523 episodes

Dismantling New Age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy-mad yogis. At best, the conspirituality movement attacks public health efforts in times of crisis. At worst, it fronts and recruits for the fever-dream of QAnon.As the alt-right and New Age horseshoe toward each other in a blur of disinformation, clear discourse, and good intentions get smothered. Charismatic influencers exploit their followers by co-opting conspiracy theories on a spectrum of intensity ranging from vaccines to child trafficking. In the process, spiritual beliefs that have nurtured creativity and meaning are transforming into memes of a quickly-globalizing paranoia.Conspirituality Podcast attempts to bring understanding to this landscape. A journalist, a cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic discuss the stories, cognitive dissonances, and cultic dynamics tearing through the yoga, wellness, and new spirituality worlds. Mainstream outlets have noticed the problem. We crowd-source, research, analyze, and dream answers to it.

Conspirituality Awakener

    • Religion & Spirituality
    • 4.4 • 143 Ratings

Listen on Apple Podcasts
Requires subscription and macOS 11.4 or higher

Dismantling New Age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy-mad yogis. At best, the conspirituality movement attacks public health efforts in times of crisis. At worst, it fronts and recruits for the fever-dream of QAnon.As the alt-right and New Age horseshoe toward each other in a blur of disinformation, clear discourse, and good intentions get smothered. Charismatic influencers exploit their followers by co-opting conspiracy theories on a spectrum of intensity ranging from vaccines to child trafficking. In the process, spiritual beliefs that have nurtured creativity and meaning are transforming into memes of a quickly-globalizing paranoia.Conspirituality Podcast attempts to bring understanding to this landscape. A journalist, a cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic discuss the stories, cognitive dissonances, and cultic dynamics tearing through the yoga, wellness, and new spirituality worlds. Mainstream outlets have noticed the problem. We crowd-source, research, analyze, and dream answers to it.

Listen on Apple Podcasts
Requires subscription and macOS 11.4 or higher

    199: Inside Anti-Abortion Christian Nationalism (w/Rob Schenck)

    199: Inside Anti-Abortion Christian Nationalism (w/Rob Schenck)

    Reverend Rob Schenck spent 30 years on the front lines of the Evangelical war against Roe V. Wade. He blockaded abortion clinics, screamed at women in crisis, used fetal remains as political props, and helped wage a covert war of moneyed influence over federal officials to end abortion access.
    Now, in a return to his deeper religious commitments, he is repenting his past. In an interview with Matthew, he discusses his blissful conversion experience as a teenager rooted in what he believed was a radical social justice movement. And he describes what he now sees: an anti-abortion movement helping to galvanize the Christian Nationalism poised to wreak havoc on American politics, and what we can do to push back against its aggression.
    Show Notes
    Fresh Air for July 11, 2018: An Evangelical Minister's Change Of Heart On Abortion
    Former Anti-Abortion Leader Alleges Another Supreme Court Breach
    Former Anti-Abortion Lobbyist Rev Robert Schenck Statement on "Operation Higher Court"
    Robert "Rob" L. Schenck
    About - Truth Revealed — Rob Schenck’s blog
    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    • 1 hr 12 min
    Bonus Sample: Conspirituality and the Imaginary Children (Series Intro)

    Bonus Sample: Conspirituality and the Imaginary Children (Series Intro)

    In this series of audio essays, Matthew will examine how children as symbols—but not persons with their own internal lives—are at the center of conspirituality anxiety and discourse. 
    There are two types of imaginary child in conspirituality. One is an object of dread. The other is an idol of aspiration.
    In the realm of dread we have fetuses murdered by late term abortion, children who are trafficked, made autistic by vaccines, sexualized by pornography in elementary school, or mutilated by trans activist doctors. 
    In the realm of idols we have newborn babies sliding like dolphins into warm birthing tubs after a mere hour of ecstatic, medically-unassisted home births. We have little girls in prairie dresses or first communion veils who must be protected from library drag queens or woke grade school teachers. We have starseeds and indigo children who carry prophecies from the great beyond. 
    We often reflect on the problem of authority on this podcast. Who are our leaders, and what gives them power? Why do conspiracists default to God to corroborate fantasies? What gap in cultural fatherhood is Jordan Peterson trying to fill? 
    With this series, Matthew looks in the other direction: what does the conspirituality crowd do with its own authority? How do misgivings, regrets and shame in relation to children get inflated and projected into moral panics?

    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    • 8 min
    Conspirituality and the Imaginary Children (Series Intro)

    Conspirituality and the Imaginary Children (Series Intro)

    In this series of audio essays, Matthew will examine how children as symbols—but not persons with their own internal lives—are at the center of conspirituality anxiety and discourse.

    There are two types of imaginary child in conspirituality. One is an object of dread. The other is an idol of aspiration.

    In the realm of dread we have fetuses murdered by late term abortion, children who are trafficked, made autistic by vaccines, sexualized by pornography in elementary school, or mutilated by trans activist doctors.

    In the realm of idols we have newborn babies sliding like dolphins into warm birthing tubs after a mere hour of ecstatic, medically-unassisted home births. We have little girls in prairie dresses or first communion veils who must be protected from library drag queens or woke grade school teachers. We have starseeds and indigo children who carry prophecies from the great beyond.

    We often reflect on the problem of authority on this podcast. Who are our leaders, and what gives them power? Why do conspiracists default to God to corroborate fantasies? What gap in cultural fatherhood is Jordan Peterson trying to fill?

    With this series, Matthew looks in the other direction: what does the conspirituality crowd do with its own authority? How do misgivings, regrets and shame in relation to children get inflated and projected into moral panics?

    Brief: Unmasking Jay Shetty (w/John McDermott)

    Brief: Unmasking Jay Shetty (w/John McDermott)

    Former monk turned spiritual influencer to the stars, Jay Shetty, has amassed 15 million followers on Instagram. He’s interviewed Michelle Obama, Kim Kardashian, and Kobe Bryant on his popular podcast. Shetty has received accolades from Gwenyth Paltrow and Ellen Degeneres. He even officiated J Lo and Ben Affleck’s wedding.
    Yet when LA-based writer John McDermott was assigned to cover Shetty for Esquire, something seemed…off. When he started pulling at some threads, Esquire pulled out of the feature. Fortunately, The Guardian agreed to publish McDermott’s investigative reporting, in which he found little of Shetty’s origin story holds up to scrutiny. 
    John joins Derek and Matthew to discuss.
    Show Notes
    Uncovering the higher truth of Jay Shetty
    ‘Very few have balls’: How American news lost its nerve
    Jay Shetty Is Full Of SH*T!
    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    • 29 min
    198: Holy Food (w/Christina Ward)

    198: Holy Food (w/Christina Ward)

    Does God have a recipe? That’s the first line of the blurb of Holy Food: How Cults, Communes, and Religious Movements Influenced What We Eat: An American History by independent food historian, Christina Ward. Ward’s survey of American religious groups and cults through the foods they grow, source, and prepare leads into an in-depth discussion about cults and high-demand groups that use food, and food restrictions, as a method for control. 
    That’s not all she tells Derek—they also discuss the ritual of sharing a meal. Matthew and Julian offer their own reflections on food in high-demand settings before Christina joins to discuss her excellent book.
    Show Notes
    Holy Food
    Christina Ward
    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    • 1 hr 6 min
    Bonus Sample: Ketamine Soul Mates

    Bonus Sample: Ketamine Soul Mates

    Dolphins, drugs, new age music. Isolation tanks as a portal into other dimensions. True love and fake aliens. Julian shares a personal love story from the nineties that intersects with the work of prolific scientist, inventor, and psychonaut, John C. Lilly. 
    The belief that we can contact extraterrestrial civilizations, which are waiting to usher humanity into a golden age of light and love, is now a hugely profitable and popular commodity. Apparently these extraterrestrials also want to help us vanquish the forces of Deep State darkness. This is evidenced by the QAnon-and-alien-disclosure-style of programming on Gaia’s spiritual subscription platform (which brings in roughly $80 million annually).
    Yet: Gaia is currently embroiled in a legal battle with a former host who claims that his stories about secret space programs and eight-foot tall “blue avian” aliens are actually part of his trademarked creative IP. When it comes down to dollars, he admits it’s all make-believe. Has he really ever dropped acid in a flotation tank though?!
    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    • 5 min

Customer Reviews

4.4 out of 5
143 Ratings

143 Ratings

SiânyG ,

A lifeline!

This podcast has just about kept me sane over the past few years of troubling covid misinformation and disinformation. I watched as friends of mine fell pray to anti-vax rhetoric and spent silly money on parasite cleanses, whilst ignoring the grounded advice of actual health professionals.
It covers a huge range of topics that are all so helpful to unpick and discuss, and they invite brilliant guests to share their knowledge and expertise.

Thank you so much for the hard work!

gwengwen125 ,

Wish it was more accessible

I’m grateful for this podcast for spreading a message I’ve been looking for for a long time.

My one critique - sometimes the discourse is so dense and lofty it’s impossible to follow in audio format. It feels like it’s more for the hosts than the audience, which is actually exactly how the conspiritualists spread misinformation. Using plain speech and accessible language, even if it’s not as “academic” or “rigorous” is more accessible from a disability rights perspective and from a listener engagement perspective. I hope the hosts will consider this.

Also would appreciate the hosts introducing themselves at the beginning of each episode because they sound quite similar!

weriew ,

Hysterical

So funny - I think my favourite moment was when “do they really not care that they’re punching down?’ Was asked in seriousness, and with so much earnest and despair. Laughed til there was tears in my eyes 😅

Top Podcasts In Religion & Spirituality

Omar Suleiman
Muslim Central
Mufti Menk
Muslim Central
The Surprising Rebirth Of Belief In God
Justin Brierley
BibleProject
BibleProject Podcast
Tara Brach
Tara Brach
The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)
Ascension

You Might Also Like

Decoding the Gurus
Christopher Kavanagh and Matthew Browne
Straight White American Jesus
Bradley Onishi + Daniel Miller
QAnon Anonymous
Julian Feeld, Travis View & Jake Rockatansky
If Books Could Kill
Michael Hobbes & Peter Shamshiri
Maintenance Phase
Aubrey Gordon & Michael Hobbes
A Little Bit Culty
Sarah Edmondson & Anthony “Nippy” Ames