Less than two weeks after a shooter unloaded 500 rounds at the CDC in Atlanta, RFK Jr gutted that agency's violence prevention research by firing 100 employees. Less than a month later, Charlie Kirk was shot in front of a crowd of 3K at a Utah university. Millions saw the graphic clip online, which ignited a propaganda and disinformation culture war. Meanwhile, yet another child shot his classmates at a Denver high school that same day.
It's not the guns though, say the GOP pundits and politicians, it's the violent rhetoric from the left, and those hateful transgender antifascists. Just ask RFK Jr. He'll confirm that it's not the guns, but all those kids overmedicated on dangerous antidepressants.
What are SSRIs anyway, do hurt people hurt people, and do gun laws have any effect?
Show Notes
No, Antidepressants Do Not Provoke Mass Shootings
Mental Illness and Lone Actor Terrorism
Is There a Link Between Mental Health and Mass Shootings? | Columbia University Department of Psychiatry
Politically-Motivated Violence is Rare in the US
No Statistical Support for SSRI-Mass Shooting Connection
Mass Shooters and Political Assassins Have Similar Profiles
The Violence Prevention Project
Characteristics of Lone Wolf Violent Offenders
Blackpill Aesthetics: A Crash Course in Meme Extremism
62: Manifesting Something Awful (w/Dale Beran) — Conspirituality
Gun Purchases by Year
Correlation Between States with Weak Laws/High Ownership and Gun Deaths
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Bonus Sample: The 9/11 Rorschach Test
The events of September 11, 2001 changed the world. Julian reflects on several interpretations of what they meant, proposing that each is a kind of Rorschach-test result based on our own religious and political beliefs, backgrounds, and social conditioning.
The conspiracy theorist simply can’t believe something like that could happen to America, going in search of complicated alternative explanations that exist outside of the “official narrative,” even of reality itself.
Where the Christian conservative might see a call to Holy War signaling that the End Times is near, Neocon warhawks surrounding Bush observe an opportunity to enact plans for maintaining economic and political power and security.
Meanwhile, many on the left see the attack as justifiable “blowback” against American imperialism, Cold War atrocities, and Western colonialism. Religion is merely an inflaming of a fundamentalist minority based on political injustices.
What about the Soviet Union? The history of political Islam and massive Muslim caliphates that ruled for nearly 1,300 years? The intractable sectarian conflicts and the multiple internal ideologies vying for control over the Middle East?
There may be no easy answers, but perhaps engaging with these different perspectives can allow us to name some of the many factors that got us to 9/11 and the seemingly unsolvable dilemmas of our world today.
Show Notes
Popular Mechanics on 911 conspiracies
Noam Chomsky on 911 conspiracies
Pilger on Project for A New American Century
NYT 2023 Piece on the Reasons for Iraq War
Saddam’s Ruthless Purge
CNN on Kabul attitudes after US Invasion
Polling of Iraqis
Mahmood Mamdani Good Muslim, Bad Muslim Interview
Human Rights Watch on Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan
Taimur Rahman’s Red Star History of Political Islam Lectures
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Brief: MAHA’s Conspiracy Theories
Derek worked for nearly 10 months on a NY Times opinions video, "You Might Have Already Fallen for MAHA’s Conspiracy Theories," which was published this week. He discusses what it took to produce this video with his collaborator, Alex Stockton, as well as the role journalism has to play in dispelling health misinformation.
Show Notes
You Might Have Already Fallen for MAHA’s Conspiracy Theories
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274: Is Rogan REALLY Leading a Death Cult?
If it wasn't all so tragic, politics might seem like a bad joke. But how did comedy become so unfunny, so politically toxic?
From his hideout in a remote mountain cabin, anonymous video collage artist and essayist The Elephant Graveyard has finally cracked the code. According to him, Joe Rogan has created a doomsday death cult that feeds the dad-shaped hole in the hearts of its followers. In this allegory, his Comedy Mothership theater in Austin is like the alien spacecraft zooming in from behind the Hale Bop comet to take the Heaven's Gate group suicide victims home, freed from their earth-suits.
And it turns out tech oligarchs Peter Thiel and Elon Musk are really behind it all.
Show Notes
Vile Grifters Are Taking Over Establishment Media
How Comedy Was Destroyed by an Anti-Reality Doomsday Cult
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1:13:22
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1:13:22
Bonus Sample: How Wellness Influencers Became Radicalized
Biostatistician Halbert Dunn's 1961 book, High Level Wellness, set the stage for the modern wellness movement. Derek reads it alongside some of today's top conspiritualists, noticing the themes (and differences) that run throughout Dunn's work.
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Dismantling New Age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy-mad yogis. At best, the conspirituality movement attacks public health efforts in times of crisis. At worst, it fronts and recruits for the fever-dream of QAnon. As the alt-right and New Age horseshoe toward each other in a blur of disinformation, clear discourse, and good intentions get smothered. Charismatic influencers exploit their followers by co-opting conspiracy theories on a spectrum of intensity ranging from vaccines to child trafficking. In the process, spiritual beliefs that have nurtured creativity and meaning are transforming into memes of a quickly-globalizing paranoia. Conspirituality Podcast attempts to bring understanding to this landscape. A journalist, a cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic discuss the stories, cognitive dissonances, and cultic dynamics tearing through the yoga, wellness, and new spirituality worlds. Mainstream outlets have noticed the problem. We crowd-source, research, analyze, and dream answers to it.
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