Conspirituality

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Climate reality keeps colliding with denial, erasure, and rebranding — across media, politics, and religion. Temu conspiritualists weave melted stories about the origins of wildfires, while the high-class guys run meditation-and-regenerative-farming spectacle backed by Exxon money. Julian’s on that angle.

Derek will be telling us about how climate journalism is collapsing faster than the climate itself with mass environment reporting layoffs at NPR, CBS, the Washington Post, and the LA Times. Trump gutted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. EPA webpages have been scrubbed of human-caused warming language.

Are religious institutions doing any better? In 2015, five world religions — Jewish, Catholic, Islamic, Hindu, and Buddhist — independently issued climate statements ahead of the Paris COP21 talks. Matthew looks at how they struggled to challenge the global economies they depend on.

Show Notes

What Is Happening to Climate Journalism?

Where Climate Coverage Goes to Die

How will NPR layoffs affect climate stories?

CBS axed its last climate reporting pillar

How do you report on the weather when data is disappearing?

NOAA stops tracking cost of extreme weather and climate disasters

NOAA monthly media calls on climate change suspended

EPA websites now downplay link between humans and climate change

A Rabbinic Letter on the Climate Crisis Rabbis Against Climate Change

"Laudato Si'": Encyclical Letter on Care for Our Common Home

Islamic Declaration on Global Climate Change

Hindu Declaration on Climate Change The Time to Act is Now: A Buddhist Declaration on Climate Change

"Laudate Deum": Apostolic Exhortation to All People of Good Will on the Climate Crisis

Al-Mizan: A Covenant for the Earth (full text PDF)

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What do films like Dracula, The Truman Show, The Matrix, Invasion of the Body-Snatchers, Being John Malkovich, and Night of the Living Dead all have in common?

Science fiction and horror bend our everyday experiences and beliefs around mind and body, sensory perception, identity, and reality itself. But it turns out that many fictional tropes (zombies, vampires, cloned imposters, reality-simultations, and shapeshifters) may be rooted in rare brain disorders.

These conditions, often caused by injury or disease, can make people prone to becoming convinced that their loved ones are imposters, the same person (in elaborate and convincing disguises) is following them everywhere, their surroundings are an artificial duplicate of a real place, or even that they themselves are already dead.

Once our perceptions are sufficiently distorted, our minds invent explanations that confound reality. Might these overlap with supernatural and conspiratorial beliefs?

Julian blends storytelling, cultural references, and observations from psychiatry and neurology to take you on a fascinating journey.

You’ll learn about:

A woman in a 1903 Prague clinic who patiently explained to staff that the clinic was a perfect replica—not the real clinic itself

A man in 1970’s Sacramento who believed he was a real-life zombie and went on to commit a series of grisly crimes

A woman in 1920’s London who believed that two famous French actresses were following her everywhere in hyper-realistic disguises—and controlling her mind

One man in LA and another in Utah that tragically killed their own family members because they believed they were imposters

These cases drive to the core of how humans experience self, relationships, and the structure of reality.

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The MAHA Chiropractic Hub had a big launch in Washington DC this week, with RFK Jr extolling the benefits of the practice—and promising to redirect research funds their way as his movement attempts to spread chiropractic throughout the American healthcare system. But can back cracks really "reset the entire nervous system," as one MAHA-endorsed speaker claims? Or is the profession just dressing up subluxation theory, which has never been clinically validated, for the modern age?

Derek and Julian discuss the four objectives of the Chiropractic Hub, what this could mean for American healthcare, and how Kennedy is likely helping funnel money earmarked for actual scientific research into this ghost religion. They begin with a brief history of chiropractic.

Show Notes

Subluxation Theory: A Belief System That Continues to Define the Practice of Chiropractic

Chiropractic Vertebral Subluxations: Science vs. Pseudoscience

Subluxation: dogma or science?

Chiropractic subluxation is still "unsupported speculation"

Chiropractic: A Skeptical View

Effect of chiropractic treatment on primary or early secondary prevention: a systematic review

This is how science dies
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The pharmaceutical industry is filled with greedy businessmen getting innocent consumers hooked on their toxic products in order to barely keep them alive. But if you want to actually thrive, an entire array of natural supplements are just a click away.

So goes most every wellness pitch on social media. Mallory DeMille returns to break down the marketing techniques as we dive into the sordid world of supplements and peptide creation, which, in reality, is not dissimilar from pharmaceuticals. In fact, many products use the same manufacturing processes and production plants, as Derek discusses.

In the final segment, Julian revisits Bryan Johnson, the centimillionaire on a quest to live to 200, and what his recent chronic illness diagnosis says about pumping your body filled with experimental drugs.

Show Notes

Bryan Johnson Autoimmune Gastritis Explained

What everyone got wrong about biohacker Bryan Johnson’s viral diagnosis: A medical expert weighs in

What Bryan Johnson’s diagnosis says about the limits of health tracking, longevity medicine
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Matthew considers two registers of painful eulogy: spectacles thrown for elite terrible people, and the music offered for ordinary terrible people, when we can manage it.

Lindsey Graham's death triggered a wave of bullshit from Trump, Harris, Booker, Netanyahu, and Canadian PM Mark Carney — while online ghouls predicted the same fate for Mitch McConnell and Trump.

Where does the elite eulogy reflex come from? Ancient taboo, Thucydides on praise as a function of a rival's removal, and terror management theory on why elites protect their own at the moment of death.

Then we have a music thanatologist's story about playing harp for a dying man nobody liked, and what it teaches about the difference between forgiveness that strengthens ordinary people and deference toward the powerful.
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