Conspirituality

We’ve spent the last three-and-a-half years criticizing a range of wellness ideas, charismatic charlatans, abusive self-styled gurus, and conspiracy theories. We’ve also discussed our own beliefs and highlighted many people and ideas that we believe are getting it right.

Derek has never really explored what motivates him on a physical and mental level despite having spent many years doing so inside of gyms and studios. This is no motivational speech, but rather an exploration of a motivational mindset, weighed against how some popular influencers position the concept. Derek uses his recent experience summiting Mt St Helens to frame the conversation.

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In light of the recent allegations, Matthew offers a backgrounder on what we’ve learned about Brand through conspirituality and cultic studies and from his opportunistic relationships to wellness, self-help, and Kundalini Yoga. Ending with a focus on how his yoga world LARPing became a launch pad for his success as a spirituality-coded conspiracy theorist in the age of COVID.

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Show Notes

Conspirituality 97: Brand Awareness 

Russell Brand accused of rape, sexual assaults and abuse

Russell Brand - In Plain Sight (Dispatches) [couchtripper] - video Dailymotion 

BBC and police begin inquiries as Russell Brand faces more claims

Russell Brand: BBC resists calls to release complaints filed against presenter

Russell Brand's Charismatic Bullshit - by Derek Beres 

Russell Brand helps the homeless with his yoga teacher... and his new tantric tattoos | Daily Mail Online 

Yogi Bhajan Turned an L.A. Yoga Studio into a Juggernaut, and Left Two Generations of Followers Reeling from Alleged Abuse 

Conspirituality 36: Guru Jagat's Pandemic Brandwash

Conspirituality 37: Guru Jagat Cultjacks Kundalini Yoga 

Conspirituality 64: Remembering Guru Jagat

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Who could be a better guide through the fever dream of modern anti-semitism—the socialism of fools—than a scrappy young scion of the House of Rothschild? How has Mike, this mysterious insider—visible on CNN but a seeming ghost in real life—used his inheritance and connections to score book deals with the Fake News Media? Will he redeem his family name?

Just joking! Author and friend of the pod Mike Rothschild is no relation to the banking family that has lived rent-free in the minds of antisemites and conspiracy theorists for over two centuries now. He is the author of 2021’s The Storm Is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything. His new book out less that two years later, is ​​Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories. Mike joins us now from his summer palace in the South of France, um, actually his home office in Los Angeles to discuss the very stupid but dangerous groundswell of Jew hatred now filling our feeds.

Go to HelloFresh.com/50conspirituality and use code 50conspirituality for 50% off plus 15% off the next 2 months!

Get 50% off up to $20 and zero delivery fees on your first order when you download the DoorDash app and enter code CONSPIRITUALITY

Show Notes

Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories

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When we deconstruct harmful ideas and beliefs—from antivax positions to reactionary social views—we will inevitably be seen or felt as attacking the relationships that people form through those views. That’s a big problem in a lonely world, and there will be blowback. What to do?

Matthew steps off the debunkery hamster wheel, and remembers an old piece of yoga advice. 

Show Notes

The Religious Case Against Belief by James P. Carse

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Burning Man 2023 will forever be burned in memory with two images: a group of climate activists blocking the single road into Black Rock City and the sea of mud that a climate change-induced hurricane turned the playa into. The jigsaw puzzle is pretty complete. Will Burners see it?

Tommy Diacono is a five-time Burner. He also helped organize the protest. He joins two-time Burner Derek for a discussion about why his crew blocked the roads, the importance of rituals, and the importance of knowing when rituals need to end.

Show Notes

FULL VIDEO: Climate Protesters Shut Down BURNING MAN, Rangers Ram Through Blockade

Tommy Diacono on Instagram

Burn it all down — Derek Beres

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Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World is a polymathic work that serves up new political heuristics with the firepower we’ve come to expect from the coiner of “disaster capitalism.” A Dante-spiral through our circles of cultural hell, it’s also a memoir of demoralization, self-evaluation, and persistent hope.

If this sounds overly ambitious or grandiose—that’s a fair suspicion in this age of galaxy-brained pundits who want to write *that book about everything.* In less humble, less feminist hands, a project like this could feel like a vanity vehicle for an author’s unbearably brilliant mind.

But that doesn’t happen here, because Klein’s intersectional discipline—which despite many flights of fancy, she never abandons—serves the values of economic, racial, and climate justice, and she does it by always citing her sources and elevating the voices of the marginalized.

Derek, Julian, and Matthew discuss briefly before Klein joins Matthew to discuss her way into and out of this bizarre and demoralizing land.

Show Notes

Doppelganger — Naomi Klein

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The Forrest Gump dandy of right-wing dirty tricks is in the news again. Strategizing from the Willard Hotel as January 6 unfolded; protected by a coterie of now convicted Oathkeepers; captured on video dictating Trump’s fake electors scheme for an email. These are just a few of the things Roger Stone has done. 

Stone may be the swampiest of Deep State operatives our politics has seen. Julian gives a colorful breakdown of this longtime Trump ally who's been involved in every anti-democratic scheme, from Watergate to Bush’s 2000 steal to 2016’s Russian interference—raking in millions from the “torturer’s lobby” along the way. Stone has always slithered away from accountability, but maybe this time he’ll pay the price.

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Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World is an exuberant, polymathic effort, in which Klein develops several new political heuristics that pack the punch we’ve come to expect from the originator of “disaster capitalism.” Reading it is like getting walloped by a novel political theory virus— or a potent vaccine for the times. It’s also a Dante-esque spiral down through our endless circles of historical and cultural hell.

Klein’s core subject is the “Mirror World” we now battle in: a place where our digital avatars occlude our bodies, where morbid fantasies blot out fact-checked histories, where the fool’s gold of influencers outshines the daily work of researchers. It’s a place where antimaskers steal the “I can’t breathe” cry of George Floyd, and antivax influencers pretend they are being led to the gas chambers. It’s a place where selfish demagogues appropriate and mimic the poetry of social justice, but only for a select few. It’s where MAGA movement architect Steve Bannon LARPs as a therapist for the common man.

Doppelganger has landed like a Rosetta Stone for divining the incoherent politics of the figures we’ve covered all these years—and the cultural and moral vacuums they fill. But most surprisingly—and we think our listenership will be grateful for this—this rich memoir of demoralization and self-evaluation also offers a deep undercurrent of persistent hope. 

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Show Notes

Doppelganger

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Do you ever feel like American society is caught in limbo? The bardo-realm between two election cycles. The dial-up static between invasive social media and quarantine isolation. Stacking sandbags against the deluge of conspiracies and disinformation as we await the slow-motion countermeasures of science and the justice system.

The disruptions of Trump, COVID, QAnon, conspirituality, and January 6 all still frame our everyday lives, even as we attempt a return to a normalcy that was always tenuous at best. Whatever happens over the next few months, the oven of 2024 looks preheated for chaos—yet, one by one, the treasonous conspiracy-mongering liars who peaked in 2020 are being forced to deal with cold legal consequences.

Our guest today is award-winning journalist and author David Neiwert, whose book The Age of Insurrection explains how we got here—and points a way forward.

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Claiming your First Amendment rights are being violated is a sure way to have the spotlight shone on you. It's also an effective way to shut down criticism of whatever you're selling. From the 1940s-60s, supplements manufacturers used the free speech gambit to keep regulators away from their products, resulting in a 1969 Supreme Court case. Derek looks at the 20th century evolution of medical regulations, and how companies are still using a similar argument to dissuade consumers from looking too deeply into what's inside the bottle.

Sign up today at butcherbox.com/CONSPIRITUALITY and use code CONSPIRITUALITY to get two 100% grass-fed filet mignons and two wild-caught lobster tails for FREE in your first box plus $20 off your first order.

Show Notes

Dietary Supplements: A Framework for Evaluating Safety

United States v Kordel

Some Implications of the Kordel Decision

163: The Huberman Paradox

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