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
  • Bonus Sample: Antifascist Woodshed 3.1: The Kids are Alright

    Bonus Sample: Antifascist Woodshed 3.1: The Kids are Alright
    Apr 7 2025
    Part Two: Matthew remembers the snow job of “The Sound of Music.” Also: more on Sophie Scholl, introducing the Edelweiss Pirates, the “adult gaze”, what trusting kids means, notes from Emma Goldman and Janusz Korczak, and excerpts from a poem by Aku Päiviö, father of Jules, who traveled from Northern Ontario to Spain in 1937 to volunteer in the International Brigade. ____ When fascism rises, and some young people are drawn into its orbit, because everyone from Jordan Peterson to Andrew Tate has figured out how to exploit resentment at the failures of capitalism, we have an opportunity to give our kids a lot more than moralistic calls for a return to normalcy, compliance, warnings about screen time, striving to be better students, doing more sports, and not making too much of a ruckus. The kind of parenting that limits itself to restoring the status quo for younger people in an age of fascism is not engaged parenting. It’s not enough to be a good boy or girl. Antifascism takes more than that. Show Notes Op-ed: Try again, President Kumar: Renewing calls for Tufts to adopt March 4 TCU Senate resolutions Death toll since Israel's aggression on Gaza on October 7 rises to 31,819 (March, 2024) Austerity Has Always Been a Project to Empower Capital at the Expense of Workers It's Not Them; It's Us: Thoughts on the Show Adolescence Adolescence is a really well made depiction of misogyny that fails to critique it | by Mallory Moore | Mar, 2025 Netflix’s ‘Adolescence’ Taps Into the Latest Moral Panic Jonathan Haidt’s Claims On Kids & Tech Crumble Under Scrutiny From Top Expert, Candice Odgers | Techdirt UK government's own estimate says welfare cuts to push 250,000 into poverty | Reuters Labour’s cuts to PIP will drag a quarter of a million people into absolute poverty, DWP figures show – Disability News Service 55: Games Against Humanity (w/ Thi Nguyen) — Conspirituality 207: Gaming Realities (w/Thi Nguyen) — Conspirituality Reminder to the media: Research video games before reporting on them Out of the Ruins:The Emergence of Radical Informal Learning Spaces Anarchist Education and the Modern School: A Francisco Ferrer Reader The People's Republic of Neverland: The Child versus the State Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work Teaching Resistance: Radicals, Revolutionaries, and Cultural Subversives in the Classroom TRUST KIDS! Stories on Youth Autonomy and Confronting Adult Supremacy Refusing Complicity: The Bravery of Sophie Scholl - Radical Tea Towel Sophie Scholl and the youth resistance against the Nazis – DW – 02/22/2023 The majority of news influencers are conservative men, study finds An Unclaimed Country: The Austrian Image in American Film and the Sociopolitics of The Sound of Music The politics of The Sound of Music | Peter Levine Edelweiss Pirate Walter Mayer The Edelweiss Pirates: A Story of Freedom, Love and Life Walter Meyer describes his 1943 trial for looting, and the impact of his role in the Edelweiss Pirates on the sentence he received | Holocaust Encyclopedia The Edelweiss Pirates The Child and Its Enemies | The Anarchist Library —Emma Goldman DECLARATION OF CHILDREN'S RIGHTS—Janusz Korczak The King of Children: A Biography of Janusz Korczak - Betty Jean Lifton Sophie Scholl – The Final Days Remember the Mac-Paps - rabble.ca The Canadians In The Spanish Civil War 'Gentleman Jules' lived for just causes | Sudbury Star Poetry – Friends and Veterans Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    6 mins
  • Brief: Antifascist Woodshed 3: The Kids are Alright

    Brief: Antifascist Woodshed 3: The Kids are Alright
    Apr 5 2025
    But the parents? Meh. When fascism rises, and some young people are drawn into its orbit, because everyone from Jordan Peterson to Andrew Tate has figured out how to exploit resentment at the failures of capitalism, we have an opportunity to give our kids a lot more than moralistic calls for a return to normalcy, compliance, warnings about screen time, striving to be better students, doing more sports, and not making too much of a ruckus (as Marco Rubio calls it). The kind of parenting that limits itself to restoring the status quo for younger people in an age of fascism is not engaged parenting. It’s not enough to be a good boy or girl. Antifascism takes more than that. In this Part One, Matthew previews our main feed discussion of Adolescence (coming this Thursday), parses a speech by Gareth Southgate, wonders why Jonathan Haidt knows nothing about gaming, and remembers Sophie Scholl. Show Notes Op-ed: Try again, President Kumar: Renewing calls for Tufts to adopt March 4 TCU Senate resolutions Death toll since Israel's aggression on Gaza on October 7 rises to 31,819 (March, 2024) Austerity Has Always Been a Project to Empower Capital at the Expense of Workers It's Not Them; It's Us: Thoughts on the Show Adolescence Adolescence is a really well made depiction of misogyny that fails to critique it | by Mallory Moore | Mar, 2025 Netflix’s ‘Adolescence’ Taps Into the Latest Moral Panic Jonathan Haidt’s Claims On Kids & Tech Crumble Under Scrutiny From Top Expert, Candice Odgers | Techdirt UK government's own estimate says welfare cuts to push 250,000 into poverty | Reuters Labour’s cuts to PIP will drag a quarter of a million people into absolute poverty, DWP figures show – Disability News Service 55: Games Against Humanity (w/ Thi Nguyen) — Conspirituality 207: Gaming Realities (w/Thi Nguyen) — Conspirituality Reminder to the media: Research video games before reporting on them Out of the Ruins:The Emergence of Radical Informal Learning Spaces Anarchist Education and the Modern School: A Francisco Ferrer Reader The People's Republic of Neverland: The Child versus the State Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work Teaching Resistance: Radicals, Revolutionaries, and Cultural Subversives in the Classroom TRUST KIDS! Stories on Youth Autonomy and Confronting Adult Supremacy Refusing Complicity: The Bravery of Sophie Scholl - Radical Tea Towel Sophie Scholl and the youth resistance against the Nazis – DW – 02/22/2023 The majority of news influencers are conservative men, study finds An Unclaimed Country: The Austrian Image in American Film and the Sociopolitics of The Sound of Music The politics of The Sound of Music | Peter Levine Edelweiss Pirate Walter Mayer The Edelweiss Pirates: A Story of Freedom, Love and Life Walter Meyer describes his 1943 trial for looting, and the impact of his role in the Edelweiss Pirates on the sentence he received | Holocaust Encyclopedia The Edelweiss Pirates The Child and Its Enemies | The Anarchist Library —Emma Goldman DECLARATION OF CHILDREN'S RIGHTS—Janusz Korczak The King of Children: A Biography of Janusz Korczak - Betty Jean Lifton Sophie Scholl – The Final Days Remember the Mac-Paps - rabble.ca The Canadians In The Spanish Civil War 'Gentleman Jules' lived for just causes | Sudbury Star Poetry – Friends and Veterans Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    48 mins
  • 251: Who Is Curtis Yarvin?

    251: Who Is Curtis Yarvin?
    Apr 3 2025
    "If Americans want to change their government, they're going to have to get over their dictator-phobia." That's neo-reactionary philosopher Curtis Yarvin in 2012, when he outlined a strategy that's eerily similar to how Trump and Musk are now destroying our government. The "dark enlightenment" blogger, long a transgressive darling of the New Right, has in the last two months enjoyed a fresh round of mainstream exposure. We look at a man who has the ear of those who are reshaping our world at breakneck speed. Show Notes That's Bait - by Jeff Sharlet Kristi Noem Gets a MAGA Makeover - The New York Times Kristi Noem’s New Teeth Are Blowing Up in Her Face | Vanity Fair Venezuela-hired lawyers file petition in El Salvador aimed at freeing Venezuelans deported by US | AP News Kristi Noem’s El Salvador Prison Photo Op Might Have Violated the Geneva Convention Trump wants FEMA gone. But that could be its own kind of disaster. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem posed in front of El Salvador prisoners wearing $50k watch Will Stancil: "The El Salvador government is using its concentration camp as a kind of Disneyland thrill ride for right-wing influencers” Kelly Brogan’s Divine Dungeon: Pt 1 (feat/Esme Providence Brown) Kelly Brogan’s Divine Dungeon: Pt 2 (feat/Esme Providence Brown) ‘All life is a service’: The Contested Erotics of Fascism from Foucault to Frost – Retrospect Journal Cathedrals of Erotic Misery • Ill Will Politico Yarvin Interview Financial Times on Dark Enlightenment TIME on Dark Enlightenment Common Dreams on Dark Enlightenment/DOGE NYT Podcast End of Democracy Jennifer Kollmer, 1971-2021 — Yarvin’s obit poem, TW on the rest of the blog! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    58 mins

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