One of the precious bright spots for our family in this long dark winter of COVID has been outdoor skating. Other than the walking trails, it’s the only thing that the city has kept open. I take our boys, 4 and 8, while my partner is working. The older one has developed a speed-skater’s stride. He’s not crossing over yet as he turns, but he’s close to it. The younger one has amazed us all with learning to glide easily in this, his first winter on skates…As per the city regulations, we stay masked and distanced as we’re lacing up, and while skating. But two weeks ago, an anti-masker started showing up, and openly ignored the attendants who asked him to comply.This audio essay is about all of the feelings that came up for me as I a watched this unfold, tried to intervene, and tried to make sense of it all for myself, and the boys.
-- -- --Support us on PatreonPre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | JulianOriginal music by EarthRise SoundSystem
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bonus Sample: Anti-Masker at the Skating Trail

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.

Society & Culture

Personal Journals

History

Philosophy

Places & Travel

Social Sciences

Science & Medicine

Religion & Spirituality

Other

Spirituality

Christianity

Buddhism

Hinduism

Judaism

Islam

Science

Tensions between Israel and Iran escalated as supernaturally-charged conspiracy theories about the solar eclipse flooded the internet. And so Julian searched for answers about the mysterious “red heifer.” What is so special about a red cow? Might its discovery and ensuing journey from Texas to Jerusalem have played a role in the October 7 attacks? Why are zealots from all three Abrahamic religions so focused on one piece of holy real estate? Could apocalyptic prophecies actually be self-fulfilling, even when the metaphysics are make-believe?
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bonus Sample: The Dark Sun, The Red Cow, and The End of Days

Matthew is joined by Theo Wildcroft and Harriet McAtee, co-editors of The Yoga Teacher's Survival Guide: Social Justice, Science, Politics, and Power (Singing Dragon Publications), a volume of essays from 16 yoga world contributors.
Three yoga culture critic nerds get into the weeds of how wellness workers and yoga teachers survive and navigate a post-pandemic world that exists at the crossroads of:

capitalism and spirituality

medicine and religion

modern therapeutics and precolonial philosophy and caregiving

gigwork and care work


Theo is a yoga scholar. Harriet has been training yoga teachers for seven years in a little school in Oxford, UK.
Show Notes
The Yoga Teacher's Survival Guide | Singing Dragon - US 
Theo Wildcroft 
Harriet McAtee 
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brief: Yoga Teacher’s Survival Guide (w/Theo Wildcroft & Harriet McAtee)

“Cult expert” Steve Hassan has been publicly concerned with the complex sociology of trans youth since 2020. We track that interest back to his communications with gender critical activists in 2017, who reached out to him because they believed that his cult theory could shed light on what they believed were nefarious aspects of the trans awareness movement. In the spirit of helpfulness, but without any chops in the subject, he stepped up to the plate and started swinging.
Regardless of how earnest or paranoid his concern is, his access to this landscape has been bought with his intellectual legacy, and been filtered through networks that question trans identity altogether. His most inflammatory (but also silly) claim is that many young people are being hypnotized by online pornography and influenced by social media groups to the extent they inexorably choose medical transition. We investigate and analyze this unfortunate skid into the culture war mud.
Hassan has stated at length his opposition to the “cancel culture” he believes is directed at Rowling and himself. This episode is not that. It’s a sober evaluation of legacy, disciplinary overreach, and what better public intellectual engagement would look like.
Show Notes
Full show notes posted to our website and Patreon.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

202: Steve Hassan and the Trans Cult Conspiracy Theory

Following up on our Long COVID episode with Tara Haelle, Matthew will be expanding the Listener Stories portfolio with stories from listeners about navigating Long COVID. Why? Because there’s nothing like a mysterious disease, denied by some, stigmatized by others, and politicized by multiple interests, that will bring a person closer to the appeal of alt-med conspirituality.
Matthew Stillman is our guest today. Author, documentary filmmaker, and lifelong New Yorker, Stillman grew up in an eccentric family of spiritualism and alternative medicine, but which also fostered a healthy respect for evidence-based medicine. So what happens when experts at Mt. Sinai Center for Post-COVID care reach the end of their capacity to help him with not one but two strains of Long COVID? Red light therapy! Chinese herbs! And a bracing contemplation of what it means to explore the tension between hope and knowledge.
Show Notes
Matthew Stillman
The major genetic risk factor for severe COVID-19 is inherited from Neanderthals | Nature
How Genes from Neanderthals Predispose People to Severe COVID-19 | The Scientist Magazine
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bonus Sample: Long Haul Stories: Matthew Stillman

Matthew is joined by historian Neil J. Young, co-host of the excellent Past Present Podcast, to talk about his new book: Coming Out Republican: a History of the Gay Right.
Young’s riveting storytelling shows how, beginning in the aftermath of WWII, many American gay men—born into socially conservative and religious families from which they had struggled to individuate—hitched the wagon of their political hopes to a Republican party they believed would champion their privacy and individual civil rights. 
Ground zero for their fiercely libertarian clubs and action committees was San Francisco, where a culture of rugged entrepreneurship fostered the slogan “Keep the government out of our bedrooms, and out of our wallets.” It was an individualist politics that looked to Civil Rights and women’s rights movements for inspiration, but not allyship. 
In time that same GOP would lead a culture war against everything queer—paradoxically led by closeted gay politicians who, with deeply conflicted motives, legislated against their fellows. But even as the tide turned, many gay Republicans kept their shoulders to the unforgiving wheel of respectability politics.
Young illuminates the flashes of bravery and self-reliance in these men’s stories, but also shows what happens when a marginalized group seeks acceptance and political power—instead of liberation—within a culture built on exclusion.
Neil writes for WaPo, the Atlantic, CNN, the Los Angeles Times, Vox, Politico, Slate, and the New York Times. 
Show Notes
Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right, Young
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bonus Sample: Anti-Masker at the Skating Trail

Download our free app to listen on your phone