Brief: Ground Zero Grifting

Matthew offers a meditation on Brandolini’s Law — “the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it” — and accepting the hopelessness of altruistic reporting, whether on disinformation or climate change. With a haunting clip from ex-journalist Dahr Jamail. Also: a memory of visiting a Benedictine monastery, where there were no screens, and where the ancient rule understood that because work is never done, it only becomes sustainable through contemplating time itself. Show NotesPrimer on Extra Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO)Brandolini’s LawCuomo covers up nursing home deathsSexual harassment allegations against CuomoDahr Jamail and Barbara Cecil on Last Born in the WildernessAbbaye de Saint-Benoît-du-Lac -- -- --Support us on PatreonPre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | JulianOriginal music by EarthRise SoundSystem Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

5 Huhti 20218min

Conspiritualists hide their grifts in mantras. MLMs market themselves as communities, while cults preach freedom. When a research firm spotlights Sayer Ji as a disinformation super-spreader, he calls them a hate group. When Lil Nas X spins a catharsis of gay-goth dreams, he embodies MAGA disgust. It’s an age of misdirection.It’s also an age of transference. Living and breathing people become memes. The impulse to communicate gets devoured by the need to perform. Drives to justice adopt dominant affects.  Real conspiracies get overshadowed by myths. We’re keeping ourselves very busy while the world burns,'This week we’re releasing a bonus episode into the wild that speaks to a small wedge of the transference game. Matthew contemplates what it means, in both helpful and unhelpful ways, to be named as or reduced to “cis white men”, and how important issues can get lost in the dead zone between culture wars and cults.Both conspirituality and social media influence are driven by the hot take, the keyword, the avatar, and the speed of emotional reactivity. And cults are glued together by intense, non-negotiable emotional demands on participants. So far we’ve shown how all of these elements degrade our chances to evaluate evidence and resist being conned by charismatics or cult leaders. Our hope is that we contribute to a slower and open-ended exploration of how to balance the rhetoric of social change with the nuance of interpersonal empathy.In the Ticker, Derek looks at the retraction crisis plaguing scientific research. Julian watches Lil Nas X lap-dance through the MAGA homo-pocalypse. Matthew looks at a new cult scheme for recruiting anti-vaxxers, while the Jab examines the conspiritualist love of contrarian experts with scientific credentials but no evidence for their claims.Show NotesLil Nas X’s ‘Satan Shoes’ trolled some Christians. But ‘Montero’ is about more than that.Lil Nas X’s unofficial ‘Satan’ Nikes containing human blood sell out in under a minuteLong-retracted papers are still cited in major journalsRetracting publications doesn’t stop them from influencing scienceThe ex-Pfizer scientist who became an anti-vax heroA rare clotting disorder may cloud the world’s hopes for AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccineMarketplace -- -- --Support us on PatreonPre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | JulianOriginal music by EarthRise SoundSystem Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

1 Huhti 20211h 36min

Social psychologists and evolutionary psychologists have been studying the origins, neural networks, and role of intuition for decades. Wellness influencers cling to the belief that intuition is a mystical force. Derek looks at the research while celebrating the importance of this hard-won skill. -- -- --Support us on PatreonPre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | JulianOriginal music by EarthRise SoundSystem Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

29 Maalis 20213min

It was inevitable: QAnon has stormed HBO. Less inevitably, Conspirituality Podcast has been invited to an academic conference Down Under. In this episode, we’ll review how the first two episodes of Cullen Hoback’s “Into the Storm” lands, and wonder about what happens when conspiracy movements come under big-screen and academic scrutiny.Cullen embedded within the labyrinthine Q-world for almost four years. He globetrotted, gaining incredible access to a network of social avoidants and keyboard warriors. His sympathy is both touching and problematic. Our own embedding in the wellness world — sixty years between the three of us — hasn’t been quite so weird or dangerous. But it does raise a similar question: how clearly can we see the conspirituality of the world we’ve worked in for so long? As Cullen tries to draw out the humanity and intentionality of the QAnons, how are we understanding — or missing — our own subjects? Then there’s the question of impact. Will America understand itself more clearly after Cullen’s work? And where will the scholarship on conspirituality go after we dump our research on that conference table?In the Ticker this week, we review the new Lululemon mat, report on how Imran Ahmed’s team at the CCDH identified the social media Disinformation Dozen and succeeded in partially deplatforming conspiritualist power-couple Sayer Ji and Kelly Brogan. In the Jab, we’ll be looking at the woes of Astrazeneca Covid vaccine as they approach applying for FDA approval.Show NotesLululemon gives the yoga mat a clever makeoverLavrence and Lozanski on Lululemon’s neoliberal schtickWorkers making £88 Lululemon leggings claim they are beatenCCDH’s “Disinformation Dozen” ReportMatthew’s thread on Zen and the Art of the Q-dropOn Psychological & Influence Ops in the Info Age: Q in the Crosshairs (CW: disinformation site)Hyperobjects: ‘A reckoning for our species’: the philosopher prophet of the AnthropoceneFirst we take Deakin, then we take Berlin -- -- --Support us on PatreonPre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | JulianOriginal music by EarthRise SoundSystem Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

26 Maalis 20211h 23min

Julian recounts the wild and touching journey of four close friends in a self-directed spiritual group therapy session—super high on Ecstasy.Content Warning: this story includes accounts of traumatic events. -- -- --Support us on PatreonPre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | JulianOriginal music by EarthRise SoundSystem Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

22 Maalis 20217min

Back in December, a certified anesthesiologist named Dr. Madhava Setty posted a long critique of our podcast to the New Age website Collective Evolution. While cordial and apparently well-meaning, Setty’s essay failed to quote a single episode. Setty filled in his own blanks with outright misrepresentations, leading with: “Matthew, Derek and Julian… assume that there are no large conspiracies in play in our world at this time. To state it flatly, to them the idea of a large conspiracy is so preposterous that they cannot even see that they are making an assumption when dismissing the possibility.”There’s no planet on which any of our episodes have said anything of the kind. In fact, we’ve repeatedly affirmed the opposite: that conspiracy theories and conspiritualists that monetize them exist because real conspiracies traumatize people. Tuskegee happened. MKUltra was real. #savethechildren took hold in part because Jeffery Epstein’s network has not yet been fully understood or prosecuted.Setty is so well-mannered and convincing, however, that New Age influencers who might be feeling a little defensive about how the yoga and wellness world has shown its ass in 2020 have welcomed his dulcet tones with open arms. In one appearance, he guested on J. Brown’s Yoga Talks podcast, and provided a master class on how to lead an anxious and altruistic yoga devotee into conspirituality. We didn’t respond to Setty’s initial essay because there was nothing to respond to: he didn’t offer any data. But now we think it’s worth examining in detail how, in real time — and before he winds up on Joe Rogan — he seductively spins together theories about divine consciousness, 9/11, COVID, and how everything is not as it seems.In the Jab, Julian reviews the scare-mongering of the newest seemingly-qualified anti-vax doc, Geert Vanden Bossche. In the Ticker, Derek looks at the empty religions of Instagram and the truth seekers of tomorrow—and today.Show NotesWho is Geert Vanden Bossche?Dr. Mobeen Syed on Vanden Bossche.Dr. Zubin Damania on Vanden Bossche.America Without GodThe Empty Religions of InstagramThe Truth Seekers Are ComingMadhava Setty distorts our podcast contentMadhava Setty redpills J Brown i -- -- --Support us on PatreonPre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | JulianOriginal music by EarthRise SoundSystem Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

19 Maalis 20211h 35min

This episode follows up on earlier discussions on the podcast about how we manage privilege. Our exploration of cancel culture — specifically that part of it that is really a form of horizontal violence — isn’t motivated by any shift to the right, but by a desire to unpack the rhetoric, jargon, and performative behaviours, that, so often in the reductive rhythm of social media, serve to shut down learning, and polarize progressives that might otherwise work together.Here, Matthew focuses on how a rhetorical device in social justice relates to our project: what it means, in both helpful and unhelpful ways, to be named as or reduced to “cis white men”.Reduction and essentialism are key aspects of the meme-ification of our politics, and potent weapons in the arsenal of conspirituality. None of the influencers we study on this podcast would have gained their social power without labelling and essentializing their opponents in black-and-white terms, without taking black-and-white positions on things like vaccines, big Pharma, and whether or not a person is “awake”.Both conspirituality and social media influence are driven by the tag, the hot take, the keyword, the avatar, and the speed of emotional reactivity. And cults are glued together by intense, non-negotiable emotional demands on participants. So far we’ve shown how all of these elements degrade our chances to evaluate evidence and resist being conned by charismatics or cult leaders. Our hope is that we contribute to a slower and open-ended exploration of how to balance the rhetoric of crucial social change with the nuance of interpersonal empathy.Show NotesContraPoints on Cancelling Robin diAngelo defining “white fragility"“Peggy McIntosh’s White Privilege Knapsack“That time I didn’t get shotMinimization as a patriarchal reflexCedric Michael Williams on DiAngelo Daniel Bergner on DiAngelo Tada Hozumi, Selfish ActivistLog the Fuck Off, Jacobin -- -- --Support us on PatreonPre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | JulianOriginal music by EarthRise SoundSystem Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

15 Maalis 20218min

Imagine that you’re 25 years old. You grew up Irish, gay, and online. When the Orlando Pulse massacre explodes, you go to YouTube for the news. You watch Milo Yiannopolous and Gavin McInnes fake-kiss in front of the police-taped club and say that the Muslims are coming to kill all gay people. YouTube’s algorithm spins you downward into anti-Islamic content. Before long, you’ve left your marketing job with a mission: to make slick propaganda videos for some of the most despicable alt-right ghouls on the planet. You believe they’ll stand up for you.How did you get here at such a young age? What does it feel like? If you have a change of heart, if you want to fight back against your old life and its consequences, who will believe you? Should they believe you? How will you help them believe you?Today Matthew asks Caolan Robertson these difficult questions. After years of being the PR man for people like Tommy Robinson and Laura Southern, Robertson has shaken it off and started to collaborate with other ex-alt-right members on a deradicalization project called Future Freedom.In the Ticker, Julian reports on the new QAnon variant infecting telegram, Sabmyk. Matthew reviews how Christiane Northrup and a Gen Z priestess in a Greek eco-fascist group flip their positive orientalism on its head to diss the Dalai Lama for getting vaccinated. Derek looks at one of the strangest grifts around: pet psychics.Show NotesWhat Do Dogs Really Think? Pet Psychics Are Standing ByThe Sabmyk Network: How a mysterious disinformation network is hijacking QAnon – HOPE not hateWhat is Sabmyk? QAnon Followers Targeted By New Messianic MythologyAlso: QAnon was big in IranThe Dalai Lama Gets A COVID-19 Shot And Urges Others To Get VaccinatedAeifaron on InstagramSofia Katsaiti aka Sofia Tara on Instagram is very worried about the Dalai Lama’s vaccineAeifaron looks like a totally normal eco-fascist groupPfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine neutralizes Brazil variant in lab studyFuture Freedom project on -- -- --Support us on PatreonPre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | JulianOriginal music by EarthRise SoundSystem Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

11 Maalis 20212h 19min