39: How to Talk about Conspiracy Theories (w/Anna Merlan)

Listen to the full episode 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 transferred the trademark to his anti-vax compatriot, Del Bigtree, before it was transferred again to former Kennedy security lead, Gavin de Becker. Currently being used by a variety of MAHA-based organizations, the opportunity to monetize MAHA, the brand, could be directly affected by Kennedy’s policies. Given how much MAHA leadership loathes social services, more health-based privatization could be on the horizon—just as Projected 2025 prescribed. Derek winds down the rabbit hole into the MAHA trademark. Show Notes MAKE AMERICA HEALTHY AGAIN - Trademark Details The MAHA Enterprise Explained Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

22 Des 8min

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 Julian discuss the debate, as well as the value of Jubilee in an oversaturated media environment. Show Notes 1 Doctor vs 20 RFK Jr. Supporters (ft Doctor Mike) Surrounded Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

20 Des 34min

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 "nutritionist" should be a protected term, and Jessica's possible political ambitions. Show Notes Dr Jessica Knurick on Substack | Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

18 Des 1h 6min

Listen to the full episode 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 essential way, but criticizing the conditions that make religion necessary as a consolation. The problem is not faith itself, but the suffering — inequality, exploitation, alienation — that gives rise to the instinct for spiritual escape.  Marx’s atheism was not a New Atheist-type negation but a theological critique — a way of revealing how capitalism itself can displace Christianity as a religion of profit, rent, and wages. According to liberation theologian Enrique Dussel, Marx frames money as a jealous god, capital as the Antichrist, and private property as original sin. No wonder he is eternally hated.  Full show notes at https://www.conspirituality.net/episodes/brief-demonic-karl-marx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

15 Des 5min

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, and a raft of Evangelical blowhards cast communism as satanic and civilization-ending, a narrative now accelerating through Trump-era rhetoric, and Project 2025.  Capital is difficult to rebut directly, so detractors often attack Marx himself, calling him godless or deranged. Jordan Peterson and Paul Kengor treat Marx’s horny gothic teenage poems as literal evidence of demonic influence—which is much more interesting to them than taking surplus value, alienation, or commodity fetishism seriously. But the OG distorter of Marxist economics is the Catholic Church, beginning with Pius IX, who Red-Scared the 19th C faithful with a now-famous trick: conflating personal property with bourgeois private property. Marx targeted only the latter — profit-generating property — which the Church depended on then and still does today. Full show notes at https://www.conspirituality.net/episodes/brief-demonic-karl-marx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

13 Des 40min

How does an elite Millennial politics reporter wind up having phone sex with and giving campaign advice to the 70-year-old emerging fascist she’s reporting on? Most of that should stay between Olivia Nuzzi and her therapist. What we do know is that American Canto, Nuzzi’s new book, is a memoir (or maybe novel) made for the conspirituality age, in which raging toxic roided-up hypocritical male charisma is always the center of attention. The domineering ghoul is the pole star of interest and fascination, always moving too fast and chaotically to understand—unless you know how fascism accelerates. We scavenge these pages for clues about Kennedy and how the hell this journalism disaster happened. Show Notes Zyn pouches and American Masculinity The Olivia Nuzzi Comeback Is Everything Wrong With Modern Media A Serious Journalism Scandal Hiding Inside a Frivolous Sexual One The Scandalous Rollout Was the Best Part of Olivia Nuzzi’s Memoir 119: We Are Slenderman (w/Kathleen Hale) The first-person industrial complex: How the harrowing personal essay took over the Internet. A Q&A with Olivia Nuzzi of New York magazine on her career, covering Trump and access journalism  Guests urged to be vaccinated at anti-vaxxer Robert F Kennedy Jr’s party Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

11 Des 58min

Listen to the full episode here Hasan Piker just spent two weeks in The People’s Republic of China. The famous streamer is often invoked as being a potential “Joe Rogan of The Left,” who might bring young voters, especially working class men, back into the Democratic Party.  But Piker’s livestreams from China raise controversial questions. Is he whitewashing Chinese human rights abuses? Was he paid by their government to propagandize his combined 5 million viewers? How else to explain first-class plane tickets, ultra-luxury hotel rooms, privileged access to forbidden Western social media, and carefully avoiding criticisms of the authoritarian state while waxing poetic about their country and Mao Zedong? Julian digs into Piker’s politics in the context of China’s tumultuous history. First stop: Tiananmen Square. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

8 Des 5min

"Immortality influencer" Bryan Johnson recently livestreamed his second-ever psilocybin trip "for science." But was it, really? Derek and Julian break down the performative nature of this stunt and discuss the growing right-wing influence on psychedelics culture. Show Notes Bryan Johnson Has Discovered Shrooms, and He Really Wants You to Know It Silicon Valley’s Man in the White House Is Benefiting Himself and His Friends How the Right Coopted Psychedelics Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

6 Des 28min