exploded’ in the Pandemic

Eating Disorders Surged Among Adolescents in Pandemic

Men obsessed with building muscle mass have higher mental health risks

Uncovering and Destigmatizing Male Body Dysmorphia in Popular Culture

Doctors alerted to dangerous dry scooping workout trend

Prospective health associations of drive for muscularity in young adult males

What Is Orthorexia?

Body dysmorphic disorder

Film Theory 101 – Laura Mulvey: The Male Gaze Theory

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An audio essay loosely based on conversations Matthew has while parenting. Content is possibly appropriate for ages 7 to 11 — although who really knows. The main point is to deflate the media persona and cut back on the cynicism and hot-takery to discuss these things in a way that leaves the door open for growth and hope. Rules: use simple sentences, many examples, frame bad news within good news, and never call anyone stupid. Don’t give a kid a story that has no way out. Don’t people their world with hopeless cases.Questions include:

• What is a conspiracy? 
• What’s the difference between a good and bad conspiracy? 
• So what are conspiracy theories? 
• Are all conspiracy theories bad? 
• How can people can believe COVID isn’t real when they can see how many people are getting sick and dying? 
• Why do conspiracy theorists make things worse than they actually are? 
• Why would the government cover up aliens? 
• What is spirituality? 
• What do conspiracy theories have to do with spirituality? 
• So if you grew up believing in Jesus, did you used to believe in conspirituality?

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Whatever one’s conception of “God” is, “John of God” should now be a nauseating name. For decades, João Teixeira de Faria pretended to heal an endless stream of pilgrims to his center in rural central Brazil through the Spiritist practice of “psychic surgery.” In reality, the miracle healing claims worked to cover up an obvious truth. João was sexually assaulting and raping women, in public and in private, likely every day of his “working” life. As he did so, he amassed a vast fortune in affiliate businesses, farming operations, real estate, referral rackets, and sales of crystals and fake remedies.

In this episode we won’t retell this history, now poignantly captured by a new Brazilian-made documentary on Netflix. Instead, we’ll look at how lazy and motivated journalism shook hands with the entrepreneurial New Age to validate and accelerate the absurd claims of a monster. In addition to original reporting on how João made his mark in the U.S., Matthew is joined by former New Age publicist Lisa Braun Dubbels and Brazilian journalist Mirna Wabi Sabi to discuss the globalization of magic and abuse.

Trigger warnings for this episode: rape, sexual assault, fraud, spiritual abuse.

Show Notes

Biles, Maroney, Raisman and Nichols opening statements before Congress

Chico Xavier | Obituary

Is ‘John of God’ a Healer or a Charlatan?

John of God — Skepdic

James Randi ABC comments debrief

The trouble with Dr. Oz

John of God 2006 Atlanta Program

About Heather Cummings

Oprah March 13, 2010: “Do You Believe in Miracles?” (webarchive)

Leap of Faith: Meet John of God — Susan Casey (webarchive)

Part One: John of God: Oprah’s Favorite Ghost-Channeling Rapist Surgeon – Behind the Bastards

Famous Brazilian spiritual healer accused of sexual abuse | 60 Minutes Australia

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During Thursday’s episode, Derek briefly described Flow States in the context of a universal form of spirituality. He explores that concept in a little more depth, pulling audio from Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s 2004 TED Talk about the social ramifications of Flow States.

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We’re grounding down. We’re letting go. We are going deep. We are finding the metta in our meta and tuning in to Source. This week we’ll either answer or transcend the core questions our listeners post in moments of parasocial vulnerability:

Do you guys believe in anything at all? Are there any wholesome spiritual communities out there? Are all spiritual teachers toxic?

This four-hour immersive encounter between three white guys is not to be missed!

(Seriously tho: we’ve got some huge interviews and investigative pieces coming up in the next few weeks, so we’re kicking back a little here to talk basics and regroup.)

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Julian traces the roots of today’s pandemic-era conspirituality back to What The Bleep’s quantum woo, The Secret’s privileged denial and grandiosity, and the dark lessons of why beliefs really matter, as revealed by James Arthur Ray’s deadly Spiritual Warrior Retreat.

Show Notes

Laura Tucker’s response to Nine Perfect Strangers

Guru: The Dark Side of Enlightenment

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Daniel Sherrell is the author of an extraordinary memoir and prayer book, Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World, in which he recounts how, as a climate activist born in 1990, he has fought to manage, digest, and even celebrate the desperate tasks of the only age he’s known: the Anthropocene. The book is his homage to the resources that help him meditate on weaning ourselves from the dissociations of Twitter and doing the hard work of transforming climate grief into climate integrity.

In our feature interview this week, Matthew sits down with Daniel to discuss the real conspiracy of climate denialism, and how conspiracy theories provide relief to those who cannot contemplate our condition.

We start the show with Derek’s contemplation of Amitav Ghosh’s “The Great Derangement” and Julian’s notes on climate denialism dwarfing the disinformation we typically interrogate in the wellness world.

Show Notes

Warmth by Daniel Sherrell

Sherrell and Dorothy Fortenberry on Know Your Enemy

Why Grief can be Strength in a Warming World | Daniel Sherrell |

Learning How to Die in the Anthropocene – Scranton

Laudato si’ (24 May 2015) | Francis

Tucker Carlson on Military Vaccine Mandate

Dr. Wilson (Debunk the Funk) on Mike Yeadon

Big Oil’s War on Science

UCSA Climate Skeptic Disinformation List

The Climate Disinformation Playbook

Desmog Database

Steven Koonin, the “Obama Scientist”

Daniel Sherrell’s Reading List

Ducks, Newburyport — Ellman

The Summer Book – Jannson

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On his family’s yearly trip to Manitoulin Island, Matthew detoxes from conspirituality influencer garbage, and returns with parts of a new plan.

Show Notes

Warmth by Daniel Sherrell: 9780143136538 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

Living at the End of Our World (w/ Daniel Sherrell & Dorothy Fortenberry) | Know Your Enemy

Lives Reclaimed — Mark Roseman

What Conspiritualists and Anti-Vaxxers Get Right | by Matthew Remski | Aug, 2021 | Medium

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This week, California Governor Gavin Newsom rode sane pandemic messaging to victory against the Republican-led recall election by a huge margin. Unsurprisingly, voting patterns perfectly matched the state COVID heat map, with fans of the recall suffering the worst outbreaks. Meanwhile, a strict lockdown in Australia, which is experiencing a Delta outbreak, led to American libertarians and right-wing commentators screaming fascism! We talk to Decoding the Gurus co-host (and real-life Australian) Matthew Browne about the situation on the ground. Later in the episode, Julian interviews another Aussie, Dr. Izzy Smith, about her online anti-conspiracy theory activism and science advocacy.

In the Ticker, Derek looks at JP Sears’s new cryptocurrency grift, which appears to be inspired by fellow Austinite Mikki Willis—who also announced a supplement grift this week. Matthew talks briefly to Toronto video journalist Morgan Yew to begin making sense of the alarming convergence of racist alt-right groups with aggressive anti-mask, anti-vaccine protestors at medical facilities in Canada.

Show Notes

How the media helped fuel the anti-vaxx movement

The Non-Fungible Freedom Column

Atlantic article “Australia Traded Away Too Much Liberty”

Josh Szeps Twitter thread response to The Atlantic

Federalist article Pursuing Covid-Zero Has Turned Australia into an Authoritarian State

Opinion | Meet the police chief turned yoga instructor prodding wealthy suburbanites to civil war

Ex-La Habra police chief Alan Hostetter, 5 others charged in Jan. 6 Capitol riot

When QAnon Came to Canada

Glowing Mama Anti-Masker. Toronto Influencer Socially Toilets in… | by Matthew Remski | Medium

Morgan Yew (@weynagrom)

Morgan Yew interviewing Sarah Choujounian of Canadian Frontline Nurses

Morgan Yew: Plan to “Interview” Racist Anti-Lockdown Influencer Ends in Violence

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In June, Planedemic creator Mikki Willis appeared on Living 4D with Paul Chek to discuss what “really happened” at the Capitol on Jan 6. During the long-ranging talk, Willis took some time to attack a VICE News article that we were featured in. Unfortunately for Willis, we have the audio from the Election Night party in Austin being referenced. Derek updates Willis’s memory.

Show Notes

Living 4D With Paul Check, EP 141 – Mikki Willis 2: What’s Really Going On?

The Election Night audio

Leading New Age Conspiracy Influencers Plan Their Retreat to Utopian Lagoon

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Paul Chek will tell you how much he’s influenced the fitness industry. He’ll tell you that he popularized Swiss Balls, and about his time working with the Jordan-era Chicago Bulls and then the championship Lakers. The kinesiologist and founder of the Chek Institute, which offers numerous training programs under the slogan, “We teach the science of living well,” claims that he’s always taken a holistic approach to weightlifting and the gym. In fact, the man does not mind telling you how vast his influence is.

Embedded in Chek’s holistic approach is a penchant for conspiratorial thinking. He trained JP Sears, traded podcasts with biohacker Ben Greenfield, hung with anus sunshiner Troy Casey, and hosted Mikki Willis twice in the last year on his own podcast, Living 4D with Paul Chek. Today’s co-host, NYC-based fitness expert Antonio Valladares, also trained with Chek, but unlike many of Chek’s acolytes, Antonio has used his time and knowledge debunking conspiracy theories in nutrition and fitness, not adding to the fire.

In this week’s closer, Matthew reviews and contextualizes a Facebook post from the charismatic dissectionist Gil Hedley. Hedley’s post leaned into familiar anti-vax territory. But he deleted it — and, in a positive email exchange, revealed some earnest motivations and empathetic impulses. A good lesson that you never quite know where people are coming from, or where they’re going.

Show Notes

Deconstructing Paul Chek

Who is Paul Chek: Holistic Lifestyle Coach

Plandemic Director Mikki Willis Explains His Presence at Capitol Riot — Matthew Remski

About Gil Hedley

Gil Hedley: Fascia and stretching:  The Fuzz Speech

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A QAnon-themed Stop The Steal, anti-vax, Covid-denial roadshow came to an untimely end in mid-August with their fearless leader succumbing to COVID pneumonia on a ventilator in Florida. He denied the virus was real until his last breath.

This week, Julian chronicles the 84-stop Arise USA Resurrection Tour led by the recently deceased former CIA agent, Robert David Steele.

Characters on this Ill-fated tour include the aging wanna-be rock star slam-poet conspiracist Sacha Stone, anti-vax Urban Health Alliance leader Kevin Jenkins, cowboy-costumed MC Trent Loos, and a presidential impersonator named Lincoln Bob.

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Psychedelics are all the rage in the investment world, with hundreds of millions of dollars pouring into research-based startups in the hope of finding interventions for addiction, depression, PTSD, end-of-life anxieties, and much more. But is it too much? Are we, as has happened with numerous substances in the past, placing too much faith in plant medicine? Will investors expecting a return on investment skew the research? And, more to the point of this podcast, is the burgeoning crop of yoga instructors turned shamans promising more than they can deliver?

With Matthew on a much-deserved vacation this week, Julian interviews Derek about these topics based on Derek’s 2020 book, Hero’s Dose: The Case for Psychedelics in Ritual & Therapy.

In the Ticker this week, Julian looks at the growing list of anti-vax, COVID-is-a-hoax conservative radio hosts dying of COVID. We begin with the obvious: Joe Rogan recently contracted COVID, and admitted to undergoing what might be the most insane drug regimen to date.

Show Notes

Robert David Steele Dies from Covid, While Denying Covid

Anti-Vax Conservative Radio Hosts Dying from Covid

Caleb Wallace, 30-year-old Freedom Rally Organizer Dies from Covid

Texas GOP official who Mocked Covid, dies from it

Hero’s Dose: The Case for Psychedelics in Ritual & Therapy

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After watching the Almost 30 podcast hosts bond over Zach Bush’s Jesus-like qualities, Matthew explores the barren friendship landscape of wellness gigworkers.

From the transcript:

Show Notes

About Lindsey & Krista: Almost 30

SoulCycle changed fitness. Its culture and toxic work environment made growth impossible.

The Wellness Pornographers. Gamifying intimacy, abusing public… | by Matthew Remski | Aug, 2021 | Medium

Anti-Vax Doctor Manifests as Jesus. Wellness Ladies Weep with Joy. — Matthew Remski

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Spirituality, ill-defined a term that it is, often implies both an emptying out and an addition. What leaves is the vacuous clinging to achievements that are supposedly preventing us from seeing our true nature. What’s granted is a new mindset, a novel way of being, one in which you are at peace with both yourself and the world.

Where does the drive for status play into this quest? As journalist Will Storr points out in his new book, The Status Game: On Social Position and How We Use It, you can’t escape our impulse for achieving status. You can learn to dampen its hold on you, however. Derek catches up with Will to discuss how status plays a role in anti-vax groups, spiritual communities, and political groups.

We start this week with a Ticker by Matthew, who previews a bonus episode on the friendship porn we see on the Almost 30 episode in which the hosts share tears after being snowjobbed by Zach Bush.

Show Notes

Almost 30 podcast, Ep.451: Dr. Zach Bush on Fear, The Immune System, & The Real Meaning of Life

The Status Game by Will Storr review — how the fight for status defines our world

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One of the most debated topics in spirituality (and beyond) involves the origins of consciousness. Most neuroscientists agree that it’s emergent—the physiological systems of the body create what we call “consciousness.”

Derek revisits his 2018 conversation with Michael Gazzaniga, whose 1961 studies on split-brain patients revolutionized the discipline of neuroscience.

Show Notes

Neuroscientist Anil Seth: ‘We risk not understanding the central mystery of life’

VS Ramachandran: 3 Clues to Understanding Your Brain

Decoding the Brain’s Cacophony

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Santa Barbara surf coach Matthew Coleman murdered his two young children in Mexico nearly two weeks ago. He told the FBI that he was “enlightened by QAnon and Illuminati conspiracy theories and was receiving visions and signs revealing that his wife possessed serpent DNA and had passed it on to his children.”

Beneath the peak chaos of this story lies a social fabric torn to shreds by QAnon and related conspiracy theories. Marriages are ending, custody battles are raging, and parents and children are negotiating painful silences or estrangements.

Joining us today as a co-host is Jitarth Jadeya, one of the few ex-QAnon followers so far who has been willing and able to discuss what this fever dream did to him and his family. Marriage and Family therapist Rachel Bernstein, the host of the brilliant IndoctriNation Podcast, also joins to discuss her experiences working with cult survivors and providing recovery resources.

In this week’s closer, Derek examines the scientific hipsterism of Zach Bush, who has recently co-opted Malcolm X as a posthumous endorser, when Malcolm would have probably hated his gut biome.

Show Notes

Surf Instructor Killed His Children and Claimed QAnon Made Him Do It, F.B.I. Says

QAnon: a timeline of violence linked to the conspiracy theory

Former QAnon follower Jitarth Jadeja on “The Takeout” — 2/12/2021

Former QAnon believer says following the conspiracy “was absolutely a drug”

He went down the QAnon rabbit hole for almost two years. Here’s how he got out

How Ex-QAnon Followers Escaped The Cultish Conspiracy Theory

He’s a former QAnon believer. He doesn’t want to tell his story, but thinks it might help.

Rachel Bernstein’s excellent IndoctriNation Podcast

QAnon Casualties on Reddit

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Conspiritualists amp up their victimhood-fetish by comparing anti-vaxxers to Jim Crow-era African Americans and Jews under the Holocaust. Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson questions vaccines, bangs the CRT red-scare propaganda drum, and swoons over Hungarian fascist Viktor Orban.

ulian compares Fox News’s idealizing coverage of Orban to how they treat another famous Hungarian, boogeyman of the far-right, George Soros. He also tells the tragic tale of Trofim Lysenko—Stalin’s “barefoot scientist,” to illustrate how pseudoscience actually flourishes (to everyone’s detriment) under real totalitarianism.

Show Notes

The Soviet Era’s Deadliest Scientist Is Regaining Popularity in Russia

Under fascism, a generation of scientific knowledge was lost in Spain

Hungarian scientists are on edge as country is poised to force out top university

Say it with statues: Brick-and-mortar revisionism in Orban’s Hungary

Orban shocks the world again: He admits to being a Nazi pilot, calling him a knight and a hero

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With guests: Philip Deslippe, Jules Hartley, Janja Lalich, and Stacie Stukin

We’ve convened an expert panel this week to remember and discuss Katie Griggs, aka GJ. She died in an LA hospital on the evening of August 1st. LA Magazine was the first outlet to confirm the death with the RA MA Institute, which Griggs co-founded in Venice, CA.

The cause of death has not been confirmed, but according to a eulogy film put out by the RA MA Institute, Griggs reportedly broke her ankle in Berlin on July 11th, and on the 15th had surgery to repair it in Los Angeles. Subsequently, she developed a pulmonary embolism, which proved fatal.

In episodes 36 and 37, Philip and Stacie joined me to discuss Griggs’s adopted culture and religion, Kundalini Yoga, and where she stood in relation to the legacy of KY’s abusive founder, Yogi Bhajan. They are uniquely equipped for that background: Philip is an expert in KY history, and Stacie has published excellent investigative work on the #metoo wave that swept through the community to uncover long-suppressed stories of Bhajan’s abuses.

Joining us today to dig even deeper are former Kundalini Yoga student Jules Hartley, and renowned cult expert Janja Lalich.

In our earlier episodes, we discussed how Griggs went on the offensive in the midst of the Kundalini abuse scandal, publicly attacking Bhajan’s survivors. We also discussed how she quickly pivoted into conspiracy theories about COVID and BLM when the pandemic hit. We also discussed the culture and cultural impact of Griggs’s RA MA Institute.

We continue that discussion in somber tones today.

Show Notes

Philip Deslippe’s website

Jules Hartley on IMDB

Janja Lalich’s website and 2021 Recommended Reading List

Stacie Stukin on Twitter

LA Magazine Griggs death notice

Inside the Dubious World of RA MA Yoga, and Its Girl Boss Guru to the Stars — Cassidy George, VICE

Guru Jagat Dies. A Saint Is Born. | by Matthew Remski | Aug, 2021 | Medium

Guru Jagat Mourned in Person with Breathing Exercises, No Masks — Matthew Remski

(PDF) From Maharaj to Mahan Tantric: The Construction of Yogi Bhajan’s Kundalini Yoga — Philip Deslippe

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This past week, Matthew defined “Wellness Pornography”, working from the ideas of C. Thi Nguyen and Bekka Williams in their essay “Moral Outrage Porn.” In this bonus episode, he asks:

• How do we measure the violence of wellness pornography when it becomes clear that it fuels vaccine hesitancy?
• When wellness pornographers directly indoctrinate people against public health, are they, like the sexual pornographers eviscerated by Andrea Dworkin, violating civil rights to security and safety?
• If we start to see the death concealed by wellness pornography, will we also see through the ads for pickup trucks to the ecocide they conceal? Will that help?
• What will we do with all of this rage?

Show Notes

The Wellness Pornographers. Gamifying intimacy, abusing public… | by Matthew Remski | Aug, 2021 | Medium(PDF)

Moral Outrage Porn — Nguyen and Williams

Kohut and the self-objectAndrea Dworkin’s Testimony to the Attorney General On Pornography (all trigger warnings)

Hunger Strike: Starving Amidst Plenty by Susie Orbach

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The YogaVaxGate Instagram post turns out to have been a bellwether for the $88B industry packed with science skeptics and spiritual bypassers. When Wolf Terry got trolled for daring to argue in Yoga Journal that getting vaccinated was an act of non-harming, the stormfront was clear. As thousands of yoga studios ponder opening amidst the stop-and-start waves of Delta and beyond, one question dominates staff meetings: “Will we ask our returning clients for proof of vaccination?”

Matthew interviews Sarah Garden and Colin Hall of Bodhi Tree Yoga in Saskatchewan, who made national news when they announced that yes, they would. Bodhi Tree clients will have to show their card; if they can’t or don’t want to be vaccinated, online classes are still available. Simple, right? Not in Yogaland. We’ll be reading from emails describing the backlash — from the absurd to the abhorrent — faced by studio owners who are taking the no-brainer Bodhi Tree path.

In the Ticker, Derek looks at Antisemitism in vaccine disinformation campaigns while Julian checks in with Joseph Mercola, who announced he’ll be removing all content from his website this week. In the Jab, Julian lays out the “base-rate fallacy” anti-vaxxers are using to falsely claim that vaccinations are not helping to stop COVID-19. And off the top, we’ll briefly flag the topic for next week: the sudden death of conspiritualist Kundalini leader Katie Griggs.

Show Notes

How About Not Using the Holocaust to Spread Vaccine Disinformation?

Mob Morality and the Unvaxxed

Inside the Dubious World of RA MA Yoga, and Its Girl Boss Guru to the Stars

Griggs LAMag obit

Matthew: Guru Jagat Dies. A Saint is Born.

‘Bold decisions’: Regina yoga studio cancels in-person classes, calls on others to follow suit – Regina | Globalnews.ca

Regina yoga studio requiring proof of vaccination to attend classes

Lawyer says yoga studio should be legally allowed to ask clients for vaccination status

Bodhi Tree Yoga, Regina SK

The Most Influential

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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.

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The genius parade continues this week with co-host Dale Beran, author of It Came from Something Awful: How a Toxic Troll Army Accidentally Memed Donald Trump into Office. All three of us writers are legit blown away by Beran’s layered and penetrating coverage of the chan-verse-to-Capitol Riot pipeline.

After last week’s journey led by Dr. Annie Kelly through the anti-feminism of the high-testosterone sites that prepped cyberspace for QAnon, Beran takes us deep into the cosplayed souls of the man-child nihilists who created an online politics of chaos, and served it up to the MAGA movement.

Equal parts deep-internet history, social psychology, and critique of late capitalism, Beran’s lamentation to based and wasted youth still manages to hold out some hope for the future — and we’re going to ask him why.

Show Notes

The Return of Anonymous

Who Are the Incels of 4Chan, and Why Are They So Angry?

It Came From Something Awful: How a Toxic Troll Army Accidentally Memed Donald Trump into Office

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