Conspirituality

About Conspirituality

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 child trafficking. In the process, spiritual beliefs that have nurtured creativity and meaning are transforming into memes of a quickly-globalizing paranoia. Conspirituality Podcast attempts to bring understanding to this landscape. A journalist, a cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic discuss the stories, cognitive dissonances, and cultic dynamics tearing through the yoga, wellness, and new spirituality worlds. Mainstream outlets have noticed the problem. We crowd-source, research, analyze, and dream answers to it.

Publisher

HJK

Category

science · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

14 May 2020

Latest episode

22 Jun 2026

Latest episodes

809 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   22 Jun 2026

   Bonus Sample: RFK Jr Reboots Reaganomics

   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

2. 

   20 Jun 2026

   Brief: Conspirituality Viewed Through Neofeudalism and Vectoralism

   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

3. 

   18 Jun 2026

   313: The Resurrection of JP Sears

   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