Conspirituality
Derek Beres, Matthew Remski, Julian Walker
- 58 minutes 10 seconds295: The Attia Files
Over 1,000 children and women were potentially victims of Jeffrey Epstein's trafficking and sexual abuse. It is not clear how deeply Peter Attia was enmeshed in Epstein's core activities, but we do know he belonged to an important tier of his operation: the influencer-celebrity-intelligentsia set that legitimized him as a sophisticate across a wide range of disciplines.
We revisit Attia in light of his 1,700+ appearances in the Epstein Files.
Show Notes
285: Can Peter Attia Live Forever?
Longevity guru Peter Attia keeps CBS News role despite showing up in Epstein files
Peter Attia, the Epstein Files and the Lie Propping Up Big Wellness
Bari Weiss Attempts to Get Past Her Rocky Start At CBS News
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12 February 2026, 11:00 am - 6 minutes 28 secondsBonus Sample: Armed Struggle
In the wake of ICE murders, some are calling for more protestors with guns, or at least to prepare to meet fire with fire. Julian examines the history of armed struggle in South Africa and Northern Ireland, as well as the arguments for nonviolent vs militant political movements.
Is there a way back from the turning point at which people recruit their friends and families into neighborhood militias, learn to kill soldiers and civilians in the name of a cause, and construct chains of command that justify executing informants and collaborators from within?
Does this actually work? And do we risk becoming the very monsters we are fighting in the process?
Show Notes
The Role of Violence in Nonviolent Struggles
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9 February 2026, 11:00 am - 23 minutes 24 secondsBrief: MAHA is a Supplements Grift
Two new MAHA-approved bills would force insurance companies to cover supplements and shield homeopathic manufacturers from any liability while allowing them to make more health claims. As Derek argues, this is what Kennedy has always been aiming for: shuffle as many alt-med products into circulation as possible while ensuring they don't need any of those pesky regulations pharmaceuticals must endure.
Show Notes
Supplements Are a $70 Billion Industry. RFK Jr. Is Good for Business.
RFK Jr.’s MAHA Movement Picks Up Steam State by State
With RFK Jr. in Charge, Supplement Makers See Chance To Cash In
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7 February 2026, 11:00 am - 1 hour 3 minutes294: ICE Resistance
Prior to last month’s killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, many white American citizens felt obligated to use their privilege to actively disrupt unjust ICE activities in their cities. But the stakes just got higher for everyone.
In the wake of these tragic deaths, we look at how the MAGA propaganda machine dehumanizes opposition and demands loyalists not trust the evidence of their own eyes and ears. In segment two, Matthew will look into how renegade religious leaders, then in segment three Derek discusses brave community organizers in Portland currently resisting ICE and the authoritarianism it advances.
Show Notes
Christians, Let’s Stop Abusing Romans 13
As a resident of Minnesota—Bishop Barron
Bishop Barron's tendentious attack on Mayor Mamdani distorts doctrine | National Catholic Reporter
BBC Audio US Military Archbishop, Faith and Gen Z, 'Understanding British Imams' project
Fact-Checking Trump Admin Claims of Paid Protestors
“Womanosphere” Influencers Urge Against the “Sin of Empathy”
‘Oregon was next’: Trump targeted state after Minnesota, report says
Feds at Portland ICE facility again deploy chemical agents against protesters
Brief: Beyond Violence and Nonviolence (Part 1) — Conspirituality
Omar Wasow on Non-Violent Protest Effectiveness
Charles Tilly on Public Perception of Protest Movements
William Gamson’s Strategy Of Social Protest
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5 February 2026, 11:00 am - 5 minutes 51 secondsBonus Sample: An Ode to Curiosity
When videos surfaced of Alex Pretti kicking an ICE vehicle's taillight 11 days before his murder, claims that the video was AI dominated social media. Some commenters even posted articles that stated the opposite of what they thought they said.
Derek explores the necessity of curiosity when coming across information that contradicts what you want to hear. First, he explores it through his love of books before applying the skill to situations like the Pretti video.
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2 February 2026, 11:00 am - 37 minutes 9 secondsBrief: Did MAHA Put MAGA In Power?
The silence of MAHA influencers around the murder of Renee Good (and ICE generally) has been excessively loud. Yet that’s expected from the coalition that voted for Donald Trump in order to install RFK Jr at this point. Many believe “health isn’t political” while refusing to accept or acknowledge what their vote has empowered.
Dr Jonathan Howard, a neurologist and psychiatrist at NYU Langone’s Multiple Sclerosis Comprehensive Care Center, returns to the podcast to talk about MAGA’s enablers in the MAHA movement with Derek and Julian.
Show Notes
MAHA Gave Us MAGA 2.0. Remember the Enablers.
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31 January 2026, 11:00 am - 58 minutes 6 seconds293: Trump and Fascist Dementia
As Trump surges his Gestapo and threatens to annex new territory, his brain is collapsing. He’s sundowning on Truth Social, nodding off in meetings, slurring words, slurping at the saliva pooling in his mouth. His insults and aggressions are as constant and predictable as his arms are, reaching out for handholds.
Up until this point, discourse on the mental health of this decrepit fascist leader has used the kid gloves of psychology, psychoanalysis, and psychiatry, in which even the most informed analyses were constrained by the fact that experts were interpreting his inner states. For our part, we’ve compared his fate to that of charismatic cult leaders at the end of the line—and we’ll do more of that today.
Now a new posse of clinical commentators on IG and TikTok have made it all much more biological: we are witnessing, they say, the predictable signs of fast-progressing dementia.
Show Notes
Goldwater Rule vs Duty to Warn, American Academy of Psychiatry and Law
World Health Organization: Dementia
Signs and Symptoms of Dementia
USC study finds new evidence linking dementia to problems with the brain’s waste clearance system
A new drug could stop Alzheimer’s before memory loss begins
A 2025 update on treatment strategies for the Alzheimer’s disease spectrum
Dementia prevention, intervention, and care: 2024 report of the Lancet standing Commission
Study finds disparities in diagnosis and treatment of dementia
Decomposing Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Risk and Protective Factors of Dementia in the U.S.
Mapping racial and ethnic healthcare disparities for persons living with dementia: A scoping review
Dementia Diagnosis Disparities by Race and Ethnicity
Racial disparities in dementia determined by social factors
Straight-forward Explainer: What’s Going on With NIH Cuts to Alzheimer’s Research?
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29 January 2026, 11:00 am - 5 minutes 34 secondsBonus Sample: Simone Weil: We Have Obligations Before We Have Rights
Simone Weil was skeptical about the project of “rights.” They argued that obligations come before rights, and that rights only become real when obligations are recognized and lived.
Weil believed the French Revolution made a foundational error by grounding society in rights rather than eternal obligations, creating a contradiction that still haunts liberal democracies today. Rights, Weil argues, carry a bargaining spirit and ultimately depend on force for enforcement, while obligations arise unconditionally from the mere fact of another person’s vulnerability. You owe something to others not because they’ve asserted a claim, but because they exist.
Drawing from Weil’s posthumous The Need for Roots, Matthew unpacks their critique of liberal rights discourse: that modern societies undermine their own moral claims by prioritizing abstractions over duties.
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26 January 2026, 11:00 am - 28 minutes 31 secondsBrief: Prospirituality Predictions for 2026
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
Peter Beinart, “I No Longer Believe in a Jewish State,” The New York Times
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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24 January 2026, 11:00 am - 1 hour 8 minutes292: Women of Jan 6 (w/ Noelle Cook)
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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22 January 2026, 11:00 am - 7 minutes 8 secondsBonus Sample: Oil, Power, and Theocracy
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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