Conspirituality

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:

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

“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

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

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. 

Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right, Young

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

When Moms For Liberty attacks libraries with demands to ban books about MLK Jr and age-appropriate sex education, and claims that librarians are grooming their children into the trans agenda, they’re enacting the worst forms of neo-fascist bullying. But they’re also paradoxically defending a troubled American legacy against a librarian culture attempting to course-correct towards greater inclusion.

To discuss this problem, Matthew talks to Heath Umbreit, a reference librarian who works at a public library in the northeastern U.S. Mis- and disinformation has been a professional and personal interest of theirs for several years; Heath's study of the phenomenon focuses on a critical examination of popular narratives about disinformation, the concept of epistemic supremacy, and the ways in which information and disinformation intersect with systemic power differentials in American society.

Derek gives the Keynote Address at the 2023 Oregon Library Association's Annual Conference

Library Bill of Rights | Advocacy, Legislation & Issues 

Students, authors fight censorship in PA schools 

Kuo & Marwick, "Critical Disinformation Studies"

Morales & Williams, "Moving Toward Transformative Librarianship: Naming and Identifying Epistemic Supremacy"

danah boyd, "You Think You Want Media Literacy... Do You?"

PEN America, 2023 Banned Books Update: Banned in the USA

Kelly Jensen, Trauma, Book Bans, and Libraries: A Resource Guide for Library Workers, Library Supporters, and Beyond

Kristen Browde, Who's Making News for Sex Crimes Involving Children?

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

Project 2025 is the libertarian conservative Heritage Foundation’s systematic governance plan for the next Republican president. The 920-page plan aims to implement the "unitary executive theory," which would give all of the power of the US government to the executive branch—Donald Trump, if he wins in November. 

Derek and Julian read the chapter on the Department of Education, which focuses on unlocking public funds for Christian schools while banning any discussion on DEI, CRT, or gender theory.

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

A common sentiment in wellness spaces is that people turn to alt-med practices due to the exorbitant costs of American healthcare. While the latter is certainly true, Derek and Julian discuss why a lot of products and services in wellness land is really just another form of extractive capitalism.

Head to factormeals.com/conspirituality50 and use code conspirituality50 to get 50% off your first month plus 20% off your next month!

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

This week we take stock of the full entrenchment of the Mirror World, where conspirituality influencers bask in the rays of confident delusion. After a little stage-setting on the heterodox mediasphere, we open with a snapshot of conspirituality Valhalla as we listen in on Joe Rogan and Chris Rufo talking about unhoused people as though they are children who haven’t been given good boundaries. 

Then we’ll look at four instances in which the spectacle brokers meet reality. What happens when Chaya Raichik gets bodied by Taylor Lorenz? What happens when the Moms for Liberty have to explain themselves on 60 minutes? What happens when Destiny rejects Jordan Peterson’s bullshit? And what happens when the mack daddy of it all, Alex Jones, gets confronted by Sandy Hook parents, face to face? Does reality break through?

Head to factormeals.com/conspirituality50 and use code conspirituality50 to get 50% off your first month plus 20% off your next month!

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

Project 2025 is the libertarian conservative Heritage Foundation’s systematic governance plan for the next Republican president. The 920-page plan aims to implement the "unitary executive theory," which would give all of the power of the US government to the executive branch—Donald Trump, if he wins in November.

This week, Derek and Julian investigate the chapter on the Department of Agriculture, which aims to strip funding for food stamps and welfare programs and further deregulate Big Ag. And if you think the author is part of a climate change denial think tank, you'd be correct.

Head to factormeals.com/conspirituality50 and use code conspirituality50 to get 50% off your first month plus 20% off your next month!

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

The death of Mahsa Jina Amini at the hands of the Islamic Republic’s “morality police” in September 2022 lit a fuse on a fervent global protest movement. Jina’s crime was wearing an “improper” headscarf in public. The slogan, “Woman, Life, Freedom,” which first emerged in the fight for Kurdish equality, was used by thousands of brave, defiant women in Iran (along with male supporters), who called for an end to oppression, discrimination, tyranny, and dictatorship.

Eighteen months later, the Iranian government has increased video surveillance and morality police patrols, imposed even harsher penalties for female disobedience, and leaned even further into brutal torture methods and daily executions. Meanwhile, Ali Khamenei’s administration floods the population with propaganda and conspiracy theories.

Julian talks to Iranian human rights activist and former BBC World Service reporter, Negin Shiraghaei, about the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, which she says remains active and unstoppable.

Show Notes

Iran one year after Woman, Life, Freedom

Iran: Alarming Surge in Executions

Khamenei Refuses US Help, Citing COVID Conspiracy Theory

Iran’s Supreme Leader Calls Gender Equality a Zionist Plot

Iranian Singer Sentenced to 3 years in Jail  for Mahsa Amini Protest Anthem

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