66: Spirituality & Status (w/Will Storr)

They offered initiation into ancient Christian mysticism, ritual communion with the spirits, an understanding of reincarnation, and the destined transition to inhabiting a "solar-body" in the Sirius star-system. But it all ended in murderous blood sacrifice and fire—and 74 dead believers. What is this dark preoccupation with sacrifice and ritual killing in the name of metaphysical belief? Grotesque to modern ears, yet quite commonplace historically. Julian covers the late 20th-century French cult, The Order of the Solar Temple, for his Roots of Conspirituality series. They identified with the Knights Templar, weaving Rosicrucianism and Theosophy into a tangled web of fraud, spiritual deception, and the dramatic, tragic deaths of everyone involved. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

17 Marras 7min

RFK Jr's senior advisor and supplements salesman, Calley Means, has repeatedly fabricated the story of Abraham Flexner and the birth of the modern medical system. Derek looks into his historical revisionism and what it could mean for the MAHA movement. Show Notes Medical Education in America: Abraham Flexner The Great Influenza: John Barry The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: Roy Porter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

15 Marras 28min

Back in June, we published an episode about the "Speaking with American Men" (SAM) project, a $20 million initiative designed by political consultants to understand and win back young men (18-29) who increasingly voted for Donald Trump. We talked about this cringey, inauthentic approach to compete over the influence of manosphere figures like Jordan Peterson and Andrew Huberman, who exploit a perceived "meaning crisis" with pseudo-intellectual and often reactionary messages.  Instead of what? We said that the better route would be to focus on material concerns so that the rage of young men isn’t ceded to right-wing movements. Big-money consultant-led efforts to micromanage online interactions will not spawn-in the authentic cultural engagement that right-wing influencers naturally achieve. Well here we are now in the fall, and we’ve got a bunch of guys stepping into this contested space from different angles. Zohran Mamdani and Graham Platner present very differently as masculine role models, but share the same economic populism, but also a deep challenge in the long shadow of patriarchy: how do men become trustworthy? Show Notes Brief: Nair, Mamdani, and Culture against the Culture War (Pt 1) — Conspirituality  Matthew's Review of Notes on Being a Man by Scott Galloway  A Political Litmus Test: Can You Hang With the Boys? Zohran Mamdani Is New York’s First Millennial Mayor. You Can Tell by His Suit. A Political Misdiagnosis—NYT on How Dems lost Black and Hispanic Voters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

13 Marras 1h 6min

Listen to the full episode The nonprofit organization (and its adjoined Super PAC), MAHA Action, is leading semi-regular Zoom calls featuring a host of wellness influencers and RFK Jr appointees, including Jillian Michaels, Dr Oz, and Russell Brand. Derek listens into a recent call to see just what they're saying. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

10 Marras 5min

Taylor Swift: Nazi sympathizer, freshly-minted racist, MAGA trad wife. Or so proponents of a recent conspiracy theory would have it. For years, the most successful female recording and performing artist of her generation (and therefore of all time) has used “easter eggs” as part of her marketing. Hidden messages in music videos and lyric sheets, oblique references in social media posts, and puzzles as merchandise marketing gimmicks have all contributed to a parasocial sense of intimacy and insider knowledge for her millions of ardent fans. With the release of The Life of a Showgirl, these treats seem to have backfired on Swift. A deluge of TikToks claim dog whistles and hidden symbols reveal a far-right turn for a progressive artist that previously stood for feminism, reproductive freedom, gay and trans rights, BLM, and gun control. Maybe it’s her “cancelled” friends, the influence of Travis Kelce, or traditional, conservative “family values” finally coming home to roost as she celebrates the desire to settle down with her soon-to-be-husband, make a home, and have some kids. Julian peels apart the layers of this highly charged political conspiracy theory and looks at what it may represent. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

8 Marras 43min

When restaurants and cafes in Portland and elsewhere link into networks of food pantries and soup kitchens, will mutual aid feel real in the US? When regular folks come out of their houses to shame and chase ICE thugs out of the neighborhood, will that feeling of power from below catch on? Will it create some craving for a different way of doing things and understanding authority and order? Derek looks at Portland, Julian looks at street resistance, and Matthew unpacks the old anarchist idea of mutual aid, and whether and how it intersects with our time and what’s left of our institutions. Show Notes Here are 18 Portland-area coffee shops and restaurants that have pledged to feed people who lose SNAP benefits Angie Vargas, ICE Chaser LAHoodLove on Instagram BraveNewFilms on Instagram Kat Abughazaleh in Mother Jones Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

6 Marras 1h 4min

Listen to the full episode on Patreon Part 2 follows the money flowing from US agencies and interests to anti-Liberation Theology figures in Latin America. We meet Jesuit operator Roger Vekemans, who in the 1960s drew funding from the CIA, USAID, West German bishops, and U.S. conservative foundations to undermine Liberation and Christian socialism in Chile and beyond.  Nelson Rockefeller used Protestant missions as a model for soft power in the region, including the Summer Institute of Linguistics and their aviation-radio infrastructure (JAARS) that doubled as state and military logistics in Amazon frontiers. That infrastructure was part of a project to rewire communal lifeways into an individualism compatible with capitalism.  But what about the “reverse boomerang”? Pope Leo XIV’s Dilexi te: On Love for the Poor, is a pastoral yet pointed retrieval of Liberation Theology’s moral center, in which inequality is posited as the root of social ills. Leo rejects trickle-down myths, insists on solidarity with migrants, and quietly sidelines the old Marxism panic. By grounding church mission in the lived poverty of Jesus himself, Leo offers a calm but withering rebuke to Christofascism and the politics of exclusion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

3 Marras 5min

This is the first of a two-part deep dive into how U.S. foreign policy stared down the political threat of Liberation Theology by promoting Evangelical Christianity in Latin America. The CIA and USAID, in league with Vatican conservatives like Cardinal Ratzinger, spent money and social capital on the suppression of this vital new movement which insisted that poverty is political and that faith without structural change is hollow.  By contrast, the Evangelical emphasis on individual sin, salvation, and personal prosperity aligned with Cold War and neoliberal interests.  Spiritualities engineered to serve empire don’t just pacify the poor abroad—they come back to police democracy at home. The “Evangelical boomerang” shows up in shifting Latino religious demographics and voting patterns, while the “reverse boomerang” hints that Liberation Theology language—once condemned—now shapes Pope Leo’s message in this time of rising fascism.  If MAGA mystics, prosperity preachers, and tech-bro shamans offer a gospel of self-aggrandizement, Liberation Theology counters with a message of shared material reality: no one owns the food, we share it; the Sabbath serves people, not power; love of God is inseparable from love for the poor.  Part 1 lays the intellectual and historical groundwork; Part 2 follows the covert money networks and then asks whether a newly emboldened Catholic social vision can stiffen global resistance to authoritarian capitalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

1 Marras 39min