Conspirituality

“I would pursue transcendence and live with its inevitable close cousins, disappointment and heartbreak, for most of my life.” So writes “Steven” (not his real name) in the first of our six spiritual heartbreak stories from our Patreon supporters. “The spiritual by-passing of folks like Marianne Williamson and Eckhart Tolle kept me spinning in a cycle of abuse and unable to see clearly enough to end an abusive marriage with a Unitarian minister.” That’s from Katherine—story number three.And in our final story, Lynn writes: “I will say even though I've been through a really awful trauma and still have to deal with that residue, I am now happier than I've ever been in my life. I enjoy just being a simple person now, without the ever exhausting pressure of having to perform my religion, to awaken my consciousness.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

JP Sears is selling CBD. His new company, Awaken, recently sent out a marketing email extolling the benefits of CBD. Derek looks at the science behind the claims.Show NotesCBD is everywhere. But is it a scam?Inverted U-Shaped Dose-Response Curve of the Anxiolytic Effect of Cannabidiol during Public Speaking in Real LifePioneering UAMS Study Warns of CBD Supplements’ Harm to Gut HealthCan Cannabis Help Your Gut?The Impact of Cannabidiol on Human Brain Function: A Systematic ReviewCannabis, Cannabinoids, and Sleep: a Review of the LiteratureDoes CBD Help With Insomnia?Cannabidiol (CBD): What we know and what we don'tAntioxidative and Anti-Inflammatory Properties of CannabidiolCannabidiol (CBD): a killer for inflammatory rheumatoid arthritis synovial fibroblastsA single dose of cannabidiol reduces blood pressure in healthy volunteers in a randomized crossover studyImmune Responses Regulated by CannabidiolCan CBD Benefit Your Immune System?CBD and Heart HealthEfficacy and Safety of Cannabidiol and Tetrahydrocannabivarin on Glycemic and Lipid Parameters in Patients With Type 2 Diabetes: A Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled, Parallel Group Pilot Study Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why do so many inflammatory culture war issues crystallize around vaccines and masks? What is so compelling about these forms of public health and mutual aid, that they become central to the right-wing imagination? For some, straight-up libertarianism might be a sufficient answer: the knee-jerk allergy to being asked to do anything as a social player. And beneath that might lie conspiratorial notions of Fauci being a Red, Bill Gates monetizing polio, or George Soros controlling Congress. Matthew argues that even those are surface stories, covering over a trembling anxiety about the status of the body in relation to the State, and God. Show NotesRudolf Steiner on Traditional Childhood Illnesses and VaccinesBiss, Eula. On Immunity: An Inoculation. Minneapolis: Graywolf, 2015 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is Marianne Williamson’s promotion of A Course in Miracles any more relevant to her political persona than Biden’s Catholicism? If it demonstrably informs her every instinct and communication (as we expect it would given she sermonizes out of it every day), then yes, it is. If it leads her to suggest that meditation can help contain nuclear waste, divert hurricanes, heal the “scam” of clinical depression, or “boost the immune system” against COVID19, then yes, it is. Is it sexist to highlight Williamson’s reported history of interpersonal abusiveness, when male politicians get away with far worse? There is definitely a double standard to resist. But when a candidate builds a political persona on being a love-and-light wayshower, it’s important to evaluate what that actually looks like ground-level. It’s also important to consider whether immature behavior might be a plausible outcome of following the Jesus of A Course in Miracles, who is a huge asshole. Finally: if Williamson is the only candidate out there talking about reparations and M4A, is it reactionary to dismiss her on religious or behavioral grounds? Not if you’re actually interested in a functional progressive politics, free from magical thinking and charismatic bafflement. Show NotesWilliamson’s COVID meditation, Facebook LiveRead: Pope Francis’ May prayer to Mary for the end of the pandemic | America MagazineMarianne Williamson’s ‘abusive’ treatment of 2020 campaign staff, revealed - POLITICO Marianne Williamson is a controversial AIDS-crisis figure for gay men.MARIANNE'S FAITHFUL | Vanity Fair | June 1991Project Angel Food Rocked by FeudsThe Divine Miss W — PeopleThe Power, the Glory, the Glitz - Los Angeles Times Marianne Williamson Bows Out as Pastor - Beliefnet Marianne Williamson's Democratic debate performance raised eyebrows. But she's no friend of the left.Marianne Williamson responds to Politico article alleging abuse toward staff - BBC News Here Are The Presidential Candidates Women Have Been Donating To Marianne Williamson on Her Insurgent Campaign Against Joe Biden ❧ Current Affairs Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why did Trump kick-off his 2024 presidential campaign in Waco, Texas? Who were the Branch Davidians, anyway? Julian unpacks the incendiary streams of far-right anti-government militia history and religious apocalypticism that our former president is tapping into as he faces legal jeopardy. It all goes back almost 300 years to the original Great Awakening that QAnon and New Age channelers tried to remix in 2020. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen… Can you hear it?All across the propagandist right and the free speech center, there's a new rallying cry: it's time to fight the “censorship industrial complex!”Researching and documenting digital disinformation—and coordinating to combat its malevolent agendas—is now all being described as a pseudo-academic scam, a hoax covering up an authoritarian liberal campaign of vile and secretive censorship. Now, as it turns out, this gnashing of teeth and shedding of tears at the cruel injustice of social media censorship, and the swift, brutal cancellation of anyone daring to go against the mainstream narrative is actually not new.We’ll look at the broader topic today, as well as some specific variations on the victim of censorship gambit, which uncannily often precedes being handed an even bigger megaphone.Show NotesConspirituality + Glassbox Media Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Recording the audiobook at a swanky Toronto studio sends Matthew down a memory hole to wonder about performance, self-awareness, and anxiety, and their relation to charisma.“Whatever charisma I have or project into the world has always been both prompted and tempered by the belief that becoming larger, that reaching out and creating an impression would soothe a confused or immature sense of self. That if I could be seen, I would be loved, and if loved, I would be real.“If there is an anxiety at the core of the influencers we study, it might be related to this. This week I had the opportunity to meditate on it, to remember how charisma formed around and within me, first through an arts education, and then as a yoga and wellness entrepreneur. It’s made me wonder whether and how I’ve been that much different than Zach Bush, or Mikki Willis, or Katie Griggs. I know how to project that voice, I know how to put on my resting guru face.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Conspiritualists are not wrong that Jeffery Epstein’s downline has so far evaded justice. Or that the highest levels of the Catholic Church aided and abetted child sexual abuse for generations. They are not wrong about the existence of child sexual abuse materials circulating online, and that children are coerced, abducted, and sometimes killed in order to make them. But their narratives are contorted by panic, mythology, stereotypes, paranoid and grandiose assumptions, and the antisemitic conspiracy theorizing of QAnon, which spread like wildfire through yoga and wellness social media during the pandemic and has now normalized as the “groomer” meme. They say that child sexual abuse is a planned, nefarious, top-down attack on innocents. They say that its purpose is to turn the world away from God, to starve humanity of hope.Matthew sits down with Håkon Høydal, an investigative journalist in Norway who has spent years researching and exposing the most abject behaviors on the dark web. His work reveals a very different landscape. It’s a banal world, close to home, hiding in plain sight, presided over by young men who are making reckless choices after having decided that their pathological and criminally harmful impulses will never be understood, much less treated. Show NotesHunting Warhead | CBC News VG exposed the largest child sexual abuse forum. It was run by the police. Porn site founder accused of sex trafficking arrested in Spain - The Globe and MailSex offender treatment scheme led to increase in reoffending | UK news | The Guardian-- -- --Support us on PatreonPre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | CanadaFollow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | JulianOriginal music by EarthRise SoundSystem Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Matthew sits down with Sam Binkley, Professor of Sociology at Emerson College in Boston to discuss his 2007 book Getting Loose: Lifestyle Consumption in the 1970s.We cited this very helpful work as we dug into the sociology of conspirituality for our own upcoming book. Here’s a thumbnail of Binkley’s argument:The 1970s ushered in a period of “getting loose” in relation to the body, work expectations, family relations, and political allegiances. This happened as the great moral and political questions of the 1960s deflated without resolution, even as they enshrined looser social mores around sex and finding meaningful work. The cultural yearning for structural change found its home in the project of the self, facilitated by an accelerated consumerism that expanded the conflation of agency with consumption. Getting Loose characterizes this inward turn as a retreat from the terrors of revolutionary freedom.Show NotesGetting Loose — Binkley-- -- --Support us on PatreonPre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | CanadaFollow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | JulianOriginal music by EarthRise SoundSystem Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There are a number of philosophies presented in yoga spaces as "universal truths" that turn out to be little more than directives in an echo chamber. And there are protocols presented as therapeutic in wellness spaces that blur the line between spiritual rhetoric and pseudoscience — and some are quite dangerous.Derek looks at his experiences as a student at Jivamukti Yoga as well as the recent "ozone enema" podcast between Gwyneth Paltrow and Will Cole to discuss spiritual rhetoric and pseudoscience. He opens with his experiences as an international music journalist to provide a framework for thinking outside of your box, be it a local yoga studio or the websites you treat as gospel.Show NotesGwyneth Paltrow Admits to Getting Ozone in Her Rectum-- -- --Support us on PatreonPre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | CanadaFollow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | JulianOriginal music by EarthRise SoundSystem Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices