Society & CulturePhilosophyScienceSocial Sciences

Conspirituality

Derek Beres, Matthew Remski, Julian Walker

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.

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Thursday · 1 hr 10 min
334: Digital Soldiers Win in Brazil
Listen ad-free Brazil has a Steve Bannon of the Left. Today we study up how Congressman Andre Janones turned Lula’s Worker’s Party defeat in round one of the PE on October the 4 to win on October 26 with about 10 million votes shifting sides. We’ll do it by looking at the 12 points of the Mini-Manual of Informational Warfare. We’ll go through each. First, we explore the context, followed by Derek closing with a look back at the roots of this eclectic and liberatory political explosion in the 1960's Tropicalia movement. Show Notes Yes, Protest Still Works—Serbia Just Proved It Tropical Truth: A Story Of Music And Revolution In Brazil Brutality Garden: Tropicália and the Emergence of a Brazilian Counterculture Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Tuesday · 36 min
Drop: How the Black Virgin of Brazil Helped Beat Fascists (w/Maria Bernardes)
Listen ad-free Matthew speaks with Maria Bernardes, a volunteer in Lula's digital army, about how Nossa Senhora Aparecida, Brazil's Black Marian patron, became a flashpoint in the 2026 presidential runoff. The conflict pit Catholic, multiracial universalism against the racist neo-Pentecostal church to which the Bolsonaro father and son have given themselves, in the hope that Christofascism would lead them to power. In our segment last Thursday we discussed how Worker’s Party propaganda director Andre Janones staged an assault to capture the green-and-yellow colours back from the right wing. This is a deeper version of that story, in which the Bolsonaro gang attempted to defame the Black Virgin of Brazil as transgressive, subhuman, corrupt, and disgusting. It did not work. Maria Bernardes is a Brazilian voice actress, improv performer and anti-fascism activist, now based in Barcelona. Show Notes Maria Bernardes Maria on Instagram The 1995 "chute na santa" incident (Wikipedia) Entenda a polêmica envolvendo Flávio Bolsonaro e Nossa Senhora Aparecida (Diário do Nordeste) "Fake news, né, presidente?": Lula é contestado sobre Nossa Senhora (CNN Brasil) Flávio sobre polêmica com Nossa Senhora: "espécie de facada" (Congresso em Foco) Flávio Bolsonaro afirma que Brasil será "do Senhor Jesus Cristo" (O Tempo) Pastor de Flávio Bolsonaro diz: "Deus odeia o culto à Rainha dos Céus" (Metrópoles) Flávio presenteou o pai na prisão com livro em que bispo JB Carvalho ataca "santos católicos" (Revista Fórum) Saiba qual livro Flávio Bolsonaro apresentou em visita ao pai na prisão (Estado de Minas) CNBB defende Constituição e pede intercessão de Nossa Senhora após embate com Flávio Bolsonaro (A Gazeta) Em carta, bispos católicos apontam ameaça à democracia em candidatura de Flávio Bolsonaro (CartaCapital) Caetano Veloso, Marieta Severo e Nossa Senhora Aparecida em clipe de Lula (Revista Fórum) Tudo sobre o novo álbum de Anitta, EQUILIBRIVM II (Billboard Brasil) Edir Macedo critica lema bolsonarista "Deus, Pátria e Família" (O Povo) "Em nome do Pai": evangélicos se afastam de Flávio Bolsonaro (Agência Pública) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Monday · 8 min
Bonus Sample: Two Faces of The Gen-Z “Revolutions”
Listen to the full episode What is going on with Gen-Z revolutions across the globe right now? A student-led movement in Serbia just organized a massive nonviolent protest movement against widespread corruption and democratic backsliding. Despite state control of the media, violence and intimidation from government thugs and organized crime, and election interference, they won an overwhelming victory, sending their proto-authoritarian dictator packing. This is in the wake of similar victories in Hungary, Poland, and Brazil. But it turns out that American first daughter Ivanka Trump and her real estate heir husband may have lit the fuse on both the Serbian movement and the ongoing Flamingo Revolution in neighboring Albania. They’ve been attempting to build Gulf State-funded corruption-magnet multi-billion dollar luxury hotel resorts in those countries—and the local kids are having none of it! Julian looks into how the nonviolent protest movement that ousted Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic informed the strategies and success of the Student List just this last month, leading to the CANVAS model that trains pro-democracy activists worldwide. He contrasts this with less effective, undisciplined approaches that research says often accomplishes very little, while playing into the hands of authoritarians, stopping the wider population from participating. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
November 7 · 35 min
Brief: Schadenfreude
Listen ad-free First, the blue wave. Then, Russell Brand gets convicted of rape and sexual assault. Derek and Julian talk about the meltdowns going on in America right now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
November 5 · 44 min
333: Blue Wave
Listen ad-free For the moment, a sigh of relief ripples across America, perhaps even across the world. Seats that have not gone Democrat in decades did so across the country on Tuesday. Voters appear to have finally rejected MAGA. But from our perspective, a cult leader can only lie, cheat, and do the opposite of what he promised his followers he'd do, for so long. His now betrayed populist appeals to affordability and avoiding endless foreign wars appear to have been the final straws. Not January 6, not election tampering, not pulling out of global climate agreements, not the Ukraine-aid fiasco, not his criminal indictments, not even the actions of proto-fascist ICE thugs—the price of gas. Well, we'll take it. For now. We debrief and decompress from a night when the polling data over-delivered instead of delivering a gut-punch. Derek looks at the MAHA implications, Matthew notices a trend toward progressive populists reclaiming of patriotic symbolism, and Julian covers what and who to keep an eye on as the highly-organized anti-democracy election-conspiracists begin their assault on these results. Show Notes RFK Jr. and MAHA Suffer Brutal Election Night Wipeout Stage Set for Election Denial Chaos Key Election-Denial Activists 8 Things You Should Know About Trump’s Effort To Take Over Midterm Elections Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
November 3 · 58 min
Book Club: Man in the Mirror (w/Anand Giridharadas)
Listen ad-free Julian interviews journalist Anand Giridharadas about his new book, Man in the Mirror: Hope, Struggle, and Belonging in an American City. The book centers on the tragic death of Jordan Neely, a deeply traumatized, mentally ill, and unhoused former Michael Jackson impersonator who was put in a five-minute choke hold on a New York subway car by Marine veteran Daniel Penny, who was acquitted on all counts. Giridharadas spent three years investigating the stories beneath the high profile criminal trial. He takes readers on an immersive narrative journey that explores race, mental illness, homelessness, addiction, and the networks of support and care struggling within a failing system of social services. Show Notes Man in the Mirror: Hope, Struggle, and Belonging in an American City Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
November 2 · 5 min
Bonus Sample: "Islamogauchisme" = Sam Harris in a Beret
Listen to the full episode Matthew tracks the concept of "islamo-gauchisme," the French accusation that leftists are useful idiots for jihad. Pierre-André Taguieff's 2002 book on "new Judeophobia" is ground zero, and a forensic Twitter analysis has shown that far-right accounts pushed the term for years, until it was taken up by Macroniste ministers in 2020. The academic consensus is that it is a political slogan with no empirical reality. But like any (potential) conspiracy theory, it also emerges from a constellation of partial truths: solidarity between leftists and the French immigrant working class, the contested influence of the Muslim Brotherhood on civil society, Mélenchon's pivot from friendship with the late Charlie Hebdo editor to an anti-Islamophobia position, and the LFI refusing to condemn October 7 as an act of terrorism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
October 31 · 41 min
Brief: MAGA’s Midterm Election Denialism Network (w/Julie Millican)
Election denialism didn’t go away after the Capitol Insurrection. If anything, the revolving door between the Trump administration, the far-right conspiracy-mongering media ecosystem, and those directly involved in (and even convicted and imprisoned for) undermining democracy has only gotten more elaborate and determined. As the elections loom, Julian talks to the VP of Media Matters for America, Julie Millican, about her organization’s excellent reporting on how figures like Steve Bannon, Jerome Corsi, and Cleta Mitchell (the attorney involved in the infamous Brad Raffsenberger phone call) are sowing distrust and calling for confiscation of ballots and voting machines. They also discuss the armed ICE presence at polling sites and Tina Peters, who was convicted on charges involving attempts to overturn the 2020 election and sentenced to nine years in prison. After President Trump threatened to withhold federal funding from Colorado, the Governor commuted her sentence, freeing her to now reportedly meet personally with the President and work on “preserving election integrity.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
October 30 · 21 min
Drop: The Christian Nationalist Fight For Embryos
Listen ad-free In 2021, the first secular embryo adoption organization received federal funding after decades of pro-life Christian organizations had hogged the kitty with their particular views on who is fit enough to raise a family. Then in 2026, a change in language and some apparently shady bookkeeping on the part of an agency under RFK Jr's HHS resulted in two ultra-religious organizations receiving nearly all funding. Derek is joined by Maya Grobel, who cofounded that secular organization, Empower with Moxi, to discuss the consequences of this funding direction. Show Notes Empower with Moxi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
October 29 · 1 hr
332: The Protest Kids in France (w/Anthony Mansuy)
Listen ad-free The protests in France were initially sparked in mid-September by high school kids as young as 14 in the poorer metro districts, articulating concrete grievances about their neglected schools, underpaid and absent teachers, an AI-driven vocational assignment algorithm that forces them to choose career paths at 15, and a pervasive culture of smug condescension from the adult world. Anthony Mansuy joins us today. You might know him as the French correspondent for QAnon Anonymous. He was part of a journalist team from Societe publication, a print-only magazine in France, that travelled to places like Creteil and Alencon to interview these kids, and he walks Matthew through what they told him. First: the midterms are upon us, and so are new waves of MAGA bullshit. Derek has an update on what MAHA action is up to in the final push and Julian catches up on how Team Trump is aiming to invalidate the polls before they open. Show Notes An Iowa Republican’s Unusual Connection to the Kochs (and Kansas) Calley Means, top MAHA ally, resigns from Trump administration Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
October 26 · 8 min
Bonus Sample: Mikki Willis Injects More Bad Medicine
Mikki Willis is back with another installment of Plandemic—er, with a new book that further explains Plandemic, or something like that. Given how badly his sequels have gone, it appears that he’s looking for a new angle to mine (and monetize). Derek opens the pages of Bad Medicine: How COVID Protocols Turned Hospitals into Death Traps only to find Willis’s continual inability to grapple with reality is in book form. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
October 24 · 56 min
Book Club: American Caesar (w/Brad Onishi)
Listen ad-free Matthew welcomes friend of the pod, Brad Onishi, back to Conspirituality. Brad is the co-host of Straight White American Jesus, and he’s got a new book out called American Caesar: How Theocrats and Tech Lords Are Turning America into a Monarchy. Onishi’s scholarship charts the Frankenstein alliance of reactionary Catholic integralists, Protestant Reconstructionists, and Silicon Valley monarchists who find a common vein of worship in their rejection of democratic rule and a preference for an unbound executive. But: How will the trad-Caths out-maneuvre Pope Leo? Why do Paul Weyrich and Leonard Leo see Trump as a wrecking ball who precedes a Vance-type successor? How do they justify their openly minoritarian strategy? And: can these post-liberal believers really subordinate markets to a "common good"? Or is that impossible, given the wrath of their true deity, capital itself? Show Notes American Caesar by Bradley OnishiPeter Thiel calls Greta Thunberg a servant of the Antichrist (CTV News/AFP)Thiel's Nashville Antichrist lectures target Pope Leo XIV over AI (Gizmodo)Paul M. WeyrichBarre Seid's $1.6 billion donation to Leonard Leo's Marble Freedom Trust (JTA)US government takes 10% stake in Intel (CBS News)Kevin Roberts and Dwarkesh Patel, "Tech and the American Republic"Catholic Land Movement gaining momentum (The Catholic Register)Jeff Bezos on AI and a three-day work week (VnExpress International)Review of David Harvey's The Enigma of CapitalKarl Marx, Capital, Volume One (Marxists Internet Archive) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
October 22 · 1 hr 18 min
331: Charles Eisenstein Reflects
Listen ad-free Charles Eisenstein’s very long essay, “The Coronation,” was the focus of EP1 of Conspirituality. The sacred economist turned philosopher king joined us on EPs 30 and 32 for a two-part interview about that very essay. We’ve had no contact since, even though the man turns up in the most unusual places. Including, recently, another podcast to take stock about his time serving as advisor to RFK Jr. We thought it would be a good time to reflect on the man’s post-Covid trajectory, and what it might mean for the ground of conspirituality writ large. Show Notes Public Citizen: How Trump Conned MAHA RFK Is Gloating That His Changes to HHS Are Permanent RFK Jr. Vaccine Injury Plan Rebuked for Skewed Doctor Incentives Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
October 19 · 9 min
Bonus Sample: The New Age Nuclear Doomsday Prophet
Listen to the full episode The Church Universal and Triumphant became an international mainstream news story in 1990. Their leader, Elizabeth Clare Prophet, was poised, eloquent, and beautiful. She also claimed to have received messages directly from God about an impending nuclear holocaust. But it's more complicated than that: the theology of her new religious movement has significant overlap with three figures Julian has covered in the Roots of Conspirituality series. In the realm of conspiracism, cults, and apocalyptic religion, history always repeats itself. What’s unique about this story is the combination of colorful New Age syncretism and dark survivalist paranoia. Armed to their throat chakras with AR15s, tripod-mounted semi-automatic rifles, and armored personnel carriers, the church had spent $25 million building the largest underground nuclear bunker network in America. It contained enough food for seven years and over 600,000 gallons of fuel. What could go wrong? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
October 17 · 36 min
Book Club: The Last Temptation of Beck (w/Josephine Riesman)
Listen ad-free and support the podcast Although Beck David Hansen was born into Scientology, he’s never really practiced it. Except for that period where he did, heavily, when he even contemplated becoming an auditor. But then he left the church he was never really involved with—though pressure from the church appears to have completely ended his long-term relationship and close friendships. Does one of Gen X’s most iconic pop stars really believe in Thetans? You’re not alone if you’ve ever wondered because Beck has remained one of the most elusive celebrities for over three decades—apparently from those closest to him, and maybe even himself. Josephine Riesman returns to Conspirituality to discuss her exceptional new book, The Last Temptation of Beck, with Derek. Show Notes The Last Temptation of Beck Losing Beck Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
October 15 · 1 hr 2 min
330: The Hypocrisies of Paul Saladino [feat Mallory DeMille]
Listen ad-free and support the podcast Paul Saladino doesn’t like peanut butter. Or whey protein. Or processed foods at all. Except when they’re his peanut butter whey protein bars that are, you guessed it, processed. But his bars are different: they're really good and totally natural processed foods. Those other guys make shitty non-food foodstuff products. Paul produces the real deal. Just don’t ask the psychiatrist turned carnivore “doctor” turned fruit and honey is ok sometimes and, screw it, I’ll just make my own unprocessed processed food products, too. And definitely don’t question him about it, as guest host Mallory DeMille did. Paul wants the criticisms to rain down on him, for this is a lifelong learner, you see. Just don’t call him a hypocrite, or else he might come after you, shirtless, barefoot, wandering around grocery store aisles filming content and maybe, just maybe, searching for a friend. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
October 12 · 5 min
Bonus Sample: Max Haiven’s The Player and the Played
Listen to the full episode Max Haiven's The Player and the Played: From Gamed Capitalism to Twenty-First Century Fascism (MIT Press, 2026) argues that financialized capitalism has turned us all into speculative "players" in rigged games. It produces a "cheated player" whose resentment the far right redirects onto scapegoats rather than the ruling class. This is what contemporary fascism is. Matthew reviews Haiven’s re-reading of the conspirituality era: QAnon as a participatory game, Gamergate as a prototype of the "playgrom," and January 6th as a swarm of user-generated fascism. He traces how his own frameworks for conspirituality have shifted: cult dynamics, Lagalisse on conspiracy theory as allegory, Dean's communicative capitalism, Lubrano on the limits of persuasion. NOTE: Contains Squid Game spoilers through season 3. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
October 10 · 43 min
Book Club: Protocols (w/Scott Carney)
Andrew Huberman’s new book takes many hours of podcast transcripts and distills them to what he believes are ideal protocols for a healthy life. Protocols: An Operating Manual for the Human Body became an instant bestseller upon its publication last month. Does the science behind the hype hold up? Journalist Scott Carney joins Derek to look at the slipperiness of many claims. They also discuss the rather “unique” marketing model Huberman appears to have followed. Show Notes Auditing Andrew Huberman’s “Protocols” Andrew Huberman’s Mechanisms of Control Scott Carney Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
October 9 · 55 min
DROP: It’s Not a Horseshoe. It’s a Business Model.
This is episode 1 of a new side project Julian is doing with Azi Ghaffari, Dr. Inna Kanevsky, and Aaron McCall. Find upcoming episodes via Grifty Podcast and at grifty.org The wellness people think your toothpaste is poisoning you. Finance bros think empathy is bad economics. Somebody on the far right thinks Taylor Swift is a Democrat psy-op, while someone on the far left thinks your aunt buying hummus is personally funding colonialism. On parts of both fringes, everything is somehow Israel’s fault. The old antisemitic conspiracies apparently have remarkable staying power among people who think they’re having brand-new thoughts. Then, while the MAGA right was helpfully laying out its intentions in Project 2025, a corner of the online left looked at Russia and the Islamic Republic of Iran, a regime that jails journalists, murders protesters, brutalizes women, and executes gay people, and thought, “Maybe these guys have a point.” It’s impressive how much authoritarianism you can overlook once you’ve decided the authoritarians hate the right people. Different politics, same inability to enjoy Thanksgiving. And somehow, all of these people have podcasts. Actually, so do we. Welcome to Grifty Pod. We’re opening a season about how America lost its mind, which every podcast host seems to have already solved. In our defense, we’re planning to disagree with each other, which is a terrible way to run a cult. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
October 8 · 1 hr 13 min
329: Does Claude Have Charisma?
Listen ad-free and support the podcast When we started this show, the charismatic influencers we covered had identifiable tactics of hard-selling, finding pain points, using disorganized attachment strategies like cult leaders do, to scare followers with sometimes real, sometimes fictitious stories that only they could understand and help solve. Beyond the patterns shared by supplement hawkers, alien channelers, and New Age enema healers, each had something unique: a style, a manner of cadence, a particular intensity of intrusive eye contact. Are these not embodied, somatic skills that will outlast the AI jobs apocalypse? Can the chat bots really displace the guru economy? We explore how we may be losing this precious resource to the brutal extractivism of our tech overlords. Show Notes Popular Health Guru Sayer Ji Curates the Scientific Literature with His Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy A Dozen Misguided Influencers Spread Most of the Anti-Vaccination Content on Social Media Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart — Nicholas Carr Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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