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
- 687
- Years Active
- 2020 - 2025
Bonus Sample: Charisma & Extroversion
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…
00:06:47 |
Mon 25 Oct 2021
74: Elena Brower Could Stop Selling doTERRA
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, men…
02:01:41 |
Thu 21 Oct 2021
Bonus Sample: Radical Denial
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 …
00:10:40 |
Mon 18 Oct 2021
73: Eating Disorders in Yogaland (w/Jason Nagata & Chelsea Roff)
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 c…
01:48:04 |
Thu 14 Oct 2021
Bonus Sample: Talking to Children About Conspirituality
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…
00:09:09 |
Mon 11 Oct 2021
72: John of Fraud (w/Lisa Braun Dubbels and Mirna Wabi-Sabi)
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 centra…
02:18:02 |
Fri 08 Oct 2021
Bonus Sample: Flow States & Humility
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-Americ…
00:04:24 |
Mon 04 Oct 2021
71: So Do We Believe in Anything at All?
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 po…
01:19:52 |
Thu 30 Sep 2021
Bonus Sample: Reality Bites: The Tragedy of Magical Thinking
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…
00:09:42 |
Mon 27 Sep 2021
70: Conspiracy Theories Conceal a Burning World (w/Daniel Sherrell)
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…
02:16:13 |
Thu 23 Sep 2021
Bonus Sample: Spirit Island No Garbage
On his family’s yearly trip to Manitoulin Island, Matthew detoxes from conspirituality influencer garbage, and returns with parts of a new plan.Show NotesWarmth by Daniel Sherrell: 9780143136538 | Pe…
00:09:33 |
Mon 20 Sep 2021
69: Fascism Down Under!!! (w/Dr. Izzy Smith)
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 …
02:16:23 |
Thu 16 Sep 2021
Bonus Sample: Mikki Willis Rewrites History
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 …
00:10:14 |
Mon 13 Sep 2021
68: The Jordan Peterson of Fitness Bros (w/Antonio Valladares)
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 champi…
01:13:40 |
Fri 10 Sep 2021
Bonus Sample: Hollow Men: The QAnon Roadshow Flop
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…
00:06:28 |
Mon 06 Sep 2021
67: The Promise & Peril of Psychedelics
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, …
01:27:21 |
Fri 03 Sep 2021
Bonus Sample: I Don’t Know Who My Friends Are
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:
We engage with frie…
00:08:29 |
Mon 30 Aug 2021
66: Spirituality & Status (w/Will Storr)
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 …
01:13:24 |
Thu 26 Aug 2021
Bonus Sample: The Question of Consciousness
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 c…
00:08:31 |
Mon 23 Aug 2021
65: Long-Haul QAnon (w/Rachel Bernstein & Jitarth Jadeja)
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 r…
01:24:40 |
Fri 20 Aug 2021
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