Conspirituality
Episodes
Bonus: COVID Fatigue & Empathy (w/Dr. Ali Haider)
02 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Derek talks with Dr. Ali Haider about being on the frontlines of COVID-19.Dr. Haider is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Tufts University Medical...
23: Election Resilience (w/Hala Khouri, Lissa Rankin, & Tara Stiles)
29 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When we started this project six months ago, we could feel the cliff-edge of the election on the horizon. We could sense that our footholds of communi...
Bonus: Hay House & New Age Jesus
26 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Coming off of Conspirituality 22 with Rebekah Borucki, Matthew casts a wider net over Hay House’s cultural influence in two parts: a brief survey of...
22: Racism & Fraud in New Age Publishing (w/Rebekah Borucki & Dr Jay Mohan)
22 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Author and publisher Rebekah Borucki joins the Conspirituality team as our first co-host for this episode. She’s got a story to tell: the culture of...
Bonus: A Letter to a Friend in a Cult
19 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
More than 20 years ago, Richard Vaughan wrote Matthew a very kind and perceptive letter, asking him to reconsider whether his participation in a Buddh...
21: Om-ed and Dangerous: Militant Wellness (w/Sarah Hightower)
15 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We still can’t believe alt-health Bali retreat rockstar Sacha Stone called for the “evisceration” of public officials last week. Are conspiritua...
Bonus: The White Yogi, The Brown Activist, and the Evil Billionaire
12 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Who’s right, who’s confused, who’s noble, who’s the bad guy?Nothing exists in a cultural vacuum. The emergence of yoga as a hugely popular and...
20: The Second Wave: Pastel Q Goes Undercover (w/Ben Lee)
08 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The reality of a second COVID wave started back in the Spring. Now that With over half of American states are experiencing increased cases, the conspi...
Bonus: Bullying Gates, Bullying Biden: The Conspiracy of Male Violence
05 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Bill Gates is unknowable—except to close and estranged friends, family members, his therapist if he has one. His empire sprawls; his philanthropy is...
19: Hurtling Into the Q-Hole (w/Mike Rains)
01 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Thirty-two days out from the election and every hour reveals another layer of intensity. The more widely conspirituality and QAnon spreads, the more n...
Bonus: Demons in QAnon & Beyond (w/Professor Jonathan O’Donnell)
28 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
For our inaugural bonus episode of Conspirituality Podcast, we feature a single interview: a deep dive into the demonology of QAnon and Xtian evangeli...
18: From Psych Meds to Red Pills (w/Jules Evans)
24 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Some wellness influencers offer compelling critiques of Big Pharma, factory farming, and psychiatric malpractice. What happens when their arguments be...
17: The Politics of QAnon Spirituality (w/Seane Corn & Jared Yates Sexton)
17 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
At this point, we can say for sure that American spiritual and wellness communities are not only vulnerable to conspiracy brainworms but they’re act...
16: So You Want to Save the Earth? (w/John Roulac)
10 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Yoga-crazed Hindu nationalists murder Muslims for eating beef, believing that the cow embodies the religious gift of India’s soil. American white su...
15: Tantra: Sex, Death, & Chaos (w/Alex Auder)
03 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
For decades, Neo-Tantra has focused on sex workshops and orgasmic bliss, overlooking the fact that the Kama Sutra is effectively a patriarchal instruc...
14: The Problem with Revelation: Psychedelics and Conspiracies (w/Lorna Liana)
27 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This week we announce and discuss a refinement in our podcast’s direction. Real talk: conspirituality has clearly become both a front and a gateway ...
13: Religion Can Be A Dangerous Verb (w/Dr Theo Wildcroft)
20 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Theodora Wildcroft joins us again to take us through the basics of contemporary Religious Studies. She discusses how the discipline approaches iss...
12: So You Want To Stop Child Abuse (w/Regan Williams & Dr Theo Wildcroft)
13 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Last week, we started to explore how the real issue of child trafficking is being weaponized by bad-faith actors. This week we’re joined by two expe...
11: Cults and Disaster Spirituality
06 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Two of this podcast’s hosts have been involved in destructive cult dynamics. Matthew’s three years with Michael Roach and three years at Endeavor ...
10: The Anti-Vax Agenda (w/Imran Ahmed)
30 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
A recent report by the UK’s Center for Countering Digital Hate found that anti-vaxx organizations reach 58 million people on social media. The total...
9: Ableism in Conspiracy Theories (w/Jivana Heyman)
23 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Percolating alongside racism and classism, one of the most pernicious subtexts of conspirituality propaganda is ableism. Proponents spout accusatory m...
8: Taking Dr. Christiane Northrup Seriously (w/ Professor Jacqueline Antonovich)
16 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
As Christiane Northrup’s social media feed descends even further into the delusional zone — this week she retweeted explicitly identified QAnon co...
7: Doctoring COVID: Christiane Northrup’s Great Truther Awakening (w/Britt Hermes)
09 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
OB/GYN Dr. Christiane Northrup has been a giant in women’s healthcare advocacy for decades. She has persuasively argued for lower-intervention child...
6: Grappling with the Cult of Trump (w/Steven Hassan)
02 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It can be as hard to talk with your well-meaning yoga-world friend about their COVID-conspiracy beliefs as it is to talk with a family member about th...
5: Disease as a Metaphor (w/Maggie Levantovskaya)
25 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Conspiritualists are compelling for numerous reasons: they’re charismatic; they claim to transcend polarized politics; they claim to speak the unspe...
4: Racism in Wellness Culture (w/Dr Natalia Petrzela & Dax-Devlon Ross)
18 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On one hand, we have the CEO of Crossfit tweeting that “Floyd-19” is the real problem. (He got canceled.) On the other, COVID-truther psychiatrist...
3: Why Are Spiritual People Vulnerable to Conspiracy Theories?
11 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Right-wing conspiracy theories are being marketed in wellness communities as a form of spiritual freedom. While pattern recognition is an essential su...
2: Conspirituality in Zach Bush and J.P. Sears
04 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
To the layperson, Dr. Zach Bush’s vision of a resurrected microbiome as being the answer to modern illnesses sounds appealing. His basic argument: w...
1: Coronation for Whom?
28 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Barely two weeks into various stages of lockdown around the world, New Age philosopher Charles Eisenstein published a 9,000-word essay on the meaning ...
0.2: The Kelly Brogan Effect & Red Pills
21 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Conspirituality started with Julian and Matthew as guests on Derek’s EarthRise podcast. We’re reposting these episodes for you to hear the origins...
0.1: Conspiracy Theories & Cult Dynamics
14 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Conspirituality started with Julian and Matthew as guests on Derek’s EarthRise podcast. We’re reposting these episodes for you to hear the origins...