With Communion: Finding my Way back to Faith, JD Vance plays the same narcissistic trick: turning his lifelong journey through rightwing American Christianity—with a short and shameful detour into New Atheism—to land in the Catholic faith of Leonard Leo, sketching out a redemption plan for every bro seeking their way home. 

Matthew applies three interlocking frameworks to the conspirituality phenomenon—and to the podcast itself.

JP Sears is one of the very first people we covered on this podcast six years ago, and was one of the influencers we featured in our 2023 book about the wellness-to-right-wing radicalization pipeline. Turns out he’s turned again, this time into a flavor of Christian nationalism with an antisemitic bend.

In the first edition of the Conspirituality Book Club, Derek dives into Food Intelligence: The Science of How Food Both Nourishes and Harms Us by Julia Belluz and Kevin Hall, PhD.

We look at candidates for the next plague, how unprepared the government is, and, in classic Conspirituality fashion, the wellness influencers selling products they just know will help your immune system stave off any little virus destined to become a plandemic.

The FDA is bleeding out Covid contrarians. Marty Makary, Vinay Prasad, Tracy Beth Høeg—all gone. Jonathan Howard returns to discuss why so many RFK Jr's friends have reached the end of their bureaucratic road.

Leo the XIV wrote a big letter about a hyperobject. Many thoughts and debates are triggered. Today we’ll look at what the hell an encyclical is, the Vatican's decade-long conversation with Silicon Valley about coding morally-sound AI, and the broken and laundered echoes of Liberation Theology in Leo’s text.

Matthew investigates the under-construction STACK data centre at 3650 Danforth Avenue in Scarborough, two miles from his home, tracing what he finds through concentric circles of capital, neglect, hype, and deception.

We look at three modern bait and switches pertinent to our beat. First, Julian looks at “free speech patriot” Chud the Builder’s slimy social media tactics. Then Derek investigates RFK Jr’s SNAP benefits now you see them, now you don’t. Finally, Matthew looks at how Mark Carney is bait and switching the Canadian political body.

In February, Derek and his wife, Callan, were surprised to discover she was diagnosed with prediabetes. They didn't know that Asian American adults are at a higher risk of Type 2 diabetes than others without the traditional risk factors. Callan joins to discuss how the diagnosis changed her life, her frustrations with the healthcare system, and how she's navigating her new reality.

The Trump DOJ's 565-page report from the Task Force for Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias is one of the strangest federal documents in American history. It’s a crybully tome, arguing that the most powerful religious majority in the United States is its most persecuted minority. 

Britt Hartley joins Julian to talk about her new book, No Nonsense Spirituality: All The Tools No Belief Required, and her recent run-in with the hardcore atheist community, which calls her work “nonsense.”

Mallory DeMille leads us down a rabbit hole to uncover who’s behind the growing trend of AI wellness slopfluencer content.

Matthew reads the Introduction from Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times.

We break down what happened at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, how quickly the conspiracy theories spread, and the cultural and political dynamics of this ubiquitous reflex.

Julian dives back into the toxic manosphere podcasting space to show how three women are shoving it right back at the misogynists on their own streams.

Two-thirds of the Conspirituality staff have new books out: Matthew's AntiFascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times and Derek's Well Enough:  Finding Health Despite the Wellness Industry. Julian "interviews" the co-hosts about themes of each book and their intersections with Conspirituality.

Derek reads two chapters from his recently published memoir, Well Enough: Finding Health Despite the Wellness Industry. In Chapters 3 & 4, he discusses his work as a patient monitor looking after suicidal patients in an emergency room, then ending up in an emergency room himself after having a full-blown panic attack.

Ronan Farrow is at it again. The reporter has a new feature in The New Yorker, written alongside staff writer Andrew Marantz, about OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Today we discuss the article and then zoom out on broader questions in AI: who is it for, how is it being used, and can it be reined in?

Matthew walks through Leo's escalating confrontation with Trump, from his November 2025 immigration remarks to his Palm Sunday Isaiah citation ("your hands are full of blood"), his Holy Thursday liberation theology thread on "imperialist occupation," and the Good Friday Stations of the Cross — in which Father Francesco Patton's meditations called out the passion of deportation, surveillance, and war atrocities.