Conspirituality

In the early 20th century, some retailers would advertise a product at an attractively low price to lure customers into the store, claim the item was out of stock or of poor quality then pressure customers to buy a more expensive alternative. The practice became known in the public vernacular as "bait and switch" in the 1920s.

This week, we look at three modern bait and switches pertinent to our beat. First, Julian looks at “free speech patriot” Chud the Builder’s slimy social media tactics. Then Derek investigates RFK Jr’s SNAP benefits now you see them, now you don’t. Finally, Matthew looks at how Mark Carney is bait and switching the Canadian political body.

Show Notes

SNAP Restrictions Raise Prices for U.S. Retailers and Consumers, Rather Than Improving Diets

State-Level SNAP Food Restrictions: Assessing Long-Term Profitability and Policy Risks for Grocery Retailers

SNAP Enforcement Changes Risk Limiting Food Access for Vulnerable Communities

USDA outlines retailer compliance for state SNAP waivers

EBT, SNAP, and Food Retail Compliance: A Complete Explainer for Small Grocery and Convenience Store Owners

FRAC Urges USDA to End Harmful SNAP Food Restriction Waivers

Bank of England — Mark Carney biography

UN — Carney Special Envoy appointment

Council for Inclusive Capitalism — Carney

Amnesty International Canada — Bill C-12

CBC News — Bill C-233 defeated

Government of Canada — CERB eligibility

CBC News — CRA COVID benefit clawbacks

Parliamentary Budget Officer — federal housing spending

CBC News — oil and gas emissions cap scrapped

CBC News — F-35 contract review

CBC News — Defence Security and Resilience Bank confirmed

CBC News — Indigenous Services Canada budget cuts

CCPA — Bill C-15 corporate exemption

CBC News — Grassy Narrows, "I can outlast her"

Guardian — Carney climate record

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Across continents and centuries outsider poets have made a bold stand for the life of the body, contemplative ecstasy, sexual liberation, and the sacredness of nature, often in the face of religious and political repression. 

From Rajasthan to New York, Ancient Persia to London, and Swansea in Wales to Balkh in Afghanistan, ecstatic poets have broken taboos around sex, death, gender, social caste, and religious dogma.

In a follow-up to last week’s interview with Britt Hartley of No-Nonsense Spirituality, Julian reflects on how poetry has always lit up his inner world as a form of embodied spirituality that transcends religious frameworks or supernatural metaphysics.

He shares favorite pieces that span 800 years and three continents from Mirabai, Walt Whitman, Mary Oliver, Kabir, David Whyte, Dylan Thomas, and Rumi, along with stories from their lives, and his own.

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In February, Derek and his wife, Callan, were surprised to discover she was diagnosed with prediabetes. They didn't know that Asian American adults are at a higher risk of Type 2 diabetes than others without the traditional risk factors. Callan joins to discuss how the diagnosis changed her life, her frustrations with the healthcare system, and how she's navigating her new reality.

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The Trump DOJ's 565-page report from the Task Force for Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias is one of the strangest federal documents in American history. It’s a crybully tome, arguing that the most powerful religious majority in the United States is its most persecuted minority. 

Julian examines the FACE Act allegations, the FBI-Catholic surveillance controversy, and the selective history propping up the Christian-founding thesis. Derek traces the freethinker and secularist tradition the report erases. Matthew tracks the document's most telling absence: anticommunism. 

From Eisenhower to Reagan, Christian nationalism always came bundled with a Soviet enemy and a defense of free enterprise and private property. But the 67% of the doc that’s about sexuality, gender, and reproductive rights shows that the billionaire Jesus class thinks the class war is over, and so all that’s left to control is the body itself.

Show Notes

Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism

SPLC: 12 Anti-Semitic Radical Traditional Catholic Groups

AXIOS: Assaults Against Abortion Clinics Rose 128% in 2021

DOJ Says Biden Unfairly Attacked Anti-Abortion Groups

Is Jane’s Revenge For Real?

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In this contribution to an ongoing co-host conversation, Matthew argues that the liberal centre's habit of punching left is a historically conditioned class strategy. From FDR's New Deal—designed to inoculate capitalism against socialism—through Hayek, Buckley, the Birchers, Limbaugh, and the Obama-era "socialist medicine" smear, liberals have accepted the premises of Red Scare attacks, because doing so served their own interest in disciplining the actual left. 

The result is a Ratchet Effect that pulls discourse perpetually rightward, and a narrowing of the Overton window to convert anticapitalist politics into psychological pathology. 

When the liberal centre engineers conditions in which no structural challenge to capitalism is rational, it can caricature the resulting conflict as hysteria, cultishness, and immaturity. There’s also a gendered dynamic going on here, in which the leftist is unreasonable, nitpicky, always demanding too much, focused on minutiae but also big feelings, and always missing the “big picture”. Sometimes the only real division between right wing and liberal responses to the left is the difference between outright hatred and resentful dismissal. 

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It’s normal to feel lost after leaving a cult, transitioning out of fundamentalist religion, or abandoning conspiracy theories. Whether you’ve left behind, you may be asking, "What now?" 

Britt Hartley joins Julian to talk about her new book, No Nonsense Spirituality: All The Tools No Belief Required, and her recent run-in with the hardcore atheist community, which calls her work “nonsense.” The ex-Mormon practices Sufi mysticism, holds an MA in theology, and is writing her doctoral dissertation. A spiritual atheist, she advocates passionately for reclaiming awe, rituals, pilgrimages, and spiritual experiences from the monopoly of organized religion.

Show Notes

No Nonsense Spirituality: All The Tools No Belief Required

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Two months ago, we recorded Episode 291: My Chinese Buddhist Israeli AI Guru, surveying the growing field of AI slopfluencers churning out wellness supplements via Amazon affiliate links. At the time, we weren’t clear on who was behind these accounts. Then Mallory DeMille went down a YouTube and TikTok rabbit hole and found the men making millions from these accounts. Today we’re going to look at what they’re doing, how they’re doing it, and the cultural and racial dynamics at play in their slop.

Show Notes

An Amish Avatar and an A.I. Monk Are Pitching Supplements on Social Media

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Derek considers the online debates over leftism and liberalism in the context of coalition building.

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Matthew reads the Introduction from Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times.

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As Cole Allen sprinted into the news cycle, social media accelerated to cover the story—and the conspiracy-beast in the basement flexed his fast-twitch muscle fibers. The now third assassination attempt on Donald Trump (this time at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner) had to be staged. What else could explain it?  The one time Trump shows up, an assassin is waiting for him. What are the odds? How about the guy who just calmly kept eating his salad?  

A highly suspicious AI video showed a security agent’s hat morph into his hair, while another had Allen running faster than humanly possible, which fit with an elaborate story about the shooter actually being a time traveller. 

We break down what happened, how quickly the conspiracy theories spread, and the cultural and political dynamics of this ubiquitous reflex.

Show Notes

False-flag Conspiracy Theories Swirl After WHCD

The Era of Normie Extremism is Here

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