Conspirituality

Project 2025 is the libertarian conservative Heritage Foundation’s systematic governance plan for the next Republican president. The 920-page plan aims to implement the "unitary executive theory," which would give all of the power of the US government to the executive branch—Donald Trump, if he wins in November.

This week, Derek and Julian investigate the chapter on the Department of Agriculture, which aims to strip funding for food stamps and welfare programs and further deregulate Big Ag. And if you think the author is part of a climate change denial think tank, you'd be correct.

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The death of Mahsa Jina Amini at the hands of the Islamic Republic’s “morality police” in September 2022 lit a fuse on a fervent global protest movement. Jina’s crime was wearing an “improper” headscarf in public. The slogan, “Woman, Life, Freedom,” which first emerged in the fight for Kurdish equality, was used by thousands of brave, defiant women in Iran (along with male supporters), who called for an end to oppression, discrimination, tyranny, and dictatorship.

Eighteen months later, the Iranian government has increased video surveillance and morality police patrols, imposed even harsher penalties for female disobedience, and leaned even further into brutal torture methods and daily executions. Meanwhile, Ali Khamenei’s administration floods the population with propaganda and conspiracy theories.

Julian talks to Iranian human rights activist and former BBC World Service reporter, Negin Shiraghaei, about the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, which she says remains active and unstoppable.

Show Notes

Iran one year after Woman, Life, Freedom

Iran: Alarming Surge in Executions

Khamenei Refuses US Help, Citing COVID Conspiracy Theory

Iran’s Supreme Leader Calls Gender Equality a Zionist Plot

Iranian Singer Sentenced to 3 years in Jail  for Mahsa Amini Protest Anthem

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In response to Kerry Howley’s meticulous reporting on the deceptions of Andrew Huberman in New York Magazine, Huberstans around the world are braying that the man’s private life has nothing to do with his virtue as a science communicator.

Not so, we argue in this brief. Deception in one mirrors deception in the other, and there is no private life for the influencer who wants to influence your private life.

Beyond shilling for Athletic Greens and saying that sunscreen winds up in your brain, Huberman opines on relationships, sex, and addiction issues as if he is an expert—instead of (an alleged) hot mess.

Pseudoscience and pseudotherapy are parallel harms—both using manipulative jargon to convince consumers or women respectively that the influencer is well-researched and using best practices to be of service.

So we advise all Huberstans to view their hero… holistically.

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Reverend Rob Schenck spent 30 years on the front lines of the Evangelical war against Roe V. Wade. He blockaded abortion clinics, screamed at women in crisis, used fetal remains as political props, and helped wage a covert war of moneyed influence over federal officials to end abortion access.

Now, in a return to his deeper religious commitments, he is repenting his past. In an interview with Matthew, he discusses his blissful conversion experience as a teenager rooted in what he believed was a radical social justice movement. And he describes what he now sees: an anti-abortion movement helping to galvanize the Christian Nationalism poised to wreak havoc on American politics, and what we can do to push back against its aggression.

Fresh Air for July 11, 2018: An Evangelical Minister's Change Of Heart On Abortion

Former Anti-Abortion Leader Alleges Another Supreme Court Breach

Former Anti-Abortion Lobbyist Rev Robert Schenck Statement on "Operation Higher Court"

Robert "Rob" L. Schenck

About - Truth Revealed — Rob Schenck’s blog

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In this series of audio essays, Matthew will examine how children as symbols—but not persons with their own internal lives—are at the center of conspirituality anxiety and discourse. 

There are two types of imaginary child in conspirituality. One is an object of dread. The other is an idol of aspiration.

In the realm of dread we have fetuses murdered by late term abortion, children who are trafficked, made autistic by vaccines, sexualized by pornography in elementary school, or mutilated by trans activist doctors. 

In the realm of idols we have newborn babies sliding like dolphins into warm birthing tubs after a mere hour of ecstatic, medically-unassisted home births. We have little girls in prairie dresses or first communion veils who must be protected from library drag queens or woke grade school teachers. We have starseeds and indigo children who carry prophecies from the great beyond. 

We often reflect on the problem of authority on this podcast. Who are our leaders, and what gives them power? Why do conspiracists default to God to corroborate fantasies? What gap in cultural fatherhood is Jordan Peterson trying to fill? 

With this series, Matthew looks in the other direction: what does the conspirituality crowd do with its own authority? How do misgivings, regrets and shame in relation to children get inflated and projected into moral panics?

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Former monk turned spiritual influencer to the stars, Jay Shetty, has amassed 15 million followers on Instagram. He’s interviewed Michelle Obama, Kim Kardashian, and Kobe Bryant on his popular podcast. Shetty has received accolades from Gwenyth Paltrow and Ellen Degeneres. He even officiated J Lo and Ben Affleck’s wedding.

Yet when LA-based writer John McDermott was assigned to cover Shetty for Esquire, something seemed…off. When he started pulling at some threads, Esquire pulled out of the feature. Fortunately, The Guardian agreed to publish McDermott’s investigative reporting, in which he found little of Shetty’s origin story holds up to scrutiny. 

John joins Derek and Matthew to discuss.

Show Notes

Uncovering the higher truth of Jay Shetty

‘Very few have balls’: How American news lost its nerve

Jay Shetty Is Full Of SH*T!

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Does God have a recipe? That’s the first line of the blurb of Holy Food: How Cults, Communes, and Religious Movements Influenced What We Eat: An American History by independent food historian, Christina Ward. Ward’s survey of American religious groups and cults through the foods they grow, source, and prepare leads into an in-depth discussion about cults and high-demand groups that use food, and food restrictions, as a method for control. 

That’s not all she tells Derek—they also discuss the ritual of sharing a meal. Matthew and Julian offer their own reflections on food in high-demand settings before Christina joins to discuss her excellent book.

Holy Food

Christina Ward

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Dolphins, drugs, new age music. Isolation tanks as a portal into other dimensions. True love and fake aliens. Julian shares a personal love story from the nineties that intersects with the work of prolific scientist, inventor, and psychonaut, John C. Lilly. 

The belief that we can contact extraterrestrial civilizations, which are waiting to usher humanity into a golden age of light and love, is now a hugely profitable and popular commodity. Apparently these extraterrestrials also want to help us vanquish the forces of Deep State darkness. This is evidenced by the QAnon-and-alien-disclosure-style of programming on Gaia’s spiritual subscription platform (which brings in roughly $80 million annually).

Yet: Gaia is currently embroiled in a legal battle with a former host who claims that his stories about secret space programs and eight-foot tall “blue avian” aliens are actually part of his trademarked creative IP. When it comes down to dollars, he admits it’s all make-believe. Has he really ever dropped acid in a flotation tank though?!

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Masculinity, in all its wounded and preening anxiety, is the perennial currency of American populism.

America’s foremost public historian on fitness and education, Natalia Petrzela, returns to the pod to discuss her recent study, with Ilyse Hogue, of the appeal RFK Jr. has with young men, and what progressives can learn from it. 

Show Notes

Bio – Natalia Petrzela 

RFK Jr. has a distinct appeal when it comes to young male voters — Petrzela and Hogue

Robert F. Kennedy Jr | "My Plan To Heal Addiction" | News Nation 

Prior coverage of RFK Jr.

Brief: RFK Jr Flirts with Body Fascism (w/Natalia Petrzela) — Conspirituality

164: The Two Faces of Robert Francis Kennedy Jr. — Conspirituality

Brief: The New Age Origin Story of RFK Jr’s Campaign — Conspirituality

Brief: RFK Jr’s New Director of Propaganda — Conspirituality

Special Report: RFK Jr.’s Independence Day — Conspirituality

Brief: RFK's Health Propaganda Roundtable — Conspirituality

Brief: RFK Jr., The Anti-Vax Candidate — Conspirituality     

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The “healer” mutters prayers, flutters his hands over the patient’s belly, then rubs his fingers close to her navel. A stream of what looks like blood shoots out from between his fingers. After a few more finger wiggles, he appears to pull several bloody cocktail shrimp out of an invisible incision. The patient is healed. Of something.

Welcome to “psychic surgery.”

Documentarian of the uncanny, Brad Abrahams, takes our correspondent seat this week to explain how Shirley MacLaine, Burt Lancaster, Andy Kaufman, Charlie Mingus, and tens of thousands of Americans got drawn into the morbid healing craze that kicked off in the 1970s, and which may have seen its last hurrah with the imprisonment of Brazil’s John of God.

Centuries of colonization in Brazil and the Philippines, Brad explains, made conventional medical care basically unavailable for anyone poor or outside of major cities. This left a void for traditional and alternative healing to fill as the only real options, as well as provide a connection to a cultural identity that had been systematically repressed. And of course, charlatans rode the wave.

Brad brings his characteristic curiosity, empathy, and cultural competence, holding the door open for us to imagine why this abject form of medical and spiritual fraud speaks so deeply to so many.

Show Notes

Brad Abrahams

Love And Saucers — Brad Abrahams  

Do you see what I see? | Short Doc about Controversial Conspiracy Theorist Artist David Dees — Brad Abrahams 

72: John of Fraud (w/Lisa Braun Dubbels & Mirna Wabi-Sabi) — Conspirituality

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At what point do you tune someone out and no longer consider them worth considering? Is their entire catalog of thought defined by one encounter you don’t like? Multiple encounters? If you disagree with someone on one point, do you write them off entirely, or can you consider other points of agreement? What if your initial encounter with a thinker is disagreeable? What if you really like someone and then find them increasingly disagreeable over time? Have they really changed that much? Or have you? And would you know it if you did?

Derek meditates on these questions while working through his own process of consideration. Most importantly, he lands on one certainty: racists, bigots, transphobes, and misogynists need to be stamped out.

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Being a chaos agent is exhausting. The internet never ends. It’s so abstract, groundless. At some point, all of your content seems stale and redundant. All the conspiracy theories, outrage farming, and dietary supplements seem boring; your manic salesmanship starts to feel hollow. Maybe you’re also wondering about whether you’ve sold your soul, or who you may have hurt along the way.

What will you turn to? Who will help you? What will your ultimate piece of content be? From time out of mind, there’s only ever been one answer: GOD. Russell Brand, Joe Rogan, and Andrew Huberman have all recently made such confessions of faith. Derek and Matthew discuss.

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For 22 years, astrologers, channelers, and UFO enthusiasts have run booths next to crystal healers, purveyors of esoteric books and pseudoscience products, and paranormal enthusiasts at Los Angeles’s Airport Hilton. More recently, this event—the Conscious Life Expo—has increasingly featured speakers spouting red-pilled conspiracy theories about COVID, vaccines, and the Satanic alien reptilian cabal coming for your children.

To get an insider’s view, Julian donned his gray baseball camp and grabbed his recorder to do his own research on the latest iteration of conference room conspirituality.

Introduction to CymaTones cymatic sound therapy 

Activate your Pineal Gland: An introduction to your third eye and exercises to awaken the higher mind: Ruehlig, Bianca 

Shawn Buckley, Trucker Lawyer  

Ottawa's use of Emergencies Act against convoy protests was unreasonable, violated Charter, court rules

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This is a newly favorite mantra that RFK Jr is using on the presidential stump. 

The subtext, uttered in the shadow of a pandemic that this guy did what he could to minimize and bypass, carries a lot of American spiritual—or maybe pseudospiritual—baggage. 

Digging into what he means and what his demographic hears when he says “There are worse things than dying,” can tell us a lot about the status of Death, Grief and Belief in the American psyche—and even global capitalism—in this volatile time.

This episode is a recording of a talk Matthew gave at the 2024 Symposium on Death and Bereavement Studies in January, organized online by Terri Daniel of Portland, OR.

Show Notes

2024 Symposium - Death, Grief, and Belief

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Brad Onishi of Straight White American Jesus sits down with Matthew to analyze the debut of “America’s Bishop,” Joseph Strickland, on the CPAC stage, where he blessed MAGA Christian Nationalism with his purple finery and endless torrent of anti-choice bafflegab. 

Strickland—removed as Archbishop of Tyler, Texas in November by the ultra-woke Pope Francis—has hit the influencer circuit to firm up the sometimes-precarious Evangelical-Catholic alliance on the backs of women. His aw-shucks “humility” and East Texas drawl offers this reactionary movement genteel cover for its aggressive fever dreams. He is, as Onishi puts it, the Catholic Ned Flanders who conspires with Mr. Burns at night.

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Show Notes

Brad Onishi 

Conspirituality 183: Woke Pope Cancels America's Bishop w/Mike Lewis 

Weekly Roundup: Embryos are People Now? — Straight White American Jesus 

Nazis mingle openly at CPAC, spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories and finding allies 

Bishop Strickland at CPAC — LIfesite News (redpill site warning!)

The making of Bishop Strickland - Where Peter Is 

Strickland's Adventurous Online Legacy - Mike Lewis Extra 

Bishop Strickland's "Letter from a Friend" 

Twitter photo: Strickland with Fournier and Pavone

Catholic Priest Uses Aborted Fetus On Altar In Appeal For Donald Trump (Trigger warning. Image blurred, but still, JFC.) 

Fr. Frank Pavone uses aborted fetus in message for Election Day | National Catholic Reporter

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In the early days of the pandemic, most of the cultural focus was on the necessity of quarantine measures and the distinction between mild and severe COVID infections. Yet by May 2020, some were experiencing the phenomenon of long COVID. Now understood as a post-acute infection syndrome, patients suffering from it have endured mockery, stigmatization, and accusations of lying. Nonetheless, support and patient advocacy groups have led the way, first in demanding medical and social recognition, and now in consulting with receptive researchers on diagnosis and treatment.

We’re joined by science journalist Tara Haelle, whose work has appeared in Scientific American, NY Times, Washington Post, and more. She’s also the Infectious Disease Core Topic Leader at the Association of Health Journalists. Her work covering the pandemic, vaccines, and the Long COVID connection, which combines reporting on the latest science as well as writing from patients and patient advocates, has been indispensable in understanding this spectrum of diseases.

Show Notes

Possible contender for a Long COVID blood test 

RECOVER trial for Long COVID Treatments

New Yorker on the Yale LISTEN Study

LISTEN Study website

50% average lower prevalence in vaccinated people.

Tara Haelle’s Long COVID Connection project.

Opinion | Ed Yong: Reporting on Long Covid Taught Me to Be a Better Journalist - The New York Times

Six Ways of Looking at Crip Time | Disability Studies Quarterly 

COVERING LONG COVID | Lygia Navarro 

The Sick Times

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After going undercover at the Conscious Life Expo, Julian examines the weird synchronicities between himself and his mirror-world doppelganger, the eccentric Rhodesian conspiritualist, Sacha Stone. Close in age and born in the same African country, both white men got involved in New Age spirituality as aspiring rock musicians in their twenties. How then did their paths diverge so radically, even as they converged in Los Angeles?

Stone invokes a fantastical millenia-long cosmic holy war, claims the pyramids were charging stations for UFOs, and praises Vladamir Putin. Julian gives a brief real world history of the British Empire, South African Apartheid, and the legendary Zulu and Ndbele nations—and wonders, how much of Sacha’s macabre preoccupations are just white guilt?

Stay tuned for a cameo from Julian’s Dad.

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A contrarian doctor “just asking questions.” Super reasonable. Certainly not anti-vax, just a regular guy who grievance-mongers about quarantine measures and mocks people afraid of long Covid. Vinay Prasad cuts a different type of figure on the conspiracy-influencer stage. He fits right in with his pal, the charismatic guru-esque Dr. Zubin Damania, and might just pop up in your YouTube feed alongside Andrew Huberman and Peter Attia.

Prasad demands unrealistic randomized controlled trial data for everything on his podcast, including protecting ICU patients from Covid via visiting restrictions. Who’s volunteering for that control group?!

Julian sits down with returning guest, Dr. Jonathan Howard, the author of We Want Them Infected. They talk about Prasad (among others) who play a sensationalist science-distortion role in the digital economy and their connections to libertarian think tanks like AIER (architects of the Great Barrington Declaration) and Brownstone Institute—who’s founder, Jeffrey Tucker, wants to repeal laws around child labor and underage smoking.

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January 6, 2021. MAGA hats, tactical gear, American flags, poles turned into clubs. Another flag appears: white, with a blue corner square containing a red Latin cross. Another that proclaims “Jesus is King.”

If you’re agnostic or atheist, you might get that old familiar feeling. Horror at the irrational devotion, nausea at the toxic masculine violence that justifies itself as holy. 

But what if you recognize that Protestant flag from your own church sanctuary? What if you recognize in that mob people from your church choir? Will you wonder how their faith was replaced by conspiracy theories, and how their Jesus turned into Trump? 

That’s the question posed by “God & Country,” a new documentary by Dan Partland and produced by Rob Reiner, based on the book The Power Worshippers by Katherine Stewart. Stewart is an investigative reporter and author who has covered religious liberty, politics, policy, and education for over a decade. Her journalism appears in the NY Times, NBC, the New Republic, and the New York Review of Books. She joins us today to discuss the dangers of growing Christian Nationalism in America.

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The Cleveland Clinic's website states that leaky gut is a "hypothetical condition." Yet Cleveland Clinic physician, Mark Hyman, claims that leaky gut is at the foundation of autism, depression, cancer, diabetes, and much, much more—and has solutions to sell you.

Derek investigates the manipulative and contradictory world of functional medicine.

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An anti-vax, COVID-grievance, climate-science denying, communism panic-generating film by Mikki Willis just won “Best Documentary Feature” at the Santa Monica International Film Festival. 

Julian attended the festival in order to track how Willis’s latest paranoid pseudomentary, “Plandemic 3: The Great Awakening,” was platformed at this annual fete held in affluent Santa Monica alongside two other conspiracy films: “Shot Dead” and “We Will Not Be Silenced.” These three films include a who’s-who of conspiritualists: David Icke, JP Sears, Alex Jones, Joe Rogan, Brian Rose, Peter McCullough, and newer “medical whistle-blowers.”

This is the on-the-ground story about how a 30-year-old normie independent film festival got red-pilled into platforming such dangerous misinformation.

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When she’s not talking to her angel guides, Christiane Northrup says that taking Vitamin D is better than the HPV vaccine for preventing cervical cancer. When Kelly Brogan isn’t denying germ theory, she’s telling thousands of women in her online programmes to stop taking not only their SSRIs, but also birth control and Tylenol. When Naomi Wolf isn’t explaining to Steve Bannon where women’s liberation went wrong, she’s worried that vaccinated women are poisoning non-vaccinated women just by walking past them.

The train of messianic women wellness influencers rumbles on and on. But their pseudoscience claims and twisted forms of spiritualized feminism meet a brick wall in the work and advocacy of our guest today, Dr. Jen Gunter. Hailing from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Dr. Gunter is an OB/GYN who has been offering actual women’s health information through a solidly feminist lens for decades as the author of several books, including 2019’s The Vagina Bible, 2021’s The Menopause Manifesto, and her newest book, which dropped just 3 weeks ago: Blood: The science, medicine, and mythology of menstruation.

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Selling enemas to replace psych meds, or treat cancer, or cure autism is some dangerous shit.

But Matthew has a tingling sense that the wellness enema craze promises more than false health benefits. Perhaps the coffee might be an artisanal distraction from a more existential promise: a ritual of cleansing and muscular control for a world that feels filthy, guilty, and in absolute chaos. A way of returning to a crucially innocent time when you learned to hold it all in, then given permission to let it all out, and then lovingly cleaned up when you did.

Today, Instagram gives us permission to show it to the world: look at what I made! Look at how fresh and pure I am! Look at how I am polishing my innermost self. Look at this magic of making the invisible visible.

Welcome to your 50-minute analysis session to process Mallory’s brilliant reporting on Thursday: a tour through a labyrinth of dirt, control, differentiation, exhibitionism, shame—and possibly reclamation and integration.

Chapters:

1. How to Read an Enema
2. Managing Filth with Freud
3. Winnicott’s the Best
4. The Abject
5. Political Shit
6. Dear Kyah

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Show Notes

Conspirituality 192: Coffee is Your Friend, Not Your Enema

Paranoid Reading, Reparative Reading — Sedgwick

Know Your Enemy: UNLOCKED: Freud and Politics (w/ Pat Blanchfield) on Apple Podcasts

Freud, "Character and Anal Eroticism" | PDF

THE SEMINAR OF JACQUES LACAN BOOK X ANXIETY 1962 - 1963

The child, the family, and the outside world : Winnicott, D. W. (Donald Woods), 1896-1971 : Internet Archive

Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.

Pro-Trump rioters smeared poop in US Capitol hallways during belligerent attack

Are Anti-Vaxers Really Pooping Themselves Because of Ivermectin?

What Donald Trump Actually Smells Like, According to Ex-GOP Congressman

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Wellness influencers are quite capable of inventing and spreading health misinformation. When it comes to culture war issues, however, they're incapable of generating original thoughts. So it shouldn't surprise anyone that they simply parrot talking points created by the likes of Chris Rufo and Bari Weiss, especially when it comes to their uninformed critiques of DEI and CRT efforts.

Author, lawyer, and social impact consultant Dax-Devlon Ross takes Derek on a journey through the life of a DEI facilitator—and corrects the bias and misinformation pundits like Rufo and Weiss spread as gospel.

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This episode has been brewing for some time. This week we ask: which hole is coffee really supposed to go in? Because, in the contrarian and conspiratorial wellness world, a growing number of influencers advocate for your morning java to go where the sun doesn't shine. If that's not alarming enough, they claim coffee enemas will treat autism, cancer, parasites, and much more.

Mallory DeMille is here to finally flush out this nonsense.

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Project 2025 is the libertarian conservative Heritage Foundation’s systematic governance plan for the next Republican president. The 920-page plan aims to implement the "unitary executive theory," which would give all of the power of the US government to the executive branch. This week, Derek and Julian investigate the chapter on US media agencies and the GOP's plan to create a true state-sponsored media beholden exclusively to the president.

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From the Supreme Court to Project 2025, reactionary Catholics are on the frontlines of this year’s war on democracy. Many of them bend the knee to an Italian redpilled Vatican diplomat: Cardinal Carlo Maria Viganò. 

Who is this guy, and who let him onto the internet?

In 2018, Viganò rebranded Pizzagate for Catholics, by accusing Pope Francis and his progressive allies of supporting “homosexual networks, which are now widespread in many dioceses, seminaries, religious orders,” and “act under the concealment of secrecy and lies with the power of octopus tentacles, and strangle innocent victims and priestly vocations.” 

Viganò went on to pen an open letter to Trump—in the style of one spiritual leader to another—in which he spoke of the great war between the “children of light and the children of darkness.” His 19th century flair, boosted by Trump himself, was such a hit it got featured in a Qdrop, got echoed by Mike Flynn, and won him an invite into the world of Steve Bannon. 

Catholic political commentator Dr. David Lafferty has been following Viganò for years. He walks Matthew through how the Cardinal Catholicized MAGA fever dreams to discredit the progressive administration of Pope Francis—going so far as to wish death upon him—while inspiring a generation of TradCath crusaders.

Show Notes

Puccini meets Watergate in 'Vatileaks' scandal

Former ambassador Vigano accuses Vatican of covering up McCarrick scandal for years

The Man Who Took On Pope Francis: The Story Behind the Viganò Letter

The (Growing) List of Catholic Prelates and Other Notable Catholics Supporting Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò. : r/Catholicism 

‘It Is Not a Closet. It Is a Cage.’ Gay Catholic Priests Speak Out

Open Letter to President Donald Trump from the Carlo Maria Vigano, Archbishop of Ulpiana

Vigano's most pilled tweet  

Viganò, QAnon, and the 'Deep Church' explained

Another Viganò Wake-Up Call

“An infamous betrayal of the mission of the Church”: Interview with Archbishop Viganò - Crisis Magazine (CW: Steve Bannon BS ahead)

Americans, including Catholics, continue to have favorable views of Pope Francis — Pew Research 

The Silence of Sodom: Homosexuality in Modern Catholicism, Jordan

Decadence and Catholicism — Hanson

The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2010

John Jay Report: On Not Blaming Homosexual Priests

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The internet has changed not only how we communicate with each other, but how we understand the world. All technologies reorient how we navigate the world. This one just feels, at times, so disorienting—especially if you are, like the three of us today, extremely online. 

That’s the title of Washington Post columnist Taylor Lorenz’s recent book. Taylor has been covering internet culture since starting in social media for the Daily Mail in 2011, which led to positions as a technology reporter for Business Insider, the Daily Beast, and the NY Times. In her insightful book, she details the history of internet culture, and she joins us today to discuss reporting in an age of conspiracy theories and online trolling, the challenges of covering long Covid in an age of overwhelming health misinformation, and what it’s like to be extremely online. 

Show Notes

Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet

Taylor Lorenz on YouTube

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Project 2025 is the libertarian conservative Heritage Foundation’s systematic governance plan for the next Republican president. The 920-page plan aims to implement the "unitary executive theory," which would give all of the power of the US government to the executive branch. This week, Derek and Julian break down the dystopic chapter on the Department of Health and Human Services, written by the anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ+ Catholic nationalist, Roger Severino.

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Do people radicalized into conspiracism or cults ever admit their errors? When the prophecy fails and evidence shows they were wrong, do they come clean or double-down? 

Julian checks in on some of the legacy conspiritualists profiled in our book—Russell Brand, Dr. Christiane Northrup, Mikki Willis, JP Sears, and Lorie Ladd—to see what their online messaging around Christmas and the New Year tells us. 

These figures drove the anti-vax, Covid denial, QAnon virality, and rightward political trend in conspirituality during 2020-21. We’ll find out if they’ve seen the error of their ways in the aftermath of the 5th dimensional Great Awakening that never happened.

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Science evolves, often through fits and starts. Yet for most of medical history, there’s been one consistent theme: most science has been conducted on male bodies. And this has created a range of problems for women.

Thankfully, says Cat Bohannon, that’s changing. As more women and BIPOC are entering the STEM fields, we’re undergoing a renaissance in our understanding of a more inclusive and expansive science. On today’s episode, the author of Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution tells Derek how much science has gotten wrong by focusing exclusively on male bodies—and what we’re now doing right.

Show Notes

Cat Bohannon

Epidemic Podcast | Tony Fauci: from one pandemic to another

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Julia Tucker is a professional church organist in Savannah, Georgia. She grew up homeschooled in a TradCath home presided over by a father who is now a minor celebrity on the reactionary right. In this Listener Story, she discusses her long strange trip out of Catholic revanchism, the unexpected freedoms of homeschooling, sneaking around in sacristries, why she believes that figures like Bishop Strickland and the Catholics heading up Project 2025 are more ominous and effective than Evangelical leaders, how music began to displace religion for her, and why she’ll continue playing the organ in church. 

Show Notes

Julia Tucker, Organist 

Julia Tucker, Recital

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Dr. Taslim Alani-Verjee joined us last January for a Brief on Jordan Peterson’s professional status as a shitposting registered psychologist. She returned for Episode 141 on whether it makes sense that the Canadian Medical Assistance in Dying act is fuelling conspiracy theories about state neglect. 

Today she returns, as a psychologist and as a practicing Muslim, to discuss with Matthew how it feels to see her community drawn into culture war territory over sex ed and gender issues. Matthew also asks about her clinical practice with Muslim and Jewish clients in the shadow of the current Israel-Gaza war. This episode was recorded in November, but the themes are as current as ever.

Show Notes

Dr. Taslim Alani-Verjee 

Brief: Is Jordan Peterson Really a Licensed Psychologist? — Conspirituality

141: Does Canada Want Suffering Citizens to Die? (w/Taslim Alani-Verjee)  

Hate on Display at the 1 Million March 4 Children Rally in Calgary

Cross-country rallies against 'gender ideology' in schools meet with counter-protests

Statement by MAC on Statements by Canadian Leaders and School Boards on Recent Protests

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Nothing will stop Republicans from lining up behind Trump. But the left? It's in crisis. Fragmented. Perhaps in times of great flux fascists reflexively double-down while progressives slide into a cloud of self-doubt. There, strange bedfellows are sometimes found in the dark.

To help us understand this territory—what it is and how to navigate it—we're joined by journalist, professor, and documentarian, Jeff Sharlet. His books, The Undertow: Scenes From a Slow Civil War and The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power are field guides for understanding modern America.

Show Notes

Losing the Plot: The “Leftists” Who Turn Right

The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War

The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power

The Family on Netflix

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Control the Court. Overturn Roe. Funnel anonymous donations and shady gifts. Deregulate for Jesus. Roll back the cultural clock. Celebrate. Rinse and Repeat. 

Leonard Leo’s libertarian Catholic agenda has made him a preeminent power-broker in right-wing American politics. He’s reshaping society while enjoying the pipeline of cash and influence that connects billionaire GOP mega-donors and the SCOTUS judges he helped install. 

Julian tracks how Leo’s Federalist Society used Trump as part of a decades-long systematic takeover of the judicial system that culminated in the current ethics and corruption scandal in the SCOTUS.

Show Notes

ProPublica “Friends of the Court” investigative journalism series

The Guardian Club For Growth GOP Insurectionist Support

Open Secret 2022 Donor List

Dark Money Spending After Citizen’s United

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse “The Front Group Swarms”

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The online pseudoscience clearing house, Human Garage, treats fascia as a cure-all to nearly every disease imaginable. Yet as today's guest, David Lesondak, Senior Structural Integrator and Fascia Specialist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s Center for Integrative Medicine and author of the bestselling Fascia: What It Is and Why It Matters, tells Derek, they begin with a little bit of truth before going full Quantum nonsense.

David breaks down fascia this week: what it is, how it functions in the body, and why fascia pseudoscience is so dangerous.

Show Notes

David Lesondak's website

The Tissue That Connects Our Muscles May Be a Key to Better Health

Harvard scientists closer to solving centuries-old heart mystery

Human Garage: Manifesting Through Fascia

Human Garage: Anti-Gravity - Full Spinal Decompression

Human Garage: Autoimmune Diseases

Human Garage: Erectile Dysfunction

Human Garage: Anal Sphincter Release

Human Garage: Ileocecal Valve

Human Garage: Trauma Stored in Fascia

Human Garage: Trauma Release Maneuver

Human Garage: Fascia Work Cures Hives

Human Garage: Fascia Facial Release for Acne

Human Garage: Heart is a Vortex

Human Garage: Movement Instead of Medicine

Human Garage: Faith Healing

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What happens when white knights role-play at saving all the children? What impacts do they have on the actual realities faced by trafficked children and adults? And how does their propaganda—rolled out in blockbuster trauma porn events like Sound of Freedom—stigmatize and endanger adult sex workers, especially those who are already marginalized? Esme Providence Brown returns as our correspondent to run it down.

Brown retired from professional sex work in 2021 after twenty-year career in Manhattan. She first joined us on Episode 169 to talk about the strange overlaps between sex work and the neo-tantra yoga movement. In this richly-researched report and discussion with Matthew, she examines the history of and present-day ramifications of anti-trafficking movements—projects that often scapegoat women who are secretly desired but publicly hated.

“Everybody wants to save the children,” Brown says, “but very few people want to step into the tangled web of what this actually means or the history of how ‘salvation’ movements - hobbled by grandiosity, white knighthood, and patriarchal ignorance—have incurred collateral damage while failing in their ultimate mission of liberation.” 

Show notes for this one are extensive, and won’t fit into most pod apps. You can find them here.

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Rightwing activist Chris Rufo recently led the charge in helping oust Claudine Gay from the Harvard presidency. While the charge is plagiarism—a charge Gay herself acknowledged—the reason for Rufo’s intense focus on her has little to do with academic pedigree.

Rufo, a former vegetarian yogi, is leading the right-wing charge against DEI trainings, LGBTQ+ rights, and any mention of critical race theory. Rolling off his "victory" of Gay's resignation, he's published a blog post that he hopes will become the guiding manifesto for the "New Right." As Derek breaks down, this means returning America back to 1776 in many ways.

Show Notes 

The New Right Activism

How We Squeezed Harvard to Push Claudine Gay Out

Claudine Gay: my part in her downfall

Bill Ackman’s wife is accused of plagiarizing part of her dissertation

Contracts Between Hungarian Nonprofit and Christopher Rufo, Others, Raise Foreign Agent Concerns

The Plagiarism War Has Begun

A lesson in persuasion — Loretta Ross

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On January 6, 2021 Del Bigtree took the stage at the MAGA Health Freedom Rally a few blocks away from where Donald Trump had just instigated a riot. He joked about how the former president was a hard act to follow. 

But he dug deep and persevered by stringing together key dog whistles of Trumpian disinformation and resentment: public health officials are corrupt, COVID is a scam, and the election was probably stolen.

Such performances have gotten Bigtree’s Highwire show nuked by YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. But they’ve also made him wealthy, and with his new appointment as RFK Jr’s new Director of Communications, his political star is now rising.

Matthew runs down what we know about Bigtree, and what he thinks this appointment will bring.  

Show Notes

An Important Message To The Medical Freedom Community from Del Bigtree 

RFK Jr. hires top anti-vaccine activist as campaign communications director 

The Disinformation Dozen — Center for Countering Digital Hate | CCDH 

Brief: RFK's Health Propaganda Roundtable — Conspirituality 

Brief: RFK Jr Loses New Age Support Over Israel — Conspirituality 

Pandemic Profiteers — Center for Countering Digital Hate | CCDH 

Tracy Beanz - The HighWire 

How three conspiracy theorists took 'Q' and sparked Qanon 

Anti-Vaxxer Del Bigtree’s Unhinged Quest for Unvaccinated Blood Leads Him to Mexico

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Last year, the Heritage Foundation published a 920-page document that lays out the conservative organization’s road map for the next Republican president’s first four months in office, which could very well be Donald Trump. Project 2025 rests on four pillars devoted to the implementation of the unitary executive theory—basically, all levers of the American government bowing down to the executive branch. If this sounds like a roadmap to authoritarianism, that’s because it is.

With 54 conservative and religious organizations signing on and over 450 contributors, as well as untold millions in dark money, Heritage is leading the charge with this anti-abortion, anti-LBGTQ+, anti-DEI, anti-civil liberties game plan. To date, they’ve interviewed thousands of prospective candidates for the next administration, with the goal of hiring tens of thousands of subservient bureaucrats ready to implement this Christian Nationalistic plan.

Today we break down what the document says and how it could rapidly erode American democracy. And if that sounds like hyperbole, it isn’t.

Project 2025

The Power Worshippers | Katherine Stewart

Behind the Curtain — Scoop: The Trump job applications revealed

The Conservative Plan to Take Over the Country (you need to know about this)

The '3.5% rule': How a small minority can change the world

Dr. Kevin Roberts | Catholic Citizens Annual Banquet

Living a Life of Catholic Integrity in a Hostile World | Roger Severino

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Friend of the pod and Straight White American Jesus host Brad Onishi returns to pick up with Matthew where they left off in their discussion of post-religious spirituality. They discuss what happens after disenchantment, the spirituality of boredom, and why, as we hurtle into the coming chaos of 2024, it’s good to keep an eye out for new allies in unlikely places. 

This is Part Two of two-part conversation. Look for Part One in your pod feeds, dated December 30. 

Show Notes

Brad Onishi 

Straight White American Jesus 

Axis Mundi Media

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Friend of the pod and Straight White American Jesus host Brad Onishi joins Matthew for a New Year’s discussion of post-religious spirituality. Onishi fills out the details on a nascent identity that many of you might resonate with: the “secular person of faith.” They talk about the false choice of Max Weber’s fork in the road: that either we commit to the sciences or languish in the churches. They discuss Jeffery Kosky’s idea of “disenchantment with disenchantment.” And they try to figure out what Thomas Altizer was going on about when he proposed a “Christian Atheism.”

This is Part One of two-part conversation. Part Two drops Monday, New Year’s Day, on Patreon. 

Show Notes

Brad Onishi 

Straight White American Jesus 

Axis Mundi Media

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Life coaching is big business. The life coaching industry was worth $1.5 billion in 2022 and is considered one of the fastest growing industries in America. The International Coaching Federation reported more than 26,000 coaches in North America in 2020. Yet those numbers are hard to qualify given that you don’t need certifications or training to become a life coach or, as we explore today, coaching of most any sort. Life coaches, business coaches, fertility coaches, “quantum” coaches: every industry has an increasing number of people who want to tell you how to do your job effectively, magically, or quantumally.

Who really benefits from this supposed gold rush of “MULTI 6 FIGURE BUSINESS COACH”, “Multi 8 fig biz mentor”, and “high ticket biz coach helping women scale to 20-30k months”? And has the dilution of the term "coach" damaged credentialed coaches with decades of experience?

Mallory DeMille returns to talk about the coaches who coach coaches industry: marketing tactics, parallels to multilevel marketing, and the glut in the coaching industry.

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The joys of Xmas, the wonder of parenting, the complexities of family, the distinctions between religions and cults, and the compassionate dignity of locating the sacred in our mortal humanity. Julian offers an atheist reflection on the holidays that is equal parts heartwarming, thought-provoking, and (perhaps) inspiring.

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COP28, the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference, recently took place in the UAE. The controversial conference included 2,500 fossil fuel industry lobbyists and featured billionaires flying into Dubai on private jet. Yet, as Maya Lilly—a film, television, and digital media producer who focuses on activist documentary storytelling—tells Derek, it's one of the few places that so many nations and world leaders meet to discuss climate change. And, she says, the financial incentives exist to make even the richest men salivate. Governments just need the political will, and citizens need to vote more climate-forward legislators into office.

Show Notes

Maya Lilly’s Curated Climate Reading List

Earth on verge of five catastrophic climate tipping points, scientists warn

Right-wing media use COP28 to dismiss climate-related deaths

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In this annual meditation and reflection, the trio consider the past year's significant happenings in conspirituality, discuss their biggest influences, identify 2024's most pressing challenges, and offer what gives them each hope as we transition into 2024.

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In November, the comedian Matt Rife released his first Netflix special, "Natural Selection." Early in the show he made a joke about domestic violence that many people took offense to. Since then, he’s clapped back at a number of people on social media (including a six-year-old boy), published a fake apology that linked to helmets for people with disabilities, and has been praised by many right-wing pundits, including the focus of today’s bonus episode, Jordan Peterson.

Derek looks at the escalation and rhetoric that’s occurred since the special, arguing that the real misogynistic thinking has taken place since the special first aired.

Note: Derek states that biologist EO Wilson is famous for popularizing the term "alpha male." This was actually primatologist Frans de Waal.

Show Notes

Bunny Hedaya claps back at Matt Rife

Should you rely on first instincts when answering a multiple choice exam?

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Amy Carlson’s metallic blue body was covered in glitter, wrapped in a sleeping bag, and draped in Christmas lights when police found her on the night of April 16, 2021. The 45-year-old leader of the “Love Has Won” cult weighed just 75 pounds; her eyes had been removed. 

Carlson, known as “Mother God,” proselytized along with her followers by livestreaming around the clock, preaching a QAnon-themed spirituality that they monetized by selling colloidal silver and New Age tchotchkes. When her body was found, it was discovered that her inner circle had prepared for Carlson to be picked up by galactic starships from their Crestone, CO compound. 

Julian and Matthew discuss HBO’s new docu-series, “Love Has Won: The Mother God Cult,” directed by Hannah Olson. They meditate on religious freedom, spiritual tragedy, and the ethics of big-budget cult documentary filmmaking.

Show Notes

Denver Post article with Rick Ross comments

Vulture Interview with Hannah Olson

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Measles was declared eliminated in the US in 2000. Fast forward to 2019 and the nation experienced the largest number of cases since 1992. Globally, there were 207,000 measles deaths that year, a 50% increase since 2016.

The anti-vax boom time was still to come. Andrew Wakefield, Del Bigtree, and RFK Jr. massively increased their exposure and salaries during Covid via pseudoscientific fear-mongering and promiscuous political alliances.

Scott Kennedy’s new documentary, Shot in the Arm, details the deadly impact of these anti-vax kingpins, as well as the tireless counter-efforts of scientists, medical workers, and science educators like Peter Hotez, Paul Offit, Karen Enrst, and Blimi Marcus. Scott joins Derek and Julian to discuss the past and future of the anti-vax movement.

Shot in the Arm

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Matthew follows up on his interview with Mike Lewis about Bishop Strickland with thoughts about:

1) Building a bridge with progressive elements of a religion that claims 1.36 billion people globally, as it goes through another surge of paranoia and reactionary radicalization, and

2) Building a bridge into a personal past

Show Notes

Vatican II: It's about that 'fresh air' | National Catholic Reporter 

The Smoke of Satan on the Silver Screen: The Catholic Horror Film, Vatican II, and the Revival of Demonology | Journal for the Academic Study of Religion 

More sexual assault survivors connected to Michigan-based religious groups surface 

Inside the People of Praise, the Tight-Knit Faith Community of Amy Coney Barrett - The New York Times 

And Scales Fell From His Eyes | PDF | Protestantism | Catholic Church 

Pope Michael – WRSP 

‘The most conspiratorial demographic’: white evangelicals and the QAnon connection - The Conversationalist 

Evangelicals are looking for answers online. They’re finding QAnon instead. | MIT Technology Review 

QAnon Conspiracies Sway Faith Groups, Including 1 in 4 White Evangelicals | News & Reporting | Christianity Today 

New poll: QAnon embraced by 11 percent of white Catholics and 15 percent of all Americans | America Magazine

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