Manifestation workshops. MLM downlines. The supplement grift. Cash is king everywhere in the conspirituality sphere, even—especially—when disguised in the jargon of spiritual-ese. Derek and Julian step back and discuss the cash grab impulse, as well as talk about their own feelings on money and its value.

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In this conversation, Beatrice Adler-Bolton—disability justice advocate and co-host of Death Panel Podcast—says something twice:

"Under capitalism, you’re only entitled to the survival you can buy."

Her forthcoming co-authored book is called, provocatively, Health Communism. Part of its argument is that we have to imagine a society in which everyone is entitled to the survival we can share.

How disquieting it is that the natural instinct we have as individuals to ask:  "What is this going to cost me?" is microcosmic to neoliberal obsessions—austerity, productivity, and dreams of a better future purchased with moral sacrifices in the present. It’s microcosmic to the brutal decisions our societies are now making about who is worthy of protection and who isn't, and which political constituencies we can't afford to piss off by appealing to the small amount of generosity and humility it takes to wear a mask.

We're living in a culture of What is it going to cost me? And that's not really a culture at all.

If we don't do better, then how exactly are the conspiritualists wrong? Not about the details, but about the existential condition. They imagine a Cabal at the top of everything, making nefarious decisions, and this is easy to dismiss. Less easy to dismiss is the feeling they articulate, that many of us share: that unseen and impersonal forces are working against the spirit of human generosity. They know that sometimes we all feel ourselves participating in that process, which means we have to do something—perhaps as radical as waking up. Not to the magic of turmeric, or the realization that we’re starseeds. Something far more radical than that, and much more mundane: that we can organize ourselves in more fair and loving ways.

Beatrice Adler-Bolton is a blind/low vision and chronically ill artist, writer, and disability justice advocate. Beatrice studies radical patient groups and the capitalist political economy of health as an independent researcher and is earning a master's in Disability Studies at CUNY. She is the co-host of the Death Panel podcast with Artie Vierkant and Phil Rocco.

Note from Beatrice:

If you'd like to give your listeners a little more info on Disability Justice (DJ), I would recommend this link from Sins Invalid, which is a short and foundational DJ text and a really quick primer on what it is written by Patty Berne and Sins Invalid: tinyurl.com/DJ10Principles.

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Derek and Julian discuss the literary influences and yogic practices that led them to yoga in the first place, while also discussing what spirituality in a post-pandemic world could look like. 

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In July 2020, just as we were finding our sea legs with this podcast, Imran Ahmed joined to discuss the state of disinformation occurring around the world. As the founder of the UK’s Center for Countering Digital Hate, he had just produced a report that found anti-vax organizations were reaching 58 million people on social media—and this was well before the COVID vaccines were developed. The total amount of money spent by anti-vax groups and advertisers targeting their followers on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube turned out to be roughly $1 billion.

Imran’s group kept reporting and we kept covering them. You probably remember the Center thanks to its Disinformation Dozen report, which profoundly impacted awareness of just how much anti-vax leaders were monetizing their supplements, seminars, and other supposed COVID “interventions.” The report even reached the White House where Joe Biden called out the Disinformation Dozen during a press conference. 

What’s changed in the nearly two years since we had Imran on? Well, a lot—and in some ways, not much at all. Julian interviews Imran this time around after having met up in person at the Defeat the Mandates rally in downtown Los Angeles. Imran discusses what’s changed, what hasn’t, and how the bottom line remains the same: namely, the conspiritualist’s bottom line. They also talk about the nature of free speech in an internet filled with disinformation. 

Before hearing from Imran, Derek and Julian briefly discuss the state of disinformation and free speech online, which Derek frames in terms of urban planning and the concept of legibility. 

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The Sermon of the Sardines is etched into our very souls. Picture the scene, as dreamboat doctor Zach Bush recounts his shimmering story of swimming off the coast of Tulum with thousands of tiny heroic fish, for Rich Roll’s Tuscany retreat participants. In this week’s Bonus episode Matthew and Julian connect the dots between Zach’s quivering amphibious ecstasy, his fascist notions of holy sacrifice in warfare via “non-empathic presence,” how he praises his hospice staff for using reiki as opposed to pain meds, and inspires his listeners to have no fear of death. After all—it’s the ultimate upgrade. From Sardine to Salvation, Bush has it covered.

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Listeners: there’s a revolution going on. Legions of Twitter counselors and Instagram therapists has risen up to offer unsolicited sermons on cults, cult leaders, and cult recovery. With COVID closing down the studios, every third yoga teacher has become an expert in trauma. They’re starting Facebook groups. They’re selling courses. They’re doing their Family Systems work out in the open, displaying heroic levels of vulnerability. We’re just waiting for the first QAnon recovery MLM to launch on Kickstarter.  We know it’s coming. There will be oils, and breathing exercises, and some very long emotional check-ins on Zoom.

Meanwhile, Netflix is distinguishing itself from GaiaTV, the Netflix of cults, with an explosion of cult documentaries. There’s a gold rush on. Scouts for all of the streaming companies are lined up outside of the ashrams, vetting survivors to see who has the chops to carry a series. We seem to love them, but sometimes not as much as the sociopaths themselves. The cult doc is the new true crime chill.

Beneath the feeding frenzy, there’s real work to be done. The QAnon Casualities subreddit has 235K followers as of today. We get dozens of emails and DMs from people who have had their lives upended by conspirituality and cults. We have hints and whispers to offer them, but no answers. Yes, we live in a capitalist hellscape in which emotional turmoil of the people is commodified and sold back to them in the form of workshops and bingeable series. But we are also able to host Rachel Bernstein, cult recovery therapist, to get some clarity on the basic phenomena that dominate our commons today.

Program note: We’re going to try to stretch this out to 90 minutes so that we can each say we got a 45-minute free consult on why TF we’re doing this job.

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Since early on in this conspirituality experiment, Derek has been using the catchphrase that is the title of this week's bonus episode. Julian joins in to discuss exactly what the phrase means in the landscape of conspiritualists, who the most egregious offenders are, and the origin story of the term. If you think your coffee is moldy or those glasses are really blocking blue light, think again.

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If you get treated by someone who says they’re a doctor, but they’re not, can they still have a placebo effect? That’s the question we’d like to ask Dr. Joe Dispenza, who’s not a doctor, but who plays one on the internet, treating one and all with the placebo of his bafflegab about Quantum healing and TimeSpace.

Placebo Joe. Who is he? How do you take the measure of a Quantum Man? We’ll shine our browsers into the slit experiment and observe a particle here, a wave there. The particles of video clips, the waves of affiliate links. We’ll run our signature experiment: Schrodinger’s Influencer, to find out just how many parallel Joe Dispenzas are populating the multiple universes he is trying to crack back to alignment with his chiropractic panache. There’s the Joe of the Ramtha School of Enlightenment, Joe who starred in “What The Bleep Do We Know?” There’s faith healer Joe, and Joe who now headlines, alongside David Icke, for the Netflix of conspirituality, Gaia TV.

Joking aside: in episode 89, we heard from Mary, whose husband almost gave up on chemotherapy for aggressive pancreatic cancer under the influence of Placebo Joe. And today we’ll watch him pretend to be able to cure infertility, and romance Aubrey Marcus. We’ll also puzzle over his strangely undramatic origin story. We’ll suss out the normalizing impact Joe has on a whole raft of bullshit. We’ll wonder why this boy from a nice working class famiglia in Jersey wanted to be a doctor so badly, he was willing to talk himself into it.

Show Notes

Gaia Acquires Yoga International, a Leading Digital Yoga Service

You Are The Placebo

Why Some People Are More Susceptible to Placebos

$2.5B Spent by the NCCIH

Placebo Myths Debunked

Feedback Monday Bonus: Responding to Lissa Rankin

Merv Griffin Show JZ Knight As Ramtha - 1985 - 14 minutes

RSE: 4 axioms

Life University loses accreditation

Dispenza Quantum University bio

Joe Dispenza "I am the Placebo"

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Matthew and Julian draw back the curtain to take you behind the scenes of the book-writing process. They step back to consider the pantheon of conspiritualists we’ve covered over the last two years; the kaleidoscope of themes they represent, and the key moments they’ve had on the big cultural stage as the pandemic has unfolded. Who among them is worthy of being cast in the rogue’s gallery we will include in the book that will officially document all of our work over almost 100 episodes now?

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This week we’re “just asking questions.” You probably recognize that quip from Joe Rogan, of course, but today’s focus is another actor and comedian turned popular podcaster, Russell Brand. As with Rogan, who he recently said he loved being compared to, Brand is amassing an increasingly large following—trust us, he’ll remind you of that number at the top of every episode—thanks to his high-energy solo rants about the conspiracy of, well, seemingly everything.

But what’s Russell really saying? We’ve listened to hours of his podcasts and watched further hours of videos and, to be honest, we can’t really tell. Pseudo-spiritual musings mesh with benign revolutionary politicizing with a healthy dose of his live performance schedule and reminders to smash the subscribe button thrown in. Russell is exceptionally good at evoking emotions and firing listeners up with his high-energy, seemingly stream-of-consciousness diatribes, yet when you break down the sentences, you find that he’s pretty content-free. Well, except when he’s marketing himself, which, at the end of the day, seems to be the only thing Russell is truly interested in.

Show Notes

Hybrid immunity offers increased protection that is longer-lasting against Covid-19 reinfection, studies show

Russell Brand: My Response

Russell Brand: How Did We Miss This?

Russell Brand & Nigel Farage clash over immigration on Question Time

Russell Brand: 'I've never voted, never will'

Johnson & Johnson Announces Real-World Evidence and Phase 3 Data Confirming Strong and Long-Lasting Protection of Single-Shot COVID-19 Vaccine in the U.S.

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Vaccine Boosting in Persons Already Protected by Natural or Vaccine-Induced Immunity

Effectiveness of the BNT162b2 Vaccine after Recovery from Covid-19

Protection against SARS-CoV-2 after Covid-19 Vaccination and Previous Infection

World Economic Forum: Digital Identity

Watch Russell Brand Read From A Couple Of My Articles

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