The Trauma of Caste: A Dalit Feminist Meditation on Survivorship, Healing, and Abolition by Thenmozhi Soundararajan pulls back the curtain on the carceral impacts of terms like dharma and karma, and concepts like purity, pollution, and reincarnation. We discuss the impact of this longstanding history with her.

Mark Roseman, professor of Jewish and German Studies at University of Indiana at Bloomington, Peter Staudenmaeir, professor of modern Germany history at Marquette, and Rebecca Carter-Chand, historian at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum join Matthew to discuss the Bund.

Our guide today is our new correspondent, Mallory DeMille, who comes to us from the land of TikTok, where Light Language has gone viral, and is making bank, bank, bankity bing bong bank.

What is the state of the documentary film in the age of manipulative online propaganda? In the hands and eyes of a documentarian like Amy Berg we find a journalistic commitment to the truth combined with the artistry of compelling and intimate story-telling.

History professor Thomas Lecaque joins to discuss the Hobbit fetish of new Italian PM and heir to Mussolini, Giorgia Meloni, as well as the American right’s obsession with the Templar Knights, and the troubling midterm election trend of open White Christian Nationalism.

QAnon was foreshadowed by Pizzagate, but Pizzagate was foreshadowed by a moral panic in London, England that was driven in part by someone the three of us are karmically bound to, for good or ill, forever.

The book is filed. Our mental health is in check. And, as it turns out, Matthew found a new guru. We return to trio work by investigating his fellow Canadian's cure for, uh, anything, or maybe something, as well diving into two biohacking conferences and the conspiritualist's new favorite fascist on the block.

Rina Raphael joins to discuss her new book, The Gospel of Wellness: Gyms, Gurus, Goop, and the False Promise of Self-Care. She talks to us this week about her adventures in modern spirituality—its teachings as well as its traps.

We’re finally looking at David “Avocado” Wolfe, whose paranoid Telegram channel boasts all of the above claims and much, much more. And we’re not just clipping recent podcast talks and driver’s seat rants. We’re joined by longtime journalist, health food marketing guru, and co-founder of the website, Ethos, Jill Ettinger, who worked side-by-side with David for many years.

Author Kathleen Hale joins Matthew to discuss her reporting on this story in her riveting and compassionate new book, Slenderman: Online Obsession, Mental Illness, and the Violent Crime of Two Midwestern Girls.

CTZNWELL founder, Kerri Kelly, joins to discuss her new book, American Detox: The Myth of Wellness and How We Can Truly Heal.

Historian and assistant professor at The New School, Natalia Petrzela, returns to discuss her forthcoming book, Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America’s Exercise Obsession.

Historian Tamara Venit-Shelton joins the podcast to talk to Derek about the history of Chinese Medicine in America. The author of Herbs and Roots: A History of Chinese Doctors in the American Medical Marketplace, they discuss the xenophobia and racism that Chinese encountered in the 19th century West and how the acupuncture needles we use today are not actually Chinese in origin.

Matthew sits down with ace journalist EJ Dickson to explore her deep archive of reporting on the policing of women's bodies, and how it reflects on her own experience of childbirth.

Philosophy and religion professor Alan Levinovitz calls this "empowerment epistemology" and describes it as a connective tissue between the seemingly distant domains of gun culture and the wellness sphere.

Derek began his career as a religion journalist, and this week he interviews Sam Kestenbaum, who’s made a career in this field. Sam has written for the NY Times and the Washington Post, where he recently published an expose on Christiane Northrup.

Derek was recently a guest on cardiologist Danielle Belardo’s podcast, and now she returns the favor, joining him to discuss her thoughts on being a science communicator and a female cardiologist in a male-dominated field, as well as many of the wellness myths circling around social media, including supplements, statins, sunscreen, veganism, organic foods, and GMOs.

Our guest today, Jennings Brown, is a bright light in an increasingly chaotic cult-content economy. His 2018 podcast on Teal Swan, The Gateway, produced with Gizmodo, sets a high-watermark standard for research, fairness, and sensitivity.

Is Christiane Northrup LARPing when she talks about murdering political enemies? What would Mikki Willis wear to tactical boot camp? Amidst the carnage of Uvalde and the Supreme Court, are conspiritualists gearing up to offer logistical or merely symbolic support for political violence? Does it even make a difference? When does the Temple of the Gun become a firing range and then a staging ground?

With Jon Kasbe’s series, “The Deep End” airing on Hulu, Swan has entered some A-list limelight. But what do we really learn from this docutainment event, radiating out from an embedment in Swan’s inner circle? According to Kasbe’s own words, we don’t learn the “Capital T Truth” of Swan’s day-to-day, but rather the immersive feeling of what it is like to be under her spell.