Two weeks ago, several university administrators asked militarized police units to smash pro-Palestinian encampment protests on quads and in occupied buildings. It happened at places like Columbia and CUNY, and the University of Texas in Austin where our guest today, Dr. Peniel Joseph, teaches on the history of the Black Power movement. 

In the midst of the news cycle frenzy, an old phrase began popping up in discussions of who the protestors were and whether the police actions were justified. Authorities said (and media figureheads repeated uncritically) that protestors were infiltrated and influenced by “outside agitators.”

It’s a phrase with a long history to it. Joining Matthew to unpack it is Dr. Peniel Joseph, a historian of the Civil Rights era, during which time the trope reached peak exposure, when it was lobbed at Martin Luther King Jr., as he sat in Birmingham Jail.

Show Notes

Peniel E. Joseph

NYPD Chief of Patrol on the “unknown entity”

Thursday's Headlines: NYPD Discovers Chained Bike Locks Edition

Nearly all Gaza campus protests in the US have been peaceful, study finds 

Unmasking The 'Outside Agitator'

Debunking the “Outside Agitator” Trope amid pro-Palestinian campus protests

Cost of repairing occupation damage at Portland State library estimated at $750K

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Matthew is in the guest seat today! Why? Because in 2019—just months before the pandemic and this podcast kicked off—he published a book titled Practice and All is Coming: Abuse, Cult Dynamics and Healing in Yoga and Beyond. It focused on survivor stories of assault and abuse within the cultic mechanisms of Pattabhi Jois' Ashtanga Yoga community. The book also proposed a path into co-creating safer yoga communities via enhanced critical thinking, self-and-other-care, student empowerment, and community resilience. 

In many ways, this book holds the keys to how one-third of the team has tackled the conspirituality era. Derek and Julian interview their colleague about it all on the occasion of the release of a second edition, now titled: Surviving Modern Yoga: Cult Dynamics, Charismatic Leaders, and What Survivors Can Teach Us (North Atlantic Books).

Show Notes

Surviving Modern Yoga by Matthew Remski | PenguinRandomHouse.com

Yoga’s Culture of Sexual Abuse: Nine Women Tell Their Stories | The Walrus

Survivors of an International Buddhist Cult Share Their Stories | The Walrus

How a #MeToo Facebook Post Toppled a Yoga Icon | by Matthew Remski | GEN

Shielded for Decades, A Yoga Leader's Alleged Sexual Abuse Finally Comes Under Fire

How to Respond to Sexual Abuse Within a Yoga or Spiritual Community—Jubilee Cooke, Karen Rain 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 2020, former NY Times journalist Isabel Wilkerson published Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. The book tells a compelling story: that the root of our social divisions is the invented hierarchical structure of castes, not, as we often assume in America, race. Race, she writes, is only another manifestation of caste.

While it’s certainly an important topic here in America, Wilkerson shows, by investigating the longstanding caste system in India, the social divisions in Nazi Germany, and America’s founding and expansion through chattel slavery, that caste is a universal phenomenon.

Derek discusses his thoughts on this powerful and important book.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr Sarah Ballantyne forged a career in science communication and health education advocating for autoimmune solutions in food and the paleo diet. In 2014, she began questioning her approach. Shortly after, she realized she was spreading nutrition misinformation and has dedicated her career to correcting those errors.

Derek talks to Sarah about the dangers of diet and nutrition misinformation, dealing with obesity and eating disorders, and the challenges of talking about food in public. Her new book is Nutrivore: The Radical New Science for Getting the Nutrients You Need From the Food You Eat.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We have a real treat today for listeners who love all forms of movement, especially yoga and strength training.

Derek and Julian talk to Movement Logic hosts, Laurel Beversdorf and Sarah Court, who navigate the curvilinear path of creating irreverent yet high quality science-based movement content that sets teachers and students free from dogma and fear-mongering. Our two podcasts intersect by looking into fallen gurus, pseudoscience health claims, dodgy alignment dogmas, and cults of personality susceptible to the dangers of conspiracism. And this week we’re diving into a recent Movement Logic episode on back pain specialist, Stuart McGill.

Yet, as this conversation shows, all hope is not lost, and all physical culture is not a pipeline into body fascism, or worse—multi-level marketing. There are still intelligent and grounded educators who share the love of movement, infused with the logic and humility of science.

Laurel Beversdorf is an international yoga educator, a certified kettlebell specialist, and a strength coach. Sarah Court is a Doctor of Physical Therapy, movement mentor, and yoga teacher trainer.

Show Notes

Movement Logic

Episode 62: Make McGill Make Sense

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the first full episode of this ongoing series, Matthew looks at the anti-abortion arcs of two men: Rob Schenck and Frank Pavone.

Both leaders invested the images and remains of the unborn with passionate but imaginary desires that obscured from them how much harm they were causing. 

One of them exited that highway, but the other is still burning it up.

Includes the story of Kermit Gosnell, and how his Philadelphia abortion abattoir exemplified a political and moral disaster worthy of Naomi Klein. An obvious, organized crime, something that everyone could see but some tried to paper over, aided and abetted by the dominant order and progressive hypocrisy. Something that becomes the focal point of reasonable rage, but then leads to twisted conclusions. 

Content warning: abortion details.

Full Show Notes available on Patreon.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The late historian of religion James Carse (1932-2020) made a radical proposal in his 2012 book, The Religious Case Against Belief. He argued that beliefs, far from being central to or definitive of religion, are actually antithetical to religious community. 

A religion’s historical longevity, he argued, depends on its ability to absorb and neutralize beliefs—epistemological dead ends built on willful ignorance. 

“The challenge to religion,” Carse says, “is not its opponents from without, but its believers from within, and the real enemy of religion is belief itself.”

What does this mean for a project like Conspirituality and other projects of disillusionment carried out in the shadow of New Atheism and other modern skeptical movements?

Blair Hodges of the Fireside and Family Proclamations podcasts joins Matthew to discuss a potential casualty of the battle against religious extremism: a nuanced understanding of religion itself.

Show Notes

The Religious Case Against Belief by James P. Carse

Fireside with Blair Hodges

Family Proclamations w/ Blair Hodges  

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Robert F Kennedy, Jr isn’t backing down. You can’t get away from his voice or his endless content stream. He’s banked on tech world oligarch anti-vax mom, Nicole Shanahan, to nail down the VP slot. His Children’s Health Defense charity is casting doubt on whether polio was even a virus. And he keeps claiming he’s not against vaccines himself, but his messaging around it tells a different story.

It’s been a few months since we’ve checked up on Chaos Kennedy, so it’s high time we did: to look at polling, rhetoric, and charismatic technique.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"Human Biologist" and life coach Gary Brecka's star rose after biohacking UFC President Dana White's health. Yet Derek has a few questions this week: Is someone with a degree from a chiropractic college qualified to talk about seed oils, GMOs, depression, tinnitus, fluoride, detoxifying through water fasts, and diet plans? Is it concerning that his 10X Health System cofounder is a fervent Scientologist? And what happens when you actually read the science Brecka is linking to?

Show Notes

Worst U.S. cities for air pollution ranked in new American Lung Association report

GMO Foods: How Genetically Modified Foods Sabotage Your Health | Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka

Are children and pregnant women risking their health by eating “GMO” foods? The American Association of Pediatrics controversially says ‘yes’. The real question: Is the AAP endangering the food vulnerable?

Organic foods are not healthier...or pesticide free.

A Comprehensive Review of Health-Benefiting Components in Rapeseed Oil

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A Deep Cut from our Patreon archive (July 2023)

What do we mean when we say that we believe something? When the QAnon Shaman got dressed on the morning of January 6, he put on his red, white, and blue face paint, his postmodern quasi-Native American horned fur hat, and grabbed the spear to which he had attached an American flag. In performance mode, this cosplay persona had already garnered him a taste of the attention that would soon increase exponentially as he became the most recognizable figure of the Capitol Riot.

In today’s Bonus, Julian argues that his costume, as well as his ritual actions on that day were also an expression of a political worldview, run through with deeply held spiritual beliefs about the world and his role in it. The history of political religion, propagandistic conspiracies, and progressive spiritual convictions may show that—far from being trivial—belief is at the heart of the American, and perhaps the human, story.

Intro music: Single Origins—Luz Cafe

Interstitial: Silent Song—Eccodek (EarthRise SoundSystem Remix)

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Neal Brennan has upped the artistic ante in stand-up comedy. In Netflix specials like "3 Mics and Blocks" he’s explored loneliness, isolation, and the mental health fallout of growing up the youngest of 10 in a Catholic family with an extremely unwell father. In the process he’s made some of the great mysteries of family pain and inner turmoil more tolerable.

And—he’s a fan of our podcast, because in his search for relief, he’s tripped through the land of psychedelics, where conspirituality can sour the active ingredients.

Neal joins us today to talk about his weird journey through the plant medicine scene, to wonder whether emotional and spiritual healing makes him funnier, and to answer our questions about how today’s comics are dealing—or not—with their supersized role as political pundits.

His new special is called Crazy Good.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices