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: Strongman Heroes, Barefoot Science, & Fake Victims
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 r…
00:08:04 |
Mon 16 Aug 2021
64: Remembering Guru Jagat: a Panel
With guests: Philip Deslippe, Jules Hartley, Janja Lalich, and Stacie StukinWe’ve convened an expert panel this week to remember and discuss Katie Griggs, aka GJ. She died in an LA hospital on the ev…
01:36:03 |
Thu 12 Aug 2021
Bonus Sample: Wellness Pornography as Abuse
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 meas…
00:08:19 |
Mon 09 Aug 2021
63: Yoga and the Jab (w/Colin Hall & Sarah Garden)
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 …
02:08:51 |
Fri 06 Aug 2021
Bonus Sample: Vaccines Are Not the Holocaust
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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00:04:42 |
Mon 02 Aug 2021
62: Manifesting Something Awful (w/Dale Beran)
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 …
01:23:32 |
Fri 30 Jul 2021
Bonus Sample: Digital Delusions: How conspiracy-fueled political religions like QAnon hijack our brains
QAnon emerged out of a perfect storm of evolving technology, social psychology, and global crisis. But it exploited pre-existing neural architecture already easily hijacked by addictive drugs, junk f…
00:08:54 |
Mon 26 Jul 2021
61: From Anti-Feminism to Anti-Vax (w/Dr. Annie Kelly)
It takes patience, empathy, and a steady hand to paint a detailed landscape of the politics and culture that connect anti-feminism to ethnonationalism to the broader obsessions of conspirituality.Dr.…
01:31:32 |
Fri 23 Jul 2021
Bonus Sample: Dear Raw Meat Guy
A closer look at the content and constellations of Josh Rainer Goldstein, who livestreams himself eating raw meat.Presented in three parts:
An analysis of how the content is self-centered, ableist, …
00:09:32 |
Mon 19 Jul 2021
60: Crypto Dreamin’ (w/David Morris)
Are you crypto-curious? This past year has shown that an increasing number of people are dreaming of becoming crypto millionaires. But what is blockchain and this strange new digital currency and, mo…
02:08:54 |
Thu 15 Jul 2021
Bonus Sample: The Future of Psychedelics
Derek investigates a recent NY Times essay by Michael Pollan as an entry point to discuss big questions in psychedelics and conspirituality: How do we honor indigenous traditions as psychedelics are …
00:11:42 |
Mon 12 Jul 2021
59: Is Rudolf Steiner Dead Yet? (w/Jennifer Sapio)
What should a global network of popular and private schools do when faced with evidence that the foundation of their pedagogy was laid by a racist, proto-fascist pseudoscientist? What should they do …
02:22:39 |
Thu 08 Jul 2021
Bonus Sample: True Colors
Julian reflects on unchosen racial complicity and how moments of moral courage in the face of oppressive power can reveal one’s true colors. He traces the history of Apartheid as it intersects with t…
00:09:21 |
Mon 05 Jul 2021
58: NXIVM: Recover & Educate (w/India Oxenberg)
How do we avoid being the subject of—and feeding the market for—trauma porn? If anyone knows, it’s India Oxenberg, who in less than two years (while under the unforgiving glare of a media firestorm) …
01:53:09 |
Thu 01 Jul 2021
Bonus Sample: A Conspiracy Theory of Everything
Matthew debriefs after the Mike Rothschild interview, looking at QAnon’s “Conspiracy Theory of Everything” as a hyperobject and spiritual dilemma.Show Notes‘A reckoning for our species’: the philosop…
00:06:56 |
Mon 28 Jun 2021
57: The Storm is Mutating (w/Mike Rothschild)
It’s only been eight months since Q stopped posting, but Mike Rothschild has been able to corral the firehose of data into the first major journalistic study of the fever dream that has tortured mill…
01:15:53 |
Thu 24 Jun 2021
Bonus Sample: Playing Shaman
The race to capitalize on the world’s wellness needs in a post-pandemic society—well, at “post” as we can pretend to be—was unavoidable. Derek reflects on the continually unrealistic marketing promis…
00:06:11 |
Mon 21 Jun 2021
56: Critical Race Theory in Real Life (w/Dax-Devlon Ross)
In June 2020, equity consultant and journalist Dax-Devlon Ross—who you might remember from Conspirituality 4 that very same month—published an essay called “A Letter to My White Male Friends of a Cer…
01:27:47 |
Thu 17 Jun 2021
Bonus Sample: Doomsday Prophecy & Spirituality Porn
Humanity has an apocalypse fetish. But wrapped up In the doomsday death wish is a utopian fantasy of the ascension that comes after a fallen and sinful world is purified by cataclysmic fire. Whether …
00:12:05 |
Mon 14 Jun 2021
55: Games Against Humanity (w/C. Thi Nguyen)
This episode is co-hosted by Dr. C. Thi Nguyen, a philosopher who teaches at the University of Utah. His breakthrough book is about agency in games, in which he shines a light on disquieting aspects …
01:42:36 |
Fri 11 Jun 2021
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