113: A Course in Conspiracies (w/Sam Kestenbaum)

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 is a public health crisis? And to say that the MMR vaccine is the most effective way to prevent measles? How could he say such a thing when, as Mikki Willis recently claimed, this “version” of measles is a bioweapon designed to infect the Mennonite population?  This week we look way too deeply into Candace Owens’s recent episodes about the blackmailing of RFK Jr, a story that quickly spread its tentacles into the microphones of a number of contrarian right-wing podcasters. We’ll give you the lowdown on the story and how, like a children’s game of telephone, it repeatedly got distorted and reframed with every mind it touched. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

24 Huhti 1h 15min

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 the 1970s, so free love hippies flocked to his French commune—then it all turned to shit. Somehow Claude kept landing on his feet. He took his schtick to Quebec, then Japan, and even found thousands of followers in Africa. Still no embassy, no divine alien arrival, no cloned human babies—but he kept raising funds from the gullible and living like a king with a ballerina bride 40 years his junior. For the latest installment in Roots of Conspirituality series, Julian muses on the epic tale of the Raelians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

21 Huhti 6min

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 capitalism—as well as the misogyny, racism, and militarized Christian themes that inform this beloved and despised fitness regimen. She joins Derek to discuss her new book, The Cult of CrossFit: Christianity and the American Exercise Phenomenon. Show Notes The Cult of CrossFit: Christianity and the American Exercise Phenomenon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

19 Huhti 36min

"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 new vision that cuts through red tape to improve people’s lives and address the crises in housing, climate, healthcare and politics. But many on the left are suspicious. Is this just Reaganomics wrapped up in the intellectualized language of the NY Times? Is Abundance the privileged prosperity gospel for white liberals? Show Notes The Abundance Agenda: Neoliberalism’s Rebrand Abundance: The Left Hates It Summary of Abundance Critiques Politico: False Choice Between Abundance and Antitrust Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

17 Huhti 55min

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. says HHS will determine the cause of autism by September RFK Jr. says he plans to tell CDC to stop recommending fluoride in drinking water What RFK Jr. Told Grieving Texas Families About the Measles Vaccine Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

14 Huhti 6min

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

12 Huhti 38min

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. Should it be shown in Parliament? Schools? Does it tell us much about the kids it is worried about? Does it offload responsibility for misogyny and violence onto ambient internet chaos, when there are so many other causes closer to home? And why, if it is a meditation on violence committed by boys, do we learn so little about the girls who are harmed? ___ Correction: In the episode, Matthew said that Axel Rudakabana was of South Asian descent. He was born in the UK of parents from Rwanda. Show Notes Brief: Tate Crime Teachers Warn That Misogynist Andrew Tate Has 'Radicalized' School-Age Boys 180: Is This the Next Andrew Tate? Stephen Graham shares the heartbreaking stories that inspired Netflix's Adolescence  'Adolescence' Becomes Netflix's Most-Watched Limited Series in First 2 Weeks With 66.3 Million Views Elon Musk blasted for spreading 'concerning' misinformation about Netflix's Adolescence  Netflix’s Adolescence makes TV history in the UK “Netflix hit Adolescence has lessons for us all” says Northumbria PCC Susan Dungworth, as she welcomes PM backing for it to be shown in UK Schools  Netflix's Adolescence inspired by true story of Croydon girl's horrific murder - MyLondon  UK experts warn of dangers of violent content being readily available online | Southport attack Croydon schoolgirl Elianne Andam stabbed in ‘white-hot anger’, court told | UK news Hassan Sentamu sentencing remarks  Sentencing Remarks: In the matter of the murder of Ava White Crime in England and Wales: year ending September 2024  The facts about firearm violence Firearm Violence in the United States | Center for Gun Violence Solutions   Online gangs of teenage boys sharing extreme material are ‘emerging threat’ in UK | NCA (National Crime Agency) Beyond the Headlines 2024 Summary | Youth Endowment Fund  Spotify takes down Andrew Tate ‘pimping’ podcast after complaints  Kyle Clifford watched Andrew Tate videos before triple murder The Terrifying Truth Behind Netflix’s ‘Adolescence’  Stephen Graham Netflix series Adolescence inspired by two real-life crimes "Objective realism," ethnographic cinema, and the classical model of visual-anthropological research  PACE Code C 2023 GCSEs harm our young people. Ministers should have the guts to abolish them – and start again Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

10 Huhti 1h 10min

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 some young people are drawn into its orbit, because everyone from Jordan Peterson to Andrew Tate has figured out how to exploit resentment at the failures of capitalism, we have an opportunity to give our kids a lot more than moralistic calls for a return to normalcy, compliance, warnings about screen time, striving to be better students, doing more sports, and not making too much of a ruckus.  The kind of parenting that limits itself to restoring the status quo for younger people in an age of fascism is not engaged parenting.  It’s not enough to be a good boy or girl. Antifascism takes more than that. Show Notes Op-ed: Try again, President Kumar: Renewing calls for Tufts to adopt March 4 TCU Senate resolutions  Death toll since Israel's aggression on Gaza on October 7 rises to 31,819 (March, 2024)  Austerity Has Always Been a Project to Empower Capital at the Expense of Workers  It's Not Them; It's Us: Thoughts on the Show Adolescence Adolescence is a really well made depiction of misogyny that fails to critique it | by Mallory Moore | Mar, 2025 Netflix’s ‘Adolescence’ Taps Into the Latest Moral Panic    Jonathan Haidt’s Claims On Kids & Tech Crumble Under Scrutiny From Top Expert, Candice Odgers | Techdirt  UK government's own estimate says welfare cuts to push 250,000 into poverty | Reuters Labour’s cuts to PIP will drag a quarter of a million people into absolute poverty, DWP figures show – Disability News Service 55: Games Against Humanity (w/ Thi Nguyen) — Conspirituality 207: Gaming Realities (w/Thi Nguyen) — Conspirituality   Reminder to the media: Research video games before reporting on them  Out of the Ruins:The Emergence of Radical Informal Learning Spaces Anarchist Education and the Modern School: A Francisco Ferrer Reader  The People's Republic of Neverland: The Child versus the State   Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work Teaching Resistance: Radicals, Revolutionaries, and Cultural Subversives in the Classroom TRUST KIDS! Stories on Youth Autonomy and Confronting Adult Supremacy Refusing Complicity: The Bravery of Sophie Scholl - Radical Tea Towel Sophie Scholl and the youth resistance against the Nazis – DW – 02/22/2023 The majority of news influencers are conservative men, study finds  An Unclaimed Country: The Austrian Image in American Film and the Sociopolitics of The Sound of Music  The politics of The Sound of Music | Peter Levine  Edelweiss Pirate Walter Mayer The Edelweiss Pirates: A Story of Freedom, Love and Life Walter Meyer describes his 1943 trial for looting, and the impact of his role in the Edelweiss Pirates on the sentence he received | Holocaust Encyclopedia The Edelweiss Pirates The Child and Its Enemies | The Anarchist Library —Emma Goldman DECLARATION OF CHILDREN'S RIGHTS—Janusz Korczak  The King of Children: A Biography of Janusz Korczak - Betty Jean Lifton Sophie Scholl – The Final Days Remember the Mac-Paps - rabble.ca  The Canadians In The Spanish Civil War  'Gentleman Jules' lived for just causes | Sudbury Star  Poetry – Friends and Veterans Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

7 Huhti 6min