Conspirituality

Today's Drop is a crosspost of an interview Matthew Remski did with Brianna Patten of the Surviving Satchidananda Podcast.

Patten asked him a bunch of really good questions about high control groups, both as a former member and as someone who went on to research their sociology. Matthew finds Satchidananda's Integral Yoga fascinating, because Satchidananda's ascendancy through his Woodstock headline position in 1969 initiated the inward turn of 1960s liberation movements and fostered a tradition of reactionary values dressed as counterculture.

Patten asked about how Matthew got into high-control groups. He talked about how both groups he joined offered a kind of socialism, a hint of a different way to share resources. This echoed the brush with liberation theology he'd had in his Catholic upbringing. As a Gen X person, he was depoliticized, and he probably had undiagnosed depression that made him yearn for whatever impossible thing was being promised.

On the leaving side, Patten asked him if the pain ever goes away. He said maybe, but only as you resocialize into a purposeful life and real friendships, and there are no guarantees. They also talked about how unmoderated survivor forums can reproduce cult dynamics and claustrophobic fixation.

Show Notes

Surviving Satchidananda Podcast
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Matthew tracks the attack on disability justice activist Beatrice Adler-Bolton after a clip from her Socialism 2026 panel — "Health Fascism, Body Politics, and the Anti-State State" — was stripped of context by a right wing rage-farmer, and made to go viral. Adler-Bolton used the word "dysgenic" ironically, as a reclamation, arguing the left shouldn't try to out-fitness fascists. The clip drew 12 million views and wound up on Rogan.

Matthew unpacks what his colleague Adler-Bolton actually said, and why swoletarians in the “Left Manosphere”—as per Ayman Makarem's framework—misheard her point about fitness as an attack on their attempts to prepare for revolution.

Show Notes

Health Fascism, Body Politics, and the Anti-State State

Death Panel podcast

Ayman Makarem, "The Leftist Manosphere and Identity Politics"

Elite Capture by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò

The Combahee River Collective Statement, 1977

Ben Case, Street Rebellion: Resistance Beyond Violence and Nonviolence

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Harvard paleoanthropologist Daniel Lieberman returns with Fed Up: What Evolution Teaches About Food, Diet, Health, and Eating Well. In the book, he tries a variety of major diets, breaking down the latest science around each. His work, Derek argues, is a necessary corrective to the wellness influencers who promote and monetize single-diet solutions, when history and biology tell a much different story.

Show Notes

Fed Up: What Evolution Teaches About Food, Diet, Health, and Eating Well

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Humans are social animals. We’re not the strongest, fastest, or even best adapted to our environment. But what we excel at is our ability to work together, which means we’ve been able to adapt to every environment, a true outlier in the animal kingdom. And a big reason for that is our ability to empathize with others.

Basically, empathy is the ability to step into someone else's shoes, understand what they are thinking or feeling, and share in that emotional experience. The main types of empathy are cognitive, affective (or emotional), and somatic.

Derek looks at the first two in segment two through the lens of Paul Bloom’s work, but given a recent book by Lebanese-born Canadian marketing professor, Gad Saad (which Matthew covers in segment three), we thought we’d look at how empathy is being used, and potentially distorted, in modern society. Or, as Julian starts with, how it’s being weaponized on social media by Christian nationalists.

Show Notes

This Lebanese-Canadian Behavioral Scientist Is Gaining World Fame

Gad Saad: Google Scholar profile

Jews safer in Mississippi than Canada, says Jewish prof who left Montreal for Ole Miss

He's Canada's number one author, and he's leaving Canada for safety reasons

David Saad: Olympedia (official Olympic biographical record)

Gad Saad thread on his brother's Olympic/antisemitism story

Trump Says There Are 25 Million Illegal Immigrants

Fact Check: Did 20 Million Illegal Immigrants Enter US Under Biden?

Record 14 Million Unauthorized Immigrants Lived in the US in 2023

Vance magnifies false claims about Haitian immigrants eating pets

ADL's Global 100 Survey: What Does It Actually Say About Muslim Attitudes Toward Jews?

Examining the ADL's Antisemitism Audit

Campus Antisemitism and Student Experiences (CASE)

Flawed by Design: Jewish Faculty Network Response to CASE Report

First Anti-Islam March by Pegida Movement Fizzles in Denmark

Why Moslems Cannot, Will Not, Need Not Integrate
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A recent article in The Atlantic ponders the current state of yoga. Derek weighs in based on his decades-long experiences.

Show Notes

What Happened to Yoga?
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