Conspirituality

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What happens when psychedelic therapy is introduced into a society in which both the set and setting is capitalism? Derek navigates the hope and hype of psychedelics in a for-profit healthcare system with two leading researchers, Neşe Devenot, PhD and Brian Pace, PhD.

Show Notes

Beyond the psychedelic hype: Exploring the persistence of the neoliberal paradigm

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Close your eyes and imagine exiting your front door. Within moments, everything necessary for your life is a few blocks away, except perhaps your job. Groceries, coffee, toiletries, your bank—if you’re still a physical bank-type person—auto shop, all within walking distance. You never have to commute too far to live your life.

Sounds like quite a dystopian hellscape, doesn’t it? 

Believe it or not, that’s yet another conspiracy theory that emerged earlier this year, because the ability to access things you need is apparently a Deep State plot. Derek is joined by “The War on Cars” co-host, Doug Gordon, to discuss how this conspiracy started and why smart urban planning is a boon for society. First, we discuss Jane Jacobs, the Scranton, Pennsylvania-born journalist and theorist who brought her civic activism to Toronto in 1968, with Matthew coloring in how her legacy has fared during the rise of the Ford family.

Corrections: In his unbridled enthusiasm for the topic and the memories it churned up, Matthew messed up THREE things—the Escalade is a Cadillac, not a Ford, “Downtown” was sung by Petula Clark, not Peggy Lee, and Bill Davis was a Progressive Conservative Premier, not a Liberal! Apologies.

Show Notes

The Woman Who Saved New York City from Superhighway Hell | Vanity Fair 

‘The streets belong to the people’: Why a premier killed the Spadina Expressway | TVO Today 

​Ford family is building a political dynasty 

​​Video shows Councillor Doug Ford handing out $20 bills at TCHC building 

Where the Spadina Expressway Didn't Stop | The Local

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Derek spent nearly a month trying to get a flu shot. During the same period, he has yet to secure an updated Covid booster. There are many problems with anti-vax propaganda. But there are also serious issues with America’s for-profit healthcare system. Derek shares his last few months navigating it, first with his wife’s breast cancer screenings (and the unexpected costs dumped on them) and then with a shot the CDC wants everyone to receive, apparently without understanding just how challenging that can be.

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Julian Brave NoiseCat is a writer and film doc maker, and a member of the Canim Lake Band, Tsq'escen. In May of 2022 he posted this Twitter thread. Matthew wanted to learn more:

I'm struck by the similarity of right-wing conspiracy theories to actual policies towards Indigenous peoples. 

It's all so Freudian. The fear that it will happen to them stems from an implicit admission that they did it to others.

As though the Black, Brown and Indigenous downtrodden are just as hateful as they are and are going to turn around and do to them what they did to us.

Show Notes

Julian’s website

Mary Simon Is Leading Indigenous Peoples to New Heights

Who’s Your People?

The Past and Future of Native California

Place Determines Who We Are

The Census Powwow

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5 am. Day 4 of executive plant medicine retreat. The venture capital tech bro sits on a metaverse mountaintop, immersed in deep meditation. He hears a hum—a vibration from the great beyond. A mantra rises up like kundalini gas bubbles just in front of his spine: techno-capital machine.

Today we dissect Marc Andreessen’s anarcho-capitalist attempt at a Silicon Valley religious doctrine, The Techno-Optimist Manifesto.

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Show Notes

The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

The Ben & Marc Show: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

What the Techno-Billionaire Missed About Techno-Optimism

When was the last time Marc Andreessen talked to a poor person?

The Futurist Manifesto

Marc Andreessen Is the Buyer of Serge Azria’s Malibu Home

The Billionaire’s Dilemma

The Summer of NIMBY in Silicon Valley’s Poshest Town

37.9 million Americans are living in poverty, according to the U.S. Census. But the problem could be far worse.

Why American wages haven’t grown despite increases in productivity

Post-pandemic poverty is rising in America’s suburbs

The Federal Reserve says Taylor Swift's Eras Tour boosted the economy. One market research firm estimates she could add $5 billion

The Surprising Poverty Levels Across the U.S.

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Matthew’s essay about the transient, disorganized, purificatory pleasure of RFK Jr's campaign for his wellness/yoga/biohacker demographic. 

A workshop breakthrough is not a strategy. The pleasure of deconstruction is not a theory of change.

With reference to Vincent Bevins’s brilliant new book: If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution.

If you’ve never donated through GiveWell before, you can have your donation matched up to $100 before the end of the year or as long as matching funds last. To claim, go to GIVEWELL.ORG and pick PODCAST and enter Conspirituality at checkout.

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Bari Weiss recently held a "debate" about the failure of the sexual revolution. Expensive tickets to the Theater at the Ace Hotel in downtown LA allowed you to see Grimes and Sarah Haider talk about motherhood, porn, and woke culture with Anna Khachiyan and Louise Perry. And the results were...rather boring, says journalist Michelle Lhooq.

Derek gets the lowdown from Lhooq, who wonders how the New Right captured the cool factor of the American counterculture—and how the Left gets it back.

Show Notes

The Grimes / Red Scare debate was a right-wing psy-op

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How did Indra Devi turn the sari into a wellness guru lewk? What bold statement were the TV designers making when they dressed Richard Hittleman and his yoga models back in the 1960s? Did Lululemon founder Chip Wilson invent the category of “yoga pants” so that yoga instructors could correctly assess posture, or so that creeps could create NSFW subreddits, or so that the culture war would have yet another reason to police the bodies of girls and women?

Journalist Beau Brink (see ep 143: “Trans Reality, Trans Possibility) is back—this time as our aesthetics correspondent—to school Matthew in yoga, gender, fashion, the historical relationship between the onesie and fatphobia, the price of cotton in China, and what it means to take your clothing, your identity, and your privacy seriously. May the best Yoga Drag Queen win!

(Correction: Beau meant to reference Sam Levinson, not Sam Levine. Apologies.)

Show Notes

Brief: Marianne Williamson’s Spiritual Therapy Schtick — Conspirituality

Google Ngrams: "peperomia"

Google Trends: “peperomia”

Google Trends: “minimalism”

Google Trends: “maximalism”

Google Ngrams: “athleisure”

Kyle Chayka, “The Oppressive Gospel of ‘Minimalism’”

Rosemary Feitelberg, “Politicians and Fashion Designers Increasingly Team Up to Benefit Both Sides”

Louis René Beres, “Aesthetics and politics: Donald Trump’s idea of art and beauty”

Clare Kane, “No, You Don't Need Lululemon — Here's What "Yoga Clothes" Really Look Like”

Michelle Goldberg, The Goddess Pose

Nehmat Kaur, “The Sari Has Never Been About a 'Hindu' Identity”

Adriana Aboy, “Indra Devi’s Legacy”

Hilary McQuilkin and Kimberly Atkins Stohr, “The complicated history of women's fitness”

Caroline Hamilton, “Dancewear Through the Decades: 100 Years of Studio Fashion, From the Chiton to the Leotard”

Maren Hunsberger, “Why Do More People Prefer to Practice Yoga at Home Versus the Studio?”

“Lululemon founder Chip Wilson says pants 'don't work' for some bodies”

“Yoga Clothing Market to reach USD 70,291.0 Million by 2030, emerging at a CAGR of 7.8%”

“List of yoga pants subreddits,” Reddit, 2020

“r/girlsinyogapants stats,” Subreddit Stats

Stephen MacDonald, Fred Gale, and James Hansen, “Cotton Policy in China”

Margaret Talbot, “Abercrombie’s Legal Defeat—and Its Cultural Failure”

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Today’s profile by Julian is of a man who connects the dots between the gun-nut fifth column in American law enforcement, local school board and city council anti-woke mania, and grassroots Christian Nationalist/QAnon crossover.

Like our other swamp creatures, his involvement in the chicanery around the last two elections make him a clear and present danger to democracy. With him, our poker hand improves to three of a kind, because like Roger Stone and Paul Manafort, he was also indicted by the Mueller Probe—and in his case, pled guilty—only to be granted a full presidential pardon by Donald Trump.

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Arizona’s recent increase in “sovereign citizen filings” connects to a New Age spiritual center called the Ultimate Light Mission. Julian talks to investigative reporter Isaac Stone Simonelli.

Show Notes

Sedona's wellness to radicalization pipeline

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