109. Who’s Afraid of Teal Swan? (w/Jon Kasbe)

"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

RFK Jr is one of the greatest perpetrators of a firehose of falsehoods that we’ve ever covered. The stakes were raised when he was installed as head of America’s public health system. A new longform article in The Atlantic offers an inside look at the history and current thinking of this man, as insightful for what it offers as telling for what it omits. We discuss the role of journalism in an age defined by propaganda. Show Notes Scoop: The new #2 at CDC is a top ivermectin prescriber who ended Louisiana’s vaccine-promotion media campaigns Doctor Critical of Vaccines Quietly Appointed as C.D.C.’s Second in Command CDC Quietly Turned Off Its Vaccine Search Tool. It’s Not Clear When It’s Coming Back. The Olivia Nuzzi and RFK Jr. Affair Is Messier Than We Ever Could Have Imagined RFK Jr. and the Inexplicable Appeal of Repulsive Men RFK Jr. is overhauling the program that helps preserve Americans' access to vaccines Why Is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. So Convinced He’s Right? Nature: Pertussis, A Tale of Two Vaccines Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

4 Des 1h 8min

Listen to the full episode. With the CDC recently updating its website with anti-vax propaganda under the direction of RFK Jr, disgraced and disbarred physician, Andrew Wakefield, is back in the news. In fact, Senator Ron Johnson even tweeted out that he deserves an apology. He must be relying on short attention spans, given all the ways Wakefield manipulated the “study” that showed a link between vaccines and autism—even though the study itself found no such proof. Derek revisits the retracted 1998 study, as well as shows just how much proof exists to the contrary of the CDC’s new page. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

1 Des 5min

Derek and Julian survey all of the incredible, life-changing deals going down this weekend in Wellnesslandia. Show Notes Influencers made millions pushing ‘wild’ births – now the Free Birth Society is linked to baby deaths around the world Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

29 Nov 34min

In the wildly popular biohacking and longevity space, Peter Attia is often cited as one of the leading luminaries. His straightforward, science-backed approach seems to cut through the noise in a space dominated by fit bros and wellness grifters who always seem to have a product to sell. But the man who dropped out of residency at Johns Hopkins to found a private clinic focused on longevity has his share of critics, who are a bit suspicious about his self-experimentations—and the millions he makes counseling Silicon Valley insiders about experimental medicine. This week we take a look at longevity broadly and Attia specifically. Derek kicks off the episode with a recap of his time at Eudemonia Summit, where, among other things, he got to debate another leading biohacker, Dave Asprey, about seed oils. As it turns out, longevity was the top buzzword there as well. I Went to Eudemonia – a Wellness Summit with the Industry's Top Thought Leaders – Here's What It Was Like Outlive: A Critical Review  A Review of OUTLIVE Critiquing Peter Attia Andrew Huberman and Peter Attia: Self-enhancement, supplements & doughnuts? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

27 Nov 1h 11min

This bonus episode is Part 2 of Graeber vs Bannon, Anarchism vs Leninism.  I start in the 1870s with Marx and Bakunin fighting over the joys and traumas of the Paris Commune. Marx sees it as an imperfect but historic prototype of a workers’ transitional state, cut down before it could consolidate power. Bakunin reads it as a betrayal of anarchist principles — too willing to replicate the machinery it meant to overthrow. Out of that conflict comes a rift that still haunts us: should revolution be disciplined, organized, and strategic, or spontaneous, horizontal, and permanently suspicious of institutions? I explore David Graeber as a hopeful modern anarchist, highlighting his idea of “everyday communism”—the mutual aid and cooperation we already practice—and his vision of Occupy as a revelation of our capacity to act as if we’re free. I contrast this with Marxist-Leninist critiques: the exhaustion of consensus, obstructionism, spectacle without strategy, and the refusal to make demands. A story about my late friend Michael Stone at an Occupy “mic check” shows how openness can invite opportunism. Finally, I contrast No King’s vagueness with MAGA’s fusion of mystical energy and disciplined technocracy—QAnon shamans backed by P2025 architects, vibes condensed to machinery. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

24 Nov 4min

In this first of a two-part series, I dig into a century-long debate within revolutionary politics—one that now shapes the fault lines between MAGA authoritarianism and the fragmented resistance against it.  How did the American far right end up using Leninist strategy more effectively than the American left? And what does that say about our own movements—our blind spots, our strengths, and inherited illusions? In 2013, Steve Bannon called himself a Leninist. In 2016, he openly called for the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” In Trump 2.0, he’s been an ideological whip for the  vanguardism of Project 2025. If Bannon has a foil, it was the late anthropologist David Graeber—Occupy organizer, anarchist, and author of The Dawn of Everything—who championed prefigurative politics and rejected the idea that the state could ever be an instrument of liberation. Drawing from Vincent Bevins’ If We Burn, I explore why a decade of globally interconnected mass movements failed to build lasting power—and how the right learned from their mistakes. We revisit January 6 through the lens of conspirituality influencers, we go to São Paulo to watch anarchist punk collectives lose the narrative to organized right-wing actors, and we return to Occupy to understand the spiritual hopes and organizational gaps that still shape protest culture today. Part 2 will dig deeper into Graeber’s legacy, the theological undertow of spontaneity vs. structure, and what younger activists may inherit if we don’t learn from the last half-century of revolt and repression. NOTE: Full citations are available on the episode page at https://www.conspirituality.net/. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

22 Nov 43min

In 1954 a doomsday alien cult headed up by Chicagoland housewife Dorothy Martin was waiting for the cataclysmic flood that would herald the arrival of spaceships to transport her and her followers to safety. When the hour came and went and nothing happened, she and her followers made up a Bible’s worth of excuses, saying that the group's penitence and piety had saved them, and so the failure of the prophecy was actually a validation of their new religion. And even though its central claim had been refuted, they accelerated their efforts to proselytize and convert new followers.  This is the story of the 1956 classic study, When Prophecy Fails, by Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter. Problem is—this didn't really happen. At least not that way. As our guest this week Thomas Kelly points out from his investigation of newly unsealed archival materials, the psychologists not only embedded themselves in Martin's cult in a way that provoked their most irrational statements, they fudged the outcome of Martin story to suit their virally popular new theory of cognitive dissonance.  Show Notes Debunking “When Prophecy Fails” - Kelly - 2026 - Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences Failed Prophecies Are Fatal | International Journal for the Study of New Religions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

20 Nov 1h 12min