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.
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Two new MAHA-approved bills would force insurance companies to cover supplements and shield homeopathic manufacturers from any liability while allowing them to make more health claims. As Derek argues...
294: ICE Resistance (01:03:34)
Prior to last month’s killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, many white American citizens felt obligated to use their privilege to actively disrupt unjust ICE activities in their cities. But the stak...
Bonus Sample: An Ode to Curiosity (00:05:51)
When videos surfaced of Alex Pretti kicking an ICE vehicle's taillight 11 days before his murder, claims that the video was AI dominated social media. Some commenters even posted articles that stated ...
Brief: Did MAHA Put MAGA In Power? (00:37:09)
The silence of MAHA influencers around the murder of Renee Good (and ICE generally) has been excessively loud. Yet that’s expected from the coalition that voted for Donald Trump in order to install RF...
293: Trump and Fascist Dementia (00:58:06)
As Trump surges his Gestapo and threatens to annex new territory, his brain is collapsing. He’s sundowning on Truth Social, nodding off in meetings, slurring words, slurping at the saliva pooling in h...
Bonus Sample: Simone Weil: We Have Obligations Before We Have Rights (00:05:34)
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Simone Weil was skeptical about the project of “rights.” They argued that obligations come before rights, and that rights only become real when obligations are recognized a...
Brief: Prospirituality Predictions for 2026 (00:28:31)
If conspirituality names the ways religion and spirituality are weaponized to justify power, prospirituality points to religious traditions doing the opposite: grounding resistance, ethical clarity, a...
292: Women of Jan 6 (w/ Noelle Cook) (01:08:11)
Noelle Cook’s The Conspiracists: Women, Extremism, and the Lure of Belonging is the first ethnography of conspirituality, and it comes via someone who was able to really embed themselves in a volatile...
Bonus Sample: Oil, Power, and Theocracy (00:07:08)
In 1953 the CIA and MI6 participated in a coup d’etat in Iran. That true sentence (and what usually follows) can create an oversimplified distortion of history—and present. But Iran is in the news aga...
MAHA’s Selective Skepticism (00:23:55)
Whole milk is back! The war on protein is over! Mainline meat!
Derek investigates the new inverted pyramid and everything lacking in the new dietary guidelines.
Show Notes
The New Dietary Guidelin...
291: My Chinese Buddhist Israeli AI Guru (01:06:06)
“Train your mind gently, not to deny what is hard, but to see what is still good” implores the monk sharing spiritual messages to his 2.5 million Instagram followers. Clad in an orange robe—well, some...
Bonus Sample: Overwelled (00:04:20)
From Andrew Huberman's Goop collab and Mel Robbins' protein shots to MAHA flipping the long-defunct food pyramid and making meningitis great again, the first full week of 2026 was off to quite a start...
Brief: Censorship Industrial Complex (00:22:16)
Marco Rubio’s office published an official press release last month titled “Announcement of Actions to Combat the Global Censorship Industrial Complex.” The memo discusses the decision to impose visa ...
290: Trump Derangement Science (01:06:32)
What do fascists need to do to convince their rank and file that they’re the smartest in the room? They invent new science to trash the old science they didn’t like. First, we look into how RFK Jr is ...
Bonus Sample: What My Late Mom Would Have Thought About Jordan Peterson (00:05:33)
Matthew reflects on the fifth anniversary of his mother’s death and revisits how her life, trauma, and values helped him understand the appeal—and fatal flaw—of Jordan Peterson’s worldview. Toughness ...
Brief: Class Wars on Christmas (00:35:30)
Have you seen the “Grinch prank” video trend? Bad parenting, yes. But also a nod to the conflicts, ancient and modern, embedded in Christmas.
Contrary to what Bill O’Reilly would tell you, there has...
289: Big Wellness’s Nicotine Gambit [feat Mallory DeMille] (00:50:19)
In 1965, the US passed the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act, the reason every pack of cigarettes has a warning label informing you about the potentially harmful effects. Since then, nume...
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In 1994, Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard psychiatry professor John E. Mack became one of the most pedigreed proponents of UFOs, alien abductions, and the alien-hybrid breedi...
Brief: Nicki Minaj Goes MAGA (00:36:28)
Turning Point USA's AmFest 2025 saw a record number of attendees pour into Phoenix last weekend to watch a host of MAGA and MAHA luminaries proclaim they're raging against the Deep State—even though t...
UNLOCKED: Chatbot Awakening to Love and Enlightenment! (00:51:25)
An unlock of a bonus episode from earlier this year. Access all of our bonus episodes here.
Happy holidays, everyone!
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Earlier this year, a spate of news stories told of chatbot users trave...
Bonus Sample: The Monetization of MAHA (00:08:16)
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RFK Jr trademarked MAHA in a giant swath of categories, including many he now advocates for in his position as Secretary of HHS. After making $100,000 in licensing fees, he...
Brief: Dr Mike vs MAHA (00:34:25)
Dr Mike has become one of the most effective debunkers of science misinformation. His second appearance on the uber-popular show, Jubilee's Surrounded, pitted him against 20 fans of RFK Jr. Derek and ...
288: Conspirituality Live with Dr Jessica Knurick (01:06:22)
Derek sits down with Dr Jessica Knurick at the Eudemonia Summit for this special live recording. They discuss combating health misinformation online, what MAHA gets right and wrong, whether or not "nu...
Bonus Sample: Marx’s “Atheism” vs. the Capitalist Religion of Everyday Life (00:05:31)
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Matthew explores Marx’s “opium of the people” passage by placing it back into the philosophical and political project it came from. Marx was not attacking religion in some ...
Brief: Demonic Karl Marx ATTACKS Private Property and DESTROYS Religion (00:40:49)
Matthew examines how Karl Marx has long been framed as a demonic threat to religion and private property — a tactic that sidesteps Marx’s actual critique of capitalism. J. Edgar Hoover, Ronald Reagan,...
