Conspirituality - Bonus Sample: A Course in Miracles Reconsidered (w/Joseph Baker)
Aired: 2026-04-06
Duration: 04:03


=== Joseph Baker And A Course In Miracles (03:12) ===

[00:00:03]  Hello, everyone.
[00:00:04]  This is just a brief introduction before I run my conversation with the late Joseph Baker, in which we struggle over my allergy to A Course in Miracles and his devotion to it.
[00:00:15]  If you heard my brief from a few weeks back, you'll know that Joseph died on February 4th at the age of 51.
[00:00:22]  Now, we recorded this conversation on January 9th, 2024, so more than two years ago.
[00:00:30]  And as I mentioned in the eulogy, we both felt it was a little bit long and maybe also that we were at Slightly odd angles with each other, and so we had plans to redo it as we got to know each other better.
[00:00:42]  But that got delayed by the news cycle, Trump's second election, and then Joseph had to go for more chemotherapy, so we never got around to it.
[00:00:53]  But I've edited the original interview here, and I think it serves him well.
[00:00:59]  It's a little bit hard for me to listen to because I'm hearing my own unawareness of his health and fate.
[00:01:06]  I said in the eulogy that I learned a tremendous amount from Joseph about a spiritual orientation to radical politics.
[00:01:15]  But as I went through our emails to double check some timeline details, I came across something else that I'd just forgotten about that didn't make it into the eulogy, and it has nothing at all to do with spirituality, at least explicitly.
[00:01:32]  I wanted to add it here.
[00:01:34]  So, in one of our long email exchanges, I had disclosed that our younger son is autistic and was facing a number of accessibility challenges, and that my heartbreak over this had probably pushed my radicalism over the edge into a white hot glow.
[00:01:52]  And here's what he wrote back All the best to you and your family as you advocate for your son.
[00:01:59]  I can relate, though I by no means faced the challenges you all have.
[00:02:05]  When I was around that age, I had wires attached to my head and was.
[00:02:09]  Put on a high dose of Ritalin for the next seven years and diagnosed ADHD.
[00:02:15]  I learned through perseverance how to be socialized in a normative world.
[00:02:20]  And as a parent, you have every right to push back against the expectation that your child learn to cope in environments that are not inclusive of him.
[00:02:29]  And there's a newish book you might like.
[00:02:31]  It's a critique of normativity and neurodivergence through a Marxist historical analysis.
[00:02:37]  The author is Robert Chapman, The Empire of Normality, Neurodiversity, and Capitalism.
[00:02:43]  Pluto Press.
[00:02:44]  Chapman is diagnosed autistic, lives in England, and is a professor of critical neurodiversity studies.
[00:02:51]  So I had forgotten that it was Joseph who actually connected me with Chapman's work, which has gone on to influence a whole bunch of things that I've done because it's utterly changed my perspective on neurodivergence as a class issue.
[00:03:07]  So it's one of those, you know, my life before this book versus my life after this book moments.
[00:03:12]  So anyway, I wanted to throw that in there.

=== Robert Chapman's Empire Of Normality (00:47) ===

[00:03:16]  It's kind of amazing that there was this other sort of intersection.
[00:03:21]  So, with that, I'll leave you with my discussion with Joseph Baker, with the original intro and everything.
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