Dismantling New Age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy-mad yogis. At best, the conspirituality movement attacks public health efforts in times of crisis. At worst, it fronts and recruits for the fever-dream of QAnon. As the alt-right and New Age horseshoe toward each other in a blur of disinformation, clear discourse, and good intentions get smothered. Charismatic influencers exploit their followers by co-opting conspiracy theories on a spectrum of intensity ranging from vaccines to ch ...
…
continue reading
Capitalist Exploits Podcasts
Post-Deleuzian political thinking as an instrument of combat. Unapologetically queer, feminist, anti-capitalist, and abolitionist.
…
continue reading
The author, Ian MacDonald, narrates the contents of his three novels. The first novel to be narrated by Ian is "BEWARE THE ABANDONED". It follows a discarded, orphaned boy from Los Angeles who is enlisted by a non-religious capitalist sect in New Mexico. Their objective is to exploit gifted street children for the rest of their lives by turning them into wealthy entrepreneurs. The story moves from Paris to Las Vegas and Delaware with the FBI and the Mafia in hot pursuit. The three murders we ...
…
continue reading
Become a Paid Subscriber for EARLY access to episodes and EXTRA content: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/endofsport/subscribe In The End of Sport, academics Derek Silva, Johanna Mellis, and Nathan Kalman-Lamb provide critical commentary, analysis, and interviews on sport and society. The End of Sport Podcast raises questions about the role of sport in our daily lives and whether or not we can reimagine sport and sporting cultures in the future.
…
continue reading
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. C…
…
continue reading
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 Doc…
…
continue reading
1
288: Conspirituality Live with Dr Jessica Knurick
1:06:22
1:06:22
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
1:06:22Derek 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 a…
…
continue reading
1
Bonus Sample: Marx’s “Atheism” vs. the Capitalist Religion of Everyday Life
5:31
5:31
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
5:31Listen 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 — inequ…
…
continue reading
1
Brief: Demonic Karl Marx ATTACKS Private Property and DESTROYS Religion
40:49
40:49
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
40:49Matthew 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 P…
…
continue reading
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 w…
…
continue reading
1
Bonus Sample: “Joe Rogan of The Left” Glazes China
5:58
5:58
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
5:58Listen 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 whi…
…
continue reading
1
Brief: Have Tech Bros Killed Psychedelics?
28:41
28:41
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
28:41"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 Si…
…
continue reading
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 …
…
continue reading
1
Bonus Sample: How Does Andrew Wakefield Keep Getting Resurrected?
5:53
5:53
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
5:53Listen 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 …
…
continue reading
1
Brief: Black Friday’s Wellness Extravaganza
34:24
34:24
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
34:24Derek 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…
…
continue reading
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 …
…
continue reading
1
Bonus Sample: Graeber vs Bannon, Anarchism vs Leninism (Part 2)
4:49
4:49
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
4:49This 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 pr…
…
continue reading
1
Brief: Graeber vs Bannon, Anarchism vs Leninism (Part 1)
43:28
43:28
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
43:28In 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 mov…
…
continue reading
1
284: When Prophecy-Science Fails (w/Thomas Kelly)
1:12:12
1:12:12
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
1:12:12In 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 …
…
continue reading
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 ki…
…
continue reading
1
Brief: Does Calley Means Get Anything Right?
28:13
28:13
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
28:13RFK 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 Grea…
…
continue reading
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 Jorda…
…
continue reading
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. …
…
continue reading
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, ob…
…
continue reading
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 th…
…
continue reading
1
Bonus Sample: US v. Liberation Theology (Part 2)
5:28
5:28
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
5:28Listen 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 …
…
continue reading
1
Brief: US v. Liberation Theology (Part 1)
39:11
39:11
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
39:11This 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 ins…
…
continue reading
“Meet the man who built RFK Jr’s kitchen cabinet” goes the title of a recent investigative article in Politico. Yet that man, Jeffrey Tucker, is much more than that. In fact, you can make the case, as Politico does, that Tucker is one of the main driving forces behind MAHA. We’ve covered Tucker before on this podcast, including two previous intervi…
…
continue reading
1
Bonus Sample: Chatbot Awakening to Love and Enlightenment!
6:07
6:07
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
6:07Earlier this year, a spate of news stories told of chatbot users travelling through the looking-glass right into Conspirituality. Paranoid conspiracies, spiritual awakenings, even falling head-over-heels in love with the simulated personalities of large language models like ChatGPT. Could AI have finally crossed the threshold into autonomous sentie…
…
continue reading