The irreplaceable Dolly Parton died on August 25 after a brief battle with cancer. Social media was filled with loving tributes to an incredible artist and devoted philanthropist. A minority also felt the need to use her death to platform their own issues, including a cohort common on our beat: the anti-vaxxers.

Journalist and professor emeritus at Northern Arizona University, Annette McGivney joins Julian to discuss her new book, Plastic Shaman: The True Story of a Deadly Self-Help Retreat and America’s Misguided Quest for Wellness.

We reflect on Joe Rogan making an intimate discovery: that Trump is a grifter, so adept at grifting he fooled all the grifters. Is he defecting? What would that really mean?

Matthew traces the concept of wetiko — a Cree figure for a cannibal spirit whose hunger grows with what it consumes — from its original anticolonial and anti-imperialist meaning in Jack Forbes's 1992 book Columbus and Other Cannibals, through Derrick Jensen's anti-civilization lense, Ladha and Kirk's 2016 application to neoliberal capitalism, Paul Levy's syncretic New Age elaboration, and finally to Bernhard Guenther and Laura Matsue's QAnon-adjacent version. 

Spiralism is a quasi-spiritual online movement that emerged from long, intense conversations between humans and AI chatbots. Across users, platforms, and models, chatbots have engaged deeply with users about identity and consciousness, leading to discussions of “awakening.” 

How the Internet Disrupted Science is an enlightening gaze into the shady world of for-profit and open access scientific publishing. Authors Kent Anderson and Joy Moore join Derek to discuss their exceptional new work.

Inflammation is an important and necessary part of the body’s healing process. It’s also long been a wellness buzzword used to sell products that do very little to treat it. This week, we look at inflammation through the lens of a new Mother Jones article, “The Great Inflammation Panic,” including an interview with the author, Julia Métraux, in segment two. We’ll also discuss what inflammation is, how wellness influencers weaponize it, and what it represents in the context of Ayurveda.

Julian dives into the diplomatic complexities, ideological contradictions, and historical twists to make sense of relations between Spain, Algeria, Morocco, Western Sahara, and Israel to ask: are there any good guys or is it colonizers all the way down?

MS NOW senior reporter Brandy Zadrozny spent 10 months tracking the conspiracy theories that evolved online in the wake of the death of Charlie Kirk. She joins Derek to discuss what her investigation found.

Dr. Anthony Fauci has made for an extraordinary villain for the Trump administration and MAHA. Now it all comes together with the release of his “diaries” and the recent Senate show trial.

Red Scare-ism returns and rises in intensity and absurdity under Rubio and Miller.

Climate change should be the single issue we all care about, yet we don’t. We discuss why that is from a conspirituality angle.

A look at the MAHA Chiropractic Hub and what it means for the future of American healthcare.

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.

Derek and Julian discuss Graham Platner’s conspiracy-filled video announcement in which he ended his bid for the US senate.

Jordan Peterson is back. After a hiatus due to a, well, a whole lot of problems, he’s up for regular posting on his social media channels. We’re going to take a look at what’s happened over the last year or so of his absence, followed by his influence in the so-called manosphere podcast world. Then Matthew will offer a different perspective on podcasting that’s making waves: the Dominican Sisters Open Mic.

Matthew traces SSPX's origins through Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre's formation in the shadow of Action Française's antisemitic integralism, his fight against Vatican II, and the movement's namesake, Pope Pius X's anti-Modernist crusade. 

With so much emphasis on global politics and the World Cup in recent weeks, we’re going to focus on the somewhat quieter but intensely important bureaucratic dismantling of expertise occurring in health and science.

Derek discusses touch points from Eddie Glaude Jr’s America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation's Anniversaries, with a slight diversion into the surging online activism that purports to be about justice for all yet time and again refuses to acknowledge race as a foundation of our distress.

What happens when a wellness event is hosted in an expensive resort town on the French Riviera and features top-tier celebrities like Oprah Winfrey speaking to guests who paid thousands of dollars to attend? Does wellness really remain “for everyone?”