Conspirituality

Chaya Raichik of Libs of TikTok calls the LGBTQ+ community a cult. Does this mean the term has lost all meaning? Searching for the roots of Raichik's abuse of cult discourse leads Matthew back through a cursed gender critical message board to an ill-conceived Twitter thread by cult expert Steve Hassan. A Conspirituality Brief on what happens when fascists seize control of highly-charged explanator...

Matthew and Julian sit down for the first of a two-part examination of the 1988 bestseller at the heart of the recovered memory movement—which played a central role in validating Satanic Panic testimonials. This is episode 9 of the Swan Song Series 9.The basic premise of The Courage to Heal, by creative writing instructors Ellen Bass and Laura Davis,  is that memories of childhood abuse, especiall...

Part 2 of Matthew's conversation with Sarah. Sarah grew up in the Church of Scientology. But she also grew up in a small town. And, in a neurodiverse family. We come from so many places. Exploitative, hierarchical, hypocritical. Generous, tender, and odd. It is an honor to present this installment of Listeners' Stories. We're tickled to learn that Sarah's awakening from Scientology was quickened b...

The second part of Julian and Matthew's long look at the 1999 film Teal Swan was reportedly obsessed with as a teen. Girl, Interrupted is a freewheeling adaptation of a 1993 memoir by Susanna Kaysen about the 18 months she spent undergoing treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder in a Massachusetts psychiatric facility in the late 1960s. This episode 8 of the Swan Song Series. This study is p...

Elon, Elon, who are you? Where is your essential self? Where are you as you soar through your space fantasies, as you track and hedge and bet your billions, wondering if all those emeralds gave you an unfair advantage in life? What is the weather like on Mars? Have you found yourself yet, hiding in  millions of lines of self-driving code? Have you found your own face as you surveil your quivering...

Sarah grew up in the Church of Scientology. But she also grew up in a small town. And, in a neurodiverse family. We come from so many places. Exploitative, hierarchical, hypocritical. Generous, tender, and odd. It is an honor to present this installment of Listeners' Stories. We're tickled to learn that Sarah's awakening from Scientology was quickened by that South Park episode. And we're humbled...

Remember way back to the beginning of this podcast, shortly after “Plandemic” dropped, when wellness influencers immediately began selling supposed “immune supporting” supplements? That trend has only intensified in recent months, with grifters like Peter McCullough and Mikki Willis getting in on the supplement game. In part three of his trilogy on supplements, Derek talks with dietician Kevin Kla...

In this special report, Julian examines how the machinery of right-wing propaganda engineers the necessary conditions for stochastic terror. The recent waves of dehumanizing anti-LGBTQ bigotry heighten the probability of extremist violence. When it happens—as in November's tragic mass-shooting at Club Q, pointing this out leads right-wing media to quickly accuse the left of exploiting tragedy. Wor...

Those who fly high, fall hard. Pole dance company S-Factor crashed and burned in 2021 amidst a stack of complaints. Detractors said the company was conducting unlicensed group therapy, cosplaying enlightenment by co-opting the labour of sex workers, and whitewashing issues of racial equality. Created by former actor Sheila Kelley, S-Factor monetized pole dancing as a path of feminist and spiritual...

Julian and Matthew take a long look at the 1999 film Teal Swan was reportedly obsessed with as a teen. Girl, Interrupted is a bold adaptation of a 1993 memoir by the writer Susanna Kaysen about the 18 months she spent undergoing treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder in a Massachusetts psychiatric facility in the late 1960s. This is episode 7 of the Swan Song Series. This study is provoked...

We didn't have tracking BDSM Easter eggs in fashion shoots or Ye’s Jew-hating Christofascism on our bingo card. But here we are, covering a cluster of cursed images and hypomanic clips. We’ll stare right at the train wreck this week, but we refuse to feel hopeless. Because we can always learn—in this case about how the psychic and bodily impacts of this churn of bizarre hatred relate to the functi...

Those who fly high, fall hard. Pole dance company S-Factor crashed and burned in 2021 amidst a stack of complaints. Detractors said the company was conducting unlicensed group therapy, cosplaying enlightenment by co-opting the labour of sex workers, and whitewashing issues of racial equality. Created by former actor Sheila Kelley, S-Factor monetized pole dancing as a path of feminist and spiritual...

Matthew checks in with investigative journalist Alexi Mostrous on his fantastic work digging up the Hampstead Hoax. Show Notes Hoaxed — Tortoise Media Re P and Q (Children: Care Proceedings: Fact Finding) Jacqui Farmer's "Hampstead Research" Charlotte Ward’s conspirituality.org About page Hoaxtead Research -- -- -- Support us on Patreon Pre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Be...

Did you know, right now, as you sit there listening to this, your body is filled with parasites that need to be cleansed? Of course, that’s if you live in America, since every other country on the planet cleanses four times a year. Seriously. We heard it on TikTok. Scrolling through the gutters of TikTok is challenging for us Gen Xers, and so our TikTok correspondent, Mallory DeMille, has done the...

Are you ready for the bestest, purest immunity-boosting supplement in the history of the world? No, not that one. Only I have discovered what really works, and I'll share it with you this week. Ok, not quite, but Derek looks at a recent JAMA study that found many of the top 30 supplements sold on Amazon don't contain what they claim. He opens by looking at Mikki Willis's latest best supplement eve...

Well jeez. What can we say? We're totally honored to host and learn from Aubrey Gordon, author and co-host of Maintenance Phase. She gives us the rundown on anti-fat bias,  its links to racism, the soft eugenics of the BMI, the insincere "concern" of the slender, and the intellectual and moral dead end of "being fat is a choice." We also get into some psychothinalysis. Oh yes we do. It's super ins...

Matthew and Julian sit down for the second of a two-part examination of the 1988 bestseller at the heart of the recovered memory movement.  This is episode 10 of the Swan Song Series. Show NotesControversy Behind the False Memory Syndrome Foundation The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse Truth and reconciliation Cases That Have Resulted in Convictions Why The Courag...

The homestretch of our study of Michelle Remembers zeroes in on the literal symbols—and symbols gone literal—of the Satanic Panic. (This is episode 6 of  the Swan Song Series.)Archetypes, gore, anxieties about sex and babies and filth: Lawrence Pazder mined it all, using modes of abstraction and dehumanization as old as religion itself to weave a story he claimed was all about Michelle—but was rea...

American-style white Christian Nationalism tells of a promised land given by God to the Puritan settlers. Their divine mandate for political dominance sanctifies a violent history that stretches from the 1690's all the way through to modern right-wing politics. Our interview today is with sociologists, Philip Gorski and Samuel Perry, authors of The Flag and The Cross. We discuss their study of Chr...

Antisemitism is in the news again, as Candace Owens defends Kanye West and Kyrie Irving, while her boss, Ben Shapiro shakes his head in dismay. In this Bonus special report, Julian looks into the Assembly of Yahweh family, which funds conservative new media giants, The Daily Wire and PragerU.How do we make sense of the racial and religious tensions created by the strange bedfellow alliances of rig...

An ancient text at the root of the culture that gave birth to the yoga tradition says that if an outcaste person—a Dalit—dares to learn the holy language of Sanskrit, they must be tortured. Molten lead must be poured into their ears. Their tongue must be cut out. In the Ramayana, a Shudra (caste oppressed) who dared to practice yoga was murdered so that the sickly child of a priestly family might...

Matthew and Julian sit down for the first of a two-part examination of the 1988 bestseller at the heart of the recovered memory movement—which played a central role in validating Satanic Panic testimonials. The basic premise of The Courage to Heal, by creative writing instructors Ellen Bass and Linda Davis,  is that memories of childhood abuse, especially child sexual abuse, can be recovered and a...

In the second of three episodes on Michelle Remembers, we recap its Catholic contexts, and Lawrence Pazder's quest to transcend the limitations of psychiatry through mystical nightmares. We then explore the front matter: how Pazder introduces his project (and himself), and the ambivalent endorsement of Remi de Roo, Archbishop of Victoria. In Pazder's many clerical alliances, a crucial theme is est...

Mark Roseman opens Lives Reclaimed, his compelling history of the “Bund”—a leftist communitarian group that resisted fascism and protected Jews during the Reich—with a quote from Michael Ondaatje’s novel The Cat’s Table: “That was a small lesson I learned on the journey. What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power.” Roseman, a professor of Jewish a...

Imagine a technology so powerful it's been directly downloaded from spirit during a Scorpio eclipse. This revolutionary tool can cure burn victims, remove cysts from dogs, and endow you with ultimate productivity. Thanks to phase conjugation, this bioenhanced scalar tech will change the way you view medicine and healing forever—provided you don't have any expectations and remain open to source, th...