Conspirituality

By: Derek Beres Matthew Remski Julian Walker
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  • Summary

  • 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.
    © 2023 Conspirituality
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Philosophy Science Social Sciences Spirituality
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Episodes
  • 243: Free Market Contrarians (w/Eoin Higgins)

    243: Free Market Contrarians (w/Eoin Higgins)
    Feb 6 2025
    Edward Snowden is largely only a public name thanks to Glenn Greenwald’s reporting, for which he was one of the contributors to a Pulitzer Prize-winning series for The Guardian in 2014. For a while, Matt Taibbi was considered the heir to Hunter Thompson when his gonzo journalism tore open the 2008 financial crisis and gave the public the term “vampire squids.” Yet in more recent years, both men have swerved right: Glenn became a darling on Fox News and Taibbi was recruited by Elon Musk as one of the Twitter Files “journalists.” How did that happen? We’re joined by journalist Eoin Higgins, whose new book, Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left, dives into the career arcs of both Greenwald and Taibbi, and how they confuse and distort right-left alignments. Show Notes Sharath Jois, Heir to Founder of Ashtanga Yoga, Dies at 53 - The New York Times Sharath’s Statement on Pattabhi Jois’s Assaults: Context, Links, Notes – Matthew Remski Surviving Modern Yoga - North Atlantic Books Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left Eoin Higgins Morning Brew | Bluesky Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 4 mins
  • Bonus Sample: Kelly Brogan’s Divine Dungeon: Pt 2 (feat/Esme Providence Brown)

    Bonus Sample: Kelly Brogan’s Divine Dungeon: Pt 2 (feat/Esme Providence Brown)
    Feb 3 2025
    Part 2 of Matthew’s sit down with sex-work veteran and social justice advocate Esme Providence Brown to discuss New Age / wellness antifeminist, Kelly Brogan, and how her craven politics bolster the permission structure for Trumpian misogyny. They track her political and aesthetic journey from labcoat wearer to wellness pole dancer to BDSM cosplayer—a spiral through deepening layers of appropriation, disavowal of responsibility, and cringe-tastic ideas. Esme concludes with some deep insights on what it means for artisanal BDSM to be stripped of its political and consent-culture context, and who Brogan’s “feminism is a psy-op” argument really serves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    6 mins
  • Brief: Anti-Social Media (w/Renee Diresta)

    Brief: Anti-Social Media (w/Renee Diresta)
    Feb 1 2025
    When asked if he thought Mark Zuckerberg’s effective ending of fact checking was in response to threats that he would “put him in jail for a very long time,” Trump replied, “Probably. Yeah, probably.” A week later, TikTok voluntarily disabled their app for users, then put up an announcement saying that Trump was going to bring them back. Julian talks to digital disinformation expert Renee Diresta about the massive Big Tech realignment with MAGA, which now means Meta, X, and TikTok may become more like TruthSocial. If fact checking is biased, content moderation is censorship, and combating foreign propaganda is anti-free speech, where does that leave us now? Show Notes If you Give A Mouse a Cookie: Renee Diresta Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    29 mins

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