27: Finding Meaning (and Laughs) in Crisis (w/Alex Auder)
Though we’re all staying put this holiday season, we continue to super-spread our conspirituality vibes. This week we’re fielding listener questions for our first-ever non-Patreon AMA. During this episode, we’ll be talking about our own spiritual beliefs, finding meaning in crisis, Matthew being canceled, and more.For a holiday treat, Matthew interviews friend of the pod, the fabulous Alex Auder, about what it means to satirize free-birth influencer @bauhauswife, who’s putting the fash back into fashion.Show NotesFour Quartets — TS EliotIs Stephen Mitchell a translator? He “translates” so many languages!Then there’s Jan Van Buitenen, the unknownMatthew’s elegy for Michael Stone
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Well, nothing's final, but we're going to keep working there.
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You can check out all that information on conspirituality.net slash transmissions, where I have it posted, and Julian has also been putting it up on Facebook and Instagram.
But we have new tier levels, new offerings, and we are making our Monday bonus episode Patron-only beginning in December, so we have one more this week coming up and then we're going to convert over to there.
That said, Thursdays will always be available for everyone because that's how this started, and we're just looking for ways that we can gain support for this so that we can put more time and effort into producing these shows.
Yeah, as the media empire slowly expands in terms of all the different ways we're putting content out there, right?
Big ups to Derek for doing all of the back-end work for this stuff and also for creating the new image that we're using on the stickers and the mugs and the t-shirt.
It's really great.
It is really great.
Thank you.
Yeah.
And I just want to say, you know, so far we've been funded by George Soros and Bill Gates, and that's been really great, but it's running out.
We're just looking for ways to expand.
You know, we're just trying to bring more people in.
The paperwork is terrible.
We hate it.
Yeah.
And until the vaccine kickbacks start coming in.
I know.
I know.
Conspirituality 27, finding meaning and laughs in crisis.
Though we're all staying put this holiday season, we continue to super spread our Conspiratuality vibes.
This week we're fielding listener questions for our first ever non-Patreon AMA.
During this episode, we'll be talking about our own spiritual beliefs, finding meaning in crisis, Matthew being cancelled, or whatever word we're using now, and more.
For a holiday treat, Matthew interviews Friend of the Pod, said sincerely this time, the fabulous Alex Audaire, about what it means to satirize free birth influencer Bauhaus wife, who's putting the fash back into fashion.
The first question we get, and I've actually seen this over a number of months, there's been a certain level of criticism.
We've talked about this before, where people say, you know, we're always criticizing, but we're never putting forward what we're actually advocating for.
We've pretty much, Matthew brilliantly deconstructed that and his Bauhaus wife, Instagram posts, for example.
But one question I have seen over and over is, is it too personal for each of you to share your own spiritual beliefs?
I think I've heard Derek say he's an atheist, that is correct, but I don't know about Julian or Matthew.
But let's just open it up about our take on the term spirituality.
Oh boy.
I have to say, I really appreciate this question, but I also kind of hate it.
But thank you for sending it in.
And really, for me, it begins with, is it too personal?
And more and more, my answer kind of is yes, it is too personal.
And I think that's because, partly because of the context here of being myself, an influencer in the wellness world.
So my first instinct is that my spirituality is It's neither that describable nor that important.
But, I mean, it also brings up the really, you know, weird thing about the word belief because it doesn't actually resonate with me.
To be perfectly honest, my gut says that I don't have any beliefs, but I know that that's not accurate in the sense that there are underlying values and instincts that govern my behaviors.
Like one example I thought of today is that our top public health doctor here in Toronto, her name is Eileen Davila and I watch her give a lot of press conferences and I believe instinctually that she is a hard-working and earnest person who's like struggling to communicate best practices arrived at by consensus and she's doing that in front of an increasingly fragmented and frustrated public but
The opposite of that belief, which would be some sort of like primal distrust of her as a person, could only really occur within me under the influence of a whole pile of other totally implausible beliefs.
Like she would work in public health for decades with some secret agenda to make more people sick, for instance.
Or that like even more kindly put, her decades of service were all under the spell of some kind of brainwashing or that she's a puppet.
So I know, I believe that she's working in good faith because I listened to her with concern and empathy and I don't really think twice about it.
But I also like, I don't think the question is getting at that.
I think, I might be assuming here, but I feel like the good listener wants to know where I sit on the atheism to theism scale.
Like, I'm just itchy about that, because to the extent that I'm a public figure, I don't think that it's fair to influence anyone's private life with stuff like that.
But about the scale itself, like, I have an instinctual allergy towards the notion of a Sky Daddy or a Sky or an Earth Mommy or any kind of external, absolute influence.
But at the same time, I don't exactly know where I am on that scale, and part of that uncertainty has to do with language.
You know, I'm not closed off to words that belong to theology like God or demon or angel, but that's only because I use the terms that I use metaphorically.
So, the question of what I believe is also complicated by a basic language problem, which is, is there anything in the vocabulary of religion or spirituality that is not metaphorical to me?
Like, do I believe in things, or do I appreciate the power of metaphor?
Well, this is the heart of the matter, right?
You're going there, even though you might feel like you're sort of avoiding the question, you're going there because you're talking about the central questions, which is how do we relate beliefs?
How do we think about the concept of belief and on what do we base our beliefs?
And then the related question in terms of this area, which is, How do we make sense of the deeply interior experiential domain that metaphorical language gestures towards?
Right, right.
And I mean, it's like I've obsessed for 40 years over religion.
Yeah, all three of us have.
Right, right.
And I still don't really have any adequate language for that internal privacy.
And it almost seems like I don't have beliefs until the moment that I'm asked to describe them, right?
And then when I'm asked, I feel this kind of like silence descend.
And all that really appears in my brain is moments.
And so in my study here, I can sit and there's this window and I can look out and I can look upwards because I'm in the basement and I can see this gray November sky and that's like, That's all that I need or want.
Or I can imagine what my son is thinking, like in another part of the house.
Or I can think of my mom, who's very ill right now, and I can kind of review her life in silence.
And that's what happens when I'm asked the question, what are your spiritual beliefs?
So, yeah, it doesn't sound like it's an answer, but thanks for asking.
I think what's profoundly interesting here is the way in which we think about, I think that what so often happens in this specific, when this topic comes up, is that it's this binary dualism between do you believe in the literal sort of
claims of something supernatural or paranormal?
Or do you think life is completely meaningless because you're a nihilist atheist?
And I think that I always sidestep that question because for me, there is so much experiential, contemplative, artistic, mythopoetic magic to be in awe of and in profoundly meaningful mythopoetic magic to be in awe of and in profoundly meaningful relationship to that actually is enhanced by setting aside overly literal Or supernatural or paranormal interpretations.
So, for me, it really is a question of how do we relate to this domain?
And I know, I hear what you're saying about it being too private and too personal and not wanting to influence other people in that way.
But at the same time, it's this profoundly universal aspect of the human condition that appears in all times and in all places, this attempt to make sense of this aspect of our psyche, of our being, right?
Yeah, and you know what?
Actually, as you refer back to the privacy, it's occurring to me that I don't think one can associate the privacy that I'm speaking about without a sense almost of shame that I can't communicate or share what I'm talking about, which is, I guess it's particularly paradoxical for a writer, right?
And maybe that's why I write so much, right?
Is to try to paper over that.
My favorite definition of poetry that I always bring out whenever anyone says, well, I don't get poetry, or why do you like poetry, or how is it that you can appreciate poetry and yet you seem like such an analytical, rational person, is that poetry is the attempt to speak what cannot be spoken.
So, that exact feeling of shame and the inadequacy of words to capture something so profoundly interior and personal and private and perhaps non-verbal in a certain way, to me, that's the function of everything we call poetry, right?
I want to think about this question, or the way that I usually do think about this question is...
When spiritually comes up, there's usually a sense that humans are some sort of chosen animal or that we have some special connection to some universal force.
Right.
And that's how I just want to briefly entertain this because it's why I study history and I'm so fascinated by evolutionary biology and history.
So if you think about the millions of years it took us to evolve to become humans from primates, And then you think about the 350,000 or so years from when Homo sapiens broke off from the other Homo lineages and effectively killed the other 11 or 12 that existed alongside us.
That brings us to 200 years ago when our population was under a billion people.
Now, in the last 200 years, we've gone from 1 billion to almost 9 billion people, largely thanks to vaccinations, which we'll talk about, and antibiotics, and hygiene theory, and all best practices.
And that's why we've grown, but we still have these old primitive operating systems.
Now, to support 9 billion people, closing in on 9 billion people, we kill over 80 billion land animals per year.
And so I'm bringing up all this data because every time that I hear this idea that like, for example, this great awakening, this recurrence of this idea that there's going to be a spiritual awakening of humanity, it just is a very selfish endeavor to me because it just is a very selfish endeavor to me because we are the most invasive and destructive species that this planet has ever had.
And we are destroying everything around us.
And it doesn't matter what you believe in because we're seeing this all of the time.
So I just want to say like in terms, I fully agree with what Julian said about poetry and the spirit of being human and what we can do for one another is very important to me.
But in terms of, as Matthew phrased it, a sky daddy or something of that nature is just absurd to me because we're not looking at our impact on the world we claim to be such an influence on.
You know, it's so, you're bringing up something, this is going to sound weird, but it's not just that the language of spirituality and religion to me is only ever metaphorical, it also is associated, and this is personal history with being ex-Catholic and in a Buddhist cult and everything like that, it's also associated with disgust.
And I'm realizing that as I listen to you, Derek, that Part of what I feel when I hear the sort of overt language or explicit language of spirituality and religion being used unironically or uncritically or something like that is I'm hearing some kind of great hypocrisy that is reflective of exactly what you're speaking about.
It's almost as if In order to cover over the guilt of our presence in the world, we have to invent this other place in which there can be human specialness.
And we do that, I think, I feel anyway, often through religious language.
And so I just never want to have a part of it, I guess, you know?
I mean, that was a great summation of my longer diatribe about it, but that's exactly how I feel about it.
I just want to give one more example of what we've learned about ourselves.
It's partly why I was in this discussion on our Facebook group about how we've come to almost find a vaccine very quickly.
It's because science evolves and we learn things and then we're able to build upon it.
Everything evolves.
And, you know, there's one phenomenon that has been throughout religious literature is near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences.
And about 10 years ago, there was some research done in Spain in which they put some magnets over part of the cortex and you can now go into a laboratory and a researcher can give you an out-of-body experience.
This is something that anyone can have.
It's nothing special.
There's just certain conditions that lead to it.
And we assign such, like, depth to it.
And it could be, I mean, it's pretty cool.
I've had it on psychedelics.
Like, I get it.
But what does that really do for us as a species that has to battle climate change, for example, or try to put the homeless into shelter?
Like, what does that do to us?
It's not really, it falls flat, like you said, Matthew.
Yeah, and it goes to the question that I'm always fascinated by, which is...
How do we, how do we make space for profound experiential brain states and their brain states, but we don't experience them as brain states.
We experience through the brain state, these profound, you know, whatever they are, emotions, sensations.
How do we make space for all of that without Jumping so quickly to the assumed interpretation of what it means metaphysically, right?
So under certain conditions, it can appear to my brain as if I have left my body.
The metaphysical assumption about that is, oh, you are a soul that exists distinct from your body and can travel away from your body.
Therefore, death is not real.
Therefore, this central existential Anxiety that we've had from the, from the moment our brains started to be able to conceive in abstract terms of the fact that I too will one day die is somehow resolved.
And this is, this is the thing for me is there are existential questions, there are psychological questions, and there are philosophical questions that I see religious and new age formulations trying to resolve.
And I actually think of awareness practice as being The process of becoming more resilient in the face of just allowing those questions, allowing an open ended inquiry about those questions without resolving them in a way that is sort of pleasing or wish fulfilling or takes away the vulnerability of what it is to be really be human.
My sense is that when we meet each other in that raw vulnerability of the authentic human condition, that to me is sacred.
My final thought on this is that if It makes you a better person than I'm all for it.
Atheists have gotten mad at me.
It happened this week when I wrote approvingly about a religious experience that I was covering.
It wasn't my own, but I was writing about.
And the whole point was that, and I actually write about this in the article, was that If it helps us to focus on living a better life and to be better people, then it's fine.
I have no problem with any belief if you're a better person because of it.
But if it's just a belief that you're just hanging out there as some sort of metaphysical trophy, I just don't see the value in it.
The storytelling that you just ran through, Julian, with regard to, you know, if the brain can have an out-of-body experience, we can construct a metaphysical narrative around why that's so.
It really like that that really points me back to some of the content that we covered in the last episode around repression, because the feeling the distinct feeling that I had as I was becoming an ex-Catholic when I was a young teenager was that was that the entire sort of edifice because the feeling the distinct feeling that I had as I was becoming an ex-Catholic when I was
The tableware, the dressings, the satan and the surplus that I wore, the bells that were ringing at the particular time, all of these things were carefully manufactured, just like the metaphysical argument to cover over action.
Actually, this this dearth of of like sort of experiential honesty, which is we don't actually know.
And so and so there's there's there's so much effort and anxiety put into the appearance of certainty and you can start to feel it.
And I think there's a that's that's a lot of what my teenage life was about was, yeah, I'm I I am I there's hypocrisy all around me.
And it's not because somebody is telling me something explicitly that's not true, although I found that out later.
It's because they're showing me that they've covered over what they're afraid of.
I think for me, I just it's just important to also say that none of nothing that we're bringing up in this conversation.
For me, in any way negates the power, the value, the beauty, the healing potential, the life enriching magic that I experienced through yoga practice, through receiving and giving body work, through ecstatic dance, through meditation.
Like for me, for me, all of this is held within the context of this conversation.
And in fact, is deepened by it for me.
So I just want to put that out there to anyone who might feel, you know, otherwise.
I'll also just close with saying that's why both Julie and I, we've talked about A Shared Love of V.S.
Ramachandran, who is somebody who puts such an emphasis on the beauty of science and understanding the awe that it inspires as you learn.
And I fully agree with that last sentiment, but Matthew was right that there was a kind of a kindred question which has to do with How do we balance meaning-making with our deconstructing and questioning?
So the way we kind of phrased it was, how do we keep a sense of meaning through all of the skepticism and the criticism that we do on this podcast?
For me, it has to do with resisting the temptation to have meaning be in an ultimate, overarching, cosmic sense.
For me, meaning is located in our human context, in our cultural context, in our relational context.
It doesn't have to do with, and it goes back to what you guys were alluding to earlier about the sort of self-centeredness of a lot of religious formulations, it doesn't have to do with What I do in my life having some grand cosmic overarching meaning or life itself having meaning in that way.
Life itself can be meaningless in the larger context of the universe and the universe itself can be completely lacking in any of the reference points that we use to construct meaning as human beings.
But our human existence is still profoundly, profoundly meaningful.
There's nothing nihilistic to me about acknowledging that first proposition.
Cool.
I mean, when I look at the trying to balance, you know, skepticism and meaning, two things come to mind, which is, I mean, first of all, there's a kind of a hygiene question and a question of rhythm.
And, you know, that's just to reflect that my mental health will definitely take a hit if I maintain some sort of overtime pace on this material, which I often do, because it's demoralizing, right?
It's like a bad diet or always being in a nightclub or something like that.
Like people send me another Thomas Cowan video and I'm like, oh my God, what do I have to do?
So I think, you know, it also makes me think of gardening.
And in the context of gardening, you know, we might say that deconstruction is like weeding, and you can go really fast yanking stuff out.
But the pace of Planting things actually is a lot slower and it's a lot smaller.
You have to get closer to the ground and so I stay okay if I mix activities, but it's like a real challenge when you, you know, make some of your living from from or more of your living from weeding rather than planting.
And it's like super challenging in a social media environment that rewards speed over thoroughness, right?
I wanted to say too that I have this thought that all three of us are actually in touch with We have a quite strong faith of our own that animates all of this, right?
So you may well say, well, gee, if you're continuously debunking and deconstructing and discovering the ways in which all sorts of truth claims are false, doesn't that then shake to the core your sense of meaning?
And yeah, it can be difficult and it can be depressing.
Uh, I think there's a faith in the value of truth.
And you know, this, this thing that I was saying a lot at the beginning of, of quarantine, that reality exists and truth matters.
And there are such things as facts.
There's, there's a faith that, that, that it's worthwhile, that, that even if you don't like the truth that it exposes, the truth matters more than the pleasing delusion.
Yeah, and the project itself is kind of energizing, like we do cover a lot of depressing material, but that's never what it feels like on Slack, right?
Exactly.
Right.
And I think that's because there's something, and it's also not, I mean, I don't think that we're ambulance chasers either, or there's some sort of fetish for the disgusting.
But at the same time, when we see something I think that we can really latch on to, there is kind of an excitement about that that is contagious, you know?
One thing I learned early in my journalism career, I got into journalism because I loved writing and I pivoted to music journalism and I became friends with a lot of the musicians.
And then occasionally one of them would produce an album that wasn't great.
I have a few instances in mind where I've reviewed hundreds of albums in my time then, and it was always hard for me to write a negative review in certain ways, and then I would see that person and it's not pretty.
But I remember reading an article about the necessity of Yeah.
And how it pushes forward literature.
Like, you're not doing anyone a favor if you're not criticizing.
And that really changed my entire perspective of what I was doing at that time in my career.
So it took more care to be less cynical and more constructive in that criticism.
And I would say, yes, sometimes, as I've said, I'm sarcastic.
We joke around on this podcast and such.
But we are three people who have invested a lot of time and energy and education and teaching about the wellness space, about yoga, about these topics.
And when you see charlatans or you see people who just want to make money and they're just sharing nonsense and bullshit, which you know is not scientifically valid and sound, I have a problem with that because I am very invested in people's wellness and we want to see people do better.
And so sometimes some of these criticisms can come across as if we had this person in this chat right now, we could debate them.
That would be one thing.
And then sometimes you just see it for what it is and it's really frustrating and you want to point that out because people are falling for it.
You know, you'll all hear me interview Alex O'Dare at the end of this episode.
And we get to this point where she actually says that she, She thinks that Bauhaus wife is more sarcastic than she is because Bauhaus wife is playing herself.
And it brings up this thing about the fact that aspirational culture actually hides this dagger behind its back.
I think yoga and wellness pretend that they're not critical, but actually the ableism, the competition, the sort of visual dominance that people try to exert over each other, it's absolutely sadistic at times.
And I think that what we do actually is by speaking that openly is we give an opportunity for it to be seen.
And that's not cynical at all.
It's not deconstructive at all.
The next question has to do with our favorite publishing company, except until Goop Publishing launches next year, which I'm sure we're going to have some episodes when that happens.
We're in talks, actually, to be on editorial.
Right.
How should we culturally rethink someone like Oprah, who encouraged a lot of this, hey, how she is stuff?
I love how that was put like Eckhart Tolle or Tolle.
I don't know how to say his name, but just in general, how should we rethink people who have championed these figures who are now proving to be what they are at this time?
Oh, it's so hard with Oprah, isn't it?
Because it's like she boosts Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, and then like, it's only because of Oprah that Jenny McCarthy is anybody, right?
Am I right that that's where her first main appearance is?
I don't know about Jenny, but yeah, I mean, Oprah has, I mean, I would guess that tens of thousands of people, minimum, read books because of her, which is a good thing.
But, but there are problems.
Yeah, there are problems.
I mean, well, we did a whole episode where there was a whole bonus episode where I go over Hay House, but like, I, you know, what this question makes me think of is I really want to promote literacy with regard to types of literature.
And so one thing that I always do in the yoga training stuff that I'm still working at, you know, while all of the studios and schools are closed down, is I try to take people through sort of an honest appraisal of, you know, what the books on their book lists typically are and where they're coming from.
And so I've got this example here.
And first of all, for people who may not be, you know, that tuned into the yoga teacher training paradigm, you know, first of all, the first thing that we can say is, you know, YTT is like a transitional ritual now in the gig economy, like people arrive to yoga teacher training programs, typically in vulnerable states.
You know, I teach rooms of 20, 30, 40 people, and, you know, everybody in the room will just have come from a divorce, or, you know, they've been sick and recovered, or there's been a death in the family, or they've moved, or something like that.
And so they come with a kind of situational vulnerability, which is something that I talk about when I talk about, you know, the conditions for being recruited into a cult.
But one of the books that is... Funny thing that, eh?
Right, right.
Well, actually, it actually is kind of, there is something sinister about it, actually, given the fact that the 200-hour teacher training really emerges from the entrepreneurial mind of
Vishnu Devananda of Sivananda Yoga who started the process in 1968 or at least created the format and it was residential and then it was also highly controlled as we now know given the cultic dynamics of the group.
So anyway, the YTT person comes into the training and they're going to find that a book called the Bhagavad Gita is on the reading list.
And here's the thing is that there are so many books about or pretending to be translations of the Bhagavad Gita that you can really be led into either New Age land or into, you know, reputable scholarship.
And it's usually into New Age land.
And yeah, that New Age land sort of media platform exists because of the oprification of spirituality.
So, you know, this book, the book that I always talk about is that Stephen Mitchell's translation, quote-unquote, of the Bhagavad Gita is always very popular.
And then, oh, look, he's the he's the husband of Byron Katie.
And because the authors are proximal, the books will be, too.
So the yoga student will be going to that section of the yoga bookstore and those books will be close together.
And things just rub up against each other.
And somehow people develop the impression that like Iron Age, you know, heroic, epic literature that involves yoga in India has something to do with, you know, Byron Katie's The Work.
But like Mitchell's book is very bad.
And I don't have to like pull it apart to prove it, except to say that he just opens his introduction by saying that the best way of understanding the Bhagavad Gita is by reading the words of Henry David Thoreau, who's reflecting on it, that he's the best source for who's reflecting on it, that he's the best source for beginning to understand this ancient text.
So not a Sanskritist, not an Indian or a Vaishnavite author, but a New England transcendentalist.
And on the cover, so I'm just going to keep going with this for a bit, on the cover it says, a new translation.
Now, translation is a word that actually means something.
And with Sanskrit, it implies a pretty high threshold of education, like there are very few professional Sanskritists in the world.
Right, right.
Well, it's but it's just true.
It's just true.
And Mitchell, like he doesn't detail his formal languages credentials for Sanskrit.
And then he says, in an interview with Publishers Weekly, he says, the Gita, for example, required three longhand drafts and two more on computer with most of the time taken for the first draft, going through the Sanskrit with an analytical version, meaning not his, comparing this with a couple of dozen versions.
So, now when we look at the other things that he's translated, we see that he's translated works from the ancient Hebrew, from Spanish.
He's translated Beowulf, so Old English is in his quiver as well.
He translated the ancient Akkadian...
Gilgamesh?
Gilgamesh, exactly!
It's highly unlikely that this dude is actually translating this stuff.
Much more plausible is that he's a boomer in the right place at the right time to capitalize on the explosion of New Age spiritual publishing.
Maybe he did the work and so he can translate anything, right?
But like, uh, it's highly unlikely that he's translating this stuff.
Much more plausible is that he's a boomer in the right place at the right time to capitalize on the explosion of new age spiritual publishing.
And in that sector, charisma is valued far more than honesty and scholarship, uh, and And also it's an environment in which ancient and indigenous ideas and resources just become like coffee table accoutrements.
And then, and if you compare that with, I'll just, you know, I'll just finish by saying like a real critical edition of the Bhagavad Gita produced by somebody like Jan van Beuthenen, 1981 or 1983 or something like that, Nobody's ever heard of this guy's name because he wasn't an influencer because his goal was not to put the book into the bookstore that had the patchouli incense going in it.
He wanted to actually produce a peer-reviewed professional text and you get so much more out of it.
And so I just want people to know that what they're looking at when when they engage with spiritual texts and and or at least texts in that in that genre.
Who says he's not an influence?
He influenced you.
Oh, right.
I spoke at a myth to mythology conferences and one I spoke and then at the elevator I got to meet Wendy Doniger and I was like, ah, OK.
We had a great talk with her, you know, but most people don't know who that is.
But yeah, right.
Like I, you know, so smaller influencers, let's be fair.
Right.
Yes.
But what I hear you, what I hear you talking about Matthew is the, the phenomenon of new age publishing.
Right.
And how Oprah, when, when we get a question like this, how Oprah, played such a big part in funneling a massive audience into that particular aisle or that particular wing of the bookstore, right?
And so I feel like there is something else in here as well that I'm hearing that I just want to mention, which is that, you know, because we've covered so many new agey influencers who've been red-pilled or who have been Perhaps in some ways unknowingly sharing Q-themed material as a sort of natural extension of what I think of as very bad metaphysical investments.
There can be a tendency to then be on the lookout for like, okay, who are all the other bad guys, right?
And so I hear in the question like, do we have to see Oprah as a bad guy now?
And what I want to say is that I feel like with someone like Oprah, There's a level of sincerity in terms of her process.
There's a level of transparency in terms of the depth of her suffering and her trauma that she's been open about.
Now, you know, we can debate back and forth the performative nature of a lot of that stuff in terms of the size of her platform, but I don't see her as someone who is knowingly spreading You know, easy access to an audience for con artists and charlatans and people who we actually see as profoundly damaging, someone like Byron Katie.
She was a huge proponent of the secret when the secret first came out.
She's had James Arthur Ray on the show and James Arthur Ray ended up killing people because his New Age beliefs are so nutty and dangerous.
I don't I don't it's so it's so tricky because I see a lot of what Oprah does is incredibly beneficial and bringing a sort of trainer wheels version of valuing the inner life to so many people who might not otherwise come into contact with it in that more mainstream sense.
But I also do see her giving a platform to a lot of people that that I don't think are helpful to human beings.
One of the other things that I cover with yoga training students is that it's become very important, especially in recent times, more and more important actually for yoga teachers to understand that there's such a thing as a scope of practice and that they're not physiotherapists and they're not treating people's injuries.
and they're not also dieticians, and they shouldn't be recommending vegan diets or whatever, and that everybody seems to grasp that, that it's improper for the yoga teacher to recommend that you stop taking your SSRIs, for example.
Like in health sciences, we kinda got that, but what I think we would really benefit from is the expectation from people who put out humanity's content that they have a scope of practice as well.
That they're able to show in some way that what they're talking about is verifiable or that it's passed through some critical process.
And so that we don't get the situation in which Somebody with an enormous and well-earned platform like Oprah simply picks up Eckhart Tolle's book and goes, wow, this is amazing, and I love this, and then broadcasts it to 100 million people.
What, like, what is, on what basis is the value of that really communicated, except this was a book that had a personal impact upon Oprah, and that might be nice, but I mean, what if it actually has really stupid ideas in it?
Yeah, there's never a And that's why the sort of convergence between the entertainment world and the New Age spirituality world is so fraught as well.
I think it's something that we kind of started to bring up with Jeff Krasnow on his platform with Commune and with Wanderlust.
What are these companies?
Are they entertainment companies?
Or are they humanities companies?
I think it's also extremely important to think critically about people and understand that you can both appreciate Oprah for certain things and then also be critical of others.
The danger of fanaticism is losing sight of that.
But as we're talking, it makes me think of something like The Secret, which I don't think she's ever come out and said, oh, you know what, this was actually bullshit.
But when she helped to boost James Fray, and it turns out that James Fray lied when he wrote One Million Little Pieces, where he embellished his addiction, she had him back on and, I mean, lambasted him.
And you can be critical of her for sure, but it makes me wonder, Did she feel duped because she boosted that book and it turned out not to be true?
And then if so, why isn't that standard held up to the other nonsense that we're talking about?
Why doesn't she think critically about that?
Was it about her ego because she got duped?
I don't know.
Well, I don't know this story, but it makes me ask whether if, you know, I mean, there's nothing identifiably sort of dangerous or fraudulent.
There's been no criminal cases that have come out of the secret so far as I know.
So it's not like James Arthur Lane.
The secret, though?
I mean, did he torch people in that sauna because of the secret or under the influence He was one of the teachers in the secret and the whole thing he was doing in that sauna was he was saying, I'm teaching you how to be spiritual warriors where you let go of your fear and you stay in here even though you think you're going to die because you are deathless and you create your own reality and I create my own reality.
And so this is all going to be fine and people die.
Yeah, toxic, toxic shits.
So anyway, so yeah, it's a great question.
Why does she rake some guy over the coals and not, I mean, I have the impression that there might be some areas in which, oh, if she starts going after those guys, then maybe several years of her programming start looking very different altogether, right?
Like, I'm just wondering about scapegoating, whether she had to do one guy in.
Well, I think that To me, it comes down to a way that people sort of reflexively think about the area of spirituality.
It's an area that exists in a kind of criticism-free compartment, where it's the thing that I've said on this podcast before, that simultaneously there is the assumption that this is so incredibly important that you can't criticize it, and yet so incredibly inconsequential that it doesn't really have real world impacts, right?
And yet it does.
And I think part of where we're coming from, part of what I was hearing you say earlier, Matthew, is this, when you were comparing those two different approaches to the Bhagavad Gita is that, are you taking this seriously as literature?
Right.
Or is it, is it just like, oh, that's kind of a cool metaphysical idea.
I really like it.
Or, oh, wow, that kind of blew my mind.
That was amazing.
Have you read this book?
Well, that's the thing.
And it really cuts to the heart of cultural appropriation with the Gita as well, because it's like the Gita is not a platform for your new age feelings.
It's actually a book.
It comes from a place that has a history.
And like, you just don't you don't fuck with it that way.
Like, there's no point.
If you wanted to write a book about your feelings, then write a book about your feelings.
Of course, that's what Eckhart Tolle does and then he gets broadcast, you know, 200 million people.
Yeah, right.
The problem is that the whole New Age ethos is this fantasy that we have arrived at this omega point where all of the different spiritual traditions And everything we know now from the new science of quantum physics all boils down to the same thing, the same set of oversimplified, puerile spiritual aphorisms like you create your own reality, everything happens for a reason, et cetera, et cetera.
That's the problem is that there isn't this appreciation for diversity and nuance and actual philosophical disagreements between the different schools of thought.
And the same thing happens in teacher training programs.
I've talked to yoga teachers where I've said, well, yeah, Patanjali is great, but what about the dualism?
Have you looked into Tantra?
Have you looked into Advaita Vedanta?
And they always say the same thing.
Oh, they all, it's all the same.
It's all basically pointing to the spiritual unity of all traditions.
It's like, no it isn't!
They fucking disagree with each other!
And that's how they were vital.
That's actually how they knew they cared.
As they said, no, that's not the way I think about these things.
Here are the places where we diverge.
Let's investigate that.
We had my interview with Brian Mororescu ran last week and something he said during it just jumped out at me is that there are over 33,000 Christian denominations around the world.
Wow.
Think about that.
33,000 different tribes based on one book and one man.
Yeah.
And so to say that they're all the same, I know many Christians, and when I hear them explain the difference between them and other groups that comes down sometimes to one passage in the Bible, I'm blown away that they're fighting over this, first of all, that they can't get it together.
But to say that they're all the same is just is absurd.
All right.
Well, we're going to get a little personal now.
Someone asked, and this is a very important topic to Matthew, and we'll weigh in on this as we go along, but I want him to speak to this, which was that it's how close he was with Michael Stone.
And the listener would like to hear his experience on what happened with the criticism and canceling on his eulogy of Michael.
It was a tragic loss.
I appreciated the article, she writes, and heard a few folks express their disdain to Matthew's critique of Michael's possible untreated mental illness.
Or was it a symptom of tapping into deeper mystical phenomena that was perceived as a mental breakdown?
So it's really about that and your thoughts on what happened.
Yeah, well, first of all, did you guys know Michael at all?
Did you ever meet him or did you know about him?
I knew about him.
We communicated once on email years ago, just in the early days of like Yoga Brains, I remember.
Yeah, I knew about him and appreciated everything that I read, but didn't know him personally.
Well, I like the question it said that I had in my elegy.
I had a critique of his possible untreated mental illness.
Actually, no, he had diagnosed mental illness and I knew about it and a select circle of people knew about it.
It actually went back over years and years and that's part of the shame, I believe, that surrounded what I did with this elegy.
And you know, I should preface this by saying that I've been trolled or online harassed or cancelled or horizontally attacked a lot over the last six or seven years.
There's two main categories.
One is that I have been accused, usually without being quoted or referenced in any reasonable way, as being anti-Hindu, as a commentator upon yoga, a Hinduphobe.
And then I also have been criticized by members of the Ashtanga Yoga community as having kind of like a prurient interest in the story of institutional abuse.
Like there were, there were members of Ashtanga Yoga who, who basically hated what I did to uncover, uh, Joyce's, um, uh, abuses, basically every day of his life for, for 40 years, he assaulted students physically and sexually.
Uh, and there was like, for instance, there was this one authorized teacher who commented on her blog that I, I covered the Joyce story because this was her reasoning, her speculation.
Uh, she said that, uh, stories of the sexual humiliation of women by Joyce turned me on, which is, that's what she said.
Yeah.
If they hadn't have turned you on, if they hadn't have turned you on, you would have just turned a blind eye like everyone else did, because they were, they were not perverts like you, right?
Exactly.
Yeah, incredible.
Right.
So anyway, that comment got broadcast far and wide and, you know, it still pops up here and there.
But like the worst experience I think I've had was it wasn't political.
I mean, it did have to do with my work, but it was much more deeply personal and it followed, yeah, my publication of an elegy for my friend Michael.
Now, he died in July of 2017, very suddenly.
He died of a fentanyl overdose.
And it's unclear whether it was accidental or not.
It's also unclear whether it was his first experience with that chemical or not.
And, you know, he was a troubled person and I can say this having been a close friend of his for many years.
I knew his diagnosis from about 2015 and I knew that his diagnosis with bipolar disorder was actually the second diagnosis that he had been diagnosed earlier in life as well.
And I knew that he struggled with extraordinarily terrible moods, and he struggled to find the correct medication.
And we were close.
We wrote a book together.
Our families were close.
And so, you know, I had this feeling after the shock of it that his death was far more complex than the initial public outpouring suggested.
It felt like there was something missing about watching almost—it was also understandable, you know, and I loved what everybody wrote and thought, but I also felt like I was watching a hagiography kind of emerge in real time, and the truth actually was so much more instructive and so much more Buddhist, actually, and so much—it would have been, you know, so much more faithful to what I think Michael experienced.
I wrote an elegy that we'll link to and I wrote it in August and I sat on it for about six weeks and I went through like dozens of versions of it you know it's five or six thousand words long it was up to eight nine it was down to four it was like And what got put in and cut out generally was my rage.
Because, you know, I was, like many people, you know, but very few people could admit it, I was just angry that he had done this thing and he had left so many people in the lurch.
But of course, that's not appropriate.
That's like, you know, he, he, he, I, I obviously can't, can't fault him or, or, or, or judge him in any way.
And really, I think when you feel angry about something like that, it's just because you fucking miss the person and you love them and you wish that they were there and they could share, you know, the afternoon with you and stuff like that.
So, um, you know, I, I waited with this thing until I could edit all of the, the crap out and, and I sent it around to lots of folks for feedback.
And I got a lot of approval for it, um, especially from one family member of Michael's and that meant a lot to me.
But I think it's also possibly where I made a mistake, which is that I should have sought out feedback from people who I suspected would hate it.
Now, why would they hate it?
Well, basically, I erased the lines between his mental health challenges and his charisma and his startling ability to teach Buddhism or whatever his version of it was.
I suggested in the essay that he had learned to manage his challenges through teaching.
And that he was such an effective preacher of peace in part because he was in despair at not having it.
And even more threateningly, I suggested that his followers socially rewarded him with a kind of idealization that may have delayed his capacity to be transparent about his illness with them and perhaps with himself.
And I also noted that he got a lot of attention from and labor out of women in the group that he ran.
And I suggested, I didn't say it outright, but I suggested that there was substantial erotic transference going on, on kind of like a group scale.
Now, to this day, I don't think any of that is controversial.
I don't think it should be controversial.
In fact, I know that I soft-peddled some of the ways in which Michael misused power.
And I know stories of people who got left behind.
And for privacy reasons, I didn't include some things.
So, I published it.
after waiting.
It was probably two months.
And then another family member of the Stone family expressed disapproval online.
And somehow, quite quickly, the lie began circulating that I had been asked not to publish this essay by this same person, but that I went ahead anyway, selfishly.
And that's just not true.
I have the receipts to show that that's not true.
And I think what happened was that um, My gut sense anyway is that some people were also secretly enraged at Michael, but it was a lot safer to be enraged at me.
We were proximal.
We were kind of definitely not doppelgangers, but we were doing similar things.
So there was a two or three week absolute day and night shitstorm, and I feel like it aged me about 10 years.
And, you know, you'll be able to see in the comments some of the things that were said, at least publicly, privately, like many nastier things were said.
And, you know, in the long term, this still comes up.
You know, when somebody wants to troll me over my cult work, they'll say, oh, yeah, Matthew, that's that guy who exploited his friend's death against the wishes of his family.
And it doesn't matter that there's no part of that that's true.
But, you know, I don't I don't want to, like, end on with dwell on bad stuff.
I actually want to refer back to the interview that I did with Clementine and Jay.
And where she said at the end when she was talking about cancellation culture, she said that you're not two people.
If you are cruel on the internet, you are cruel.
You're not an internet you and a you you.
And that really struck me.
It's a very sort of like solidly ethical statement, but it made me think that being on the receiving end of this, it gave me this experience actually of being two people and what resolved it for me.
And you know, I'm not saying that it shouldn't have happened.
I think it was very, I think it was wrong.
that people attacked me.
It was not necessary.
It was not fair and they shouldn't have done it.
But at the same time, I got some kind of weird Buddhist lesson out of it too, because I was in the sauna two, three weeks in and I came out and typically I would lie down on the bench.
And for some reason, my heart rate finally came down and I had this very distinct impression that, oh, my body is here.
I'm touching my chest and that's like, you know, it's sweaty.
And I'm here and somebody is angry at something that's floating in space.
That's not actually me.
And it made me remember this thing that I had learned in Buddhism from the Tibetans, where like, if you want to figure out what...
What the self is that they deny, like what the sense of essential personhood is that they're trying to distinguish themselves from philosophically from other Indian thinkers.
You think of being falsely accused of something.
And so if you really meditate on being falsely accused of something, something that doesn't make sense, it couldn't possibly be true, and how you respond to it anyway, how you rise up with this indignation and like, oh, you can't possibly be saying that about me.
The Tibetans will like point at you and say, that's it.
That feeling that you have right now, that's the thing that you want to meditate away, you want to analyze away, because that's a locus of like illusory selfhood that's only going to ever cause you pain.
And anyway, so I had this thing in the gym.
And like, I just started laughing because I realized that I wanted to tell Michael about it.
Like he was the person I wanted to tell about it.
And I knew he would really appreciate it.
And so anyway, yeah, I wanted to end that.
It was a terrible thing.
And I wanted to end it on a happy note.
I wanted to end it on a happy note.
All right, so to lighten things up, and in honor of Thanksgiving weekend, we hope that you enjoy my interview with Alex O'Dare.
We also hope that you have a great holiday if you're in the States, and just a good week wherever else you are, and that you're with the people that you love and you have the support that you need.
Alex is a friend of the podcast.
She's incredibly hilarious.
We're going to post her Instagram handle up in the show notes.
And also some of her work on Mid-Century Modern Wife, which is her version of Bauhaus Wife.
We're going to talk, I'm talking with her about the science and the art and the purpose of satirizing influencers.
So we hope you enjoy it.
Alex, it's really good to see you.
So good to see you.
I'm so happy the election is over, or at least that part of it.
Oh, what a relief.
I mean, I'm sure we could do a whole nother podcast about, you know, which plenty of people talking about how, you know, Biden isn't the savior and all that.
I think we're on the same page with that.
Everybody knows I was a Bernie person, but I got to tell you, all my iconoclastic, like, hater vibes, they just dissolved in like somatic relief, like literally lead weights off the chest, which I think so many people felt.
Yeah.
Even if they're not Biden fans or Kamala fans.
Totally.
And, you know, it's just you can't help it.
It was just fucking like you realize how you were just holding on with your teeth and it felt incredible.
Yeah.
Well, how and how about for your mom?
We talked about her last time and we talked about we talked about her her conspiracism and and her humor and so on.
But how is she taking it all?
Well, so we're not really... Me and my sister, who I'm very close with, who's 11 years younger, are both a little bit on the outs with her right now.
Okay.
So, what's that, sweetie?
Sorry, my teenager's asking me something.
So, I'm in a call.
So, I did text her because I'm trying to kind of, you know, Sugar her up I can say something more obscene to like just for health.
I mean just you know in case she dies.
You know try to get on a better page with her.
So I texted her in order to make her like soften.
I believe in chemtrails.
Oh, so you threw her the chemtrail bone?
Yeah, I gave her the chemtrail bone.
The sacrifices we make for family, it's incredible, isn't it?
Tell me about it, and I'll tell you what she wrote.
And I know that she wrote on Facebook, I guess everyone needs another war again, you know, because, you know, there's the idea that Trump didn't have us in endless wars, you know, and that the next neoliberal president will return us to an endless war.
Sure, sure, yeah, right.
Okay.
So I can tell she's already naysaying on Facebook.
So I wrote, I wrote, Oh, I sent her a video of the celebration on the bus.
And she said, what is that, your bus?
And I said, yeah, we're celebrating in Philly, everybody out on the street.
She goes, glad you're having fun.
Obviously, I'm adding tone to the text, who knows what it is.
And I wrote, love you, I love you too.
I believe in chemtrails, heart, heart emoji.
It's not a question of belief, she wrote.
Oh my gosh.
Then I wrote, laughing face and kiss, and then she wrote, the government calls it aerosol spraying.
Check out their website.
Last I checked, they were considering it, but worried that the public would object.
Of course, since the government never lies about what they were doing.
Oh wait, they sent out a memo a while back that they were commencing geoengineering a year ago last March, including aerosol spraying, but they probably deleted that one by now.
Wow.
Okay, so we're gonna have to check in regularly to see how this is going.
I really appreciate you sharing the internal family dynamics.
It's fascinating.
Thank you.
Anyway, Bauhauswife.
Yes.
Please, like, first of all, I mean, first things first is that Yolande doesn't really engage with the substance of your satire, but she is super pissed that she thinks you're making fun of her son's name.
I know, which is...
Absolutely not true.
And I actually messaged her.
I'm blocked, but I think she has some other accounts.
Like, I looked up her name on Instagram and some other accounts came up.
Right.
Like, she has, like, a Saram account.
So I DM'd her and I just said, oh, just want you to know that I had no idea any of your children's names.
Actually, there's one I guess I know, Iggy, but that just somehow stuck in my mind.
Right.
Dingus is truly just this gibberish name that has been going around in our household for years that we use, like, if you forget the name of something, yeah, pass me that dingus on the shelf, or that guy was a real dongus, you know?
No, but you turned dingus into the son of mid-century modern wife, is that right?
I didn't re-watch the video because I don't like re-watching it much yet that I do.
I never listen to the podcast or anything.
But I remember that I had her as having two husbands.
And I told her in the DM, I was like, look, many of my characters are a conglomeration.
It's not all just Bauhaus.
Right.
So I'm pretty certain I refer to two husbands and one of them is called Dingus.
I wasn't her son at all.
There you have it.
Yeah, so we'd have to re-watch it for proof, but I honestly would never make fun of a name of a kid, because I don't, anybody can name their kid whatever, except for Baron.
Baron's pretty pathetic, to name your kid Baron.
Which, those of you who don't know, is Trump's youngest son's name.
I mean, that's really insane, and that's a true curse in life.
You know, he gets to live in a different place now, so I'm very happy for him.
Oh, thank God for him, I hope he survives.
But honestly, that's out of my radar.
I did you know what I will say that I do say I do I think when I'm in character I mentioned like my 13 my eight kids or whatever and I guess that is suggesting that I'm making fun of the fact that she has a lot of kids which honestly isn't really my gig like I don't want to make fun like people can have whatever amount of kids they want but it just came out in my improv so Eight kids is remarkable though, let's just say that.
Yeah, it's a lot of fucking kids.
And obviously there is this trend, yes, of this, it seems like, of this new feminism.
I think we could almost call it like a fifth wave, you know?
Oh, that's interesting.
Okay, right.
I'm just sort of saying this for the first time here, but it's like this of having like lots and lots of kids.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Have you noticed that?
But also, I mean, the rhetoric is sort of folded into if we have birth and have children properly, that a new age is dawning and so on.
So there's something salvific as well about it.
Definitely.
And I guess it harkens all the way back to the early days, right?
But I guess it's so hard to keep track exactly of what each wave of feminism is, but it seems like every time there is a new wave, there's a kind of either, you know, mirroring a past wave, which this seems to be, right?
like a biblical children-bearing wave or a reaction against another wave, right? - Right, right. - So, but none of the women ever comment on the actual content.
Well, when I say none of them, it's really, I guess the only women I like very specifically satire, the only other one besides Bauhaus, The other ones are all just imaginary conglomerations, but I have satired Elena Brower.
Yeah, right.
And she also has, I just know because someone sent me, spoken about me in a talk with somebody, in a live talk, and someone sent me a clip where she says it's, you know, she says an old friend of mine from New York is, you know, attacking me, And I don't know why, and the only thing I can say is that it's the wounded inner child, you know?
Yeah, well, I'll get to that in a moment.
I mean, I think it's really, the defenses against satire are pretty clear, but what is satire?
Just zooming back, what is the objective of satire for you?
What does it do that debate or fact-checking doesn't?
Yeah, and I was looking at your questions, which are great, and I went to take the dog out for a walk, and I was thinking about that.
You know, I think in satire, one, there's a lot of freedom for the quote-unquote artist, more freedom than a journalist would have.
Definitely.
And so I can say, okay, well, it's not even really you, you know, like, and you can't be sued, right?
Because satire, there's like laws about that, that you can't be sued.
So you can't be accused of defamation.
I mean, that's, you know, everything Saturday Night Live does is satire.
and you have some, and you have freedom to tackle, tackle stronger ideas where some people can just laugh at it.
You know, like I have some fans that loved me when I did the dolls.
And then when I switched over to tackling certain things, they're very upset with me.
So Bauhaus wife has some friends and I don't want to name this one woman because she's also a woman with many kids and in Costa Rica.
And I'm very friendly with her, have been very friendly with her in direct messaging.
Right.
And she's just everything, you know, you can imagine.
But somehow I have this little love for her.
I can't explain why.
Right.
She also in the early days shared some of my videos, and like, I got a bunch of followers because of her.
She really is upset with me now, although she never blocks me.
I've never, like, It's interesting the person who sticks with you and doesn't block, and I'm also noticing that you're saying, like, I have some sort of affinity for her.
There's got to be that going on with this tension as well, and I think that even...
And even the choice to satirize the particular person, I think within, I know enough about theater to know that you've got to be able to empathize in some way with how the person is presenting and what they're actually doing, what it feels like to be them.
And so there's kind of a love involved in satire that I think people are, yeah, that people often miss.
Yeah, totally.
I'm really glad you say that, because obviously, look, there's a lot of similarities.
I've got bangs.
I'm a cute middle-aged lady, if I do say so myself.
I wear large glasses, you know?
I've had two home births.
I have criticized the obstetric industry in the U.S., which, if you look at the stats, it is fucked up, okay?
Like, if you look at our stats, we have, I haven't looked at them recently, but we have, and so, you know, you can fact check me if you need to, but I'm just throwing out the last time I looked.
We have like 30% C-sections.
If you look at the stats of a socialized medicine country, like a Scandinavian country, it's like, it's like 3%, okay?
So there's obviously something weird going on.
Right.
One could say population numbers, all that.
We know that African-American women fare much worse in the birthing industry than white women.
Totally.
So there's something going on in the mainstream meds which end on many levels if you don't have pre-existing conditions.
You might, you do fare off and better off at home without intervention.
Right, right.
But needless to say, of course, thank God there's fucking hospitals like you have had, you had the experience with your partner, with your wife.
We need it, of course we need it.
It's just that, yeah, so that's the hard thing about this situation with Bauhaus and this other woman in Costa Rica is that if you criticize them, they say that, oh, we're all deluded.
And you know, and like what they said about you guys that you're, You're, you know, part of the mainstream media and the tech industry.
Under the influence of evil, but that's you and I together.
Yes, you and I together.
And it's very condescending because you and I are, you know, one of your pushbacks, because I listened to your thing, was that you said, you know, you're left and you talked about the three guys, you know, on your podcast.
I mean, you and the other podcast guys.
Derek and Julian like they now it's come to this thing right where even us identifying as left or and progressive they're going to critique right that's actually not considered a positive for them so that now people like them are saying that we the left are - Or intolerant, yeah, exactly. - Yes, yes, so we can no longer say, "Hey, wait a second, we're super progressive.
"We don't follow the mainstream media, da-da-da-da-da-da." It's, you know, my husband and I have talked about, made art about mainstream media for years, and even how the New York Times often is extremely conservative in their views, and in my opinion was one of the outlets that really made it harder for Bernie and in my opinion was one of the outlets that really made it Totally.
For Bernie Sanders to get ahead.
So it's like, so annoying, but I find that if I respond in a serious way, as you do, which I absolutely respect, as you, not you guys, it's like, I can't, it's, you spend Your whole life doing this, which is what you're devoted to, and it's amazing.
I cannot do it.
I'm not gonna go and, like, get all the facts.
I just can't.
And so for me, it's easier to just do through humor, satire, and irony, because that's my style.
And that way I can, like, play with the also...
Um, the, like, kind of ludicrous nature of it?
Like, sometimes something's just fucking funny.
Like, she might, she might be dead on about some of her birthing ideas, and then at the same time you're just like, this is, she herself appears as a Saturday Night Live satire, you know?
It's almost too much, like, for a while I resisted because I was like, it's too obvious to say that.
Okay, well let me ask you that.
When you first saw Bauhaus' wife, Jolande, what did you feel in yourself, and how long did it take you to know you were going to commit?
I mean, you're saying that it seemed... I guess I feel anger, I'll admit, you know?
Like, the thing that gets me is I get that, like, which I don't want and which I've been trying to avoid.
I didn't know she had mentioned me because I was trying to just, like, Focus on other things.
She makes me mad.
But then also laughing hysterically.
But I get an inner rage that is very physical and I want to, you know, I want to say, Are you fucking kidding me, you idiotic maniac?
Right.
And so then, I know you can't say that.
That's not gonna work.
So I slowly kind of, you know, breathe it out and take a break and let it sit.
Then I go back and look at it.
I try to avoid it, actually.
I don't want to do this.
It's almost like a compulsion.
And then you just can't stop.
I can't stop.
Right.
Yeah.
And then once I let it go- You try to leave and they pull you back in.
Call me back, and then people send me the shit, as they do with you.
I didn't know about her.
People send me, please look at this, please look at this, and I will ignore it.
I'll, like, delete the DM, because I'm like, I cannot, I cannot.
And then, and then finally, I'm like, fine, you know?
And so when I first watched one of the videos, I was, I'll, I find her definitely, like, ASMR, like she is both maddening and totally charismatic and involved like I'll be like wow like the the cadence and the words and I know she gets she's you know talking about how people make fun of the looks and the voice you know yeah But those are all essential parts of the presentation that the data-driven journalism can't touch.
And certainly, I can't come anywhere near her.
I'm very, very aware that in reporting on Kelly Brogan, that the way in which she puts herself together and presents herself and the composition of the shots and the haloing around her hair and her face, that's essential to her marketing message.
And I cannot touch it.
It is completely illegal territory.
And then you come along and you focus directly on that.
And I think it takes it seriously because we have to admit that without that aesthetic construction, there wouldn't be 27,000 followers.
Without that cadence.
I'm really glad that you brought up ASMR.
I hadn't really thought about that, but I think what is so mesmerizing about her speech is exactly that.
There's the articulation is very precise.
The cadence is incredible.
Yeah.
It's amazing.
Yeah, and even the, you know, which I obviously exaggerated, made a caricature of the bracelet jingling.
That's all part of ASMR, right?
To have the little sounds and the mic?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it's funny because it took me, you played that up, but it took me a couple of videos watching through Bauhauf's Wife to see where she does that and that it's actually a really subtle and very, I don't know, like magnetic thing that happens because Every time the head cocks or a point is made, then there's a little like, I don't know, rainforest tinkle in the background, right?
And it's amazing.
And what I find interesting is that she and some other women who are anti-maskers, COVID deniers, They always say if some of us critique them, and especially with my satire, it's so mean, it's so don't attack other women.
And what Yolande, is that how you say her name, Yolande?
I'm not sure, Yolande, yeah.
Yolande is doing, what Bauhauswave is doing, I find extremely cruel, the way she mocks, I find her to be very sadistic and very cruel in the way she, that the whole video she did, which is the one I was specifically satiring when she was responding to trolls and she hadn't left Canada yet, And she had decided to go out and shop, and she was making fun of these store owners who asked her to use hand sanitizer and a person at a restaurant.
And it's like, that is so classist and condescending.
Like, these people, the store owner, for all she knows, might not even believe in masks.
They have to do that to stay in business.
I find it to be ridiculously privileged.
So then she comes back to her house and she makes fun of them, but also from this position of, I know more and I'm also going to take the moral high road and kind of always disclaim, you know, they have to do what they have to do.
And, but yeah, I think, I think there's this, there's this confusion generally in social media that when people present their opinions, that they're just doing it neutrally.
Yes.
That somehow the way they position themselves, the way they speak, the way they organize the lighting, that that is not all part of the messaging.
And, yeah.
Exactly.
And the little side glances and sarcastic, you know, she's actually, in my opinion, way more sarcastic than I am.
You know, because she's playing herself, right?
Like, that's her giving an earnest speech about her true beliefs.
When I am myself, I'm quite kind.
I mean, I would never make fun of somebody who, even if I was a no-masker, I would wear a mask.
I'm not a no-masker, but I believe in the efficacy of masks.
But even if I didn't, Because I know some people who don't necessarily believe in the efficacy of masks, but they're going to wear masks, they're going to be kind to other people out, and not try to, like, mimic their beliefs that are, you know, that they think are deluded.
Right.
But I know that a lot of people think I'm very mean, you know, which, and of course there is a There is that scent.
In satire, in satiring something, yes, there's a, of course, yes, I will admit there's a harshness to it, because as you say, we are bringing up her entire aesthetic, right?
I'm satiring the entire aesthetic.
I know, but there's also, I mean, yes, there's something liberatory too about seeing that if a person is playing themselves, as you point out, that if you draw attention to the veil, to the costumery, to the pageantry, that Oh my gosh, well, maybe that can fall away, maybe that can be seen through, or maybe that doesn't have to be there.
And so there's this, I get an empathetic hit from it in the sense that, oh, it might sting to see oneself reflected back, but oh, a moment later you might say, oh, I could relax a little bit, maybe I don't have to do all of that to put together my content, right?
Or does my content actually depend upon insulting other people or telling people who have hospital births that they're contributing to the denigration of civilization?
I don't know why people need to do that in order to value natural birthing, right?
Even when I was younger, when I had my first child when I was whatever, 30 or so, and 32-ish, and I'm almost 50, I was like, wow, my daughter's really old.
I was more, and this is before internet, do you know what I'm saying?
I mean, like just as internet was.
And I was, I definitely, you know, was on my high horse, but in a more like maybe cloaked way about home birthing, you know what I mean?
Because at that time it was like, you didn't have these people.
And I was fighting against more of the mainstream, right?
Like I had people trying to scare me out of the home birth.
Can I ask you, did it also work out well for you?
It worked out beautifully and I always say, so what I was going to say is I got off that high horse because I realized That it doesn't work out beautifully for everybody, and that it is a privileged place to be in, and that you have to have, you know, you have to have pre-existing situation to be eligible for a home birth.
Right.
And it requires a great deal of support from, generally from a partner or helpers, right?
Right.
And like, the right atmosphere, the right place, blah blah blah blah blah.
And information, education.
I'm not saying that you Of course you can be highly educated and not have a home birth, but I'm saying you have to read books about it.
There's a lot of prep in a home birth, you know?
Right, right.
A lot of prep.
Yeah, because otherwise you would have had a matrilineal community that just talked you through it from the time you were eight years old or whatever, and you would have known that.
Um, you also, you know, have to be willing to, and I realize this is in everybody's gig, like I also think that having home birth and somewhat is like, you know, similar to what you and I speak about in the yoga world that yoga people like to talk about, which is that, you know, like walking the edge of death as a spiritual transformation.
Yeah, right.
So to me, home birth is that, but in this very revelatory way, because then you deliver the child rather than in yoga you have hip labrum surgery.
Right, or ostensibly you deliver the new self.
But the overlap is really clear, right?
Because it seems the way birth is positioned in this discourse is that It is the key and central moment of the remaking of the person.
And of course, it's an extraordinary, life-changing experience.
But all of this meaning is loaded onto it, and that means that it has to be done absolutely right.
Right.
And also, like, now these women are, which I think will bring us into one of your questions, you know, about what the difference is we're seeing in, like, the Bauhaus style compared to the other wellness leaders.
You know, I would have, before these women came around, yes, I would say that, like, home birth requires, like, a great deal, you know, you have to truly, like, in order to decide it, the self-agency, you know, what I would never have used this word before, you know, the sovereignty, that you, which, for whatever reason that has a lot to do with my childhood, I was, felt very strongly, you know, when I had my first home birth, and then when I had my second home birth, it, I was fairly certain it would be fine, just, you know what I mean?
It was like, I don't know, blah, blah, blah.
That is absolute privilege, you know, like, like, so what I see is that what's how this idea of sovereignty and self-agency has transmuted is, you know, and now we're going back when I know we spoke about this in our first talk, is goes hand in hand with libertarianism and is slipping into super right-wing
Socioeconomic ideology, which I can't tell, like, they cloak this, right?
Like, Yolande Bauhaus' wife, it's uncertain to me, like, what she thinks about socioeconomic ideology, you know?
Whereas there's another woman named Angela Sumner who calls herself a white witch.
Don't even get into it, Matthew, I almost don't even want to show it to you.
But I think I was introduced because Yolande was interviewed by her recently or something like that?
Yes.
So these three women.
So they're affiliating and networking together?
Yep.
And this other woman who I say I have this love for, who I don't want to say because I just, I don't know, I have this, I feel bad for her somehow.
Yeah.
So the other woman started posting, my friend, unquote friend, started posting, save the children.
And I said, I DM'd her, I said, are you aware that this is a Q&A?
She was like, oh honey, I don't think Trump's going to save anybody, but I know Hollywood is, I was, she goes, I was once in Hollywood, I know Hollywood is trafficking kids.
Okay, right, right.
So I just didn't respond.
I was like, all right, she's, Not gonna happen.
Angela Sumner is, so she claims, so there was this inner DMing where Angela Sumner said, I know you're talking about me with infinite sore.
Oh, I just said her name anyways, with this other woman.
And I said, yeah, no, of course, yeah.
I research women like you to figure out what's going on.
I'm not a Trumper, believe it or not.
Okay, she says that.
I'm like, okay, but she does say she's a Republican in some of her other stuff.
Now, for an entire story feed, It's interesting because I've got, I'm just going to pull it up right here.
Let's see.
insane you know so yeah she's uh so but so why won't she say why didn't she say you know i mean i don't get it like what are they trying to hide like just say you it's interesting because i've got i'm just going to pull it up right here um let's see and i think it is if i can find it it's on yolan clark's um personal page oh Okay.
No, no, that's not it.
I'm gonna try to find it, but it was something about, I'm hanging out with, you know, drinks in, you know, Central America or wherever I am with this friend of mine, and I am, we're talking about how we're not really, we're not really political.
Right.
Oh yes, here it is, here it is, here it is.
I'm anti-political.
I've only voted a couple of times in my life, and I've regretted it each time, and I truly believe that what is known as the political process is pure theatre, a diversion from the actual power brokers and structures that enforce and enact the tensions that pull our puppet strings.
Politics is the bread and circuses, but gosh, My husband and I are having fun tonight in this tiny tropical village, the sound of crickets and frogs chirping in the background after a torrential warm rain as we theorize and pontificate on the end of the world.
It's also interesting for me to reflect on the fact that I don't know anyone personally who has shifted their perspective from Republican to Democrat in the past year, but I do know many people in my circle have, reluctantly or not, decided that red might just offer a smidgen more hope than blue.
Ugh!
Interesting.
It makes me so crazy!
Interesting.
You know, I mean, are they dense?
Or is shitting on your progressive friends actually like enjoyable and a LARP?
Is it a way of further distinguishing oneself?
Is it like in another sort of teenage move where you say, oh, well, I grew up in, I mean, there was this whole thing that she did about, you know, being outraged that she couldn't go to the Fredericton Farmer's Market in June Because they used to sell their pottery there and of course they all now had to wear masks and that was unacceptable and she wasn't going to do that.
And so there's also this story of like self-isolating from people that she describes as friends, right?
Yes, oh yeah, there's a big thing.
And so has Angela Sumner as well.
A lot of friends and family have been arguing that she posted about voter fraud and how this is a stolen election and all that.
The other woman, Angela Sumner, lost a bunch of friends.
Right, and so there's got to be some, it feels to me like that is a performative risk that the person is willing to take, that I'm going to break these relationships or I'm going to come out and say that the people that I went to the Fredericton farmer's market with for years are now idiots and they are brainwashed and they're sheeple and whatever.
I don't know, somehow going to work out, or it's going to... Also, like, here's what very much confuses me, because what if you think that Republican Red, whatever you want to call it, might offer a light of hope?
It says to me she has done no reading on what a Republican agenda is, because if they want sovereignty and physical freedom, The Republican agenda is anti-women's bodies freedom, right?
In the essence that they're anti-pro-choice.
I don't even like to say pro-life.
I like to say anti-pro-choice.
Well, we've got to dig into that, though.
Like, is it good for Bauhaus' wife and other people in the free birth movement that Amy Coney Barrett got the seat?
Like, is it good for them?
Is that a good thing?
It might be, because I have a feeling that Bauhaus and all that feel that probably are anti-abortion.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, we don't know.
We don't know, but yeah, saying as a free birth advocate that, oh, you know, red might offer more hope than blue.
It's absolute bullshit.
Yeah, right, on the cusp of Roe v. Wade being overturned.
It's going to happen.
It's going to be challenged, and it's probably going to happen in a month.
Yes, and the crazy, and on top of it, the Republican machine is Now granted, I'm going to give a disclaimer here.
Don't anybody go crazy because I get that the Democrats have almost as much, but they are crazy ass funded by Big Pharma and crazy ass funded by CEO.
Now, yes, so is the Democratic Party.
That is why some of us were wishing we could get more of a Bernie Sanders agenda, which his entire thing was get the fucking money out of politics.
Right.
And tackle Big Pharma.
Bernie's huge thing was Big Pharma.
Right.
So if you look at... Yeah, prescriptions, prescriptions.
How many times did he say prescriptions?
Yes, so what I want to ask the women so badly, I wish they would like come on this show with us, is what is their suggestion then to organize society in the world?
How would they say that my neighborhood 20 blocks away should function with no politics, right?
Are they anarchists?
Maybe like mayhem, you just like let the poor die?
I don't think you can be an anarchist and hang out in Central America and kind of talk about how you're not into politics.
The only way you could have safe home births, in my opinion, is if you have socialized medicine.
Absolutely, right.
So, like, they're completely wrong.
To me, there's no two ways about it.
I have no room or patience to hear that you lean towards red or Republican and believe in home birthing.
Like, that's literally an oxymoron.
Okay, but maybe this is why the satire is so important, because my sense is, you said, you just started this little segment by saying, have they not read anything about the Republican platform?
Well, maybe they haven't, and maybe that's not what it's about.
Maybe it's about provocation, and it's not about data.
Maybe it's about disruption.
It's not about actual information or positions.
And so, and that's why it's very important to actually look beneath the surface of the argument that's being made, because there isn't an argument being made.
What's being- Offered is a kind of affect.
Exactly.
And what Ashley, so my friend, who now I keep saying her name, would say, and I don't know what Bauhaus would say to this, but if I, we said all this to Ashley, she would say, honey, you're deluded.
This isn't about, this is about that we are light beings and, you know, that we are divine beings and there's, and, and you are not, you know, you're, you're, Frequency is low, so that's what you say, which is just, once you're in there, there's no TV, you're just gone, right?
But, okay, so have you gotten the sense when somebody, like, makes that pivot, and you actually say, okay, well, is this about data or is this about feelings?
And then they go, like, to the third option, which is, no, this is about God.
Yeah.
Do you have the sense that it's just like, it's a greased pig, right?
It's not the, it's, it, the person isn't, it doesn't really have a position, but the ultimate default is, is, oh, I can talk about 5D consciousness because that's really undefined.
And really just if I, if I do googly eyes at you, you should be able to understand, and then we don't have to talk anymore.
We can go to brunch.
And that's when I feel a little bit bad for some people because some people, I'm trying not to talk about her specifically, have said themselves that they never had an education, that they came from this trauma, that they had these really awful situations with men.
And so they've landed in this place in Costa Rica.
are about to have more children, you know, and don't have money and stuff.
So at that point I'm like, what's my, what's my motive in trying to like one up or show this person.
There's no point.
Do you know what I'm saying?
Like they're on their path.
Like I can't with this particular person, you know what I mean?
Which is why I don't want to like, like have, even when she comes onto my page to support Bauhaus, I feel bad when people start yelling at her. - Yeah, right. - 'Cause at the end of the day, she'll then DM me and say, "You know what?
I'm about to have these kids and I can't deal with this.
You know, you're hurting my feelings at this point, dah, dah, dah." And I actually do feel bad.
I'm like, "What does this woman have her birth?" - It's such a car crash between punching up and punching down, right?
Because like, Because, I mean, Bauhaus has 27,000 followers.
I don't feel bad for Bauhaus at all.
But that's the thing, is that she's going to have sort of, in the downline, so to speak, of her content, she's going to have influencers or people who aspire to be influencers who, if you criticize her, they're going to be impacted.
Yeah.
They're going to be humiliated.
I think about all of the people who have gotten these kind of certifications or they've gone through trainings with a sort of mid-level influencer, and so they feel like they're in their downline.
And so if you say, hey, that influencer is full of shit, they actually suffer because You know, in lieu of actually going and doing a certified education somewhere, they have poured money into this person that you now have to criticize because they're insane or they're doing something really harmful.
It's really, really tangled.
I hate it.
It's really tangled.
And then sometimes I question all of it.
I love making my video satires.
Many levels, it's just a conglomeration of shit.
And if somebody did a satire of me, I truly would be flattered.
You know what I mean?
If I opened up my feed and saw someone doing me, I'd be like, awesome!
I would share it.
Right, right.
I would write them thank you, no matter how weird it was.
I'd be super into it.
Right.
People to try to like talk about the satire stone, but I did just get like a hundred more followers, right?
Yeah.
So maybe she's getting, I'm sure she got some followers too.
So on some level it's like this sick bat, you know what I mean?
I'm like, do I want to be part of this?
Sure.
I don't mind.
I'll take the followers, but like, like it's a little bit, you know what I mean?
On some level, like that too, right?
Where I'm like, So I think the way we try to answer that question on the podcast is like, do we have guests who are doing shit in the real world that we can link to, where whatever engagement we drum up through the content production actually points towards things that people can do?
So, you know, when we had Reagan Williams on, she works for, you know, a child sex trafficking organization.
Los Angeles.
And, you know, she's like, if you have time to, you know, if you have time to criticize Chrissy Teigen, you have also have time to give 10 bucks to this organization that actually takes care of children who are really impacted.
And so I feel like that's a, um, a So you link those two things together, but what I'm seeing in most of these people is that, you know, once the customers or once the followers are gathered, the object is to pull them more into a private space.
where they're even more protected away from the real world, away from their actual communities.
Come join my subscription thing.
And so there's even less engagement with the neighbors at that point and more investment in the idea of the person's online brand.
That's like, you know, I think that's the...
And deleting every comment.
Right.
Right.
Someone is is creepy because then nobody sees when you go to the page that you see.
It appears that nobody feels any differently.
Right now.
I I rarely delete comments.
Recently, I did block a couple of people after the Bauhaus thing.
Yeah.
They came in and I looked at their profiles and it was like zero.
Like I could tell they had just made an account to troll me a little bit.
Right.
And it wasn't anything huge was the usual shit like, oh, she calls herself a yoga teacher, you know, whatever, which I find the most.
I I wish there was like an emoji I could put for like the amount of times people say, how can you call yourself a yoga teacher?
I'm just, like... What would that be?
What would that be, that emoji?
It would be, like, it wouldn't be the cartoon yoga woman, but, like... It would be, like, a yoga lady with an exploding vagina or something.
Or just a bottle of liquor or something.
Like, I want on my grave, even though I don't want to be buried, but if I did have a gravestone, I want my epitaph to be, you call yourself a yoga teacher?
Right, exactly.
You call yourself a yoga teacher, if you can believe it.
Can I just ask, can I just ask?
Okay, we did, you did mention that you have these composite characters and, you know, so you have MLM oils, Yoga Liberty, you have Om Drone Vampire.
A lot of the sort of presentation techniques are the same with these influencers.
There's like intrusive eye contact, there's this grandiosity, there's an obsession with appearances that seems to be like just, oh, I just sort of arrived here.
Now, what is particularly notable for you about the aesthetics, composition, accessories of the Bauhaus wife brand?
And who is that supposed to appeal to?
Yeah, I know.
I think people like me.
Because her aesthetic does appeal to me, you know?
And I was like, well, she's fashionable.
Because a lot of the other women, I think, excuse me, are a tad cheesy.
Okay.
In terms of, like, just aesthetics, I would say she does appeal to a sort of whatever you would call my, like, class, socioeconomic, right?
Which, you know, like I say, that's what I'm describing, like a kind of haircut like this.
You'll have to, I'm not going to describe my own haircut, but, you know, a hip, Large glass frame, a red lip, you know, some, like, bohemian, like, drapey clothes with chunky jewelry.
Okay, so, but, so, but urban.
Yeah.
Highly educated.
Mm-hmm.
What else would we say?
It's like, it's like, it's boutique-y, salon-y.
Yep.
Right.
So, you know, boho, bohemian chic.
Okay.
You know, with, You know, a sort of intellectual slant to the vocabulary.
Right.
You know, people say, you see on her comments, wow, you're so well-spoken.
Well, she is very well-spoken about herself.
She is!
She's an amazing improver.
You know what I mean?
Her off-the-cuff language is incredible.
I'm super impressed.
And she's not reading.
I do want to know.
I don't know.
There might be a teleprompter that's on plexiglass right in front of this beautiful screen.
I would love to see that.
I want the intel.
Because yeah, people who speak in full paragraphs like that are very, very impressive.
It's not great to try to do that off the cuff when you're doing a kind of report on somebody else's work though, right?
Right.
Right.
And yeah, so I think she goes a little beyond the typical oil lady, right?
The doTERRA lady.
Because the doTERRA lady, I'm gonna say, is a little bit more suburban.
Yeah.
You know, Elena Brower sort of breaks all those things, you know?
Elena Brower is more similar to Bauhaus' wife on many levels.
Right.
You know what I mean?
So, the Bauhaus MLM.
Yeah, yeah.
Right.
Yeah, and so, and agreed that calling herself Bauhaus is so odd and chilling a bit, and, um... Well, yes, okay, so this is the thing is that... Yes, I, yes, and I don't, I mean, Bauhaus, for those who aren't familiar with, like, 20th century aesthetics, this is like the It's such a clean, spare, but machine-driven, highly sort of sanitary, very, very clean aesthetic of interwar Germany.
Like, it gave us Helvetica font.
It gives us IKEA.
Like, what is this?
What's being communicated?
What does that have to do with free birth or with liberation or with autonomy?
I mean, it's like the aesthetic, it is the aesthetic of institutionalized neoliberalism.
So I don't know what, I don't know what's going on.
And does she know that?
Like, is it just that she likes the aesthetic of Bauhaus?
Or the sound of the word?
Or the sound of the word?
Yes, which is why I like, which is why I came, when I came up with mid-century modern really quickly, because on some level it harkens back to this waves of feminism, right?
Like, as a mid-century wife, it's like, who'd want to go back to the 1950s?
You know what it makes me think of is like how horrible it would have been and uncomfortable and impractical if Eames made a birthing chair, right?
Can you imagine?
And you would find it in some 50s boutique in Brooklyn or something like that, but you couldn't really sit on it, like you'd have to, oh man.
It's like uncomfortable, like you'd be like trying to do hypnobirthing and it would be like jamming up in your back.
That is so brilliant.
I know, it's like.
With chrome and shit, yeah, it would be like.
It's so interesting because, like I'm saying, who'd want to go back to the 1950s?
Feminism, you know, which obviously wasn't existing in the 1950s.
Yet.
Yeah, who indeed?
Exactly.
This is what they're doing because the fact that she adds in wife.
Right.
And Angela Sumner, the witch lady who's part of this triad or, you know, many that and She just did a ranting video right before she went on vacation and talked about the election fraud about she's walking out in nature and she starts really going off on men who wear masks.
And she goes, you know what I think when I see a man wearing a mask?
Oh.
They are fucking pussies.
Oh my God.
They are just, what we want from men is to protect us.
You know, it's this whole thing, which I think bow houses into to this idea of the male protector.
Wow.
Wow, that's stunning.
And it's really intense.
It might still be up.
You might want to watch it.
She goes off really angrily.
I don't know.
I feel like I have to have a shower just listening to you describe it.
I know.
And it's chilling.
It's chilling.
And that actually, I just started laughing.
It didn't make me angry, but I mean, it was chilling, but also like insane.
Both Ashley and Bauhaus, I think Bauhaus says this, I'm not sure, and Angela all say, like, we're all gonna realize, like, especially in terms of this political stuff in the election, like, we're all gonna figure they're right.
Like, Angela Summer says, you'll be back.
She always says that to, like, her, like, whoever's watching her.
And you'll see that we're right, you know?
Right.
Oh wait, I just need, I want to make sure that we don't, before we end, because I don't know what our timing is, is that we get into the turf thing briefly as well.
Right, well, okay, this is, I think it's related to, like, who wants to go back to the 1950s.
Well, men are men, women are women, women might have eight kids, and they should be self-sufficient if they do so.
So institutionalized, right, in the 50s.
Right, right.
Like you were given a pill to stop your milk from flowing, you know?
Right, exactly.
I don't know if they had it in the book.
Yeah, what is, I mean, this is not something that I looked at really closely, but it does seem that she has a lot of turfy opinions.
Oh, yeah, she's totally turfy.
And also, my other friend gets accused of that, too.
Now, I don't want to, and I know you, Obviously, say you don't feel that, you know, you don't have a lot of leeway to indulge in these subjects because you're a man and da-da-da.
But, um, but I mean, sorry, in the birthing subjects, but I will say as a cisgendered 50-year-old, I also don't feel I'm any spokesperson on this subject, but I 100% You know, agree to call anyone the pronoun they want to be called and accept trans men, trans women into my life with gusto and have no problem.
I have people who used to come to my brick and mortar yoga studio who were, you know, trans men, midwives, you know, whatever.
I'm just saying, like, I'm on board.
Right, right.
But I also make mistakes.
And I also can fall prey in my own thing to being like, wait, they want to be called that?
Like, I know I see my own like old fashioned stuff coming up.
I feel it's my duty to progress and level up to what... Yeah, it's old fashioned, but it's also like years and years and years of training.
And like you grow up with a particular language and then you have to change it.
And it sounds like, and it sounds like from the little bit that I've seen from Bauhauswife's content, that it goes deeper than I don't want to change what my pattern is.
It's that women is a special sort of biological category and it's only women who give birth and anything that sort of challenges that orderliness, which is a huge part of the aesthetic as well, is a sign of civilizational decline.
It's kind of a Jordan Peterson thing, right?
Totally, they've got a lot of Jordan Peterson.
In fact, it would be interesting, aesthetically, they're kind of similar, because Jordan is always in these fucking 1940s suits with a watch chain and stuff, and super well-groomed, super well-groomed, also Canadian, also extraordinarily passive-aggressively polite.
Yep, and has a very special voice.
Very special voice.
It's so weird.
What's up with these Canadian people?
I don't know.
I don't know.
But I apologize on behalf of the world.
Also, I'm nervous that Costa Rica is going to block all North Americans.
Because all these bitches are heading off to Costa Rica.
But what's also really important to point out about the TERF thing, okay, is that it's exactly the same thing as it's so hypocritical to say you want sovereignty and freedom.
Oh God, yeah, right.
Just like the Republicans and the Libertarians say they don't, you know, they want everybody to have freedom, you know, no governmental controls except with abortion for the Republicans.
And for these women, total sovereignty, freedom, but A trans man can't say they're I don't even I mean I don't even know what it is they're arguing about but I guess it's this whole thing with a womb right that so like they're upset that a trans So this is what they don't get, I feel like.
So a trans man can be pregnant.
It's pretty simple.
So meaning that trans man has a womb, obviously, because in order to be physically pregnant, you have to have a womb.
So it's not that big a deal.
He's a man, if he wants to be identified as a man, and he's pregnant and he's got a womb.
Right, right.
And that somehow that's going to impact the, I don't know, the legitimacy of free birthing or feminism and reproductive rights because of the pronoun or how the person conceives of themself.
I don't get that.
Do they not see that their sovereignty and freedom goes to language too?
I guess they're saying that they feel their freedom to call themselves women is being challenged.
It feels like, it just feels like a manufactured LARP.
It's like I'm going to, and that was the whole thing behind Jordan Peterson too, is that he was completely bullshitting when he went to the Canadian Senate and said Bill C-16 is going to force me to go to jail unless I call people by the pronouns that they demand that they call me.
Now that's been law for years.
Nobody's gone to jail.
I don't believe anybody's been fined, which is the first thing.
And it only would apply to people who aggressively harassed their colleagues in the workplace, who asked that they not be misgendered.
And so he goes and he lies.
He made this thing up.
And by making this- That's what the Bauhaus does.
Doesn't she say that there's these camps and stuff that people, like she's trying to claim that in Canada- Oh, COVID camps?
That's some crazy ass shit.
Yeah, tell me about that.
I'm not quite sure on that line, but I guess, yeah, the lines of fiction are really palpable, right?
And that's why I do think, just coming back to what you actually do, the satire is super important because I don't think, for a lot of the influencers, it's about content.
It's about making an impression and driving engagement.
And that's why it's so bone-crushingly irritating and boring to try to argue data with people because they're not interested.
They're interested in the clunky jewelry and the framing, and also how provocative the meme can be.
And if you take that away from me, or if you criticize that, then you're limiting my capacity for free speech or something.
Circled it up in a great way in terms of what the satire is bringing out, because that's exactly right.
They're not interested in content, because when Elena Brower said, you know, it's her wounded inner child, I so badly want her to address, and she specifically said, like, there's no reason this old friend of mine should be doing this, or this old teacher should be doing this.
It's absolutely unfounded, she said.
And I, and the reason I get specific with Elena Brower is because I do, as we were saying how there's some closeness there, she truly is a peer of mine, you know?
And at one point I found her to be an intelligent, excellent yoga teacher, way back in the old days in New York.
So I do find her particularly fascinating because we are so similar.
And like, even in New York, once we got called out, like 10 best yoga teachers who use language, you know what I mean?
So we have this like strange parallel.
And so I'm fascinated by her, and I do think she's actually smart.
Well, I'm not sure anymore, but I did.
And I would like her, I would love for her to address it, to say, you know, because the last one I did where I played with images of her and Gabby Bernstein talking, I thought was very interesting, like very clear, you know?
That was a different thing than I usually do, right?
I wasn't playing her, I was like, Editing videos where they really say like COVID is a gift and they speak, Elena for the first time, like truly reveals that she believes that, you know, if you work hard enough, like you'll manifest and that everything can be turned into a gift.
And it was just astoundingly frank in its privilege.
Right, right.
False information.
And so, yeah, I was like, yeah, let's talk about that.
You know, not that, like, there's a wounded inner child.
First of all, who isn't a fucking wounded inner child?
Of course I have a wounded inner child.
I would never argue I don't.
Right, right.
Like, which one of us didn't come from trauma?
Like, there's a rare few who didn't have fucking trauma in their childhood, in their life.
Some more than others, of course, but...
I mean, it also suggests just how compelling and weaponizable the language of trauma can be to be used to dance around the obvious, the elephant in the room, which is that if you run with an MLM crowd, it's become a diamond seller or whatever in doTERRA, that means that you are engaged in financial abuse of people in your downline.
There's no two ways about that.
That's like, that's well documented.
It's proven.
And so if you just say that, like, so if anybody, so, so, so basically, if you say that, if you say that honestly, clearly, without any kind of, you know, opinion, or even, or even this is what you should do, or I think you should be ashamed of yourself, like leave that all to the side, it immediately gets turned into the personal psychological, you know, psychological attack, the ad hominem attack,
Uh, and, and then, and then, you know, the flip around, which is, which is, you know, Alex, you know, you must be so unhappy to be attacking the success of a, of a colleague like this.
You must be so, uh, I really hope for your healing.
I really hope for your healing.
Right.
Totally.
And there's no way to respond to that.
You know, I never respond to that because it's like saying to someone, I'm not racist.
Like, you can't say, like, I'm happy, actually.
Like, you know what I mean?
I just- Well, you just did, though.
You just did.
You just did.
You said, yeah, you're right, Elena.
You just also dodged the problem.
Here are the aspects of my inner trauma that I'm willing to disclose to a public audience because you seem so interested in them.
Now, I'm going to flip it around and say, but you actually avoided the problem, which is that you're at the top of an MLM and it's financially abusive.
And how many people in the yoga world have you drawn into it?
Right.
And how much money have they lost?
How much money have they lost?
How many of them are young women?
And what kind of role modeling is that?
And look at the fucking hard fact statistics that only a rare few can make the money you're making.
You're already making the money.
She's already gathered the money that anybody else can make.
It doesn't work like that.
It's a fucking pyramid scheme.
Anyways.
But what you said, and I got distracted talking about Alina, was they don't address the content and that And all they are is the aesthetic jangling bracelets surrounding, which is why it's ripe for satire and why the satire brings out the surreality of it on many levels, right?
Right, right, right.
Which is why I enjoy, right?
Like, I enjoy just getting down to the fact that it's just, like, all smoke and mirrors and jibbity-jop, you know?
Like, I could almost talk in gibberish.
Right.
You have the same effect on some levels, you know?
Right, right.
Yeah, if you did the tone, the rhythm, the intrusive eye contact, exactly, right.
And so, and it's, the satire allows to kind of, it brings it into this realm of, it's almost magical on some level, you know, because it starts to get, it's like all, I mean, you know, anyone we've, All of us who are into humor, satire, art, performance, go back to Buster Keaton.
Do you know what I'm saying?
Right, right.
Go back to Charlie Chaplin.
And they were huge political figures, you know?
I know, right.
And so my guy is always Buster Keaton.
That's what I base myself on.
And then, of course, the amazing Lucille Ball.
Oh, man.
So, like, it makes me laugh because, I'm sorry to say, it's actually just so stupid for these women to say, how can you be a yoga teacher and do this?
Like, and not get that it's not about yoga.
It has nothing to do with yoga teaching.
Like, I'm just a comedian and performer.
Like, get over it.
It's like writing to Kate McKinnon on Saturday Night Live and being like, how can you make fun of me?
Not that I came to kick, but like, you know what I mean?
It's like, get over it, bitch.
Like, it really shows that they're living in some weird spiritual bubble, yoga bubble, that they can't, like, see out of that, just because I also teach yoga.
Well, they also have to protect.
They also have to protect the filter around it and to say, and I think this is the thing that's really amazing about satire, is that it shows the dreamlike quality of the presentation.
Yes.
And because it's dreamlike, it feels a little bit hollow.
It's a little bit off.
And that has to be protected against because it's just so immediate.
Because if the person isn't communicating data, what they are communicating is charisma.
And if you show the charisma to be hollow from the outset, within five seconds, like don't even listen to what the argument is, you show the charisma to be hollow, it's going to evaporate.
And that's super dangerous.
So anyway.
And it's, yeah, and I can get, and I just get a dig, once I start getting into it, like the one of the videos that's on my highlights, which is the Elena Brower, Gabby Bernstein one.
Yeah.
I started just turning the camera myself.
I wasn't made up or done in any way.
I would just show a video and then I, I just love it.
I can't stop.
I start riffing on the fact that I'm living in New Mexico, but I'm just in my bed, you know, and like, and like showing the wall and like, it just becomes so, it's so ripe and blossoming and it gives me such pleasure.
And so when they say you're unhappy, I'm like, I can't even describe to you.
It's just like I had an orgasm.
That's how happy I am.
Right.
Well, here's here's here's to catharsis.
I mean, and I think and I think that's got to be like it.
It is easy for, you know, satire to devolve into irony and irony to devolve into cynicism and cynicism to become nihilistic.
But like.
And that's what my generation is accused of, you know.
Right.
And there's some truth to.
Yeah, right.
Totally.
Like you as a Canadian, not as much.
As a Gen X or American, yes.
And I'm like... Oh, yeah.
I mean, one of my writing, like, sort of country people and the same age as me, really, is Douglas Copeland, who wrote Generation X for us, really.
And, you know, there's a real sort of slacker kind of apathetic... You're right.
I totally take that back.
You're right.
Right, right.
Yeah.
I mean, we're good at it.
Canadians are good at it.
And I want and I do want to say, sorry, I know you're trying to end here, but I need to say this for our listeners, is that I recognize that in myself and I do actually fight against it.
And even that's what I was trying to say with this current election, is that I have a tendency to want to be like, Fuck you, idiots.
You think Biden's going to do anything for us?
And you know what?
I just let that melt in my heart because I realize I don't want to be that iconoclastic.
I don't want to be that bitter.
I want to believe in my heart that, yeah, we all did do something here in America.
We barely did it by the skin of our teeth.
Totally fucked up the country, but actually we all just fucking voted, and we did at least remove something that is worse than what we're about to have.
You know what I mean?
It's hard for me to say that, because I've always said the Democrats and the Republicans are almost the same, you know?
Right, right.
Well, and you know, there's a little bit of breathing room, but I think the most important thing is that we can actually just go out and do stuff too, right?
Like, we can do stuff in the real world, and yeah.
And then relax with satire.
Exactly.
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