Derek investigates the origins of language through thinkers like David Crystal, Michael Corballis, and others, to investigate how two popular figures—Deepak Chopra and Rick Warren—sell their spiritual wares. Their patterns reveal the model many conspiritualist influencers use today.

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The global pandemic response is a microcosm of the global climate collapse response. In both  we get to see what’s really under the hood when the pressure is on. In the face of endless and relentless odds and near-constant demoralization, what stories do we turn to, what bonds do we form, and who do they help?

Climate journalist emeritus George Monbiot joins Matthew to discuss the never-ending road of empathy and activism, and what happens on that road when otherwise brilliant and sensitive people “lose their mirror,” or sense of responsibility to the commons. What happens when they aestheticize grief. What happens when they have enough privilege to fetishize renunciation.

Their discussion orbits around the recent conspirituality spiral of a writer who has been  a hero to many in the realm of climate literature and consideration. Paul Kingsnorth has recently converted to Romanian Orthodox Christianity... and vaccine skepticism. He's also wondered aloud whether the virus is not "a delicious little sign from God" that humanity deserves punishment.

Show Notes

The Dark Mountain Manifesto

Earth Talk: Five years on a mountain - Paul Kingsnorth and Dougald Hine

Is there any point in fighting to stave off industrial apocalypse? | Paul Kingsnorth and George Monbiot | The Guardian

After the failure of Cop26, there is only one last hope for our survival | George Monbiot 

The Vaccine Moment, part one - by Paul Kingsnorth

The Vaccine Moment, part two - by Paul Kingsnorth 

The Vaccine Moment, part three - by Paul Kingsnorth

George Monbiot on Twitter: "I've read Paul Kingsnorth's anti-vaccine essay on Substack, and I suspect it might contribute to quite a few deaths. Why? Because his writing is elegant and powerful, but some of his facts are simply wrong. Here's a very small sample: Thread/" 

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In the 1990s, Westerners searching for enlightenment flocked to India. The pilgrimage represented an affirmation of status and authority in the burgeoning yoga economy. Julian reflects on his three months in the “middle circle” of the Osho Ashram in Pune, where he chased a destiny seeded years before in a South African basement. As an earnest yet skeptical seeker passing though cultic territory, he points out the overlaps between meaningful experience and group indoctrination.

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While Americans were transforming esoteric strains of yoga into a commodifiable industry in 1980, a young naval officer named Steve Bannon was picking up theosophical texts in metaphysical bookstores and practicing Zen meditation in secret while stationed in Hong Kong. He was wary of his countrymates liberal explorations of Eastern philosophies, aware of the nationalistic roots upon which these “mystical” systems were founded. Then he stumbled into Traditionalism, a perennial philosophy that consumed all world religions, as popularized by the likes of French metaphysicist René Guénon and Italian antisemitic conspiracy theorist Julius Evola.

This week we welcome Benjamin Teitelbaum, an Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology and International Affairs at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and author of the book, War for Eternity: The Return of Traditionalism and the Rise of the Populist Right. Teitelbaum gained access to leading right-wing figures around the world, including Steve Bannon. He’s got their number and brings receipts. Get ready for a long, strange trip.

Show Notes

The rise of the traditionalists: how a mystical doctrine is reshaping the right

Covid-19 Is the Crisis Radical ‘Traditionalists’ Have Been Waiting For

The People Who Pray for the Apocalypse | Benjamin Teitelbaum | The Glenn Beck Podcast

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Matthew responds to the robust feedback on the Sam-Harris-is-a-highbrow-conspiritualist bonus, and then stretches the terms around harm in the conspirituality sphere in another way, by looking at the spectrum of agency offered by different wellness/spirituality products. He interrogates the premise implicit in some of our reporting that the cognitive errors and magical thinking of alt-health and New Age paradigms are all on a slippery slope to ruin. TLDR: isn’t it always more about sociology than ideology?

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When Mike Flynn posted a video on July 4, 2020 in which his family recited QAnon slogans, it cemented the disgraced former National Security Advisor and U.S. Army lieutenant general as a MAGA patriot super-hero. On September 17, just 14 short months later, Flynn took the stage, bathed in light at the Lord of Hosts Church in Omaha, Nebraska to lead a political prayer that was a fiery angelic call-to-arms. But, oops! It turns out that this prayer traces back to New Age doomsday cult leader, Elizabeth Clare Prophet. Now the Q-faithful have turned on their hero, accusing him of being in league with the Satanic cabal. We’ll ask today’s guest host, Sean Prophet—who happens to be the eldest son of that cult leader—how he got out, and how we got here.

Show Notes

The Radical Secular podcast with Sean Prophet

Relevant episodes:

9: QAnon and Conspirituality: with Matthew Remski - 08.24.20

16: Before Q, There Was CUT: with Joe Szimhart - 10.19.20

22: Getting out of Cults and Harmful Religions - Bonus Episode

54: Blavatsky, the I Am, and The Summit Lighthouse - 07.19.21

Black Sun Journal » Happy Birthday, Mom!: 2006 Article by Sean Prophet on final interaction with Elizabeth Clare Prophet

Church Universal and Triumphant - Nightline - May 17th 1990

CUT/Summit Lighthouse on Oprah 5 with Streiker and Hassan

QAnon Fall Out from Mike Flynn using I Am Prayer

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Derek shares a story from his time as a Lululemon brand ambassador to highlight the toxic merging of spiritual practices and consumerism. Not only does he detail Lulu's post-Chip Wilson pivot in an attempt to "own yoga," he also explores the histories of branding, money, and markets in an attempt to understand how we arrived at the influencer culture that dominates social media today. 

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We've talked a lot on this podcast about the selfie sermon: the kind of iPhone video native to Instagram influencers. Easily weaponized by conspiritualists, this sermon is equal parts intimate confessional, prophecy download, and motivational coaching, directly transmitted from your favorite self-anointed maverick expert. Social media seems perfectly designed for such hypnotic performances and spiritual darshans. But in the brick-and-mortar world, yoga teachers have long blurred the line between acting and teaching, space holding and theater, and ritual ceremony and fitness. If all the world's a stage, as Shakespeare had it, the wooden planks of the yoga studio—and the digital platforms built in ether—demand that teachers embrace a role, adopt a script, and sell a story to their audience. What we want to know is: where does the performance end and yoga begin, or perhaps more to the point, is there even a difference?

Our guest host today is Jill Miller, who many listeners will know from her hugely influential body of work in yoga and movement as founder of Tune-Up Fitness. She's also a former actor, which played an important role in her transition to full-time yoga instructor. We're going to start today with an excerpt from her 2017 TED-style talk that she gave in Toronto titled, “Lights, Camera, Yoga."

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Kyle Rittenhouse walks away from the courthouse while Ahmaud Arbery's killers were found guilty and "QAnon Shaman," Jacob Chansley, was received significant jail time. Our opinions on each of these cases are likely determined by our political affiliations, which in turn are a reflection of how we think about morality, crime, and punishment.

Julian draws on scientific research into how genetics and the brain shape our politics, thought experiments in moral philosophy, and the work of moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt.

As he questions whether or not any of us have freely chosen to be the good ones, he wonders if a way out of our toxic polarization might be found through understanding the underlying  moral values and emotional reactions that drive one another's political beliefs.

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COVID has been a recruiting windfall for hate groups in Canada, with new alliances and networks forged between white supremacists, xenophobes, and ethnonationalists in the fire of accelerated conspiracism. Joining Matthew to map out this landscape are street-level anti-hate activists Elizabeth Simons, the deputy director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, Dan Collen, a researcher with the Neuberger Holocaust Education Center's Online Hate Education and Research Project, and Morgan Yew, a video journalist and DJ from Kamloops, whose coverage of Toronto's anti-lockdown protests has been rich and revealing.

We cover a lot in this one: the “irony poisoning” white nationalist recruiting tactics that target 14 year-old boys, the rogue’s gallery of extremists wreaking havoc at anti-lockdown rallies, racists trying on “sovereign citizen” pseudolaw in the courts, and their craven appropriation of Indigenous rights discourse when they lurch into “Pretendian” territory. We’ll also look at the People’s Party of Canada, and discuss why it is not very smart to write it off as QAnon foolishness.

Content Warning: analysis of hateful views, including notes from a white supremacist recruiting manual that is instructing followers on how to indoctrinate children.

Show Notes

Canadian Anti-Hate Network

Dan Collen’s fantastic articles on Medium: dancollen.medium.com

Morgan Yew’s awesome Twitter feed

Canadian Anti-Semites and Far-Right Conspiracy Theorists Try New Tactic: Aligning with Indigenous Communities

Mediasmarts

Learning for Justice | Education Resources

Wisdom2Action – Facilitate Change. Strengthen Communities.

The 519- nonprofit promoting 2SLGBTQ+ inclusion serving Toronto - The 519 - Space For Change - The519

Egale Canada - nonprofit promoting 2SLGBTQ+ inclusion serving Canada Home - Egale

CASSA - Council of Agencies Serving South Asians - http://cassa.on.ca/

The Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre - https://www.holocaustcentre.com/

Chinese Canadian National Council for Social Justice - https://ccncsj.ca/

Timeline cleanse. Some of Morgan’s video nurturance journalism.

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