GUESS WHO GOT NOMINATED FOR A PUSHCAAAART

The incomparable Derek Beres.

Maybe it's because I went for two-three months without that much interaction , compared to the *constant* flow that was the baseline in 21/22 , but getting a shoutout in this episode was an immense pleasant surprise. Thanks, Al and Lauren. 

Derek Beres might be familiar to you as the co-host of Conspirituality, the podcast about “dismantling New Age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy-mad yogis”, and the co-author of the just released Conspirituality book (Public Affairs / Penguin Random House Canada).

The essays Derek publishes on Substack - under the title Trickle-Down Wellness - can be seen as an evolving blueprint for his next book, Ripped: Body Dysmorphia & Male Fragility.

Happy to be here: two short pieces of mine made it into the latest issue of Lit Angels, a journal edited by Linda Davis and Francesca Lia Block. 

“We do know it’s not just Florida, right? Is that something people realize, or are we just going to keep tweeting gifs of Bugs Bunny sawing Florida off the country until Ron DeSantis gets elected President? As far as having ground to stand on, I think anyone with an interest in preserving democracy and social progress - not to mention safety and freedom for anyone who’s not a white cishet Christian man - can claim that ground. I’d sure as hell rather see that than people telling me to abandon my home to the bigoted assholes. Fuck that, we’ve got amazing weather!”

“For the better part of a decade now, we've been living in a swampy time of professors and academics debasing themselves on social media for what I can only assume is clout and getting strangers to agree with them, yell at them or both. Are there bigger incentives at play I can't fully grasp because I'm not a Dr. Prof. ? The last thing I would want is to become Jordan Peterson.” 

Topics include: getting into Medieval Studies through D&D, through Tolkien, through fantasy and video games; Humanities academics being dopamine addicts, professors debasing themselves on social media for clout and engagement, Jordan Peterson as a worst case scenario, LiveJournal drama, flame wars, the rush of validation that comes from being published in academic journals vs. the narcissistic impulse to whip out the phone and post, the golden age of Extremely Online scholars, Andrew listening to podcasts when he’s painting his Warhammer 40,000 minis, becoming a Twitter personality as the gateway to brain worms, and how to deal with the day-by-day after you spend all of your life looking over to the next thing. 

“Griff Sombke is the co-host of Did Nothing Wrong, a podcast all about “politics at the intersection of extremists, propaganda and Cold War 2.0”. Didn’t we just have his partner on board? Yes, we did - that would be Jay McKenzie - but Griff is a fascinating guy with a life story that’s unique. Plus, I fucked up the title last time. And the subtitle.

This is a wild ride.

Topics include: training for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for 11 straight years, founding a gym, walking away from that gym, not answering the phone for years, bad science, bad fitness advice, the Joe Rogan Podcast and its immense cultural influence in the MMA / Jiu-Jitsu world, being a small town punk rock scene kid, conspiracy-prone taxi drivers and how to handle them with "Risk Assessment" and "Distance Management", researching the Radical Right, finding a Jiu-Jitsu academy that works for you, what Griff did when he dropped out of his old life for a really long time, former police officer Michael Fanone as a TV talking head, and the importance of waking up, going again, getting a little sharper each day.

These days Matthew Remski is best known as the co-host of Conspirituality, the podcast about “dismantling New Age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy-mad yogis” he created with fellow researchers Derek Beres and Julian Walker, so of course I found his work sometime in 2021 by searching “what happened to Russell Brand”, but we’re going back and forth in the weeks leading up to the release of the Conspirituality book (Public Affairs), and this conversation should motivate you to pre-order the book on the grounds of its own considerable merit alone.

Topics include: getting recruited in “brick and mortar cults” vs. getting sucked into a digital-first online community, the ways Yoga and general wellness have been sold to Western consumers over the past decades, the political posturing adopted by spiritual influencers hungry for engagement, the infinite boredom stemming from “self-care and optimisation and working endlessly on your mindfulness”, the gilded age of cult documentaries and memoirs, how to avoid turning tragedies into trauma porn, the “survivor-to-crusader pipeline”, de-platforming, the Disinformation Dozen, and how to keep going in the middle of this.

ALL OF THIS