Conspirituality

If conspirituality names the ways religion and spirituality are weaponized to justify power, prospirituality points to religious traditions doing the opposite: grounding resistance, ethical clarity, and solidarity in moments of crisis. 

So: is there a growing prospirituality response to fascism, genocide, climate collapse, and AI-driven labor precarity? Matthew argues that yeah, there’s some good news. 

In Israel, scripture has been mobilized by political and religious leaders to sacralize violence in Gaza. But there’s also a surge of Jewish religious resistance among U.S. rabbis and Peter Beinart’s On Being Jewish After Gaza sets a new landmark of reckoning.

Mona Haydar’s rapping and chaplaincy models a form of Muslim spirituality that is feminist, anti-genocide, and rooted in mutual aid, while resisting both Islamophobia and liberal domestication. 

Then there’s Pope Leo’s escalating critiques of U.S. immigration policy and his renewed emphasis on liberation theology.

Show Notes

Dark Mirror: A Torah View of Revenge, and its Reflection in Israeli Media During Operation Iron Swords

Peter Beinart, “I No Longer Believe in a Jewish State,” The New York Times

Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza by Peter Beinart: 9780593803899 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

Even if you hate it- I still wrap my hijab — Haydar

Mona Haydar: Ask a Muslim Program Fights Prejudice

Conservative Muslims and Islamophobes Have One Thing in Common: Hating Mona Haydar 

Pope Leo replaces New York's Cardinal Dolan in shake-up of US Church | Reuters 

New archbishop ‘committed’ to immigration issues, accountability on abuse — and staying a Cubs fan 

Pope’s naming of New York archbishop signals continued challenge to Trump on immigration

Pope Leo's new US bishops are critics of Trump's migrant crackdown | Reuters  

Pope Leo calls for Venezuela to remain an independent country | Reuters 

Pope Leo says Trump administration 'extremely disrespectful' to migrants | Reuters 
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Noelle Cook’s The Conspiracists: Women, Extremism, and the Lure of Belonging is the first ethnography of conspirituality, and it comes via someone who was able to really embed themselves in a volatile culture and find its emotional logic. She’s our guest today.

Cook focuses on the travails of two middle-aged women following the January 6 Capitol riot. By spending years befriending and talking with Tammy Butry and Yvonne St. Cyr, Cook is able to document the impacts of childhood trauma and systemic neglect—as well as diverse personality quirks—that can drive folks toward QAnon. 

They are starseeds. They are mama bears. They are on a divine mission to destroy the matrix and usher in the Great Awakening. For them, the algorithms were oracles, reinforcing isolation and radicalization by providing a sense of purpose to the purposeless, and visibility to the invisible. Cook has not written a book for answers, but a book filled with the next questions worth grappling with as we realize how deeply wounded some recruits to fascism are.

Show Notes

The Hottest Spot for Sunday Church Is a MAGA Dive Bar

The Conspiracists: Women, Extremism, and the Lure of Belonging
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In 1953 the CIA and MI6 participated in a coup d’etat in Iran. That true sentence (and what usually follows) can create an oversimplified distortion of history—and present. But Iran is in the news again with the biggest protests since the 1979 Islamic Revolution bringing millions to the streets. The regime unsurprisingly cracked down hard: at least 2,700 protesters have been killed and 18,000 arrested.

Though the initial impetus was economic, these are the latest in a wave of growing uprisings in Iran against the far-right theocratic authoritarian government—especially its treatment of women. How did we get here? What happened in 1953? Isn’t this all just about oil anyway? Was the 1979 revolution really about religion? Weren’t there Communists involved? Does all the turmoil in this region trace back to Western colonial imperialism?

Julian explores the tangled threads of oil, empire, and religion.

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Whole milk is back! The war on protein is over! Mainline meat!

Derek investigates the new inverted pyramid and everything lacking in the new dietary guidelines.

Show Notes

The New Dietary Guidelines and the “Flipped Pyramid”

Several of Kennedy’s Dietary Advisers Have Ties to Meat and Dairy Interests

Carotenoid bioavailability is higher from salads ingested with full-fat than with fat-reduced salad dressings as measured with electrochemical detection

Human health effects of conjugated linoleic acid from milk and supplements

Enhancing the fatty acid profile of milk through forage-based rations, with nutrition modeling of diet outcomes

Dietary Fats and Cardiovascular Disease: A Presidential Advisory From the American Heart Association

Reduction in saturated fat intake for cardiovascular disease

Effect of Interventions Aimed at Reducing or Modifying Saturated Fat Intake on Cholesterol, Mortality, and Major Cardiovascular Events : A Risk Stratified Systematic Review of Randomized Trials

Omega-6 fats for the primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease

Butter and Plant-Based Oils Intake and Mortality
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“Train your mind gently, not to deny what is hard, but to see what is still good” implores the monk sharing spiritual messages to his 2.5 million Instagram followers. Clad in an orange robe—well, sometimes a blue robe, sometimes grey or yellow—the little man of unknown descent speaks knowledge from a temple constructed from just about every Asian country imaginable. As it turns out, the creators of the AI-generated Yang Mun are…Israeli tech bros?

Turns out AI isn’t just for spirituality. There’s an entire industry of health slopfluencers pushing untested supplements, as Derek covers before Matthew breaks down the AI Orientalism of Yang Mun.

First, Julian touches on the 5th anniversary of the Jan 6 riots, and all the propaganda that’s emerged in its wake.

Show Notes

The Promise of Health Chatbots Has Already Failed

Yang Mun on Instagram

LinktreeMcMindfulness: how capitalism hijacked the Buddhist teaching of mindfulness

Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation

GigaChad | Know Your Meme

Jean Baudrillard - Simulacra and Simulation
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