Conspirituality

Who could be a better guide through the fever dream of modern anti-semitism—the socialism of fools—than a scrappy young scion of the House of Rothschild? How has Mike, this mysterious insider—visible on CNN but a seeming ghost in real life—used his inheritance and connections to score book deals with the Fake News Media? Will he redeem his family name?

Just joking! Author and friend of the pod Mike Rothschild is no relation to the banking family that has lived rent-free in the minds of antisemites and conspiracy theorists for over two centuries now. He is the author of 2021’s The Storm Is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything. His new book out less that two years later, is ​​Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories. Mike joins us now from his summer palace in the South of France, um, actually his home office in Los Angeles to discuss the very stupid but dangerous groundswell of Jew hatred now filling our feeds.

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Show Notes

Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories

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Florida governor Ron DeSantis appointed right-wing propagandist, Christopher Rufo, along with other conservative Christian education-activists, to the board of the tiny, progressive New College in Sarasota, FL this past January.

They fired the president, installed prayer at the board meetings, forbade personal pronouns in faculty email signatures, and claimed DeSantis’s electoral victory gave them a constitutional mandate to make whatever changes they want.

The invaders frame this hostile take-over as a test-case model to “recapture” universities across the state and the country.

But who is Rufo really? He’s the guy behind the manufactured moral panic over Critical Race Theory that set conservative media, school boards and city council meetings ablaze with fear-mongering over “woke Marxism” in 2021.

New College is the latest conquest in his explicit long-game to remake the fabric of America, one sadistic lie at a time.

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Life coaching is big business. The life coaching industry was worth $1.5 billion in 2022 and is considered one of the fastest growing industries in America. The International Coaching Federation reported more than 26,000 coaches in North America in 2020. Yet those numbers are hard to qualify given that you don’t need certifications or training to become a life coach or, as we explore today, coaching of most any sort. Life coaches, business coaches, fertility coaches, “quantum” coaches: every industry has an increasing number of people who want to tell you how to do your job effectively, magically, or quantumally.

Who really benefits from this supposed gold rush of “MULTI 6 FIGURE BUSINESS COACH”, “Multi 8 fig biz mentor”, and “high ticket biz coach helping women scale to 20-30k months”? And has the dilution of the term "coach" damaged credentialed coaches with decades of experience?

Mallory DeMille returns to talk about the coaches who coach coaches industry: marketing tactics, parallels to multilevel marketing, and the glut in the coaching industry.

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Julian Brave NoiseCat is a writer and film doc maker, and a member of the Canim Lake Band, Tsq'escen. In May of 2022 he posted this Twitter thread. Matthew wanted to learn more:

I'm struck by the similarity of right-wing conspiracy theories to actual policies towards Indigenous peoples.

• 'replacement theory' - Manifest Destiny
• QAnon (mass institutionalized child abuse) - boarding and residential schools
• 'plandemic' - smallpox, alcohol, bioterrorism

It's all so Freudian. The fear that it will happen to them stems from an implicit admission that they did it to others.

As though the Black, Brown and Indigenous downtrodden are just as hateful as they are and are going to turn around and do to them what they did to us.

Show Notes

Julian’s website

Mary Simon Is Leading Indigenous Peoples to New Heights

Who’s Your People?

The Past and Future of Native California

Place Determines Who We Are

The Census Powwow

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Those who fly high, fall hard. Pole dance company S-Factor crashed and burned in 2021 amidst a stack of complaints. Detractors said the company was conducting unlicensed group therapy, cosplaying enlightenment by co-opting the labour of sex workers, and whitewashing issues of racial equality.
Created by former actor Sheila Kelley, S-Factor monetized pole dancing as a path of feminist and spiritual awakening.
In this 2-part Listener Story, Matthew speaks to Jessica Hopper about her 13 years learning and teaching in the now-defunct company. Hopper paints a picture of a confusing, high-demand group, and tells us how she made her way out.

NOTE: During our discussion, Jessica recounts a tense all-hands S-factor staff meeting to discuss PR strategy at a crucial moment as the company cracked-up over issues of white fragility. I wasn't able to secure a recording of that call before my interview with Jessica, or since. But after we recorded, I did confirm what Jessica reports about it with 3 of the other participants on that call. MR
Show Notes
Stripped Down: The Undoing of Hollywood's Favorite Pole-Dancing Studio —Hollywood Reporter.
"Strip Down, Rise Up" | Official Trailer | Netflix
Faces of Fierce Femininity—online conference organized by Kelly Brogan
Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema—Laura Mulvey, 1975

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Original music by EarthRise SoundSystem

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