Clinical psychologist Jonathan Stea joins us to discuss his new book, Mind the Science: Saving Your Mental Health from the Wellness Industry, a field guide that responds to some of the intense challenges earnest seekers face when trying to navigate waters filled with supplements-slinging sharks who believe they can diagnose mental health conditions with zero training.

ProPublica recently got a hold of 25 Project 2025 training videos—over 14 hours worth of content revealing the policies the Heritage Foundation would like to see implemented if Donald Trump regains the White House. Derek and Julian break down one of the most egregious.

This week, we look at the stakes of the first AI-generated election in America—and wonder how much worse it can get, even in three short months.

Across social media, liberal millennial women are tagging Tim Walz as the return of the dad they lost to Fox News. Matthew digs into that graveyard with a survey of the tools that we’ve used to examine the nature and function of patriarchal bullshit as it dominates conspirituality, cults, and QAnon.

We talk about fighting conspiracy theories that started as jokes with jokes that defuse conspiracy theories. About what it takes to commandeer the attention economy, and how much of our souls we spend to do it. About the difference between meme wars and policy debates, and how far the Big Dad Energy vibes can take us.

Ziklag’s ultra-wealthy network of Christian donors is spending nearly $12M to mobilize Republican voters in order to secure a Trump victory this November. ProPublica found that their plan involves purging 1M+ people from the voter rolls in key swing states. Unsurprisingly, this is yet another Christian nationalist group with ties to Project 2025.

Julia Postema and Jeremiah Gibson, co-hosts of the podcast Sexvangelicals: The Sex Education the Church Didn't Want You to Have, join the pod.

An editorial-style Brief from Matthew, who’s been parenting as a stepdad and biodad for long enough to know that parents and the childless absolutely need each other.

We run down the most cursed Kamala conspiracy theories, how they distort the real questions about her, how being a childless cat lady is her superpower, and whether the ghouls that dream them up really matter.

A tale of two tweets: Dark Horse podcast cohost and “conspiracy hypothesizer” Bret Weinstein took to Twitter twice this month, first dropping a video claiming that RFK Jr becoming Donald Trump’s running mate would make them “assassination proof,” then later floating the idea that an AI Joe Biden really phoned into Kamala Harris’s first conference as the presumptive presidential nominee. Or…is Biden even alive?

Where does JD Vance fit into the conspirituality landscape? We break down a speech from an intimate invitation-only conservative event hosted in 2021 by the Teneo Network. Behind closed doors, Vance encourages his audience to listen to the unique truths of conspiracy theorists, calls for more right-wing oligarchs, and warns about the devil.

Gaming journalist and Master of Divinity Riley MacLeod joins Matthew to talk about whether the hit indie game Cult of the Lamb might be all the inoculation against cultic dynamics that generation Alpha ever needs. 

Two landmark Supreme Court decisions represent the legal institutionalization of the core values of conspirituality: self-sovereignty, natural immunity or divine protection, and “doing your own research.” The attempted assassination on the former president forged the essence of these two rulings into a stunning still life of Trump’s image for those who love him and those he’s appointed to serve him. 

Kevin Roberts is the mastermind behind Project 2025, Heritage’s 920-page “presidential transition” agenda that seeks to implement authoritarian power in America. The text combines the anti-regulatory stance of libertarianism, laissez faire capitalism on steroids as espoused by conservatives, and the heinous and anti-democratic religious dogma of Christian nationalists, and it’s finally receiving a lot of attention.

Today we’re looking at a lavish infomercial put out by New Age oligarch and RFK Jr superfan Aubrey Marcus, in which he tries to show the world that his very expensive encounter group, Fit For Service, is definitely not a cult. And at how Matthew got quoted in the opening montage as though he endorsed FFS as an “anti-cult.” He hasn’t.

Freebirth mogul Yolande Norris Clark now joins the growing ranks of converts from conspirituality to Orthodox Christianity. How will she square her politics of the divine feminine with a hyper-patriarchal tradition? Or is it really such a stretch? 

Matthew and Julian examine the gap between how spiritual aspirations appear and are praised or condemned in the world of the spectacle, and how they play out in the flesh.

Last month, Russell Brand visited Jordan Peterson's podcast for “The Evolution of Theology.” Which, given these two figures, had to focus on topics like the unreligious impulsivity of gay people and why slaves should “just not be slaves.” Derek and Julian discuss.

The US Military was recently outed for conducting a clandestine campaign that spread anti-vax propaganda throughout Asia. What will the conspiritualists do when confronted with an actual government conspiracy based in the anti-vax lies they’ve been spreading?

Julian tracks how Leonard Leo’s Federalist Society used Trump as part of a decades-long systematic takeover of the judicial system that culminated in the current ethics and corruption scandal in the SCOTUS.