Conspirituality
Dismantling New Age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy-mad yogis. At best, the conspirituality movement attacks public health efforts in times of crisis. At worst, it fronts and recruits for the fever-dream of QAnon. As the alt-right and New Age horseshoe toward each other in a blur of disinformation, clear discourse, and good intentions get smothered. Charismatic influencers exploit their followers by co-opting conspiracy theories on a spectrum of intensity ranging from vaccines to child trafficking. In the process, spiritual beliefs that have nurtured creativity and meaning are transforming into memes of a quickly-globalizing paranoia. Conspirituality Podcast attempts to bring understanding to this landscape. A journalist, a cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic discuss the stories, cognitive dissonances, and cultic dynamics tearing through the yoga, wellness, and new spirituality worlds. Mainstream outlets have noticed the problem. We crowd-source, research, analyze, and dream answers to it.
- Update frequency
- every 2 days
- Average duration
- 48 minutes
- Episodes
- 686
- Years Active
- 2020 - 2025
Bonus Sample: A Course in Monstrosities
If you tune into your favorite Instagram wellness influencer or financial life coach, you’ll learn that money is really a state of mind—right? Thinking the right thoughts is the truest judge of chara…
00:06:49 |
Mon 26 Sep 2022
UNLOCKED: Swan Song Series 3 | Listening to Teal Swan’s Mom and Dad
Some of the most valuable material that come to us from Paula Marino's Open Shadow film of 2017 is an extended interview with Swan's parent's, the Bosworths. They speak about Swan's sensory sensitivi…
01:15:12 |
Sat 24 Sep 2022
121: The Gospel of Wellness (w/Rina Raphael)
Are you ready to biohack your brain with buttered coffee? How about going “within” at the Drybar of acupuncture? What if we told you that cannabis will catapult your chakras into higher consciousness…
01:03:29 |
Thu 22 Sep 2022
Bonus Sample: Listener Stories: Christina (part 2)
Christina Flinders returns for the second of a two-part tour through her experience with cultic dynamics, conspirituality, and the long road towards finding her place in the world. Picking up where s…
00:04:33 |
Mon 19 Sep 2022
120: Overripe Avocado (w/Jill Ettinger)
Did you know that Joe Biden is a Satanic alien Nazi pedophile intent on bringing about the New World Order? Or that Donald Trump is the only thing that will save us from complete tyranny? How about t…
01:13:44 |
Thu 15 Sep 2022
Bonus Sample: Listener Stories: Christina (part 1)
Christina Flinders is our honoured guest today for the first of a two-part tour through her experience with cultic dynamics and conspirituality. Matthew and Julian learn about her family's enmeshmen…
00:07:44 |
Mon 12 Sep 2022
119: We Are Slenderman (w/Kathleen Hale)
On May 31st, 2014, Morgan Geyser stabbed her onetime best friend Bella Leutner nineteen times, while her new best friend, Anissa Weier, looked on. All three girls were twelve years old. Geyser was l…
01:34:15 |
Thu 08 Sep 2022
Bonus Sample: The Consciousness Instinct
As we're all with family over the holiday weekend, here's a 2018 interview that Derek conducted with neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga after the publication of his last book, The Consciousness Instinc…
00:06:23 |
Mon 05 Sep 2022
118: Detoxing From Wellness (w/Kerri Kelly)
Do you ever stop to think about whether or not you can afford organic food—and then consider that many people don’t have such an option? Is Goop’s $295 incense holder a sign of feminine empowerment o…
00:52:03 |
Thu 01 Sep 2022
Bonus Sample: Swan Song Series 6 | Michelle Remembers: Literal Symbols
The homestretch of our study of Michelle Remembers zeroes in on the literal symbols—and symbols gone literal—of the Satanic Panic. Archetypes, gore, anxieties about sex and babies and filth: Lawrence…
00:10:09 |
Mon 29 Aug 2022
117: The Real Cost of Fitness in America (w/Natalia Petrzela)
Fitness is the beating heart of America. No, wait, that’s opportunistic capitalism. But opportunistic capitalism, as it turns out, is the beating heart of fitness. Yet fitness has a soul too—in fact,…
01:09:24 |
Thu 25 Aug 2022
Bonus Sample: JP Sears is Definitely Binary
JP Sears constantly refers to himself as a freethinker. His increasing religiosity is counter to critical thinking, however. Derek responds to two recent videos that detail his religious thinking and…
00:06:35 |
Mon 22 Aug 2022
UNLOCKED: Swan Song Series 2 | Teal Swan: Art & Artifice (w/Paola Marino)
In this episode of the Swan Song Series, Matthew interviews Paola Marino about why she found Teal Swan a fascinating subject to film for 2018’s “Open Shadow.” They discuss aesthetics, the mystery of …
01:49:41 |
Thu 18 Aug 2022
Bonus Sample: Swan Song Series 5 | Michelle Remembers: Themes & Framing
In the second of three episodes on Michelle Remembers, we recap its Catholic contexts, and Lawrence Pazder's quest to transcend the limitations of psychiatry through mystical nightmares. We then expl…
00:08:31 |
Mon 15 Aug 2022
116: History is Not a Placebo: Chinese Medicine in America (w/Tamara Venit-Shelton)
Traditional Chinese Medicine is an ancient medical system that has persisted in its homeland for countless generations before being exported to the rest of the world—right? Well, not exactly, but tha…
01:24:12 |
Thu 11 Aug 2022
Bonus Sample: Swan Song Series 4 | Michelle Remembers: Context & History
There's no Teal Swan without the Satanic Panic. And there's no Satanic Panic without the 1980 publication of Michelle Remembers, by Lawrence Pazder and Michelle Smith.In this first of three segments …
00:08:02 |
Mon 08 Aug 2022
UNLOCKED: Swan Song Series 1 | Close to Home
We can't understand Teal Swan without understanding the Satanic Panic. And we can't really understand that historical disaster with out feeling our way into the mysteries of memory, fantasy, shame, a…
01:24:52 |
Sat 06 Aug 2022
115: Controlling Women's Bodies "Naturally" (w/EJ Dickson)
Matthew sits down with ace journalist EJ Dickson to explore her deep archive of reporting on the policing of women's bodies, and how it reflects on her own experience of childbirth.This episode opens…
00:58:37 |
Thu 04 Aug 2022
Bonus Sample: The Wellness Theory of Depression
A recent review questioning the serotonin theory of depression has revived a generations-long debate over the very notion of "chemical imbalances." While there are plenty of important debates about t…
00:08:03 |
Mon 01 Aug 2022
114: Guns, Germs & Fear (w/Alan Levinovitz)
Life is scary. Natural disasters, violent intruders, and deadly viruses threaten our survival and endanger our loved ones. When ordinary solutions and institutions are not trusted, we may reach for t…
01:32:32 |
Thu 28 Jul 2022
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are the property of Derek Beres, Matthew Remski, Julian Walker. This content is not affiliated with or endorsed by eachpod.com.