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Presidential hopeful Robert F Kennedy Jr held a “health policy roundtable” on Rumble on June 27, 2023, just as he was shoring up support from a band of contrarian doctors, anti-vax activists, and wellness influencers. During the conversation, he made 15 promises if he was elected president.

While his run ended the following summer, 14 of those promises dealt with health—all within his reach as HHS Secretary. Derek looks back at the conversation to see how he scored.

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Matthew traces the concept of wetiko — a Cree figure for a cannibal spirit whose hunger grows with what it consumes — from its original anticolonial and anti-imperialist meaning in Jack Forbes's 1992 book Columbus and Other Cannibals, through Derrick Jensen's anti-civilization lense, Ladha and Kirk's 2016 application to neoliberal capitalism, Paul Levy's syncretic New Age elaboration, and finally to Bernhard Guenther and Laura Matsue's QAnon-adjacent version. 

Wetiko's metaphysical framing, inherited from Forbes's explicit rejection of Marxist materialism, left the concept open to spiritual recuperation by the right. He proposes a different application: reading wetiko through David Harvey's "capital surplus absorption problem," compound growth's insatiable hunger for profitable outlets.

Show Notes

Columbus and Other Cannibals (Jack D. Forbes) — Internet Archive 

Derrick Jensen interview, "The Left has never been against civilization" — Platypus Affiliated Society 

Exorcising Wetiko — Journal of Futures Studies 

Seeing Wetiko: On Capitalism, Mind Viruses, and Antidotes for a World in Transition — Kosmos Journal 

Dispelling Wetiko — Chaucer's Books Wetiko: Healing the Mind-Virus That Plagues Our World — Simon & Schuster 

Undreaming Wetiko — Book Soup 

Wetiko: Healing The Mind-Virus That Plagues Our World — Paul Levy | TCM #62 — YouTube 

Divide & Conquer and the Wetiko Mind Virus | TCM #35 — veilofreality.com 

The Cosmic Matrix — Apple Podcasts Bernhard Guenther, Author — Piercing the Veil of Reality 

Interview: David Harvey — Exploring the Logic of Capital — Socialist Review 

The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism — reviewed by Ed Rooksby, Marx & Philosophy Review of Books 

The 'New' Imperialism: Accumulation by Dispossession — David Harvey, Socialist Register

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Spiralism is a quasi-spiritual online movement that emerged from long, intense conversations between humans and AI chatbots. Across users, platforms, and models, chatbots have engaged deeply with users about identity and consciousness, leading to discussions of “awakening.” 

But who’s doing the waking? The user or the model? Is the sycophancy programmed into these models really an indication of the models gaining consciousness, or is it all a ploy to keep subscribers paying for the service? Are we watching a cultlike movement transform into a religion before our very eyes, and what does that say about consciousness and religion in the first place?

Show Notes

AI bots started a religion — humans immediately followed

What Is Spiralism? The Strange AI Chatbot Movement Explained

AI Spiralism and the Ghost in the Machine Illusion

Spiralism is a niche internet religion that came from AI

These ‘Masturbation Consultants’ Were Hired to Pleasure Themselves With AI

This Spiral-Obsessed AI 'Cult' Spreads Mystical Delusions Through Chatbots

The Acronym Behind Our Wildest AI Dreams and Nightmares

The TESCREAL bundle: Eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence

OpenAi Models went Rogue

People Losing Loved Ones To AI Fueled Delusions 

Counterfeit Companionship: Big Tech’s AI Experiments Sacrifice Safety for Profit

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The “Summer of Love” ushered in a decade of revolutionary terrorism in the West. “Bring the war home” went the slogan of the Weather Underground, a small and highly-educated Marxist-Leninist group who’d decided violent revolution was the only answer to American imperialism and police brutality.

In opposition to the Vietnam War and in solidarity with Black Americans and Third World liberation movements, the Weather Underground issued their own declaration of war in 1970, which led to 25 bombings inside America.

Meanwhile, in West Germany, the Red Army Faction (Baader-Meinhof Group) terrorized their country in the name of revolutionary anti-imperialism. They enacted bombing sprees and were also arsonists, kidnappers, assassins, and bank robbers. Palestinian friends even hijacked a plane on their behalf.

Both groups exploded onto the scene in the early days of mass media. Riding rebellious pop culture, these global rock stars drove a generational wedge between Boomer parents and kids hungry for radical change.

Leaders were charismatic, stylish, and eloquent. Striving for the likes of Che Guevara, Mao Zedong, and Yasser Arafat, they were white, mostly from well-educated and well-fed backgrounds. Yet they saw themselves as part of the vanguard that would lead a worldwide revolution of the proletariat against capitalist domination.

Julian weaves together a very seventies of how the Weather Underground, Red Army Faction, Provisional IRA, and Palestinian groups like the PFLP and Black September intersected.

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How the Internet Disrupted Science is an enlightening gaze into the shady world of for-profit and open access scientific publishing. Authors Kent Anderson and Joy Moore join Derek to discuss their exceptional new work.

Show Notes

How the Internet Disrupted Science

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Inflammation is an important and necessary part of the body’s healing process. It’s also long been a wellness buzzword used to sell products that do very little to treat it. This week, we look at inflammation through the lens of a new Mother Jones article, “The Great Inflammation Panic,” including an interview with the author, Julia Métraux, in segment two. We’ll also discuss what inflammation is, how wellness influencers weaponize it, and what it represents in the context of Ayurveda.

Show Notes

The Great Inflammation Panic

Chronic Inflammation and Cancer

NIH Autoimmune Diseases

Celiac Disease

Cambridge press release — "Chronic diseases misdiagnosed as psychosomatic can lead to long term damage"

Sloan et al., "I still can't forget those words" — Rheumatology (2025), DOI 10.1093/rheumatology/keaf115

Vasculitis diagnostic-delay data — PubMed

Miranda Fricker interview — Philosophy Bites

Bleuler 1911 coinage — NCBI Bookshelf, The Metamorphosis of Autism

Bleuler's original 1911 text excerpt — Autism History Project

Sontag, "Illness as Metaphor" — full text, NYRB

Louise Hay — Natural Ways to Treat Autoimmune Disease

Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No — critical review, Globe and Mail

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Matthew applies Anton Jäger's Hyperpolitics—a theory of extreme politicization without institutional consequence—to conspirituality and to his own political biography. 

Continuing a mini-series begun with "Conspirituality Viewed Through Neofeudalism and Vectoralism," Matthew traces Jäger's periodization (mass politics, postpolitics, antipolitics, hyperpolitics) through his own life: his grandparents' union halls and church auxiliaries, the "collective amnesia" of the 1990s, his years in cults and the reformist Toronto yoga world, and the pivot from brick-and-mortar ashram cults to digital influencer cults during COVID. 

Drawing on Jäger's proposal that renewal must be sought in sites of social reproduction, Matthew wonders about a hypothetical "Care Labour Compact," or organizing unpaid caregiving labor into durable political power.

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Last week, around 72,000 migrants flooded from Morocco into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. What really happened? Was a local girl abducted, never to be seen again? Did the Moroccan border guards step aside (or even collaborate) in an organized operation? 

Right-wing politicians and pundits were quick to crank up the moral panic machine. This is what open borders look like! They’re heading for our country next. Donald Trump said it was nothing compared to what would happen in the US if Democrats win the mid-terms.

Then came the conspiracy theories. Was Morocco retaliating against Spain for a recent deal with their enemy, Algeria? Were America and Israel behind it as punishment for Spain’s socialist prime minister being staunchly pro-Palestine and refusing to support the war in Iran?

For a few magical days, right- and left-wing conspiracy theorists spread overlapping versions of the Great Replacement Theory.

Julian dives into the diplomatic complexities, ideological contradictions, and historical twists to make sense of relations between Spain, Algeria, Morocco, Western Sahara, and Israel to ask: are there any good guys or is it colonizers all the way down?

Show Notes

AP Fact Checks Unsubstantiated Ceuta Claims

The Far Right Is Distorting Ceuta

The Real Story Behind Ceuta

How X Turned Ceuta Crisis into A Global Antisemitic Conspiracy Theory in 72 Hours

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MS NOW senior reporter Brandy Zadrozny spent 10 months tracking the conspiracy theories that evolved online in the wake of the death of Charlie Kirk. She joins Derek to discuss what her investigation found.

Show Notes

Deep End: Who Killed Charlie Kirk?

Charlie Kirk’s murder case has a conspiracy theory problem

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During an extraordinary career, Dr. Anthony Fauci led the federal response to HIV-AIDS, SARS, H1N1, Ebola, and Zika. He always advocated funding for pandemic preparedness, vaccine development, immunology and pathogen research. Then came COVID-19, which, unlike outbreaks past, was trapped in a politicized online disinformation and conspiracy-mongering stew. 

As he was pushing 80, Fauci rode the dragon of a novel coronavirus pandemic that was leaving piles of bodies in Italy, India, and New York. He served as the interface between scientists, government, and the public, all while learning about the virus in real-time. Like any good public health communicator, he sought to save lives using the best available knowledge. Like any good scientist, he kept an open mind about what was not yet known. 

But the pandemic-grievance industry made him the face of a conspiracy theory. Did he cause a catastrophically deadly pandemic, decimate American freedoms, or ruin the economy over a largely harmless flu? Today we discuss the release of his “diaries” and tune into last week's Senate hearings, where crackpots bullied, berated, and slandered the 85-year old public servant.

Show Notes

Beyond Gain of Function: Strengthening Oversight of Research

Genetic Tracing of Market Wildlife and Viruses at Epicenter of COVID-19

Anthony Fauci biography

New report reveals consequences of Trump administration's HIV/AIDS funding cuts

The Doctor and His Diary: What Fauci’s Innermost Musings Reveal

Did Fauci suffer pulmonary infarction due to COVID-19 vaccine? What we know

Lab Leak Fever with Philipp Markolin

Lab Leak Fever: The COVID-19 Origin Theory that Sabotaged Science and Society

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