Conspirituality

Derek discusses Tucker Carlson advocating for corporal punishment as a way to discipline children in his appearance at the Turning Points USA MAGA rally.

This is an unlock from a recent Patreon bonus, with a new intro from Matthew.

Show Notes

Stephen Colbert: Tucker Carlson’s Weird Daddy Issues

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Rapid-response electoral punditry is not our lane. So, while we gather our feelings and thoughts, Matthew hosts novelist Sheila Heti for a discussion of her encounter with A Course in Miracles, and what she discovered when she investigated its origin story for Harper’s Magazine.

Was Helen Schucman, the book’s “scribe”, mentally ill? Was she unduly influenced by her boss at Columbia Medical School, William Thetford, who once worked for the CIA’s MKUltra programme, and with whom she was clearly in love, even though he was gay? Were they dropping acid on assignment from Langley? Why was the initial dictation of the book so radically altered by its first editors? Why did Helen Schucman curse A Course in Miracles so soon after publication? Why did she keep writing trite poems to Jesus before dying in bitterness?

Heti was the ideal gumshoe for this project, because as a novelist all-too-familiar with internal voices and the feeling of “channeling,” she was able to feel her way into Helen’s life. Matthew asks her what she found.

Show Notes

The New Age Bible — Sheila Heti 

Sheila Heti — website

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Having lived under Apartheid in South Africa, voted in the UK, and now staring down this terrifying US election, Julian reflects on the political differences between the three countries.

Stay tuned for some hopeful poetry at the end.

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Recently, “holistic veterinarian” Marcie Fallek, whose latest book, “Little Miracles Everywhere: My Unorthodox Path to Holistic Veterinary Medicine," is the #1 bestseller on Amazon in the Alternative Holistic Medicine category, appeared on Children's Health Defense's daily morning show.

During “Pet Vaccines and Holistic Vet Care" she spreads the same sort of vaccine misinformation and fear-mongering that RFK Jr's nonprofit has become infamous for. All of which made Derek realize that yes, they're actually coming for our pets.

Show Notes

Private Equity Is Killing Your Pets

Nearly 70% of veterinarians have lost a colleague or peer to suicide, study finds

The acute suicide crisis among veterinarians: 'You're always going to be failing somebody'

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With days left before the most consequential US election in our lifetime, we reflect on the last 4.5 years of this podcast while expressing our hopes–and our own reporting goals—for the future.

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Matthew here with the third installment of Five Big Questions Posed to an Extremely Thoughtful Person. 

Michelle Cassandra Johnson was an early guest on our show and helped us lay the groundwork for understanding the reality and impacts of racism in the worlds of wellness and new spirituality.

She’s an author, activist, and racial equity trainer. Her latest book, A Space For Us: A Guide For Leading Black, Indigenous, and People of Color Affinity Groups, was published by Beacon Press in August 2023. She lives in North Carolina with her sweet dog, Jasper, and her honeybees.

Show Notes

Michelle Cassandra Johnson

Conspirituality 40: White Supremacy: Grift and Gravity (w/Michelle Cassandra Johnson & Daniel Lombroso) 

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Derek discusses Tucker Carlson advocating for corporal punishment as a way to discipline children in his appearance at the Turning Points USA MAGA rally.

Show Notes

Stephen Colbert: Tucker Carlson’s Weird Daddy Issues

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Billionaire legal activist Leonard Leo has had a role in placing all six conservative justices on the SCOTUS, and so therefore is in large part responsible for the overturning of Roe V Wade. But his right-wing activism isn’t even close to over, as he recently stated during a rare interview with The Daily Wire. Derek and Julian discuss Leo’s dark vision for the future.

Swamp Creatures 6: Leonard Leo, Judicial Kingmaker

Inside Leonard Leo’s Plan For Conservatives To ‘Crush Liberal Dominance’

We Don’t Talk About Leonard: The Man Behind the Right’s Supreme Court Supermajority

Leonard Leo’s Extremely Revealing Letter to a Dark-Money Group

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On Oct 4, Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine, economics, and health research policy at Stanford, held a symposium at his university. Titled “Pandemic Policy: Planning the Future, Assessing the Past,” it was marketed as an open-minded series of panel discussions involving a range of experts to debate and discuss the efficacy of Covid mitigation techniques.

In reality, it was a collection of mostly anti-vax and definitely anti-lockdown contrarians that tried in vain to bait people like Dr Peter Hotez to attend in order to give the event an air of legitimacy. Held on the anniversary of the “Covid is bad for business” doctrine, The Great Barrington Declaration, the day presented an opportunity to air supposed “censorship” grievances and demands that the public should have a say in the science of future pandemics.

The rub: most everyone involved is invested in the economics of public health, not the science, though those lines were freely and falsely blurred throughout the day. Considering Stanford’s new president, economist Jonathan Levin, gave the opening remarks, the Covid contrarians took one more step into the mainstream with their business-first, science-whatever attitudes.

Show Notes

Pro-COVID UK Charity With Anti-Vax Ties Behind Controversial Stanford Health Policy Conference

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick says a failing economy is worse than coronavirus 

Dr. Vinay Prasad: “Public Health’s (Mis)Truth Problem”

Can Stanford Tell Fact from Fiction?

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As the world watches, Israel and Iran are squaring off for a potential war. Meanwhile, a Texas evangelical preacher, who runs the biggest Christian Zionist group in the world, is cheering on the coming apocalypse—as predicted in his 2005 book, Jerusalem Countdown. John Hagee even flew to DC to persuade Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, to jam through another military aid package.

Julian examines the real-world significance of conflicting religious prophecies focused on one particular piece of real estate in East Jerusalem as the “shoreline of eternity”—the portal into God’s Kingdom.

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