Conspirituality

Support Conspirituality on Patreon. Does the word protestor conjure a masked figure in black clothing smashing windows and lighting fires or a weekend liberal ineffectually following rules while sipping on a creamy latte along the state-permitted protest route? A popular media narrative is that peaceful protest works best, but has the power of nonviolent resistance been debunked?  Julian responds...

Marty Makary and Vinay Prasad claim they're going to open the "black box" at the FDA, an agency they're now both employed at. So they started a podcast. It's not the first official FDA podcast, but it certainly fits into the contrarian ethos both men have cultivated since 2020. Derek and Julian listen in to see how much of that box is actually being opened. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit...

We’ve been talking about RFK Jr for years, and even dedicated an entire chapter to him in our 2023 book—and we’re going to keep covering him. Since his power and influence has only grown, and since he’s now in charge of America’s entire health apparatus, there’s no way to avoid it. This week we catch up on the last few months of MAHA. Derek looks into why he believes Kennedy’s apparatus, despite c...

Calley Means is one of RFK Jr’s top advisors. Alongside Tucker Carlson, Means has claimed responsibility for shepherding Kennedy into Trump’s camp. Does this former business school graduate Heritage Foundation intern and business school graduate really care about the nation’s health? Derek listens to a recent interview with Politico and finds the deregulatory ethos that underlies all of Project 20...

After being confirmed as Secretary of HHS, RFK Jr started installing his cabal of wellness influencers and contrarian doctors across the government's many public health agencies. And that means they have to apologize for their boss. Derek and Julian listen in on some of the most outrageous takes so far. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The most annoying convert TradCath in the world, JD Vance, whose cherubic face belies all his bootlicking aggression, gets his moment with Pope Bob. Usha stands behind him in a black mantilla. He hands the pontiff an oversized envelope: an invitation from Donald and Melania to a White House dinner. Bob smiles guardedly as he takes it and without looking at it, setting it on his desk. “I’ll read th...

Matthew is back today for more with Ben Case: profiling Gene Sharp and the (non)politics of strategic nonviolence, plus his strange funding sources. Also: why did Erica Chenoweth speak out against antifascist Trump protesters in January of 2017, and suggest their research proved that property damage and scuffles with the police would ruin any opposition movement to Trump? Also: where does the fund...

You may have grown up with the term “nonviolence” shining like a pole star over every discussion of how we accomplish socio-political change. But what does it really mean? And who defines violence for that matter—beyond the police, the courts, and others in power? Today, the theory of non-violence has grown beyond its Gandhian, spiritual aspiration roots, while retaining an irrational faith and of...

The chat bot flashes its elipsis at the bottom of the screen. What is it thinking, what does it want from you, what do you want from it? Beneath those pixels lies a sea of mined data and lightning storms of electricity heating up servers in barren deserts. What will it find for you in the past labor of the generations? According to a stunning new article in Rolling Stone, it will find whatever the...

It begins with a failed human sacrifice in Detroit in 1932. Some would say it actually starts with an evil god-scientist who created the first white people—white devils, really—some 6,000 years ago. Either way, the Nation of Islam has had an important cultural and political presence for almost a century in America. Today’s installment of Julian’s Roots of Conspirituality series covers the incredib...

In 2022, Oregonians passed Measure 111, which amends the state constitution to declare access to affordable healthcare a right for every citizen. As it happens, this was the first ballot Derek voted on when moving to the state. Now that the long journey to universal healthcare is a reality in Oregon, what does that actually entail? Derek is joined by two members of the nonprofit organization, Heal...

Cancer, as physician and author Siddhartha Mukherjee writes, is the emperor of all maladies. The disease—the over 200 different diseases all falling under this umbrella term—has been with us as long as we’ve been us. If anything is truly ancient, it is the cancer cells that are in all of our bodies, just waiting to be turned on if the conditions are right, or if our genes dictate the inevitability...

Gen X went from leaning slightly right in 2016 to become, as one analysis puts it, “the bedrock of Trumpism.” Derek meditates on what happened to his generation by reading from four different thought pieces on the topic. Show Notes Wait, What Is Really Up With Gen X’s Politics? Is Gen X a Bunch of Trumpers? Maybe That’s the Wrong Question. How Gen X Became the Trumpiest Generation How Gen X Went f...

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner was a little different this year. No president. No comedian. The event featured a mea culpa from an Axios journalist who discussed the media’s complicity in failing to expose Biden’s mental decline. Meanwhile, Substack promoted an alternative parallel event called “Not The White House Correspondents’ Dinner” with an email that announced, “a new media order is...

Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government in Ontario has leased the public space of OP to the Therme Spa company, which promises to bring wellness and democracy to the good citizens of Toronto, for a price. Bruce Van Dieten and Ann-Elizabeth Samson of Ontario Place for All join Matthew to discuss the history and possible future of Toronto's cherished public space. Bruce is "a retired busybod...

Part 2 of Matthew’s conversation with historian Craig Johnson (PhD Berkeley), who hosts Fifteen Minutes of Fascism, which covers the global rise of the radical right. He’s the author of an excellent new book, How to Talk to Your Son about Fascism, a guide for parents and educators on keeping young men out of the extreme right wing.  Today we tackle strategy. To debunk or not to debunk? How do you...

Historian Craig Johnson (PhD Berkeley) hosts Fifteen Minutes of Fascism, which covers the global rise of the radical right. He’s the author of an excellent new book, How to Talk to Your Son about Fascism, a guide for parents and educators on keeping young men out of the extreme right wing.  In this first of a two-part interview, Matthew and Craig discuss definitions of fascism, why it appeals to y...

Someone’s got dirt on RFK Jr. MAHA voters went MAGA because Bobby said he was going to end vaccine mandates—their code for ending vaccines, period. No longer would food be dyed and oils be made of seeds. Everyone would get free gym memberships. America’s chronic disease epidemic would end overnight, as he’s repeatedly claimed.  Then Mr Kennedy goes to Washington only to declare that antisemitism i...

When the aliens landed, they told a young musician and wannabe race car driver that he was the chosen one, and they were the real gods. He should build them an embassy with a UFO landing pad in order to prepare humanity for their arrival. They taught him the secrets of sex meditation and cloning DNA as a way to keep switching bodies and never die.  Not much in his story was original, but this was...

When cultural and psychological anthropologist Katie Rose Hejtmanek set out to study Crossfit, she knew she had to throw herself into it fully. For seven years, she traveled to “boxes” around the world while committing herself to her local Brooklyn box. What she uncovered was a rabid fan base that deeply values community and a business model that offers a refreshing response to unfettered capitali...

"In order to have the future we want, we have to build and invent more of the things we need." That’s the central claim of Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s new book, Abundance. They argue that Democrat-run cities and states have suffered self-inflicted wounds that are causing a mass exodus to red states, where life is simply more affordable. To stop the bleeding, Dems need to take action on a bold...

It's been quite the week at HHS with Robert F Kennedy Jr in charge. Derek considers what's been going on: Bobby's announcement that he's going to "determine" the cause of autism by September; his social media marketing-driven visit to grieving families in Texas; his pivot on the MMR vaccine; and his recommendation to the CDC that fluoride be removed from public water supplies. Show Notes RFK Jr. s...

Jay Bhattacharya, Covid contrarian and co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, is now the Director of the NIH. The day before beginning his new job, he gave his first official interview to Bari Weiss on her podcast, Honestly. Derek and Julian discuss. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There’s a mystery of violence swirling in and amongst the kids these days. Especially boys. What could it be? Snapchat? Video games? Andrew Tate? A hit Netflix series points to issues, and policy. But is it pointing in the right direction?  Today we’ll look at “Adolescence”: the origin story, the strengths and liabilities of its one-take technique, and its deceptively conservative messaging. Shoul...

Part Two: Matthew remembers the snow job of “The Sound of Music.” Also: more on Sophie Scholl, introducing the Edelweiss Pirates, the “adult gaze”, what trusting kids means, notes from Emma Goldman and Janusz Korczak, and excerpts from a poem by Aku Päiviö, father of Jules, who traveled from Northern Ontario to Spain in 1937 to volunteer in the International Brigade. ____ When fascism rises, and s...