Cable travel channels are filled with haunted houses and other paranormal activity, beyond History Channel’s Ancient Aliens and cryptozoology content. The more radicalized Gaia TV has close to a million paid subscribers gobbling up content about yoga, meditation, and psychedelic consciousness alongside accounts of inter-dimensional cryptids, Q-adjacent vampire reptilians, and channeled messages from benevolent ETs.
Julian’s talk with Pulitzer-nominated journalist Matt Hongoltz-Hetling about his new book, The Ghost Lab, How Bigfoot Hunters, Mediums, and Alien Enthusiasts are Wrecking Science. In it, he explores the history of ghost hunting and asks if failing trust in educational, religious, and government institutions is fueling a burgeoning obsession with the paranormal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a>

Bonus Sample: The Bethesda Declaration

Dismantling New Age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy-mad yogis. At best, the conspirituality movement attacks public health efforts in times of crisis. At worst, it fronts and recruits for the fever-dream of QAnon. As the alt-right and New Age horseshoe toward each other in a blur of disinformation, clear discourse, and good intentions get smothered. Charismatic influencers exploit their followers by co-opting conspiracy theories on a spectrum of intensity ranging from vaccines to child trafficking. In the process, spiritual beliefs that have nurtured creativity and meaning are transforming into memes of a quickly-globalizing paranoia. Conspirituality Podcast attempts to bring understanding to this landscape. A journalist, a cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic discuss the stories, cognitive dissonances, and cultic dynamics tearing through the yoga, wellness, and new spirituality worlds. Mainstream outlets have noticed the problem. We crowd-source, research, analyze, and dream answers to it.