Avsnitt
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Calley Means is one of RFK Jr’s top advisors. Alongside Tucker Carlson, Means has claimed responsibility for shepherding Kennedy into Trump’s camp. Does this former business school graduate Heritage Foundation intern and business school graduate really care about the nation’s health? Derek listens to a recent interview with Politico and finds the deregulatory ethos that underlies all of Project 2025 is alive and well in MAHA.
Show Notes
Full interview with Calley Means | POLITICO Health Care Summit 2025
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After being confirmed as Secretary of HHS, RFK Jr started installing his cabal of wellness influencers and contrarian doctors across the government's many public health agencies. And that means they have to apologize for their boss. Derek and Julian listen in on some of the most outrageous takes so far.
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Saknas det avsnitt?
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The most annoying convert TradCath in the world, JD Vance, whose cherubic face belies all his bootlicking aggression, gets his moment with Pope Bob. Usha stands behind him in a black mantilla. He hands the pontiff an oversized envelope: an invitation from Donald and Melania to a White House dinner. Bob smiles guardedly as he takes it and without looking at it, setting it on his desk. “I’ll read that at some point,” Vance sputters, “of course, of course.”
The scene is set for the Church-State tension of whatever phase of global fascism we’re now entering. These ghouls who jail students, disappear immigrants, and lobby for the Trump Gaza resort, shuffle into the Vatican with hats in hand to meet a fellow American who is nothing like their boss, asking for pats on the head, wondering what kind of alliance they can forge, perhaps through anti-wokeness discourse.
The enigmatic response from Pope Bob sums up where we all are as we read the incense swirls for whether he’s going to keep steering the world’s 1.4B Catholics against the tides of late-stage capitalism and environmental disaster, Francis-style.
Show Notes
Michelle Remembers | Satanic Panic Patreon Collection
Brief: Deep Church Conspiracy (w/David Lafferty)
Brief: The CPAC Pope and the Icicle Babies (w/ Brad Onishi)
183: Woke Pope Cancels America's Bishop (w/Mike Lewis)
Sisters of the Little Way
Vatican’s financial watchdog reports decrease in suspicious activities reports in 2024
Why the next Pope faces major money challenges
Pope warns the Vatican pension fund needs urgent reform as employees demand transparency
Cardinal convicted of embezzlement won't participate in conclave for Pope Francis's successor
A cardinal is convicted of embezzlement and sentenced to 5 1/2 years in Vatican trial
Church defends Indigenous peoples: ‘Doctrine of Discovery’ was never Catholic
Vatican Denounces ‘International Law of Colonization’
Reparations for empire: What the new pope owes to Africa | Slavery
Catholic Order Pledges $100 Million to Atone for Slave Labor and Sales
The Dark History of How the Catholic Church Built Its Massive Wealth
The Vatican—Bulwark of Imperialism
Indigenous leaders hope Vatican's repudiation of oppressive colonial concepts leads to real change
The Man Who Took On Pope Francis: The Story Behind the Viganò Letter
The Excommunication of Archbishop Viganò - Crisis
Bishop Strickland removed from diocese after accusing pope of backing 'attack on the sacred'
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Matthew is back today for more with Ben Case: profiling Gene Sharp and the (non)politics of strategic nonviolence, plus his strange funding sources. Also: why did Erica Chenoweth speak out against antifascist Trump protesters in January of 2017, and suggest their research proved that property damage and scuffles with the police would ruin any opposition movement to Trump? Also: where does the funding come from for all this bad research? Gene Sharp worked for the Department of Defense, and today, Bill Ackerman is a top funder of strategic nonviolence research.
Case is a retired professional Muaythai fighter, an organizer, educator, and writer. He is a researcher at the Center for Work and Democracy and a fellow at the Resistance Studies Initiative.
Show Notes
Street Rebellion: Resistance Beyond Violence and Nonviolence | Case
Why Civil Resistance Works | Columbia University Press
Why Not Riot? Interview with Author Ben Case - CounterPunch.org
Change Agent: Gene Sharp’s Neoliberal Nonviolence (Part One) – Nonsite.org
Have Repertoire, Will Travel: Nonviolence as Global Contentious Performance
Violence Will Only Hurt the Trump Resistance | The New Republic
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You may have grown up with the term “nonviolence” shining like a pole star over every discussion of how we accomplish socio-political change. But what does it really mean? And who defines violence for that matter—beyond the police, the courts, and others in power?
Today, the theory of non-violence has grown beyond its Gandhian, spiritual aspiration roots, while retaining an irrational faith and offering a distorted view of resistance history. It is now a think-tank-approved, purportedly evidence-based method that guarantees movement success.
That reasoning comes from the pioneering scholarship of the pacifist Gene Sharp in the 1960s, and his inheritors in strategic nonviolence discourse, Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan. They argue that Gandhi’s sacred ideal of satyagraha also happens to be the only successful pathway to lasting change—and they have the data to prove it.
But do they? Nope. Matthew’s guest today persuasively shows that the movements we think of as “nonviolent” never really are. Why don’t we know this? Through a tangle of academic malpractice, spiritual bypassing, liberal wish fulfillment, and erasing anticolonial voices. Oh, and Gene Sharp also got a lot of funding from the Department of Defense.
Benjamin S. Case is a retired professional Muaythai fighter, an organizer, educator, and writer. He is a researcher at the Center for Work and Democracy and a fellow at the Resistance Studies Initiative.
P.S.: During our conversation, Ben mentioned that there are antifascist fighting clubs out there. Here are a few to look into:
Haymaker in Chicago.
SKN Muay Thai in Pittsburgh, PA.
Balagoon Boxing Club in Philly, PA.
Show Notes
Street Rebellion: Resistance Beyond Violence and Nonviolence | Case
Why Civil Resistance Works | Columbia University Press
Why Not Riot? Interview with Author Ben Case - CounterPunch.org
Change Agent: Gene Sharp’s Neoliberal Nonviolence (Part One) – Nonsite.org
Have Repertoire, Will Travel: Nonviolence as Global Contentious Performance
Violence Will Only Hurt the Trump Resistance | The New Republic
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The chat bot flashes its elipsis at the bottom of the screen. What is it thinking, what does it want from you, what do you want from it? Beneath those pixels lies a sea of mined data and lightning storms of electricity heating up servers in barren deserts. What will it find for you in the past labor of the generations?
According to a stunning new article in Rolling Stone, it will find whatever the fuck makes you feel like a god—incuding all the NewAge pablum it has scarfed down—because oops, ChatGPT released a model that is just too sycophantic.
But as we break down today, the AI nonsensient flattery machine is designed to hook you into the regurgitative process of self-seduction. Is this a new spiritual delusion, or more of the same? And what does that kind and agreeable bot conceal?
Show Notes
People Are Losing Loved Ones to AI-Fueled Spiritual Fantasies
Chatgpt induced psychosis
ChatGPT And Generative AI Innovations Are Creating Sustainability Havoc
LLM Can Be A Dangerous Persuader
You'll Be Astonished How Much Power It Takes to Generate a Single AI Image
A bottle of water per email: the hidden environmental costs of using AI chatbots
Intelligent Computing: The Latest Advances, Challenges, and Future
AI Data Centers Pose Regulatory Challenge, Jeopardizing Climate Goals
AI, Climate, and Regulation: From Data Centers to the AI Act
AI could impact 40 per cent of jobs worldwide in the next decade, UN agency warns
The Future of Jobs Report 2025
History’s Magic Mirror: America’s Economic Crisis and the Weimar Republic of Pre-Nazi Germany
The Great Filter: A possible solution to the Fermi Paradox
Academic Publisher Sells Authors’ Work to Microsoft for AI Training
Address of the Holy Father to the College of Cardinals (10 May 2025) | LEO XIV
Capitalism's Fascistic Tendencies — McGowan
McGowan, Todd. 2016. Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets. Columbia University Press.
Adorno, Theodor W., and Max Horkheimer. 1997. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Verso.
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It begins with a failed human sacrifice in Detroit in 1932. Some would say it actually starts with an evil god-scientist who created the first white people—white devils, really—some 6,000 years ago. Either way, the Nation of Islam has had an important cultural and political presence for almost a century in America.
Today’s installment of Julian’s Roots of Conspirituality series covers the incredible real world history of this extremist new religious movement, as well as its outlandish sci-fi mythological theology.
Show Notes
UAP in Nation of Islam?
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In 2022, Oregonians passed Measure 111, which amends the state constitution to declare access to affordable healthcare a right for every citizen. As it happens, this was the first ballot Derek voted on when moving to the state.
Now that the long journey to universal healthcare is a reality in Oregon, what does that actually entail? Derek is joined by two members of the nonprofit organization, Health Care for All Oregon: Collin Stackhouse, the Social Media Coordinator, and Rebecca Schoon, an Associate Professor of Public Health at Pacific University, who’s on the board. Together, they map out the journey ahead.
Health Care for All Oregon
Measure 111 passes, giving Oregonians a constitutional right to access affordable health care
Maga’s era of ‘soft eugenics’: let the weak get sick, help the clever breed
Show Notes
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Cancer, as physician and author Siddhartha Mukherjee writes, is the emperor of all maladies. The disease—the over 200 different diseases all falling under this umbrella term—has been with us as long as we’ve been us. If anything is truly ancient, it is the cancer cells that are in all of our bodies, just waiting to be turned on if the conditions are right, or if our genes dictate the inevitability.
Deep in wellness land, cancer is something entirely different. It’s avoidable if you stop consuming seed oils, stop using 5G, stop thinking negative thoughts, and by god, stop taking those jabs that cause all the turbo cancers going around. And with every wellness warning comes a wellness solution. Today our correspondent, Mallory DeMille, returns for a deep dive into the treacherous depths of one of the more insidious grifts: treating cancer with the power of…water.
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Gen X went from leaning slightly right in 2016 to become, as one analysis puts it, “the bedrock of Trumpism.” Derek meditates on what happened to his generation by reading from four different thought pieces on the topic.
Show Notes
Wait, What Is Really Up With Gen X’s Politics?
Is Gen X a Bunch of Trumpers? Maybe That’s the Wrong Question.
How Gen X Became the Trumpiest Generation
How Gen X Went from Raging Against the Machine to Swallowing Misinformation While “Doing Their Own Research”
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The White House Correspondents’ Dinner was a little different this year. No president. No comedian. The event featured a mea culpa from an Axios journalist who discussed the media’s complicity in failing to expose Biden’s mental decline. Meanwhile, Substack promoted an alternative parallel event called “Not The White House Correspondents’ Dinner” with an email that announced, “a new media order is emerging.” Legit—or just another conspiracy touting MAGA sham?
Julian reports on the proceedings of both events, as well as how the media landscape is shifting in ways that render the definitions of terms like “independent,” “journalism,” and “unbiased” hard to pin down. Digging beneath the surface on Substack, and outlets like The Free Press, and the increasingly mainstreamed far right cult-rag the Epoch Times, all of which claim in some way to represent this emergent new media order, leads him to ask: where is the real home of fact-based independent journalism?
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Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government in Ontario has leased the public space of OP to the Therme Spa company, which promises to bring wellness and democracy to the good citizens of Toronto, for a price.
Bruce Van Dieten and Ann-Elizabeth Samson of Ontario Place for All join Matthew to discuss the history and possible future of Toronto's cherished public space.
Bruce is "a retired busybody with nothing better to do than to lodge burrs under the saddles of politicians who see us as customers instead of citizens and treat us like obstacles."
Ann Elisabeth Samson specializes in equality, innovation, and futures thinking. She founded and ran BabyCenter Canada, and led the launch of the $300M Equality Fund. She is co-chair of Ontario Place for All and as an open water swimmer and rower - loves Lake Ontario.
Show Notes
Ontario Place for All
“To Rid Society of Imbeciles”: The Impact of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg’s Stand for Eugenics
RFK Jr. Wants to Send People Addicted to Antidepressants to Government “Wellness Farms”
Ontario Place
Quick Facts & Analysis + Fact Checker: Ford government's health care funding
Ford government spending $525-675M on Therme Spa to get up to $380-580M in value back if it is successful for 95 years: analysis
Ford says he will ‘double and triple check’ Ontario Place deal after new report
European Spa Company Therme Misrepresented Itself in an Effort to Expand Into Canada
Province grilled over Therme's credentials to build luxury spa at Ontario Place
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Part 2 of Matthew’s conversation with historian Craig Johnson (PhD Berkeley), who hosts Fifteen Minutes of Fascism, which covers the global rise of the radical right. He’s the author of an excellent new book, How to Talk to Your Son about Fascism, a guide for parents and educators on keeping young men out of the extreme right wing.
Today we tackle strategy. To debunk or not to debunk? How do you derail the coolness of fascism? How do we theorize the agency of kids becoming political actors? How do we maintain trust while engaging with a family member sliding to the right?
Show Notes
How to Talk to Your Son about Fascism - 1st Edition - Craig A. Johnson
Fifteen Minutes of Fascism YouTube
Stream Fifteen Minutes of Fascism
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Historian Craig Johnson (PhD Berkeley) hosts Fifteen Minutes of Fascism, which covers the global rise of the radical right. He’s the author of an excellent new book, How to Talk to Your Son about Fascism, a guide for parents and educators on keeping young men out of the extreme right wing.
In this first of a two-part interview, Matthew and Craig discuss definitions of fascism, why it appeals to young men (or how masculinity is socially constructed), irony poisoning, and whether fascism can be fought through accelerating cringe cycles.
Part 2 drops in Patreon on Monday. That episode centers on an exploration of strategy: how do we theorize the agency of kids becoming political actors? How do we maintain trust while engaging with a family member sliding to the right?
Show notes
How to Talk to Your Son about Fascism - 1st Edition - Craig A. Johnson
Fifteen Minutes of Fascism YouTube
Stream Fifteen Minutes of Fascism
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Someone’s got dirt on RFK Jr. MAHA voters went MAGA because Bobby said he was going to end vaccine mandates—their code for ending vaccines, period. No longer would food be dyed and oils be made of seeds. Everyone would get free gym memberships. America’s chronic disease epidemic would end overnight, as he’s repeatedly claimed.
Then Mr Kennedy goes to Washington only to declare that antisemitism is a public health crisis? And to say that the MMR vaccine is the most effective way to prevent measles? How could he say such a thing when, as Mikki Willis recently claimed, this “version” of measles is a bioweapon designed to infect the Mennonite population?
This week we look way too deeply into Candace Owens’s recent episodes about the blackmailing of RFK Jr, a story that quickly spread its tentacles into the microphones of a number of contrarian right-wing podcasters. We’ll give you the lowdown on the story and how, like a children’s game of telephone, it repeatedly got distorted and reframed with every mind it touched.
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When the aliens landed, they told a young musician and wannabe race car driver that he was the chosen one, and they were the real gods. He should build them an embassy with a UFO landing pad in order to prepare humanity for their arrival. They taught him the secrets of sex meditation and cloning DNA as a way to keep switching bodies and never die.
Not much in his story was original, but this was the 1970s, so free love hippies flocked to his French commune—then it all turned to shit. Somehow Claude kept landing on his feet. He took his schtick to Quebec, then Japan, and even found thousands of followers in Africa. Still no embassy, no divine alien arrival, no cloned human babies—but he kept raising funds from the gullible and living like a king with a ballerina bride 40 years his junior.
For the latest installment in Roots of Conspirituality series, Julian muses on the epic tale of the Raelians.
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When cultural and psychological anthropologist Katie Rose Hejtmanek set out to study Crossfit, she knew she had to throw herself into it fully. For seven years, she traveled to “boxes” around the world while committing herself to her local Brooklyn box. What she uncovered was a rabid fan base that deeply values community and a business model that offers a refreshing response to unfettered capitalism—as well as the misogyny, racism, and militarized Christian themes that inform this beloved and despised fitness regimen. She joins Derek to discuss her new book, The Cult of CrossFit: Christianity and the American Exercise Phenomenon.
Show Notes
The Cult of CrossFit: Christianity and the American Exercise Phenomenon
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"In order to have the future we want, we have to build and invent more of the things we need."
That’s the central claim of Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s new book, Abundance. They argue that Democrat-run cities and states have suffered self-inflicted wounds that are causing a mass exodus to red states, where life is simply more affordable. To stop the bleeding, Dems need to take action on a bold new vision that cuts through red tape to improve people’s lives and address the crises in housing, climate, healthcare and politics.
But many on the left are suspicious. Is this just Reaganomics wrapped up in the intellectualized language of the NY Times? Is Abundance the privileged prosperity gospel for white liberals?
Show Notes
The Abundance Agenda: Neoliberalism’s Rebrand
Abundance: The Left Hates It
Summary of Abundance Critiques
Politico: False Choice Between Abundance and Antitrust
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It's been quite the week at HHS with Robert F Kennedy Jr in charge. Derek considers what's been going on: Bobby's announcement that he's going to "determine" the cause of autism by September; his social media marketing-driven visit to grieving families in Texas; his pivot on the MMR vaccine; and his recommendation to the CDC that fluoride be removed from public water supplies.
Show Notes
RFK Jr. says HHS will determine the cause of autism by September
RFK Jr. says he plans to tell CDC to stop recommending fluoride in drinking water
What RFK Jr. Told Grieving Texas Families About the Measles Vaccine
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Jay Bhattacharya, Covid contrarian and co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, is now the Director of the NIH. The day before beginning his new job, he gave his first official interview to Bari Weiss on her podcast, Honestly. Derek and Julian discuss.
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