Conspirituality

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The irreplaceable Dolly Parton died on August 25 after a brief battle with cancer. Social media was filled with loving tributes to an incredible artist and devoted philanthropist. A minority also felt the need to use her death to platform their own issues, including a cohort common on our beat: the anti-vaxxers.

We’re going to cover that. But we’re also going to reflect on Parton’s incredible life, because she spent so much of it uplifting others.

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There’s a lot going on when Hasan Piker wears a Zhongshan suit and praises Maoism. Matthew uses Wendy Brown's 1999 essay "Resisting Left Melancholy", which cites Walter Benjamin, Freud, and Stuart Hall to argue that campist rhetoric on the left, whether earnest or ironic, can signal unmourned loss more than conviction, and that nostalgic attachments to revolutionary pasts can choke off engagement with present possibility.

Brown argues that left melancholy displaces its grief over capital’s triumphs onto scapegoats (identity politics, postmodernism). Matthew adds that it functions as an affective membership fee within online left communities. This might account for why liberals sense that they're sometimes being asked to join in choreographies of sadness rather than build coalitions in the present.

Drawing on Hall's account of Thatcher's mastery of political language, and closing with reflections from Matthew's years as a church organist playing nearly 1000 funerals, the episode asks what it would actually mean for the left to mourn its losses instead of reenacting them — and how mourning might be a necessary revolutionary act.
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During James Arthur Ray’s 2009 Spiritual Warrior retreat in Sedona, the self-proclaimed spiritual teacher exhorted participants to “play full-on” in order to overcome their limiting beliefs and fear of death. After having their heads shaved and enduring a gruelling 36-hour “vision quest,” Ray packed the spiritual warriors into a makeshift “sweat lodge,” where temperatures reached 120 degrees.

Three people died. Eighteen were hospitalized. Ray fled the scene, taking cover at a nearby luxury resort to promote his next event. After spending just two years in jail, he went right back to presenting himself as a spiritual guide and transformational seminar leader.

Journalist and professor emeritus at Northern Arizona University, Annette McGivney joins Julian to discuss her new book, Plastic Shaman: The True Story of a Deadly Self-Help Retreat and America’s Misguided Quest for Wellness.

Show Notes

Annette McGivney Bio

Plastic Shaman is available September 15th through Torrey House Press
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Someday in the future, Joe Rogan may ask Jamie to be his mirror, and facilitate the next and most important psychedelic experience of his life: a walkthrough of his craven MAGA and MAHA boosterism, and what it said about his soul. On his ayahuasca trip, Anthony Fauci will come to him in the gown of the Angel Gabriel and offer him penance but also forgiveness— and take his microphone away.

Not today, folks. We only get to reflect on Rogan making the next-most intimate discovery: that Trump is a grifter, so adept at grifting he fooled all the grifters. Is he defecting? What would that really mean?

Show Notes

Inside Ben Shapiro’s MAGA Meltdown

The MAGA Media-Machine is Fracturing

RFK Jr. Ripped by MAHA Base After Backing Trump's Betrayal

MAHA feels betrayed by RFK Jr. reversal on glyphosate

Meatheads Are Hijacking America: Vegans feel betrayed by RFK Jr.'s beef boosting

RFK Jr. Is Breaking His Two Big Promises to MAHA Diehards

New CDC director pledges to ‘speak truth’ about science

Health secretary RFK Jr. endorses the MMR vaccine — stoking fury among his supporters

Nicole Shanahan Warns Someone Is "Controlling" RFK Jr.

'Crunchy moms' come to blows over Trump's surgeon general picks

Backlash from MAHA influencers and podcasters over glyphosate

'I've never felt so betrayed': MAHA disillusionment hits high gear

RFK Jr. tells Joe Rogan he was not 'particularly happy' with Trump's glyphosate order

RFK Jr. Calls Fake MAHA Report Citations a 'Mistake'
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Presidential hopeful Robert F Kennedy Jr held a “health policy roundtable” on Rumble on June 27, 2023, just as he was shoring up support from a band of contrarian doctors, anti-vax activists, and wellness influencers. During the conversation, he made 15 promises if he was elected president.

While his run ended the following summer, 14 of those promises dealt with health—all within his reach as HHS Secretary. Derek looks back at the conversation to see how he scored.
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