Conspirituality

With MAHA taking over stages nationwide, we’re experiencing a deluge of wellness influence and contrarians screaming about systemic issues with food, medicine, and government. Yet the solutions they offer never actually address public health.  Ironically, the same trend has been occurring in investment-driven medicine, where both government and private sector money is flowing into individualized m...

Finally: a dedicated, concise report on RFK Jr’s sordid history with women, with all the sources. Why?  Because now one of the allegations involves a criminal act.  And because it’s becoming clearer that the emotional manipulation he allegedly deploys in his personal life—many sources say that “love-bombing” is his technique—rhymes so closely with his political day-to-day that it’s hard to find th...

Cleanse the soil! Purify the blood! Save the children! Make America Healthy Again! On Sept 23, Jordan Peterson, RFK Jr., rising alt-health stars Casey and Calley Means, and many other nutrition non-experts gathered for a live streamed event they called the American Health and Nutrition Roundtable, hosted by Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. Their subtitle, A Second Opinion, was an apt d...

Matthew here with the second installment of Five Big Questions Posed to an Extremely Thoughtful Person.  Does Natalie Wynn need an introduction? Or do we simply know that every frame of every Contrapoints essay is a gorgeous still life, a love letter to the unknown viewer thirsty for smarts and queerness and justice? Often, top-tier artfulness will wind up concealing the artist. But despite the ri...

An essay from Matthew exploring the problem of authenticity which plagues every investigation we do on the spiritual influencer beat.  There are queasy questions we’re always contending with when we’re listening to the preaching of Charles Eisenstein, Kelly Brogan, Zach Bush, or RFK Jr:  Has this person really committed to the spirituality they are presenting? Or is spirituality instrumental to th...

On Monday, Senator Ron Johnson sponsored a congressional panel entitled "American Health and Nutrition: A Second Opinion." Unfortunately no actual health or nutrition experts were invited. Instead, the four-and-a-half hour event featured speakers like Robert F Kennedy Jr, Jordan Peterson, Jillian Michaels, Vani Hari (Food Babe), and a host of other influencers and contrarians. Derek investigates a...

Tens of people will be flocking to Washington DC this Sunday as Rumble comes to life during Rescue the Republic, a one-day event featuring RFK Jr, Russell Brand, Jordan Peterson, Bret Weinstein, Tulsi Gabbard—it’s quite an impressive roster of anti-vax luminaries and right-wing contrarians gathering under the pretense of what is effectively a glorified Donald Trump rally. And that’s not hyperbole,...

The British occultists took the thin and sickly but beautiful boy away from his family. Groomed him for 20 years to become the savior of humanity. Trained him between 1909-29 to be a serene guru and charming English aristocrat. He looked good in a double-breasted suit and had fabulous hair. Huge amounts of money flowed into the organization they built around him. But Krishnamurti became a man the...

“God talks to human beings through many vectors. But nowhere with such detail, and grace and joy, as through creation. When we destroy nature, we diminish our capacity to sense the divine.” With this April 2023 tweet, RFK Jr inaugurated his presidential campaign, which has now folded into a daily ritual of Trump bootlicking. Now, Bobby is telling Tucker Carlson and the world that climate change ca...

There’s been a question gnawing at fans of Charles Eisenstein: what does he really feel about RFK Jr’s pivot to Trump? The always aspiring poet-philosopher was hired as a messaging advisor to Bobby, after all. We’ve spotted little fragments of Eisenstein’s exceptionally long essays sneaking their way into Bobby’s speeches. There was some influence, for sure, even after Charles went on multiple Cos...

"Biohacking expert" Kayla Barnes recently published a 31-minute video about her morning routine, filled with EMF-blocking shields, grounding protocols, and 40 different daily supplements. Good if you can afford it, but then she sells questionable protocols at her Cleveland, Ohio-based clinic, Lyv Wellness, despite having no clinical training. Derek watches what she says, then watches what she sell...

Tucker Carlson is the Steve Bannon of Joe Rogans. Tucker surpasses Rogan’s massive reach at times, but his curated guest list drives a deliberate agenda: normalizing neo-fascist political discourse. He does it all with an affable, friendly, just-asking-questions, I’m-not-as-smart-as-my-guests attitude that may disguise what he’s doing—like interviewing a Holocaust-denier Nazi apologist, or framing...

In 2022, Tucker Carlson produced a documentary called “The End of Men,” his contribution to the so-called “masculinity crisis.” That’s when testicle tanning hit the mainstream, which one astute observer dubbed “bromeopathic therapy.” Turns out the former Fox News host isn’t done dabbling in conspirituality. This year, he’s platformed the QAnon Shaman, Jacob Chansley; lyme disease conspiracist, Kri...

Here’s the first installment of a regular timeline cleanser featuring interviews with folks reflecting on hope, faith, resilience and building community in hard times.  You know—all the things that conspirituality itself can’t offer. These are short, personal visits in which Matthew asks each guest the same five questions about their life wisdom—at least as it’s coming together in this moment. To...

What does it mean to spill ink on dispelling conspiracy theories about non-existent children being murdered, while actual children are being murdered? At what point does the labour of debunking right wing wackjobs also do the shadow-work of supporting the liberal-center orthodoxy? Matthew looks at how with QAnon, the liberal-center press criticized irrational responses to imaginary traumas, with a...

Calley Means is the cofounder of TrueMed, a company that helps businesses qualify products and services like supplements and ice baths for HSA and FSA money. Casey Means is the founder of Levels, a continuous glucose monitor subscription service aimed at the biohacking community. The brother and sister recently appeared on Tucker Carlson's podcast to rage against seed oils, as well as the food and...

RFK Jr has dropped out of the presidential race and thrown his weight behind Trump. In our 10th episode on the man in the last year-and-a-half, we look at the potential dangers of this unholy alliance, and what it means for America. Show notes are extensive, visit patreon.com/conspirituality or conspirituality.net for more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Born in 1831, Helena “Madame” Blavatsky pioneered the New Age grift. The Russian aristocrat plagiarized her books while claiming to be channeling the “Masters of Ancient Wisdom” to tell a dodgy heroic back-story. She founded the Theosophical Society in New York, claimed to have learned a secret Tibetan language, and laid the foundation for alien channelers and Woo-Anon. She also inspired the Nazis...

Dems are laughing about Donny Dentures or #TrumpisDone, but the reality inside his head, and Mar a Lago, will be very grim, and there will be a lot of collateral damage. Mental health titans like Robert Lifton have reached the consensus that Trump has been mentally ill for a long time. They’ve diagnosed him with “narcissistic personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, paranoid personal...

In one survey, 82% of young people aged 18-25 searched the internet for mental health advice. Another survey of university students found that 44% report using the internet to learn about sadness, anxiety, or confusion. Regardless of what mental health experts advise, people of all age groups are turning to the internet and social media for help. What are the potential risks and rewards of using t...

Peter McCullough recently shared a ton of misinformation about mpox while speaking to Drew Pinsky; both men work for The Wellness Company, a supplements company that weaponizes anti-vax misinformation to sell products. Mikki Willis uses the Hero's Journey as a guide to dealing with mpox—and falsely represents Joseph Campbell's work. Russell Brand and Bret Weinstein claim mpox is a government psyop...

ProPublica recently got a hold of 25 Project 2025 training videos—over 14 hours worth of content revealing the policies the Heritage Foundation would like to see implemented if Donald Trump regains the White House. Derek and Julian break down one of the most egregious. Show Notes Inside Project 2025’s Secret Training Videos Undercover in Project 2025 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megapho...

Did you hear that Taylor Swift is supporting Donald Trump for president? That’s right: last week, the former president shared photos of fans rocking “Swifties for Trump” t-shirts on Truth Social. Trump seemed pleased, replying to his online following of 24 billion people: “I accept.” Yet something seemed off. Just like photos of Trump surrounded by seven-fingered Black Americans smiling on city st...

A short break-the-fourth-wall reflection from Matthew on his new regular series for our main feed, starting in September.  The Conspirituality Relief Project will provide regular timeline-cleanser interviews in which super interesting guests reflect on hope, faith, resilience, and building community in hard times.  You know, all of the things that conspirituality itself promises to do, but can’t,...

An unexpectedly cheerful followup to “JD Vance Taps into Parental Rage.” The alt titles today could be: “Tim Walz Taps into Parental Goals,” or “Disarming the Disinfo of the Right is Great, But Have You Tried Dad Jokes?”  Across social media, liberal millennial women are tagging Tim Walz as the return of the dad they lost to Fox News. Matthew digs into that graveyard with a survey of the tools tha...