154: The Truth Wars (w/Renée DiResta)
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154: The Truth Wars (w/Renée DiResta)

Renée DiResta, a writer and research manager at Stanford Internet Observatory, talks about conspiracies, terrorism, and information warfare.

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Brief: Marianne Williamson’s Spiritual Therapy Schtick
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Brief: Marianne Williamson’s Spiritual Therapy Schtick

To see how her sleight-of-hand works, Matthew examines two classic Marianne Williamson encounters to show that the answers she gives on the stump aren’t much different from the answers she gives on her New Age retreats.

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152: Tulsi Gabbard’s Krishna Consciousness (w/Nitai Joseph)
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152: Tulsi Gabbard’s Krishna Consciousness (w/Nitai Joseph)

What does it mean for a prominent American politician to come into power as the sleeper cell of an eccentric Hindu-American cult? Nitai Joseph shares heritage with Tulsi Gabbard, as he also grew up in a Hare Krishna sect. He joins to discuss this lineage.

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151: Satan Wants You Watch Party (Spoilers)
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151: Satan Wants You Watch Party (Spoilers)

Canadian filmmakers Sean Horlor and Steve Adams have a new documentary out called “Satan Wants You,” and it fills in a lot of the blanks in our prior “Swan Song Series” reporting with incredible archival footage and brave interviews from friends and family members.

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150: Spiritual Influencer Theory
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150: Spiritual Influencer Theory

Julian and Matthew go big-picture in this tour through all the elements that construct and drive spiritual Influencers.

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Brief: The Promises & (Mostly) Perils of Ketamine Therapy
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Brief: The Promises & (Mostly) Perils of Ketamine Therapy

With Ketamine Wellness Centers and Field Trip Health shutting down ketamine clinics across the country, are psychedelic entrepreneurs placing too much emphasis on scaling and shareholders and not enough on healing, even though their marketing efforts claim the opposite?

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Brief: The Spirituality of Vaccine & Mask Panics
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Brief: The Spirituality of Vaccine & Mask Panics

Why do so many inflammatory culture war issues crystallize around vaccines and masks? What is so compelling about these forms of public health and mutual aid, that they become central to the right-wing imagination? Matthew argues that even those are surface stories, covering over a trembling anxiety about the status of the body in relation to the State, and God. 

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148: Marianne Williamson and Asshole Jesus
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148: Marianne Williamson and Asshole Jesus

Marianne Williamson is running for president…again. How does her history with and belief in A Course in Miracles affect her campaign? And what about those charges of interpersonal abuse?

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147: The Censorship Megaphone
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147: The Censorship Megaphone

Researching and documenting digital disinformation—and coordinating to combat its malevolent agendas—is now all being described as a pseudo-academic scam, a hoax covering up an authoritarian liberal campaign of vile and secretive censorship.

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145: Fever Dream Goes Mainstream in Florida
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145: Fever Dream Goes Mainstream in Florida

The propaganda and sadism is so despairing that Derek might need religion, and Matthew might lose himself in retro fantasies of Disneyworld. Luckily, Julian talks with Sarasota anti-DeSantis activist Terra Kater about fighting the good fight under the hot sun.

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Brief: Roku-Q, The Sequel (w/Alex Kaplan)
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Brief: Roku-Q, The Sequel (w/Alex Kaplan)

Senior online extremism and disinformation researcher, Alex Kaplan of Media Matters joins Julian to share his reporting on the latest developments on QAnon.

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144: The Magic Spells of Wellness (w/Colleen Derkatch)
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144: The Magic Spells of Wellness (w/Colleen Derkatch)

Professor of Rhetoric Colleen Derkatch joins Julian to discuss the techniques of the meaning miasma. Her focus is on wellness rhetoric specifically, and how it points to incipient illness, encourages recreational diagnostics, and describes daily routines as liturgies that grant membership in divine communities.

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