Listen to the full episode Three events converge—everything is connected.  Steven Spielberg releases his new sci-fi film Disclosure Day The American government’s UAP Disclosure Act drops three waves of declassified UFO documents Well-known 2012 prophecy-popularizer, Disclosure movement advocate, and History Channel’s Ancient Aliens host, David Wilcock, tragically ends his own life In the 16th installment of his Roots of Conspirituality series, Julian looks at the how everything inevitably led to this:  How Spielberg got alien-pilled into being a true believer How 2012 prophecy had to end with David Wilcock holding a gun How the MAGA conspiracy chasers now find themselves standing on the steps beside David Grusch as he tells the media about non-human biologics and alien plasmoids Deeper than that, Julian asks if perhaps we are re-enacting a pattern from the mid to late 1800s, when social upheaval in America’s Northeast led to new religions, failed prophecies, the rise and fall of charismatic heroes, and good people quit booze but got intoxicated on some quite bizarre beliefs.  Correction: This recording states that David Grusch lost his security clearance. That is incorrect. In The Intercept article, Ken Klippenstein wondered how he was able to keep his security clearance after his psychiatric holds. Grusch left his job to become a whistleblower.  Show Notes White House Goes All In On UAP Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“I do not love America, and never have, especially now.” With an opening sentence like that, you know you’re in for a ride, and Eddie Glaude Jr does not disappoint. Derek discusses touch points from America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation's Anniversaries, with a slight diversion into the surging online activism that purports to be about justice for all yet time and again refuses to acknowledge race as a foundation of our distress. Show Notes America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation's Anniversaries Author Talk: Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. — America, U.S.A. - with Jonathan Capehart An African-Centered Critique of Marx’s Logic The war against ‘woke’ could end US science as we know it Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wellness for everyone. That’s how virtually every wellness event pitches their offering. If the everyman and woman did these practices or ingested these products or adopted these mindsets, we’d all be better off as a species. Yet what happens when the wellness event in question is hosted in an expensive resort town on the French Riviera and features top-tier celebrities like Oprah Winfrey speaking to guests who paid thousands of dollars to attend? Does it really remain “for everyone?” Show Notes The Impact of the TOMS Shoe Donation Program in Rural El Salvador Shoeing the Children Is Blake Mycoskie of TOMS an Evangelical Do in-kind transfers damage local markets? The case of TOMS shoe donations in El Salvador Instagram — @millennial.therapist It's On Me Sara Kuburic official site Notes From My Phone Alfried Längle's website  Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

JD Vance calls Catholic Social Teaching (CST) a "fully integrated theory of a good human life" — and he's not wrong that it sounds good. So how’s he going to weaponize it? Matthew traces why CST's moral critique of capitalism, innovated by Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum (1891), is tailor-made for Vance's political project. CST may be sincere about human dignity, but it actively suppresses structural analysis, while opening two dangerous doors of moralism: scapegoating powerful enemies above, and blaming the poor for their own immiseration below.  Show Notes Rerum Novarum, Leo XIII (1891) Humanum Genus, Leo XIII (1884) Purusha Sukta, Rigveda 10.90 B.R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste (1936) JD Vance, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith David Kertzer, The Popes Against the Jews Canadian Food for Children Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Has former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s career been scripted and controlled by the strange leader of a breakaway Hare Krishna group? Chris Butler formed the Science of Identity organization in the seventies. Gabbard’s parents joined when she was two years old. Gabbard claims Butler has no influence on her political life, yet bombshell reporting by the Washington Post piece unearths 25,000 leaked documents to reveal that her guru may have been pulling the strings all along. The kicker? Gabbard resigned two days after journalist Jon Swaine let her team know the article would be published. Meanwhile, another cult-leader story concerns American-born Abdullah Hashem. Claiming to be the “true and only legitimate pope” (as well as successor of Jesus, Saint Peter, and Mohammed), Hashem and 150 followers took over a former orphanage in England—and have been building a significant online following ever since. On April 29, hundreds of police raided Hashem’s headquarters, charging the holy man and eight others with human trafficking, sex crimes, and forced marriage. This is the story of how these two cult operators are influencing minds across the pond. Show Notes British Police Raid Abdullah Hashem’s Compound Slavery and Trafficking Risk Orders Granted in AROPL Case Religious Sect Immigration Visas Investigated Patreon Bonus: The New Age Muslim Apocalyptic Prophet WaPo Piece on Tulsi Gabbard’s Mysterious Guru’s Influence on her Political Career Hare Krishna Guru Sought Political Power Starting in the 1970s New Yorker: What Does Tulsi Gabbard Believe? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Recent reporting in the Washington Post found that Tulsi Gabbard has been taking policy guidance from her guru. We revisit our episode from May 2023, where we lay out Gabbard's lifelong involvement in this cult: What does it mean for a prominent American politician to come into power as the sleeper cell of an eccentric Hindu-American cult? Does she act independently, or has her God-man got her on speed-dial? Can she bridge the divide between left and right with the radiant glow of Krishna consciousness? Joining us today to help answer these questions is Nitai Joseph. He shares some heritage with Gabbard, because he also grew up in a Hare Krishna sect. He holds an MSc. in the Psychology of Coercive Control and has worked across a range of issues connected to ideology and manipulation, including cultic awareness, child sexual abuse prevention, adverse meditation experiences, and organizational ethics and accountability.  Show Notes Tulsi Gabbard, her guru and the mysterious messages that helped shape her political career Gopala Govinda Rama Chant by Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa Chris Butler QAnon Anonymous Episode 211: Tulsi Gabbard P1 (The Cult) feat Mike Prysner QAnon Anonymous Episode 212: Tulsi Gabbard P2 (The Fascist Turn) feat Mike Prysner  Tulsi Gabbard Had a Very Strange Childhood What Does Tulsi Gabbard Believe? | The New Yorker Chris Butler Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa: on “freedom” An Insiders Perspective on Tulsi Gabbard and her Guru | by Lalita | Medium  Tulsi Gabbard 2016 Janmashtami Message  ISKCON Abuse Timeline Definition of Betrayal Trauma Theory Archived ex-Hare Krishna message board Nitai can be reached via LinkedIn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the gases slowly leak from Trump’s orifices and IV holes, the bright flame of his inspiration to MAGA Christians is fading. Did he drain the swamp? Prosecute the pedophiles? Save the Holy Land? Lower gas prices? Give all the grill dads better health care? What was all the speaking in tongues for? JD Vance has an answer for the MAGA faithful: another memoir, another rebrand that turns to the device that made Hillbilly Elegy a smash hit, and the worst book ever: the gall to turn his personal and familial despair into the diagnosis of an entire culture, in Appalachia.  With Communion: Finding my Way back to Faith, Vance plays the same narcissistic trick: turning his lifelong journey through rightwing American Chrisitianity—with a short and shameful detour into New Atheism—to land in the Catholic faith of Leonard Leo, sketching out a redemption plan for every bro seeking their way home.  Show Notes Rerum Novarum (1891) — Pope Leo XIII Elizabeth Catte, What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia Appalachian Reckoning — Anthony Harkins and Meredith McCarroll, eds. Battle of Blair Mountain — West Virginia Encyclopedia Hurricane Helene federal aid gap — Associated Press PolitiFact — Springfield "Lie of the Year" 2024 Institut Montaigne — JD Vance analysis Randall Balmer, "The Real Origins of the Religious Right" — Politico Know Your Enemy podcast — episode on René Girard with John Ganz Laudato Si' — Pope Francis Magnifica Humanitas — Pope Leo XIV Mike Fox, "JD Vance's Memoir Communion Performs Catholicism for Evangelicals" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to the full episode RFK Jr has been one of the loudest champions of the Trump's work requirements for Medicaid and SNAP recipients. While he frames it in the language of health, he's really just reviving a generations-old argument first made by Ronald Reagan. Derek digs into the archival tapes to deliver the goods. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Matthew applies three interlocking frameworks to the conspirituality phenomenon—and to the podcast itself. Drawing on Jodi Dean's theory of neofeudalism, Yanis Varoufakis's technofeudalism, and McKenzie Wark's vectoralism, he argues that conspirituality is an epistemic crisis—a problem of bad information spreading through inadequately critical communities—but also a structural product of platform capitalism's feudal logic. Dean's four elements (parcellated sovereignty, new lords and serfs, hinterlandization, and catastrophic anxiety) explain why certain populations are rendered susceptible before they encounter any specific piece of misinformation. Varoufakis names the extraction mechanism as  cloud rent. Wark shows what this means for the producer: a hacker class worker who owns every tool except the vector that makes the work valuable.  Matthew then turns the analysis on himself, exploring what it means to have spent six years building critical content inside the infrastructure he is criticising. Show Notes Dean, Jodi. 'Neofeudalism: The End of Capitalism?' Los Angeles Review of Books, May 2020. Dean, Jodi. 'From Neoliberalism to Neofeudalism.' Emancipations, Vol. 3, Iss. 3, 2024. Dean, Jodi. 'Neofeudalism: The Messy Political Economy of Transitioning to Something Worse.' Emancipations, Vol. 4, Iss. 3, 2025. Dean, Jodi. Capital's Grave: Neofeudalism and the New Class Struggle. Verso, 2025. Dean, Jodi. 'Communism or Neo-Feudalism?' New Political Science, Vol. 42, No. 1, 2020. Varoufakis, Yanis. Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism. Bodley Head, 2023. Wark, McKenzie. Capital is Dead: Is This Something Worse? Verso, 2019. McIntyre, Lee. How to Talk to a Science Denier. MIT Press, 2021. Heron, Kai. 'Are We Witness to the Disintegration of Capital's Laws of Motion? A Review of Jodi Dean's Capital's Grave.' Emancipations, Vol. 4, Iss. 2, 2025. Gane, Nicholas. 'Capitalism is Capitalism, Not Technofeudalism.' Journal of Classical Sociology, 2024. James W. 'Worse than Dead: A Critical Response to McKenzie Wark.' Cosmonaut Magazine, October 2020. Freedom Socialist Party. 'Book Review: Techno-Feudalism: What Killed Capitalism.' Socialism.com, 2024. Beres, Derek, Matthew Remski, and Julian Walker. Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat. PublicAffairs, 2023. Wark, McKenzie. A Hacker Manifesto. Harvard University Press, 2004. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A decade ago, JP Sears built a large following poking fun at yogis and wellness types with his “ultra spiritual life” videos. Then Covid came and Sears took a hard right turn. In fact, he credits the pandemic with “opening his eyes” to many of the world’s problems—in his eyes, that means Anthony Fauci, vaccines, and transgender “ideology.” Sears is one of the very first people we covered on this podcast six years ago, and was one of the influencers we featured in our 2023 book about the wellness-to-right-wing radicalization pipeline. Turns out he’s turned again, this time into a flavor of Christian nationalism with an antisemitic bend. Lately, Sears has been pumping out tons of Israel commentary, even turning against his former favorite president, Donald Trump. In fact, a number of right-wing influencers have soured on Israel. Is Sears sniffing out opportunities again? How is he balancing legitimate critiques of the genocide with blatant antisemitic rhetoric? And how does he fit into the growing diagonalism occurring in the right-wing attention economy? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices