We spend so much time on this podcast discussing the wellness industry’s paranoia around anything from the medical “establishment” or the Luciferean nature of “Big Pharma,” but there’s another devil that’s lurking around every corner: the Mainstream Media. Derek has long argued that there’s no such thing. Media organizations are competing businesses, and while there can be sloppiness when trying to break a story or laziness when rewriting press releases for clicks, the notion of a media “Deep State” is usually part of the conspiritualist’s sales technique, not the reality of modern media. Derek began his career as a religion journalist, and this week he interviews Sam Kestenbaum, who’s made a career in this field. Sam has written for the NY Times and the Washington Post, where he recently published an expose on Christiane Northrup. Derek asks him about this story in particular, as well as his process of reporting on religion, the differences between spirituality and religion, and the coming post-pandemic spirituality surge—and how conspiritualists are already monetizing it.Show NotesChristiane Northrup, once a New Age health guru, now spreads covid disinformationLife After Proclaiming a Trump Re-election As Divinely OrdainedGodspeak Calvary Church Defies Quarantine, Attendance Soars
-- -- --Support us on PatreonPre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | JulianOriginal music by EarthRise SoundSystem
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You can stay up to date with us on all of our social media channels, predominantly on Instagram.
We are individually on Twitter.
I think Julian still throws some things up on YouTube on occasion, as well as Facebook.
And of course, you can join us on Patreon at patreon.com slash conspirituality, where for $5 a month you can help support us and get access to our Monday bonus episodes, including a few that Matthew is about to address.
But just want to remind you that if you're on Apple, you can drop us a rating or a comment there and you will help appease the god of the algorithms.
Yeah, so last week, the Swan Song series in our bonus stream for Patreon, we featured an Early Access episode that was an interview with Paola Marino, who directed the 2017 film Open Shadow.
And we speak to her, Julian and I also speak together about the interview and about Open Shadow itself.
And as you'll hear, she drops some criticisms of The Deep End and also reflects on the obviously contrived edits and also the weirdness of being approached by the producers of The Deep End for her footage when they had three years worth of their own.
And this coming week, Julian will join me to follow in the footsteps of Sarah Marshall and Michael Hobbs of Your Wrong About as they tackled the literary aneurysm that started the Satanic Panic, which is 1980s Michelle Remembers by Lawrence Pazder and Michelle Smith.
Can't wait, can't wait.
This is deep stuff.
This is some of the wildest stuff that is hovering in the background of everything we're talking about on this series.
Yeah, and we're going to take, you know, Marshall and Hobbes are extraordinary in their coverage.
We're going to obviously bring a conspirituality angle to the project digging into the traditional Catholic propaganda in the book, and also tying its paranoia, non-stop paranoia about dead babies to the Christian conservative movements now bringing down Roe.
I don't believe we can understand Teal Swan without understanding Michelle Remembers and how well she laundered and commodified its absurd themes.
Spirituality 113, A Course in Conspiracies with Sam Kestenbaum. - Yeah.
We spend so much time on this podcast discussing the wellness industry's paranoia around anything from the medical establishment or the Luciferian nature of big pharma, but there's another devil that's lurking around every corner, the mainstream media.
Derek has long argued that there's no such thing.
Media organizations are competing businesses, and while there can be sloppiness when trying to break a story, or laziness when rewriting press releases for clicks, the notion of a media deep state is usually part of the conspiritualist's sales technique.
It's not the reality of modern media.
Derek began his career as a religion journalist, and this week he interviews Sam Kestenbaum, who's made a career in this field.
Sam has written for the New York Times and the Washington Post, where he recently published an exposé on Christiane Northrup.
Derek asks him about this story in particular, as well as his process of reporting on religion, the differences between spirituality and religion, and the coming post-pandemic spirituality surge, as well as how conspiritualists are already monetizing it.
Yeah, I'm glad that you got to interview Sam Kestenbaum.
Derek, I've admired his work for a while.
I'm just going to fanboy over one article from 2019 that's close to my heart, and it makes a whole bunch of low-key dunks that I wish I had the temperance and the subtlety to do myself.
It's called The Curious Mystical Text Behind Marianne Williamson's Presidential Bid.
Like, my blood pressure is already rising.
It's the New York Times when I think about trying to write this myself.
Anyway, he has really solid background on A Course in Miracles, which of course is the mysterious or the curious mystical text.
He notes its strange origins and quite Bible-like status amongst a host of followers, including a bunch of celebrities.
Sam is a little gentle with the text itself, and this is where I couldn't have written this article because by graph three I'd be like, this book is a batshit shitshow that should have been used for doorstops.
It says the world doesn't exist, that suffering is an illusion, that your body is meaningless, that sickness is a revolt against God.
And if any Democrat thinks this provides fiber or moral guidance for a candidate, and that it's refreshing that Williamson is in the race, that says a little bit too much about the Democratic Party and the ways in which liberalism can be really good at valuing sentiment over action.
Anyway, I've got some quotes here that are just killer.
So, he's interviewing her.
She emerged from the elevator banks of her midtown hotel, balancing a tall glass of iced tea.
Settling into a dim corner seat, she said, almost to herself, So, time for Marianne mode.
Then she was ready for her interview.
Oh, so good.
Really good.
Okay, then he really plays up.
He's got this really nice doubling up on the rule of three here in this passage.
He writes, by then, this is 1992, after she has gained some fame through Oprah, Ms.
Williamson was growing into her role as a full-blown celebrity, jumping between New York and the hills of Southern California.
In 1991, she officiated Elizabeth Taylor's wedding, a ceremony at Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch, and offered counsel to Bill and Hillary Clinton at a 1994 Camp David visit.
She crossed paths with Donald Trump, who requested her presence at a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser so that she and Marla Maples might meet.
Time Magazine called her Hollywood's New Age Attraction.
Now, because this is Sam, unlike me, he didn't write, you know, I would call her, you know, the Forrest Gump of the New Age.
But anyway, he writes more books.
So, he's got this three-part thing.
So, she's at Elizabeth Taylor's wedding, Which is at Neverland Ranch.
Okay, one.
And then, how many demographics does this cover, right?
Bill and Hillary Clinton at Camp David, and then she's at Mar-a-Lago.
Amazing.
Of course, she has a universal message, right?
Anyway, more books, he writes, based on the course, followed at a regular clip, at least six have climbed the New York Times bestseller list.
He's writing in the Times, right?
Each offering nostrums on the curative power of thought.
Weight loss?
Quote, The cause of your excess weight is fear, which is a place in your mind where love is blocked.
Poverty?
Many people fail to manifest money because on some deep level they don't think they should.
Disease, she wrote, is loveless thinking materialized.
And just no commentary, right?
Just let that sit there.
No, he just lets it sit there like just some bloody gash in the side of the human soul.
Just a hot steaming turd that he has carefully set up to garnish around.
It's amazing!
Well, there's no garnish though, it's just the white page of the New York Times behind it.
Anyway, but yeah, he's got this lovely... But her books have topped the New York Times bestseller list, and here are the things that she's done that you might be impressed by, right?
And then here's the steaming turd.
See, this is the thing, is that if I was writing the thing, I couldn't just leave it at three quotes.
I mean, I know he's got a word limit and stuff, but like, there's no way.
I would just have to keep like, Hammering and hammering and hammering.
Don't you see how nuts this is?
Anyway, he just does it really nice.
All right, he goes on.
In 2016, Ms.
Williamson saw Mr. Trump's win as a deep crisis.
He is harnessing metaphysical traditions, she told me, but dark ones.
A mysterious feeling washed over her, this is Sam writing, compelling her to swoop into the political trenches.
I like how you're doing the southern accent, which kind of comes and goes depending on what she's talking about, right?
And probably who she's talking to.
Alright, he goes on.
I love this.
This is my favorite.
At her book launch, Ms.
Williamson spoke in front of a packed room.
The venue was Deepak Homebase, an event An event space where Deepak Chopra also keeps an office and is itself inside ABC Carpet and Home, the home decor store.
Fans crowded at her feet on meditation pillows.
Candles flickered nearby.
The debates at this point were still weeks away, and she had recently cleared the polling threshold to participate.
She paced the stage.
People always tell me, you've changed my life.
Well, I'm very grateful for that, Ms.
Williams said.
Now, let's go change the world.
The audience erupted.
A woman, barefoot and sitting cross-legged, pumped her fist in the air and soundlessly mouthed, yes, yes, I love how it's soundless.
You wouldn't want to break the vibe, I think.
After, Ms.
Williamson floated from the stage for autographs in the foyer where her new books would soon sell out.
A huge line had formed, snaking around the room.
A balding man stood at the front.
He passed her a book.
You turned me on to the chorus, he said.
You saved my life so many times.
Ms.
Williamson squeezed his hand gently and said, love breaks down all the walls.
Then she paused, pen held aloft.
Now, who can I make this out to?
It's great writing.
So good.
Well done, Sam.
Thank you so much.
So I love those quotes, Matthew.
I want to just briefly touch on Kestenbaum's fantastic 2021 reporting for the Washington Post about Godspeak Calvary Chapel in Newbury, California.
Now this is the church where attendance skyrocketed in 2020 due to their flagrant violation of all public health mandates.
They became a bright shining flame of defiance for hundreds and sometimes over a thousand of maskless true believers in the freedom to breathe aerosolized COVID.
Among the faithful at Godspeak Calvary Chapel were Judy Majkovic, RFK Jr., and hard-right young Republican Charlie Kirk, who you may have heard of.
As Kestenbaum reported, Godspeak's legal battles were turned into play-by-play addictive YouTube content, which only increased their profile.
The church, as I said, is located in Newbury, which is actually a small town of 37,000, still within the Thousand Oaks city limits.
But that Newbury section has a median income that is twice the national average.
It is the fourth wealthiest city in the United States.
And these facts may in fact have influenced Pastor Rob McCoy to walk away from being mayor of Thousand Oaks and enter a more lucrative field.
The church has a pushpay.com account where supporters can pledge weekly or monthly contributions that are conveniently deducted from their bank accounts.
After a full two weeks of quarantine closure, Godspeak reopened.
So this is like April of 2020.
They reopened their church for three indoor packed services a week.
When some congregants contracted COVID inevitably, and some of those of course died, McCoy publicly said, I'm sad.
It breaks my heart, but I don't feel responsible.
Did he acknowledge that it was COVID killing them off or?
Or was that left up in the air?
I'm not sure.
That's the quote from Kestenbaum.
But, you know, McCoy has not abandoned politics.
Godspeak's website, I noticed, sells a film called Capital Punishment.
Capital with an O. Capital Punishment.
Everything They Told You is a Lie.
Oh, about January 6th.
And that you can get for $9.99 to conveniently watch right in your browser.
Now on our episode, Temple of the Gun, we talked about the close relationship gun culture has with American Christianity.
But Trumpism is also represented in dominant numbers amongst evangelicals and Pentecostals.
With regard to the Godspeak story, what's being uncovered is the extent to which religious groups that are often divided over their doctrinal splits have formed alliances through the common cause of COVID denialism and the God-given freedom to host super spreader events that are also vectors for melted conspiracies what's being uncovered is the extent to which religious groups that are often divided over their doctrinal splits have formed alliances through the common So I found Kestenbaum really helpful in terms of understanding this.
He did great work for the New York Times on Stephen Strang's Charisma Media, which is a Pentecostal publishing empire, which in addition to a magazine with huge circulation, a daily news site, podcasts, a mobile app, and publishes multiple New York Times bestselling and publishes multiple New York Times bestselling books, including four by Strang on God, Trump, and COVID.
Each one has some different play on those combinations of things.
They self-reportedly reach about 42 million users across their platforms.
So as with Kestenbaum's profile on McCoy, but I think even more so here, He takes us inside the life and mind of Stephen Strang and how his empire foments a religious extremism that would paint Trump as an anointed hero in their apocalyptic mythos.
Highly recommended.
I'll include links to both of those articles in the show notes.
Sam Kestenbaum writes about religion for the New York Times and Washington Post, and he's a contributing editor and former staff writer at The Forward.
For the Times, he's written about Pentecostal media mogul Stephen Strang and his Charisma Media empire, which we discuss in our interview that you're about to hear.
He's written about Marianne Williamson and her tangled relationship with A Course in Miracles.
He's covered an end-times evangelist who says the Bible foretold Donald Trump, which we also get into briefly.
He's also covered the revival of a forgotten 19th century scripture called the Osphae, and poet-turned-psychic Jane Roberts' Seth Channeling.
As well as the famed New York subway psychic known as Keanu.
He also wrote a piece for the Washington Post on Christiane Northrup, and that's the reason I initially reached out to him to talk today.
Sam's reporting has won the Rockeauer Award for Excellence in Feature Writing.
He has spoken about his work at the American Academy of Religion, the Religion Seminar at Columbia University, the Religion News Association, on NPR, as well as a host of podcasts, including now this one.
All right, Sam.
Thank you so much for joining Conspirituality today.
Happy to be here.
I've been reading you for a while.
We've been in touch on social media and there are a bunch of topics I want to touch on today.
I personally find the crossover between the new age and religion with society at large fascinating.
But before we get into those topics, let's start with just the history of how you got into being a religion reporter, because that's quite a specific career.
So I've read that you grew up one of the few Jews on a small island in Maine, and that kind of taught you about religious boundaries.
And then at some point you end up reporting in the Middle East.
So can you kind of catch me up on how you got from Maine to the Middle East and into journalism as a career?
Totally.
Absolutely.
So, I mean, I think, you know, a thing about The corner of Maine that I'm from that is relevant for this conversation, and I think for the show, for your listeners, is that yes, I'm a Jew from an island in Maine, and that's true.
This is also a cradle of the back to land movement.
In some ways, Helen and Scott Nearing are Brooksville, which is not far from where I'm from.
Helen, Theosophist, you know, this sort of milieu that I'm in there is also quite New Age-y, really.
So in addition to this Jewiness of my upbringing, I'm also in that in that milieu of the new age in, you know, some broad sense.
And, you know, what brought me to journalism is basically after college, I got the idea that I can work in expat media.
That is, you know, I was writing in college, I was Doing reporting here and there.
But what happens after college, I moved to China.
A bunch of my friends were out there doing expat work, teaching.
I moved there and found myself working at an English language magazine.
So I moved into the sort of expat media world.
Being a native English speaker is a currency that can sort of move you from place to place.
And I worked In a series of newsrooms, first in China and then in the Middle East, for English-language outlets in these countries.
And that culminates in working in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, where I'm editing an English-language newspaper there covering things like drone attacks, terrorist attacks in the capital.
For much of the 2010s, that was the work that I did, or for a chunk of 2010, that's the work that I did.
I remember in 2001, I got hired to edit a world music magazine and it kind of, my fascination with music, having done music journalism before, led into that.
And my very first day, one of the other editors said, Oh, your background's in religion.
Well, you'll find that world music and religion go hand in hand, because if you want to understand the people of the world and that what they believe, you look to their music.
So, would you say there's some similarity between that and the news?
Because especially, I mean, in America, which we'll get to, but also globally, so much of the underpinning of the news is based in the religion and the spirituality and the beliefs of those people.
And that creates both harmony sometimes, but also a lot of the discord that occurs.
Is that a fair assessment of news leading to religion or are there more specific examples?
I don't know if I totally think that religion is the base motivator for people in terms of how they move through the world.
I mean, that's a bit of a pedant there.
I think that religion is a way to understand how people do things, but I don't know if people hold a deep religious belief and that leads them to political action or if that makes sense.
I don't know if religious belief is underpinning every Sort of everything in that way, but I mean, and I can also say just on like a mercenary level, like, or a sort of a strategic level, you know, there's like a reporter can sort of decide whether to generalize or specialize at like a particular point.
And, you know, I think that's a piece of it too, that, you know, that I, that at one point I sort of chose religion to be the, a thing that I, a sort of a through line that I would look for in my writing.
One that I'm very interested in, you know, it was a sort of a strategic choice in that way too.
Right, and I completely agree with your assessment there.
I don't think that specific beliefs motivate the majority of the population, but it does help form the foundation of that culture, and that's more what I meant by that.
So what was that moment that made you decide that that was the through line you were going to look for?
I don't know if there was one aha moment.
You know, after spending time overseas, I'm back in New York, or I'm in New York, sort of carving a space out for myself in that very particular corner of American media.
It just seemed like a niche that would be productive to inhabit.
You know, there's a lot of different ways people approach writing about religion.
Be it reverentially, that is a sort of a sort of testimonial writing, sort of straight ahead reporting on the denominational leaders, the happenings of the Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention, and various things in between.
And I knew that it wasn't, I didn't totally want to do exactly one of, you know, one or the other of those.
That is, I wasn't totally looking to be a And only a religion be writer like just sort of happening following the happenings of denominations, nor was it like about sort of spiritual convictions of my own, but I like the sort of attention there that is, you know, there's a question one often gets.
That I get whenever I drop in on in a church or a temple or a tabernacle or anywhere is what do you believe?
You know, it's an uncomfortable question to be for someone to put to you.
I mean, I like that discomfort a little bit.
I like that there's like a question of motivation in a lot of these circles that, you know, that if you were a politics reporter, if you were a If you covered tech industry, I don't know.
I mean, I haven't done, I have not done that, that work.
So I don't fully know if you would get a question about, you know, what are your motivations?
What do you, what do you really believe about the new, you know, software update?
I don't know if you would be sort of grilled in that, in that same way.
And I like that tension.
It's sort of fun to play with or a sort of a useful discomfort.
So if someone asks you, are they trying to mine an answer?
Which will then lead to how much they disclosed you, because I can imagine that would be difficult.
How would you navigate such territory?
Yeah.
I mean, it depends on each setting that I'm in, in terms of what story I would tell, how much I feel this person wants to know, how much is productive for me to share for
For us to have a conversation and also to remind them of the reason that I am there and that is not to be necessarily converted or to be brought into their story fully as a to-be member of such a church or someone who may be sympathetic, may be interested, but not in the business of either converting or doing promotion for any one group.
Well, that was the challenge that I found with religion reporting was that most of the time it was straightforward, but sometimes you could feel there was some proselytizing going on as well.
And maybe it was just a curiosity of, can I get this person over to an event or something like that?
But that definitely comes through.
But you said that you didn't want to do the beat reporting or the reverential reporting.
So what did you land on in terms of how you approach religion reporting?
And I should say also that I have respect for colleagues who do both of those genres of work.
And there's lots of genres that we can all work in and I have respect for all of them.
I mean, you know, most of the work that I do is feature writing about these communities.
You know, I think there's something about the descriptive power of feature writing that, you know, that I think evokes something of what it's like to be in a religious community.
That is, you know, I do think that bringing to readers like scenes or descriptions of what it's like to be at a faith healers service, what it's like to be at a UFO convention or what it's like to be at a Black Israelite I think that there is something of the experiential that feature writing allows one to evoke.
But the question of reverence or reverential, I'm not particularly concerned with being overly protective of people that I write about.
That is, a lot of folks I write about are also in the business of media.
I mean, much like the people that you guys cover here, really.
They are media producers.
They're producing a lot of their own content.
Recently I wrote about Faith Heller here in LA, who is big on TikTok.
She also holds outdoor park services where hundreds come each week to have demons exercise from their bodies.
You know, this is a person who I met in person a couple times, several times, and spoke to at length.
This story may have been the first time that a secular journalist was speaking with her, but she's also very savvy in promoting and producing her own image.
The sense that journalists need to be particularly protective and respectful of Religious people and their beliefs.
It may sound a little harsh the way I'm putting this, but I think religious actors are much like anybody that we would cover in the media or as journalists that we would encounter.
And I don't think there's something especially private or special or in need of protection that is this thing we call religion.
That idea maybe puts me at odds with some people also in my corner of journalism or corners of religion writing.
I take my subjects seriously and as people that are empowered actors and producers of their own image.
They're big boys and girls and I think they can handle what it means to encounter a journalist and be covered by them.
Some, sure.
I do think a lot would push back on that statement though, because growing up, I'm 40, I'll be 47 in a couple of weeks.
And, you know, there's kind of two questions you didn't ask.
One was how much money do you make?
And the other is you could ask about religion, but it was, there was always this sentiment of my religion is personal.
I, it can never be explained to someone else, uh, which, For what we cover obviously puts it at odds with science communication, for example.
So that will always be a challenge of people thinking that their anecdote creates their reality and therefore should be held sacred to everyone else.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
You know, again, it's like one of those sort of like fun tensions of this as a sort of a thing to write about is that
You come across this, you know, that sentiment about sort of religion being, you know, and I think connecting it to the sort of personal anecdote is perfect because I do think people, you know, be they subjects or peers or there's a way that there's something sort of nostalgic or some sort of nostalgic feel people have around what their experience is with what they grew up with, you know, going to church with their grandmother or sneak them candy in their purse.
And we have these anecdotes and And these experiences of, you know, religion being meaningful in people's lives.
And I'm not discounting people's experience in any way, but there's a way that collectively this sort of rhetoric continues to sort of protect and elevate religion in the public in a way that I think a journalist's job is to sometimes sort of pierce these sort of like collective myths we have or to ask those sort of questions about why we revere what we revere and And so I think that the journalists have journalism and journalists have a special ability to do that.
I agree with that.
And actually studying academically religion and then writing on it is actually what led me to atheism personally.
And that predominantly had to do because I would interview religious leaders from all of these different faiths and every one of them thought they had the right way.
Right.
Even whether it came out explicitly or not, They had a sense of, well, we found the one and everyone else is a little off.
And it made me think, even at a young age, if all of these different people think they have the right one, then maybe there's not one.
And maybe there are other explanations, which led me to the social sciences.
Which has the right answer.
Not at all.
But I think the good ones are usually a little honest about not having the answer.
Yeah, need like a battle of the bands.
But one of the, one of the things that comes through in my generation and beyond is this, this idea of spiritual and not religious.
And that, that always makes me think about like how to balance these terms of a lot of people who, what you said, have that nostalgia of religion that are, is meaningful to them.
But a lot of people reject the religion they grew up with for a variety of reasons, but then they find some spirituality and then come to hate the term religion.
And I'm wondering, I have my own ideas on this, but I wonder if you have any thoughts on how you differentiate between religion and spirituality.
Can I ask what your take is before I give mine?
We'll see for a moment.
Sure.
I think that they both point towards some sense of belonging or metaphysics.
And I don't think there's a huge differentiation between it.
I think it's more semantic in terms of religion is, you know, I'll look at and might be a little outdated, but Joseph Campbell's idea that religion is to bind.
He's taking off the Iliad definition that it bounds the spirit with the material world or that it brings together communities in some capacity.
And I think At its best, any sort of spirituality will also do the same thing.
It brings together some sort of belief or metaphysic with your person.
And so I don't really see much of a difference between the words.
I think that in general, religion is usually looked at as some sort of organized body, which is where people usually push back because an organized body has some sort of hierarchical power structure.
Whereas people like to believe that spirituality is free Floating and therefore available to anyone.
It's so interesting.
And I think, you know, a thing that I think that you guys have been really good at this podcast is basically, you know, mapping out those networks that are basically the espionage church.
Or, you know, the sort of like that networked church, or the networked organizations, or the networked power that produces that.
And maybe the SBNR, which is like the spiritual but not religious, which is the category that now Pew polls for and marks an increased number of people who buy into the category of uncategorizable.
When people make a distinction about what they are not, If I'm interviewing somebody and they tell me they are not something, that goes in my notebook and I have to think about what they are.
That is, you know, I wouldn't be totally comfortable telling them, Oh, well, actually you are the thing that you say you are not.
But the fact that they are making a distinction that I might not see, um, is interesting to me.
And there are, you know, there are numerous other versions of this that are not just the spiritual versus religious one, which might be like politics and religion.
You know, which you'll see in churches that are endorsing candidates running for office or in churches that are putting up Black Lives Matter signs.
So depending on sort of your political or your, you know, your sort of social concerns, you might see one as Being sort of a sincere expression of your religion, or some sort of dirty politics creeping into the pews, right?
Or, even more interestingly to me, is talking to, in various Pentecostal charismatic circles, because I do a bunch of reporting on these folks, people who will say something like, who will talk about religion much like the New Agers do.
That is, oh, you know, I got out of religion.
Into the spirit.
I got out of this thing into something more direct.
I realized that I can prophesy.
I got out of the trappings of religion, which is laws and pansy preachers who are just, you know, not doing this direct, direct thing.
It's always interesting to see what people ennoble and what they toss aside.
And I guess people's categorization is more interesting to me than my own categorization of it.
From my experiences with different churches, and that was not my focus, it was more of Buddhism and Hinduism, but the difference between a Pentecostal ceremony and a Catholic, which is what my family Kind of was, are vast.
So I can imagine, you know, within denominations, there is a lot of disparities that you come across.
And then just like to even further Make it to even sort of make it even funkier.
You know there are people who are into calling themselves basically religious but not spiritual.
Or like if you're just like super duper into like the ceremony of the Catholic Church and the incense and the basically the things that the Protestants would call trappings.
Like people being into all of these accoutrements kind of religious accoutrements and sort of less concerned with you know quote unquote like the interior belief of a thing.
It just breaks down in so many interesting ways in terms of what people want to be doing and what sort of foil they set themselves up against.
I think my favorite ceremony, my ex-wife was Jewish and the cantoral singing in the synagogue was probably the most transcendent experience I ever had in any sort of... Yeah.
setting that was religious.
Since we started the podcast, one thing that's been on my mind a lot, and I'm sure a lot of people, is how the religious, especially the evangelicals, embrace Donald Trump.
Right.
And you've done some reporting on this, and I'd love to hear your experiencing of why you think that some of the most religious people in America would support someone who is, let's just say, not very religious at all.
Yeah.
This question has flowed around or lingered in the media and the public consciousness since Trump was elected.
As you put it, the question that people are asking is, how could godly people vote go for someone so seemingly unconcerned with personal morality or I don't have a fully satisfying answer to that.
And I will sort of bring it back to most of the reporting that I've done, as I said, was on this sort of Pentecostal charismatic sort of side of things, which I'm sort of separating it out from evangelicalism writ large.
But, you know, this question rests upon the idea that Trump is an unlikely candidate for religious people to vote for.
I don't know if I think that's true.
One answer people offer, and there's some truth to this, is that stylistically we can look at Trump as a child of the elite, but purportedly someone who is engaging in anti-respectability politics, that is a very vulgar, rich guy who brags about How much money he makes and women he sleeps with and etc.
I think we have to be at this point, I think it's been well tried, or people have explored this idea of the appeal of that sort of thumbing one's noses at the liberal pieties of the world.
And I think there's a, you know, there's a real appeal to that clearly.
And let me speak a little more about to the Pentecostal charismatic sort of corner of things, which is where I did more reporting.
And this is where things like Trump as a prophesied figure, Trump as a Cyrus figure, Trump as a godly, if not messianic, then, you know, something close to it.
So I wrote a piece for The Times about this guy, this publisher and journalist, Stephen Strang.
I think he's the editor and founder of Charisma Magazine, Charisma Media, which is this sprawling Pentecostal charismatic media company that puts out a magazine, podcast, books, daily news site.
And they did a lot of promotion around Trump Quoting prophets and apostles and people who said Trump was prophesied, either based upon their reading of scripture or, you know, personal revelation that came to them.
I think what's remarkable about, you know, how charisma operated within this world, as well as how these DIY prophets and apostles operated is for how quickly they were able to integrate Trump into their cosmology.
With panache, with style, whether we find that style disquieting.
You know, Stephen Strang published, I think, at least four books on Trump.
You know, his publishing house produced other books that dealt with Trump's election.
I mean, the number of, as I say, sort of freelance prophets who spoke about Trump on their YouTube channels or their newsletters.
This speaks to the creativity of American religious entrepreneurs and their ability to To sort of see what's in the news and integrate it so quickly into their homespun cosmologies that are issued from the iPads and iPhones and keyboards across the country.
So that doesn't give an answer as to why they did it, but I think it made for a really good story.
That people could tell.
If we look at secular media too, Americans in general have been really fascinated by Trump's election and rise.
Well, another story that arose during this time, a little slightly after though, was with the pandemic.
And it also crosses over between the New Age wellness communities we cover and the religious, which are anti-mask, anti-lockdown.
With churches, obviously a part of their business model is relying on people coming in and the donations.
And I know you did some reporting on that, and I'd like to hear your experiences looking into churches that were anti-lockdown, anti-mask, and what was happening there with their rhetoric.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I spent time reporting on one church specifically in Thousand Oaks, which is north of L.A., a Calvary Chapel church that stayed open during the pandemic.
A bunch of Calvary churches did the same thing or, you know, sort of constellation of churches.
I mean, across the country, but in California, in Southern California, there's sort of constellation of churches, sometimes sharing legal representation and like sort of sharing tactics, including Cheon here in L.A.
Another Calvary Chapel, Chino Hills also stayed open, Calvary Chapel, Thousand Oaks.
And according to the reports of leaders and from my own sort of observation, yeah, you know, these churches benefited.
Benefit is a strong word, maybe, but they grew as a result of defying Gavin Newsom's orders or defying the state, county, and federal council on, you know, large gatherings.
And the Calvary Shadow Thousand Oaks reportedly tripled in size Over the course of the pandemic, and they were holding three services a day going over and spilling over into like a side room.
So just, you know, business was was booming, or attendance was booming.
And like I say, you know, these are part of like a broader constellation of anti-lockdown pastors, entrepreneurs, people who came through that church, the Thousand Oaks Church are folks you've spoken about here, it'd be that Judy Mikovits, RFK Jr.
So that, you know, there's a sort of convergence of Denomination isn't really the exact right way to put it, but it's the conversions of seemingly disparate characters who are sort of crossing over and collaborating.
Sean Foyt, who's another crusading Pentecostal charismatic troubadour who's associated with Bethel Church in Reading, or he was, and also a failed politician.
He also came to that church in Thousand Oaks You know, so I came to this church a couple times just visiting.
It sort of is my style.
If I have chosen a site that I want to write about, I may go casually as a sort of not with notebook in hand, not sort of with my reporter hat, but just sort of seeing what's going on, whether there are legs there.
And so I won't sort of take any notes or Or be, you know, pressing people for quotes or what have you, but more just gathering string.
And I did that several times or a couple times in this church and ultimately got, like, you know, an audience or got to meet the pastor there.
You know, I think because of my persistence, he gave me access to speak with him, speak with his pastor, speak with people in church.
You know, very much disinterested in the mainstream media, the lies of the mainstream media and what have you, but I think that I made myself annoying enough that they let me in.
Those spaces to me were fascinating because you had people Who I'd speak to in the pews who had never been to a church before, who maybe had been belonged to another denomination, who had been LDS members and Mormons who held multiple affiliations, not Calvary, not Pentecostal.
They were coming to this church now because, well, one, it was open.
But also because it was defiant.
They were talking about Newsom.
They were questioning the narratives about COVID.
They were doing all these things that were in appeal.
You know, I think one of the lines in that piece that I wrote that was for the Washington Post was something like, they're not defying lockdowns to worship, but like the defiance itself is like part of the worship.
That is, sort of, it takes on this aura.
That is, taking your punch at Newsom and saying, I won't take it, actually is itself what's worshipful.
That is sort of how you show your godliness or your devotion to something.
And you belong, and in doing that, sort of, belong to something.
And the guy who runs this church, Rob McCoy, you know, participated in things like the Trucker Convoy when it came through California.
And So, you know, that's another appeal of watching these spaces for me, is if I find that if I sort of, if I watch them closely enough, various networks sort of begin to emerge.
And if you follow one character, you start seeing them in lots of different places.
Other characters sort of move into the frame, move out again, and a whole sort of web of collaboration shows up.
And that was what was happening at that church, Godspeak, in Thousand Oaks.
And one thing we covered was that crossover with Christianity in the new age of the wellness communities, because there was the anti-lockdown event that happened, I don't know, like six weeks ago in Grand Park in downtown LA.
And I didn't go down there, but I watched a lot of the live stream.
And I think most of the speakers were talking about God, about Christian issues.
And so that crossover, and it made me wonder, do they see an audience?
I don't know if I have a fully satisfying answer to that, but just observing that sort of happy collaboration is something that's interesting to do and important to point out.
And if I can sort of put my historian hat on for a moment, though I'm not full-blown historian, you know, I think the idea that, you know, that these are sort of distant streams is like, that's not totally true either.
In a way, like, you know, just thinking about new thought influenced both prosperity gospel and contemporary New Agers, or basically one only needs to go back like a hundred years or so to see sort of, you know, shared roots or shared impulses in various, like, streams here.
There are figures who do sort of cross over pre-pandemic, people who would sort of cross over between sort of New Age and Christian circles already.
And I think, for example, I wrote about one of these Trump prophets, Jonathan Cahn, who is like a regular guest on Coast to Coast, as well as Charisma or other Pentecostal stations.
I think that those collaborations are not, I mean, they are sort of surprising to see, but there's a history to them is also a piece of this picture.
In May, you published a piece in the Washington Post about your fellow Maine resident, or previous, where you grew up, Christiane Northrup, who we've covered extensively.
She was very instrumental in the mainstreaming of Plandemic, and so she was at the very inception of this podcast in a lot of ways.
Her daughter was a yoga student of mine that kind of knew of her work from a while ago.
What made you want to cover her specifically and do that story?
Yeah, I have to give credit to some friends of mine in Maine who, when I was back there at some point in the earlier side of the pandemic, somebody asked me if I'd sort of seen what she was up to.
I think this was even pre-plandemic.
Things had already started to happen in Portland a bit, and people were paying attention to her.
And I started following her after that.
I wasn't fully aware of Her sort of cultural import in Maine and in Portland and in the sort of holistic medical community or networks in Maine sort of prior to my sort of beginning to watch her.
Once I did, it made me even more interested in her.
I mean, seeing her as a sort of realizing she was a kind of a hometown hero in Maine.
I mean, just sort of being a doctor from this relatively provincial corner of the country who went on and got an Oprah and Um, had a mega following in Hay House book deals and a whole sort of sprawling brand of materials.
So I've been watching her for a long time and tried to get in touch with her and tried to sort of speak with her, do my sort of typical reporting job that I would do.
By the time I reached out to Sian, she was already very adversarial to the media.
And this was pre-disinformation.
who they are, what they're up to.
By the time I reached out to Xi'an, she was already very adversarial to the media.
And this was pre-disinformation.
Her channels were booming at that time.
I think either she had the savvy or the, I don't know what, but she decided to not do that tact and sort of actually try to speak to a journalist to explain what it is she's I would have given her the fair shake that I give anybody who I speak to, but that wasn't what she was up to there.
This didn't prevent her from from actually speaking at length at times about my query letters to her saying, you know, so and so reached out and they want to speak to me, but I won't speak with them.
So it's sort of she integrated the query into her sort of into her narration to the Warriors of the Radical Light.
I mean, you know, she's a really interesting person to me, and still is.
And watching her, you know, this piece for the Washington Post, you know, I tried to sort of track that evolution from her whole career, from starting out in upstate New York, where she's from, to settling in Maine, to making a name for herself.
Climbing to the heights of the Oprah Hayhouse empire.
And you know, I think she's a, you know, she provides a case study, which you guys have spoken about here, you know, a kind of a case study in, in one type of, you know, metaphysical entrepreneur and how, what, what leads them or what in her case, sort of the various things that led her to the MAGA QAnon stages that she now Is a staple in.
So she became a way to sort of track that.
I mean, her sort of personal travails are also interesting to me.
You know, she's an individual like all of us and has tragedy that has happened and personal motivations and financial motivations and all sorts of things.
But she became a sort of a way to a way a vehicle to tell this other story.
Christiane, if you tune into Conspirituality, you can still email me and we can still talk.
Well, I think we're on similar ground in that she has only spoken about us on her transmissions as part of her persecution complex, as being part of the thing attacking her.
She's never actually addressed any of our actual criticism or what we were bringing to her.
It was always like, these people are attacking me.
So I think we're in similar company there.
Yeah, but even that was just fascinating material to me, to see how persecution is integrated into the story and how quickly that's done.
Even without the piece published, on my part, I could send her a query and it was already... the piece didn't even exist in order to serve its purpose.
I'll be curious to see what's next for her.
She seems to be pretty adaptable to current events, to the changing contours of her audience.
And I'll be curious to see what her next book, if there is a book, what that is about, the podcast series about.
I think she's got a dating app now, I think, for the unvaccinated.
I didn't know she was involved in that.
Okay.
She's fascinating in the sense that a lot of the influencers we cover had small audiences and then through QAnon or anti-lockdown, anti-vax found larger audiences where she kind of went the other way.
I mean, I'm sure she, maybe it evened out, but she had a different audience and then probably picked up, but also lost a lot of people along the way.
So she's definitely an interesting case study compared to the world of influencers that we cover.
Interesting.
So you think that she's sort of at odds with the prevailing model of the wellness influencers who have gone Q?
I think that she had made her name in being a sort of contrarian women's health expert and really in the Hay House community built up something with this sort of combination of credible takes on women's health, but then with this metaphysics But had a brand, regardless, and probably would have rode out that brand for the rest of her life, for better or worse.
Right.
And then decided to throw herself into this world where it really just seemed disorienting.
You have this heart-playing grandmother in this beautiful area of Maine talking about You know, the New World Order taking over and why people should arm themselves.
And the image itself was so disconcerting.
And, you know, people can believe what they believe and that's fine.
But I just feel like a lot of the people have gained an audience, whereas with her, it was almost like just switching an audience in large parts.
Yeah, I know that makes sense.
I don't think she was, like, consulting PR.
No.
But she, you know, certainly could have gone the more conservative route.
Conservative being sort of less Not as risky a route, I suppose, of eliminating any mention of pandemic, this or that.
Much like her collaborators at Women2Women, which was the clinic in Yarmouth that she founded.
Members, people who worked there, some of whom spoke to me off the record, but people who basically decided to not, just not, whether they were sympathetic to concerns about the vaccine and They made a decision to not speak about that.
Christiane could have done that and probably burdened the pandemic out on sales of her beloved books, which are still put out by Hay House and getting reissues with new introductions and what have you, and instead did this other attack.
And if we're to believe her dispatches on her channels, it's like she discovered this part of herself that she always was.
It's hard, especially when you're dealing with people who produce so much media about themselves, how much of that we take seriously or what we believe about what they say.
In her case, you know, if she says, you know, I'm more myself now than I've ever been, you know, do we believe that?
What do we, what do we do with that?
I mean, this is a question I may be able to answer for you.
So, you know, so with the Christian piece, you know, I, the sort of lead of the piece for the Washington Post that I wrote was like, To those watching you know she's on her video speaking about auras and chakras and what have you and then she starts talking about deep state cults and this and that in the line that I had is like you know for those who knew her from this other period of time this was like this came as a shock and I sort of supported that with Conversations I had with old colleagues of her who were shocked to see her.
But this question is sort of like the central tension, I think, for pieces about Christiana and others too, is like, was there a conversion here?
Did something switch about Christiana, about wellness figures that you covered, or was it always there all along?
This was sort of a tension for the piece that I wrote about Christiana, and I tried to show yes and yes to both of those.
It was both of those, but I wonder if you thought much about that.
Was the QAnon pivot an inevitable thing for various wellness influencers, or was it always there, or was it some sort of conversion from something to something else?
Does that make sense?
Yeah, absolutely.
And it makes me think also, before I specifically address that, of some well-known influencers who I know that are anti-vax, anti-lockdown.
Not QAnon though, but very into the medical establishment being a hoax or is dangerous.
And they have their wellness brand, and they didn't touch any of this.
Because they were like, I have my personal feelings, but I have my brand and I need to keep that going.
And it was an adjacent brand.
It had nothing to do with vaccinations.
We would never cover that.
We don't talk about that because it's not relevant.
We cover people in the media and who are publicly saying things.
Now, that said, there is that lower-level influencer who had 10,000 followers who started sharing QAnon hashtags, and then they had 50,000 followers.
And that, to me, is taking part in the attention economy.
Personally, I'd put Mickey Willis in there.
Mickey Willis already had a following, but he saw an opportunity.
I consider him much more opportunistic than a lot of people.
But as I said with Northrop, I really think that something emotionally must have happened.
And of course, I'm speculating here, but to watch her go to be like, take up arms, cheering on January 6th, like a lot of the influencers didn't touch January 6th, right?
They were silent.
Willis, JP Sears, like a lot of the people, they didn't say a word about it until much later.
She was on it right away.
So I feel personally, there was a conversion event with her specifically.
But what you ask is a central question we've been asking since the beginning.
How many of these people are brokering in the intention economy because it's helping them monetize or part of their brand?
And how many of them are authentically bought into what they're saying?
I would put her in the latter category just based off of everything that I've seen.
Yes.
So interesting.
And ferreting out people's authentic beliefs and their sincerity.
It's all, it's all interesting and tricky and ricky stuff, yet it is part of this business of writing about these people and thinking about American culture.
And in the piece, you know, I do touch on, and I think you guys have probably discussed on here too, you know, personal things that have happened in her life and in things during the pandemic and in the way that the pandemic has affected so many people sort of personally and familial in various ways.
Yeah, there are a lot of factors in it.
Well, to close, let's talk a little more about speculation and maybe about what you're working on, because as happens often at the moments when collective trauma is over and the pandemic isn't over, but we have moved into a new phase, there is often a rebirth of spirituality that occurs at those times.
And I'm noticing it already.
I'm noticing it with people saying, Okay, we went through a lot of bullshit, but now we're ready for some authentic spirituality.
And you start to see the cycle start over again.
And that's what I think we're moving into that right now.
And I'm wondering if you have any ideas on where you think religion and spirituality is moving.
You can take that broadly, or as I said, maybe you're working on some specific pieces that look at this idea.
Some of the things that continue to interest me are these crossover, collaboration, reforming networks of media, religion, spirituality that I think we've seen during the pandemic.
And I'm curious to see how they will develop in the coming months.
Months, years, what have you.
Even in the case of, some of the cases we've mentioned already over the course of this conversation, be that Christian Northrop who goes from Oprah, Hay House, to being featured on these tours going across the country, going to Pentecostal megachurches, and being interested in various prophets and what have you.
From like a supply side analysis, that is from the sort of like religious media producers, you know, I'm interested in seeing how they are looking at new audiences or new interests within their audiences.
That is, you know, are their audiences concerned about government overreach?
Are they going to sort of cater to those concerns?
Are they done with talking about politics pandemic?
Do they want to talk about demon exorcisms and get away from talking about the Mark of the Beast, but just get to something like fully outside of outside of politics, I suppose, or, you know, sort of not politics themed?
Is there going to just be an exhaustion on the part of talking about the Great Reset and COVID this and COVID that.
Is there going to be an interest in some other depoliticized type of religious content?
So that, you know, from the supply side, that's sort of what I'm, what I'm tracking and there are various places I look at and you guys talk about some of them on here, be that Gaia or, or I've mentioned Charisma or other sort of religious media producers that I'm interested in looking at and seeing what they're sort of serving up to their audiences, thinking about why that is.
On the consumer side, I think Americans are continuing to be ravenous and promiscuous in their consumption of religion, of content, and from many things go from thing to thing to thing to thing.
I don't know.
I don't see either of those things slowing down.
The ravenous appetite of the American public for novel content, novel stories, and the religious producers and their ability to meet those needs.
