Conspirituality

In response to Kerry Howley’s meticulous reporting on the deceptions of Andrew Huberman in New York Magazine, Huberstans around the world are braying that the man’s private life has nothing to do with his virtue as a science communicator.

Not so, we argue in this brief. Deception in one mirrors deception in the other, and there is no private life for the influencer who wants to influence your private life.

Beyond shilling for Athletic Greens and saying that sunscreen winds up in your brain, Huberman opines on relationships, sex, and addiction issues as if he is an expert—instead of (an alleged) hot mess.

Pseudoscience and pseudotherapy are parallel harms—both using manipulative jargon to convince consumers or women respectively that the influencer is well-researched and using best practices to be of service.

So we advise all Huberstans to view their hero… holistically.

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Reverend Rob Schenck spent 30 years on the front lines of the Evangelical war against Roe V. Wade. He blockaded abortion clinics, screamed at women in crisis, used fetal remains as political props, and helped wage a covert war of moneyed influence over federal officials to end abortion access.

Now, in a return to his deeper religious commitments, he is repenting his past. In an interview with Matthew, he discusses his blissful conversion experience as a teenager rooted in what he believed was a radical social justice movement. And he describes what he now sees: an anti-abortion movement helping to galvanize the Christian Nationalism poised to wreak havoc on American politics, and what we can do to push back against its aggression.

Fresh Air for July 11, 2018: An Evangelical Minister's Change Of Heart On Abortion

Former Anti-Abortion Leader Alleges Another Supreme Court Breach

Former Anti-Abortion Lobbyist Rev Robert Schenck Statement on "Operation Higher Court"

Robert "Rob" L. Schenck

About - Truth Revealed — Rob Schenck’s blog

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In this series of audio essays, Matthew will examine how children as symbols—but not persons with their own internal lives—are at the center of conspirituality anxiety and discourse. 

There are two types of imaginary child in conspirituality. One is an object of dread. The other is an idol of aspiration.

In the realm of dread we have fetuses murdered by late term abortion, children who are trafficked, made autistic by vaccines, sexualized by pornography in elementary school, or mutilated by trans activist doctors. 

In the realm of idols we have newborn babies sliding like dolphins into warm birthing tubs after a mere hour of ecstatic, medically-unassisted home births. We have little girls in prairie dresses or first communion veils who must be protected from library drag queens or woke grade school teachers. We have starseeds and indigo children who carry prophecies from the great beyond. 

We often reflect on the problem of authority on this podcast. Who are our leaders, and what gives them power? Why do conspiracists default to God to corroborate fantasies? What gap in cultural fatherhood is Jordan Peterson trying to fill? 

With this series, Matthew looks in the other direction: what does the conspirituality crowd do with its own authority? How do misgivings, regrets and shame in relation to children get inflated and projected into moral panics?

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Former monk turned spiritual influencer to the stars, Jay Shetty, has amassed 15 million followers on Instagram. He’s interviewed Michelle Obama, Kim Kardashian, and Kobe Bryant on his popular podcast. Shetty has received accolades from Gwenyth Paltrow and Ellen Degeneres. He even officiated J Lo and Ben Affleck’s wedding.

Yet when LA-based writer John McDermott was assigned to cover Shetty for Esquire, something seemed…off. When he started pulling at some threads, Esquire pulled out of the feature. Fortunately, The Guardian agreed to publish McDermott’s investigative reporting, in which he found little of Shetty’s origin story holds up to scrutiny. 

John joins Derek and Matthew to discuss.

Show Notes

Uncovering the higher truth of Jay Shetty

‘Very few have balls’: How American news lost its nerve

Jay Shetty Is Full Of SH*T!

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Does God have a recipe? That’s the first line of the blurb of Holy Food: How Cults, Communes, and Religious Movements Influenced What We Eat: An American History by independent food historian, Christina Ward. Ward’s survey of American religious groups and cults through the foods they grow, source, and prepare leads into an in-depth discussion about cults and high-demand groups that use food, and food restrictions, as a method for control. 

That’s not all she tells Derek—they also discuss the ritual of sharing a meal. Matthew and Julian offer their own reflections on food in high-demand settings before Christina joins to discuss her excellent book.

Holy Food

Christina Ward

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Dolphins, drugs, new age music. Isolation tanks as a portal into other dimensions. True love and fake aliens. Julian shares a personal love story from the nineties that intersects with the work of prolific scientist, inventor, and psychonaut, John C. Lilly. 

The belief that we can contact extraterrestrial civilizations, which are waiting to usher humanity into a golden age of light and love, is now a hugely profitable and popular commodity. Apparently these extraterrestrials also want to help us vanquish the forces of Deep State darkness. This is evidenced by the QAnon-and-alien-disclosure-style of programming on Gaia’s spiritual subscription platform (which brings in roughly $80 million annually).

Yet: Gaia is currently embroiled in a legal battle with a former host who claims that his stories about secret space programs and eight-foot tall “blue avian” aliens are actually part of his trademarked creative IP. When it comes down to dollars, he admits it’s all make-believe. Has he really ever dropped acid in a flotation tank though?!

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Masculinity, in all its wounded and preening anxiety, is the perennial currency of American populism.

America’s foremost public historian on fitness and education, Natalia Petrzela, returns to the pod to discuss her recent study, with Ilyse Hogue, of the appeal RFK Jr. has with young men, and what progressives can learn from it. 

Show Notes

Bio – Natalia Petrzela 

RFK Jr. has a distinct appeal when it comes to young male voters — Petrzela and Hogue

Robert F. Kennedy Jr | "My Plan To Heal Addiction" | News Nation 

Prior coverage of RFK Jr.

Brief: RFK Jr Flirts with Body Fascism (w/Natalia Petrzela) — Conspirituality

164: The Two Faces of Robert Francis Kennedy Jr. — Conspirituality

Brief: The New Age Origin Story of RFK Jr’s Campaign — Conspirituality

Brief: RFK Jr’s New Director of Propaganda — Conspirituality

Special Report: RFK Jr.’s Independence Day — Conspirituality

Brief: RFK's Health Propaganda Roundtable — Conspirituality

Brief: RFK Jr., The Anti-Vax Candidate — Conspirituality     

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The “healer” mutters prayers, flutters his hands over the patient’s belly, then rubs his fingers close to her navel. A stream of what looks like blood shoots out from between his fingers. After a few more finger wiggles, he appears to pull several bloody cocktail shrimp out of an invisible incision. The patient is healed. Of something.

Welcome to “psychic surgery.”

Documentarian of the uncanny, Brad Abrahams, takes our correspondent seat this week to explain how Shirley MacLaine, Burt Lancaster, Andy Kaufman, Charlie Mingus, and tens of thousands of Americans got drawn into the morbid healing craze that kicked off in the 1970s, and which may have seen its last hurrah with the imprisonment of Brazil’s John of God.

Centuries of colonization in Brazil and the Philippines, Brad explains, made conventional medical care basically unavailable for anyone poor or outside of major cities. This left a void for traditional and alternative healing to fill as the only real options, as well as provide a connection to a cultural identity that had been systematically repressed. And of course, charlatans rode the wave.

Brad brings his characteristic curiosity, empathy, and cultural competence, holding the door open for us to imagine why this abject form of medical and spiritual fraud speaks so deeply to so many.

Show Notes

Brad Abrahams

Love And Saucers — Brad Abrahams  

Do you see what I see? | Short Doc about Controversial Conspiracy Theorist Artist David Dees — Brad Abrahams 

72: John of Fraud (w/Lisa Braun Dubbels & Mirna Wabi-Sabi) — Conspirituality

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At what point do you tune someone out and no longer consider them worth considering? Is their entire catalog of thought defined by one encounter you don’t like? Multiple encounters? If you disagree with someone on one point, do you write them off entirely, or can you consider other points of agreement? What if your initial encounter with a thinker is disagreeable? What if you really like someone and then find them increasingly disagreeable over time? Have they really changed that much? Or have you? And would you know it if you did?

Derek meditates on these questions while working through his own process of consideration. Most importantly, he lands on one certainty: racists, bigots, transphobes, and misogynists need to be stamped out.

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Being a chaos agent is exhausting. The internet never ends. It’s so abstract, groundless. At some point, all of your content seems stale and redundant. All the conspiracy theories, outrage farming, and dietary supplements seem boring; your manic salesmanship starts to feel hollow. Maybe you’re also wondering about whether you’ve sold your soul, or who you may have hurt along the way.

What will you turn to? Who will help you? What will your ultimate piece of content be? From time out of mind, there’s only ever been one answer: GOD. Russell Brand, Joe Rogan, and Andrew Huberman have all recently made such confessions of faith. Derek and Matthew discuss.

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