00:04:35.420Before we get into today's show, if you would like to support the show or would like more of the show, as always, you can get that on Patreon.
00:04:44.460A link to the Patreon will be in the episode description or the YouTube description, depending on where you're watching this.
00:04:50.640Over on Patreon this summer, I have been doing a multi-part retrospective on the bi-sister saga, the James Charles Tati Westbrook vitamin gummy heterosexual homophobia scandal.
00:05:06.200And spoiler alert, Tati Westbrook, aka Glam Life Guru, aka Mother of Beauty YouTube, is going to be having a heavy presence in today's episode.
00:05:17.580And I'm really excited to talk about my problematic queen.
00:05:26.960It is a strange career turn that my life has taken being critical, having both worked in
00:05:34.260the wellness industry for decades as a yoga instructor, as a health and science journalist,
00:05:38.620but also being critical of some of the beliefs and practices within it.
00:05:41.840So any opportunity I have to be able to discuss these issues is always a, it's a wonderful morning for me.
00:05:49.520We're going to be talking about some of the ways that people get politically radicalized through alternative wellness practices in this episode.
00:05:56.740And because this has happened at this point to a number of like public figures and influencers that I have loved for years, I'm going to be framing parts of the conversation through their journeys.
00:06:09.400So Derek, might I tell you about a YouTuber called RawBeautyChristy?
00:06:15.420Let's go for it, because you sent me some of the advanced YouTubers recovering, and
00:13:17.620A few months ago, Christy is doing a Q&A on her Instagram stories.
00:13:23.920and someone asks her, have you decided on homeschooling or not? And she posts a photo
00:13:30.460of herself and a number of small children, including presumably her child, whose face
00:13:36.800she does not show on social media and so neither will we, sitting on a grassy lawn in a circle
00:13:42.580with the text over it that says, yes, we will be homeschooling with a homeschool co-op.
00:13:48.240Now, people saw this photo and identified it as a photo that was also posted by Christy's sister, who has been featured a number of times in her content, you know, like doing my sister's makeup for a day or, you know, stuff like that.
00:14:03.620And her sister, people realized, was the person who was running this homeschooling co-op.
00:14:09.980And so they went to check out the page for the homeschool co-op that her sister had set up and that ostensibly Christy was sending her child to.
00:14:20.320I went to the website for this homeschooling co-op, and I would like to read you the Who We Are About page.
00:15:19.000First off, let me caveat it that I'm not a parent.
00:15:21.900I don't see anything wrong with homeschooling in general.
00:15:25.400I actually think that sometimes like schools that incorporate being in nature more is going
00:15:30.180to be much healthier than stuck inside of a classroom all the time.
00:15:33.260I think there's a lot of good arguments for non-traditional schooling, but I do know that
00:15:38.820the data reveals that almost all homeschooling is evangelical or fundamental Christian.
00:15:45.320And I mentioned the word romanticized before.
00:15:48.440And one thing that persists throughout most conspirituality musings is this idea that
00:15:53.340there was a better time and we need to get back to it. And that always entails some sort of
00:15:59.500rejection of the current system. But you mentioned the word privilege before. And usually in these
00:16:06.540environments, the people who are able to send their kids either to homeschool co-ops, as you
00:16:12.300said, or do it themselves, have some certain level of financial or social privilege to be able to do
00:16:17.880that. And so when you hear about their rejection of the public school system, which I also think
00:16:24.000is fantastic, you know, different areas have different systems, but overall, it's a great
00:16:29.620system. Combined with this focus on religion, that pretty much cuts across most either private
00:16:37.280religious schooling or most of these sort of trad wife homesteading homeschooling situations.
00:16:43.960I just see that language of like, we were called upon by the Lord to like, take our children's education back. And I'm like, Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no, oh, no. I did an episode of this podcast, one of the earliest episodes that I did was with a couple who were both homeschooled by evangelical families and in an environment that was like, religiously, totally abusive and inappropriate.0.98
00:17:10.100And both of them, to the credit of homeschooling and to what you're saying, like they did say there are a whole number of reasons why they think homeschooling could be the right choice for someone.
00:17:19.340When I was doing my research for that episode, something that I found really interesting was basically a movement of Black families deciding to homeschool their children because they were really uncomfortable with like the way that Black history and things like slavery were being whitewashed in parts of this country's public education system, which makes so much sense to me.
00:17:39.340My problem is not that a YouTuber homeschooled her child or that anyone homeschools their child. I think that's fine. But, you know, things can go off the rails in an incredibly white supremacist direction. And in this case, they did.
00:17:52.320One of the biggest contradictions that you'll see, and it's usually blind to the people who are engaging in it, is that the evangelical community tends to be anti-trans, anti-gay, anti-any non-heterosexual lifestyle.
00:18:07.580And they always rail against the woke public school system for trying to indoctrinate their children. But what they're actually doing is they're indoctrinating their children into a fundamentalist religious environment.
00:18:21.820And because they are so deep within this Christian ideology, they can understand that there are many of us who don't share their metaphysical understanding of the universe, and we have our own ideas and own practices.
00:18:37.740So what they're really saying is we're going to indoctrinate our children the way we want to indoctrinate them, but they'll present it as removing them from indoctrination.
00:18:48.080because the lord told us to that is an amazing cop-out for like just making any sort of
00:18:54.960questionable decision making i don't know i might adopt that that's like tastefully manipulative0.89
00:18:58.960i i fucked over my friend because the lord told me to sorry take it up with the big guy
00:19:06.460so things take a dark turn on the 4th of july this past 4th of july last month a video was posted0.98
00:19:13.940onto Christy's child's homeschooling co-op that has its own social media page. A video is posted
00:19:20.580to the social media page featuring a number of kids and parents, among them Christy's child and
00:19:28.800husband, at a local kind of parade slash protest that they had held in the streets as a homeschooling
00:19:36.560co-op against public schools and people were holding up these like pretty wild anti-lgbt
00:19:43.800signs notably uh signs that said things like don't mess with our kids hashtag don't mess with our
00:19:50.840kids which is a movement and an organization that is specifically about do you know about don't mess
00:19:57.840with our kids i've heard the term but i don't know about the organization yeah it's like it's
00:20:02.160like a movement it's it's an anti-lgbt public school movie it's exactly what it sounds like
00:20:06.100people did you know a wild you know people on the internet do a wild amount of sleuthing but
00:20:11.140but they realized that christy had liked that video so she essentially is endorsing this sort
00:20:17.500of thing and and sending her kid to partake in it and and furthermore more photos being posted
00:20:25.820from this homeschooling co-op revealed that christy was fulfilling her lifelong dream of
00:20:31.800hosting a homeschool co-op on her property the kids were being taught in this like you know
00:20:39.020renovated beautiful modern shed that she had created in her backyard and people were piecing
00:20:44.940together content from her instagram of her home renovation to the homeschools instagram and
00:20:49.840featuring kids in the shed and people just realized that she was sort of operating this
00:20:54.940entire like Jesus freak right-wing anti-LGBT homeschooling co-op and I was like whoa whoa0.89
00:21:02.860what happened to this girl that I started following like seven years ago because she wasn't0.99
00:21:08.600afraid to be like fuck this lipstick this lipstick fucking sucks we have come a long way Derek and so0.99
00:21:14.280obviously we don't know exactly what happened here but we have clues this feels reflective1.00
00:21:19.620of what has become like a pretty standard arc that we can recognize from like, the wellness
00:21:25.280slash alt medicine slash living off the land earthy spirituality space to like fascist0.64
00:21:38.820It was it was created the coined in 2011 by two researchers, Charlotte Ward and David
00:21:44.400and it basically encapsulates the left-leaning wellness new age space with right-wing libertarian
00:21:55.680individualistic ideology it's a pretty new term and it's a pretty broad term and within that the
00:22:02.260three of us hosts have our different takes on it but from my perspective the glue between them
00:22:08.220is this intensive focus on individualism. And right-wing politics is anti-anything
00:22:15.920that hints at socialism. They don't know the difference between socialism and communism,
00:22:20.420so you'll often hear that conflated. But what it always boils down to is the glorification
00:22:27.760of the individual. And unfortunately, that is something that has proliferated in wellness
00:22:33.440spaces for 200 years since yoga and Hinduism and Buddhism started being introduced into America in
00:22:40.780the first place. It's this idea of the spirituality as a way to embolden your individual self, not as
00:22:49.280a community exercise, which is mostly how it functions in other places. And that has created
00:22:55.600this very weird convergence of people who think they're living these very spiritual lives, but
00:23:01.740then you'll find them just taking and shoring up their resources and trying to create their
00:23:07.660own little cults as indicative of this particular environment you're identifying
00:23:12.000this episode is sponsored by goop no i'm just kidding i'm just kidding i can't even make jokes
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00:24:13.820to be a name brand healthcare company but was actually a Christian health share ministry that0.97
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00:24:28.260biblically objectionable, whether it's because I was drinking or having gay sex. It was a whole0.92
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00:25:14.800fruity. Again, that is incogni.com slash fruity with the code fruity for 60% off. Now back to the
00:25:22.740show i want to talk about the kind of like the way that this particular pipeline of radicalization
00:25:31.460is like i don't know people talk about the horseshoe theory where it's like you go so far
00:25:36.320left that you become right or you go so far right that you become left i want to talk about how this
00:25:40.900applies to that and i want to i want to tell you about the first time that i noticed this happening
00:25:46.160the first it was in the wake of covid and kind of the whole anti-vax movement particularly around
00:25:52.340covid in march 2021 okay let me set the scene for this basically as you might remember especially
00:25:59.760if you were living in america during like 2020 2021 anti-vax movement was huge and there were
00:26:06.680like rallies all the time everywhere the anti-vaxxers were like organizing on telegram
00:26:12.060to occupy cheesecake factories in protest of masking measures it was wild it was wild honestly
00:26:19.460it was like, I couldn't even like really go outside and like trek around New York City
00:26:23.600without encountering some sort of demonstration from like anti Fauci people or whatever. One day
00:26:29.640I was walking through Central Park, and I encountered one of these demonstrations. And
00:26:36.860I decided I was like, okay, I want to like talk to these people. Because like, what is going on
00:26:42.080really? I was expecting to find just like a bunch of Trumpers basically. Because in the media,
00:26:47.820the anti-vax movement was being sort of labeled as this very like trump adjacent right wing
00:26:54.360movement what was so fascinating what i found there was that it was like very like some of
00:26:59.600them were trump people some of them were like q anon people they were talking about like 5g and0.85
00:27:04.500the trans pedophile cults and whatever but a lot of them were like hippies like they were like0.90
00:27:08.720weren't wearing shoes they were like crunch crunch like you know crunchy granola hippies0.57
00:27:13.960And these people were all like, in community with one another at this little like lawn in Central Park protesting. And I was like, okay, okay, I'm misunderstanding what's happening here.0.77
00:27:23.440Again, I think we're going to find using individualism as a framework informative here, because I've been writing about the anti-vax movement since 2010, 2011, at least the modern incarnation of it that was really fueled by Andrew Wakefield's false connection between vaccines and autism in the 1990s.
00:27:42.520So it's always been a problem. I wrote about the measles outbreak in Los Angeles in 2015, because all of the crunchy mothers there who weren't vaccinating their children and the measles spread through that community. So it's happened before, but COVID basically gave it steroids. In fact, we founded Conspirituality as a podcast the very week that Plandemic, that pseudo propaganda film was created.
00:28:08.960Can you explain Plandemic? I remember watching it. That was crazy.
00:28:38.960vaccines were going to be developed because they weren't even on the radar yet. We're going to be
00:28:44.120a nefarious government psyop to try to control the population. And just last week, he sent out
00:28:49.920an email about the Mpox vaccine and the dangers of Mpox and how that's going to be another COVID.
00:28:55.540He's monetized anti-vax disinformation for many years now. And he really found, as a somewhat
00:29:03.920failed filmmaker, he found an audience and now he has adoring fans around him. And that is often what
00:29:10.660it comes down to, unfortunately, is people just want to be recognized for whatever ridiculous1.00
00:29:15.520shit they can come up with. And the anti-vax movement is filled with that. And so when you1.00
00:29:21.240were in New York and you see the yogis and the hippies without their shoes on, two of the threads
00:29:26.800that run throughout all of conspirituality is nothing is as it seems. And there's this sort of
00:29:32.620ultimate power that is keeping the individual down. Now, that is true. It's called unfettered
00:29:40.060capitalism. And there are political solutions to that. But the problem is most of the wellness
00:29:46.540community has no interest in politics whatsoever. They think it's all a charade. They don't
00:29:51.600understand how it affects their daily life because they never pay attention to it. And so they think
00:29:56.380they live outside the system when every facet of their life is governed by the rules and
00:30:02.420regulations that we all abide by. And I started my career in local political journalism in New
00:30:08.880Jersey in the 1990s, going to zoning board meetings and school board meetings where
00:30:13.800politics happens. But the wellness community, usually privileged people who don't have to worry
00:30:19.480about being negatively impacted by politics, thinks that they've transcended it. And so they
00:30:26.580get pulled into that very individualist sense of spirituality that I identified. And that just
00:30:32.400really dovetails well with the right wing, pull yourself up by your bootstraps mentality.
00:30:38.340wait speaking of what so okay when one is reading about beauty guru drama as i do i'm sorry guys
00:30:50.540it's i'm not proud of this but it is what it is that it's really localized on reddit more often
00:30:56.180than not and i did read this what i thought was a kind of brilliant analysis of the whole
00:31:00.600raw beauty christie situation i have so many reddit screenshots that i did while i was
00:31:07.480so this person wrote in response to the raw beauty christy situation from what i've researched it is
00:31:14.420commonly due to the reject modernity embrace tradition mindset the world feels scary and
00:31:19.760difficult women are supposed to have it all and be the best most responsible mothers they can be0.75
00:31:24.660while earning an income quality of life is supposed to be better look at all these rights
00:31:29.220women have then why do i still feel terrible why do i still resent my husband why am i still so
00:31:34.960scared about everything and the world my child is going into. Maybe these rights aren't as amazing
00:31:40.180or good for me as everyone says they are. We haven't heard from our moms in the 60s and 80s
00:31:45.460about how bad the world was. Maybe that world was better and we should go back to it. Maybe
00:31:50.620modernity, women's rights, LGBT rights, isn't worth the price. Thus, conservative pipeline.0.99
00:31:56.760It's really unfortunate because it's ignoring the biggest issue. The reason things are terrible is
00:32:00.880because of capitalism. Because of the insistence that we continually be making a profit and
00:32:05.620contributing to the world, primarily in an economic sense, rather than anything else.1.00
00:32:10.240Women's labor and autonomy will always be disrespected because capitalism requires their1.00
00:32:14.900humanity and labor to be undervalued in its essence. How else will they make profit?1.00
00:32:20.060That feels a lot like what you just said. There's a sentiment, I believe Naomi Klein
00:32:25.480identified it, but a number of people have as well, is that conspiracy theorists and
00:32:30.480conspiritualists often get the feeling right, but the facts wrong. And that is absolutely true. And
00:32:38.000this disillusionment with how capitalism operates in American society is a feeling that so many of
00:32:46.140us share, including myself, but we're not always able to pinpoint exactly what that means. And
00:32:52.980unfortunately, really understanding what it means, either for talking about politics, or we haven't
00:32:58.660really touched upon science yet, but the wellness community being anti-political and anti-science,
00:33:04.720they often go together. If they don't have the resources or understanding where to look to
00:33:10.280understand the sort of systems that hold us back and make us feel that way, it's very easy to get
00:33:16.780caught up in propaganda because one thing propagandists do very well is they flatten
00:33:21.860everything and make it feel like it's one thing. So the reason your child has autism, oh, it's the
00:33:28.320vaccine, duh, of course, when it's probably a combination of a lot of things. And that process
00:33:36.280perpetuates itself throughout online spaces everywhere. And if your feed is filled with
00:33:42.580people you follow, who get pulled into these pipelines, and you're not following credible
00:33:48.640media organizations, or if you're not reading scientific journals, or if you're not staying up
00:33:53.380on what the House of Representatives is doing, the past regulations, it's so easy to get just
00:34:00.900sucked in by these very simple messages because you're like, oh, that's what's holding me back.
00:34:06.680Okay, that's what I'm going to pinpoint and pursue now.
00:34:09.580Yeah, it does feel, I think the idea of having the right feeling, but pointing it in the wrong
00:34:16.440direction, if you will, is so important, right? Like these people will talk a lot about like
00:34:21.420big pharma. And I never want to be like, I think actually big pharma is great and sound. And I
00:34:29.100think we should love big pharma and we should love our government. Like it's, you know, it's
00:34:34.100like, I think there's a reason, especially if you're from a minoritized group, whether you're0.94
00:34:39.180a woman, whether you're a queer person, whether you're a person of color, like anyone who's been
00:34:42.780disenfranchised by like the medical system as women are known to have historically been. It's
00:34:48.120Like, okay, there is a reason why I can understand you being distrusting of these huge institutions.
00:34:55.260But then you have like the essential oils companies of the world being like, those doctors, they're out to get your money.
00:35:28.500And chemophobia is the fear of chemicals.
00:35:31.220And that also goes across, it's the anti-vax movement, the anti-sunscreen movement, the anti-seed oil movement, anything anti that has to do with some sort of product that is manufactured and made.
00:35:45.080Chemophobia, glyphosate is a great example of how people fear glyphosate when so many studies have shown that it is effective for what it's supposed to do and not detrimental to human health.
00:35:57.220So you get in this position that is very difficult to navigate because being somebody and having a podcast that often focuses on the anti-vax movement, the default reactivity to us is, oh, you're shilling for big pharma.
00:38:36.380And you will very quickly understand that most supplements don't do what they're purported to do.
00:38:41.460Well, speaking of, Tati is a beauty guru who for a long time on this platform was extraordinarily uncontroversial. In fact, that was like part of her appeal. A large part of her appeal was that while the beauty internet seems always to be embroiled in some scandal, she never was.0.82
00:39:01.160one of her kind of earliest tiptoes into scandal though was the launch of her supplement company
00:39:09.080halo beauty if you have been around the beauty space on youtube i'm sure you are feeling warm
00:39:15.540and charged right now at the mention of halo beauty but derek let me give you the brief
00:39:19.900basically she is someone who would mention with increasing frequency her interest in like clean
00:39:27.440beauty. And like, I think beauty comes from the inside out. And you know, a lot of these0.59
00:39:32.200ingredients in our lipsticks and foundations are kind of not good for you if you start
00:39:37.300doing your own research. And so briefly, I just want to mention like the launch of this
00:39:47.100brand that she created called Halo Beauty. She as many beauty gurus do, she started to tease that0.88
00:39:56.280she was launching a product and so you know people are thinking well she reviews like makeup all the0.98
00:40:02.800time and so she's just gonna launch a makeup product like an eyeshadow palette or something
00:40:07.620this is back in 2018 2019 and she's teasing like my brand I've been working on this for years I'm
00:40:15.900so excited and I you know I was in college I'm like I'm ready like I'm giving you my my $30 for
00:40:22.880this whatever you're launching tati my loins are girded then the big day comes and she reveals
00:40:30.160her brand is these pink pills which are biotin supplements that cost like 40 dollars for a 30
00:40:40.380day supply she is going through every single ingredient and explaining how it's going to like
00:40:46.060purify your pores from the inside out and like this is where beauty starts and like making these0.96
00:40:53.360like kind of wild claims and speaking about like marketing and kind of website stuff she had like
00:40:59.540all of these pictures on the payload beauty social media that were like showing like people's acne
00:41:06.600clearing up after like 30 days on these pills like it was it was wild it was wild and do you
00:41:13.800have any thoughts on influencer supplement companies? Oh, I have a lot of thoughts. But
00:41:18.180as you're talking, I'm looking over a site. And first off, real results, it has what you're
00:41:22.660talking about. They're all anecdotes. And anecdotes do not provide data. They're the
00:41:26.540beginning of data, right? So I don't want to discount anecdotes. But when you when you see
00:41:31.360that without any actual data, that's that's the first red flag, because there's no studies listed
00:41:36.240on her site. The second one she does, she's doing what is often done by supplements companies,
00:41:41.540which is she's taking all of the ingredients. And she's first off, she's listing their purported
00:41:47.780benefits. She's not linking to studies, unlike some other companies. And she's also saying things
00:41:52.320like it will help clear up your skin, like things you can't actually prove. But what she's not doing
00:41:57.500is, is sharing the studies that show the dose amount. And that's the biggest oversight that
00:42:03.520these companies do is because CBD is a great example. A lot of companies will have 10 or 20
00:42:09.680milligrams of CBD in their product. And then they'll list all of the benefits that CBD is
00:42:14.620supposed to do, but at four or 600 milligram doses. So the research is done at these very
00:42:21.140high dose levels. And then people will include a micro dose of that, but then pass it off as if
00:42:27.200it's doing the same thing. And that's what I'm seeing here. She doesn't list dose levels or
00:42:31.640anything, but she's saying all of the benefits of it. And there's no actual way to know whether
00:42:37.060or not it's going to do that. And she's also, last one, she's relying on the concept of synergy,
00:42:41.940which a lot of supplements companies do, which is this idea that if this does this and this does
00:42:47.620this, well, together, they're going to be even more powerful. But there's no chemical proof of
00:42:53.100that if they haven't been studied together. So you can't take individualized studies,
00:42:58.600throw them all together and say, well, that must mean they do all these things because
00:43:02.140there could be contraindications with some of the ingredients. This happens often with
00:43:07.060adaptogens, which are healing mushrooms. They're contraindicated to a lot of pharmaceutical
00:43:12.380products, but supplement companies won't tell you that. So that's where the negative possible
00:43:18.040impacts come in is if you're on a statin or a blood thinner or diabetes medication,
00:43:23.620and then you start taking the supplement for some other reason, it could mess with your
00:43:28.800medications and you'll never get that warning from these companies.
00:43:32.140Wow. I've waited like six years for someone who actually knows about this stuff to explain to me why my gut feeling about Halo Beauty was correct. Thank you, Derek. Again, like Tati Westbrook, problematic though she may be, falling down the Wu to Q pipeline as she may be, definitely harboring some wild homophobic feelings as she may have exhibited in 2019.
00:43:57.240still kind of an internet mother to me. And so it hurts my soul to analyze her problematic0.95
00:44:04.220behavior. And yet to an audience of 8 million, she's going down quite the rabbit hole. So
00:44:09.420maybe a year ago, two years ago, she moved from LA to Texas. This is when she starts talking
00:44:16.820a lot about toxins and also Christianity and also doing research. We're all doing research.
00:44:28.560Derek, what do you make of doing research? I do research all the time and I think it's
00:44:33.540important. But when they say that, usually what they mean is they've read a couple of Instagram
00:44:38.760posts by people they follow. That's not research. I mean, research is actually reading 30, 40 page
00:44:44.940studies and coming to conclusions and also reading conflicting evidence. I regularly interact with
00:44:50.700two chemists. One is a cosmic chemist named Michelle Wong or Lab Muffin Beauty Science.
00:44:56.000She is the best follow for anyone interested in makeup or beauty products to actually know0.98
00:45:00.900because she's a cosmetic chemist. So whenever I come across something like say Halo Beauty and I
00:45:05.980have a question, I'll just DM her. She'll reply with these lengthy replies that really break
00:45:11.700things down for me. Dr. Andrea Love is a biochemist, and she's on the board of the Lyme
00:45:17.360Disease Foundation. And she's another one who if I have questions on these things,
00:45:22.000that is actually doing research is reading the materials and then consulting with experts,
00:45:27.500reading some Reddit threads or some Instagram threads is not actually research.
00:45:31.360We're all doing our research. I just love I mean, that's kind of like, I don't know what I'm like
00:45:37.020having a casual conversation with someone about like health stuff or whatever. And they say,
00:45:40.820like i've been doing my research that's when i start getting really nervous that i've lost them
00:45:44.520that's usually one of the first signs absolutely as is moving from los angeles to austin or anywhere
00:45:50.380in texas okay there are a couple videos that tati made that i am going to clip in uh little
00:46:01.660segments from into the podcast right now hey guys welcome to today's extra juicy video we're going
00:46:09.060to talk about beauty secrets controversies things that i do in my routine that are not necessarily
00:46:15.060mainstream so i just want to start by saying nobody knows your body like you know your own
00:46:20.580body and what is truly best for you i feel responsible for my day in day out choices
00:46:27.640and that is something powerful to grab a hold of is you have authority over your choices there's
00:46:33.760two big big big red flags that i want to talk about the first one is actually in a video where
00:46:40.580that she titled controversial beauty opinions uh-oh which is a video that she also started by
00:46:46.080being like i'm gonna say things that might trigger people a lot of people are triggered and that's
00:46:51.300another one where as soon as people start talking about like oops didn't mean to trigger everyone
00:46:56.420i'm like oh no oh no right wing dog whistle am i wrong for thinking that am i too sensitive am i
00:47:01.760a blue haired lib no it's it's attention capture you're setting up somebody you're you're framing
00:47:08.480whatever you're going to say as if it's going to be a controversial usually it's not usually it's
00:47:13.180just flat out wrong like real experts aren't debating what you're talking about you're just
00:47:19.900doing it because you have an agenda so that that is always a big red flag it's totally just like0.79
00:47:25.180big water doesn't want to tell you that the water is turning the frogs gay.0.56
00:47:30.560No one wants to say it, but I'm brave enough to say it.
00:47:33.840And there is some municipalities where you have to worry about tap water. Flint, Michigan is a
00:47:40.700pretty famous example. But most tap waters, and when I lived in Los Angeles for 11 years,
00:47:45.420we filtered our water because it tasted disgusting. But moving up to Portland, Oregon now,
00:47:50.100It is fantastic. And you just have to look into filtration systems. All that said, the idea that they're poisoning you through the tap water, unless again, you're in a situation like Flint, which was a whole political and social reason for it happening, that is real. But what will happen is influencers will take instances like that peripherally and just say it's all bad, which is absolutely not true.
00:48:13.980The US has some of the best public health systems in the world. So anytime you hear an influencer
00:48:19.180saying, oh, the wheat is toxic in America or seed oils are bad, we have more regulations than most
00:48:27.100anywhere in the world. So that is provably untrue. Seed oil mentioned when you started that tangent
00:48:33.100and you said it is true that some municipalities, I thought you were going to say it is true that0.90
00:48:37.220some municipalities do have water that is turning the frogs gay. I thought you were going to be like1.00
00:48:42.760to give these people a little bit of grace and i was gonna be like which ones because i want to
00:48:47.260move to there that would be an interesting consequence of all this no i haven't seen
00:48:53.180that yet sorry it's like alex jones broken clock is right twice a day and one of those times
00:49:00.160happened to be that in fact the water is turning the frogs okay speaking of seed oils you that's
00:49:04.840why i gasped when you said seed oils because that is that is a big one uh that i don't really
00:49:09.320understand so maybe you can fill in the gaps for me but in controversial beauty opinions tati says0.81
00:49:16.320that she no longer wears okay deep breath matthew she no longer wears sunscreen on her body1.00
00:49:24.420because since removing seed oils from her diet her body responds to the sun differently and she
00:49:31.480does not burn honestly people hear that i go out and i'm not afraid of the sun and they want to
00:49:37.600rocks so hard they're like almost like cursing you like you're gonna get cancer you're a bad
00:49:42.720role model i do wear a hat and i shield my face and i use sunscreen on my face but i also am not0.93
00:49:49.260afraid of the sunshine you'll hear a lot of people in the holistic community talking about removing
00:49:54.540seed oils and how sunshine reacts differently you don't burn anymore i have not burned once
00:50:01.880going out in the sunshine at all over this summer or even last summer. And I've been a little over
00:50:08.800a year, maybe year and a half seed oil free. Like I do not have any snacks in my home that have any
00:50:14.040sunflower seed oil, grapeseed oil, canola oil. I found that out of everything was the most beneficial
00:50:20.520to my health. And also I don't get even a little bit red going outside. I've heard this often.
00:50:53.520The thread is modern society, is toxic.
00:50:56.580all of these things are created in labs when some of the most dangerous products on the market are
00:51:03.060essential oils, depending on dose level, to be clear. But essential oils can be terrible for you.
00:51:08.180I saw a documentary where parents were spraying essential oils on their children, not sunscreen,
00:51:13.800and then having them run out into the sun. So they're actually calling those actual cancer
00:51:20.320causing agents into their body through this process and thinking that they're living naturally.
00:51:26.580And that, again, goes back to the whole romanticized idea, the idea that sometime in the past, we convened with nature and everything was perfect, not realizing that up until a couple thousand years ago, humans were in the middle of the food chain, not at the top.
00:51:42.820And we have a very glorified understanding of evolutionary biology.
00:51:48.260We're in a pretty good place right now.
00:51:50.160And a big part of that is our understanding of chemistry.
00:51:52.680but what these influencers do is they exploit our underlying fear of chemistry in order to
00:51:59.300usually sell us products halo beauty yeah that are still chemicals yes i don't know about seed
00:52:07.720oils but you know it could fill your seed oil void some 40 hot pink
00:52:13.260seed oils are predominantly healthy. They are heart protective. They are generally good for
00:52:22.600you. What they're talking about is they exploit this fear of going to a food cart in New York
00:52:27.940City and seeing deep fried products. We have this image of food knishes that are sitting in oil for
00:52:35.900a long time. That is completely different than using some avocado oil or some olive oil, any
00:52:42.000sort of oil in a pan at home of course you have to take heat into heat distribution into account
00:52:47.220but besides that yes some oils are better than others but seed oils are definitely not toxic
00:52:52.980yeah she says things like you know stay on the outside perimeter of the grocery store because0.95
00:52:59.580you don't want any of that process shit in the scent it's like tati whatever i just like i was0.64
00:53:04.680like you know at a certain point i'm like wow i started watching you every day she would make0.96
00:53:11.560these makeup videos five days a week on YouTube for a long time, which is such an incredible
00:53:16.660level of output that I still to this day can't fathom. But she was making like the best deals
00:53:21.900at CVS on lipsticks right now. And I was like, you know, clamoring for her insight. And I'm like,
00:53:27.420whoa, whoa, whoa, why are you telling me that you can go out in the sun as long as you haven't
00:53:32.180been consuming seed oils? Something has shifted. What she says is actually pretty, pretty common
00:53:38.140in the wellness space. This episode is brought to you by the Essential Oil Industrial Complex.
00:53:46.920I'm kidding. I'm kidding again. I'm having fun today. What can I say? Podcasts used to be fun.
00:53:52.860No, this podcast is brought to you by our friends over at Blueland. Blueland was the show's first
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00:54:17.140dissolving, the plastic doesn't actually biodegrade. Laundry pods and dishwasher pods are just one
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00:55:06.740for 15% off your first order. That's blueland.com slash fruity for 15% off. Thank you so much as
00:55:15.440always to Blueland for partnering with the show. And now let's jump back down the rabbit hole.
00:55:22.820What's interesting to me about this too is that I think I feel like you have to be surrounded,
00:55:28.400be like in an echo chamber of like weird wackadoo wellness beliefs for a while before you feel
00:55:35.200empowered and confident enough to say it to a platform of millions of people and like not feel
00:55:39.600like you're going off the rails to be fully unafraid of the reactions that you will get for
00:55:43.820saying something to be clear absolutely crazy and untrue like you can go out in the sun and not burn
00:55:49.360as long as you don't consume seed oils like you have to have been like kind of relishing in that0.97
00:55:54.620kind of shit for a while right absolutely and i want to point out that these spaces are not new0.95
00:55:59.480i started practicing yoga in 1997 in new york city and even back then in those brick and mortar0.98
00:56:06.680spaces before influencers were doing yoga on social media things that were said you are your
00:56:13.260own best doctor you know your body better than anyone trust yourself don't trust experts like
00:56:18.400those have been around those were around in the 90s they were around before that i'm sure
00:56:23.680But what happens is how that translates through online spaces, because you no longer have the personal inner communication, you can just rely on your pre existing biases, and then people you trust online, which creates this whole weird parasocial relationship that happens. And so you, you trust these people, even though you've never met them in real life, at least in the olden days, you had to actually have some contact with that person to build that trust that no longer exists.
00:56:52.680And so, yes, those those feelings have been said probably a number of times before you've publicly stated them.
00:57:01.140But you've been in some sort of environment that facilitated that.
00:57:05.980In her video, I was making myself sick.
00:57:09.140The first thing that she does is really berate tap water.
00:57:13.680And one of the things she says about tap water, you all knew it was coming.
00:58:32.020and to basically make people like docile,
00:58:36.820you know, stifle the revolutionary spirit
00:58:39.020of the American people against communism.
00:58:40.880it was promoted heavily by the john birch society which is kind of just like a far-right
00:58:46.940white supremacist type group so that's my understanding of the fluoridation what i'm not
00:58:52.540totally sure of is how we get from like white supremacists being like they're putting fluoride
00:58:57.980in the water to turn us into communists how that flows up the river if you will to glam life guru
00:59:04.820youtube.com slash glam life guru well first on a very basic level again i i have to go back0.52
00:59:10.860to chemophobia. It's this idea that there's this ingredient in something we consume that's harming
00:59:15.400us. But you mentioned, I mean, John Birch was really rooted in Christian nationalism, but
00:59:20.380the white supremacy angle has kind of been simmering under so many of these right-wing
00:59:24.960movements. And in our book, Conspirituality, we identified the first evidence of when yoga
00:59:31.260started becoming popular in the late 19th century, some of the biggest proponents were
00:59:36.040known white supremacists. And it all had to do with the glorification of the body.
00:59:40.500And in this case, the glorification of the white body and the white race. But it still was this0.84
00:59:44.780idea of building physical fitness in order to be strong and to protect against insert enemy here.
00:59:52.460And since the 1940s, the enemy in America has been communism or some form of socialism. It's
00:59:59.540this rooted idea that the idea of the collective is not nearly as important as the individual.
01:00:06.040And the right wing has exploited that ever since. And really, when the term conspirituality was coined, the researchers pointed back to the 1960s as another indication of when it happened.
01:00:20.220Because what you had was civil rights being enacted, you had feminism coming to the fore, but you also had social turmoil. You had the Kennedys, you had MLK Jr., Malcolm X, all these very well-known figures being assassinated. And there's a lot of echoes of what's happening today.
01:00:40.560And so in all of that confusion, what you find, again, are people coming saying, I know what's going on. And the challenge that we have as, say, science communicators, for example, is every expert, epidemiologists, cardiologists, public health officials, all the people I've talked to over the last four and a half years of this podcast, they're all really good at saying things like, this is what we know right now.
01:01:08.240This is where the evidence leads. We're working with this assumption, understanding it might change in the future. That is honoring science, but what it doesn't do is it doesn't capture your attention as someone yelling the frogs are gay at you when staring into the camera.
01:01:25.500If you're a parent of a child with autism and you don't know why it happened, you're not having RFK Jr. look and say, no vaccines are effective. This causes autism with such certainty. And it's that certainty that the influencers are able to exploit because they take vulnerable people in situations where they're exposed to being open to any sort of idea that will explain their predicament.
01:01:51.200And rather than listening to someone and say, well, we have to weigh these things out, which would be the right course of action, they're seduced by the person who says, no, it's definitely this.
01:02:02.040Yeah. And I mean, something about Tati Westbrook, among other people, is that while I don't know that I would call her a cult leader, she is a popular YouTuber.
01:02:13.540And one of the things that makes her a popular YouTuber is she is beautiful.
01:02:19.500it she's rich she dresses well she has voluminous hair wait one second i'm gonna change my camera
01:02:25.980battery really fast um what was i saying tati's beautiful she's rich she's hot yeah to your point
01:02:31.820i mean when you have someone especially someone with whom you've already developed a parasocial
01:02:35.780relationship with through something like makeup or like lifestyle content it's a lot easier to
01:02:41.480listen to them about like their solutions to the you know unsolvable woes of the world than it is
01:02:47.460to like grapple with the fact that i don't know so much of this echoes to me it's like how how
01:02:52.820people are engaging with like woo to q just seems like how some people engage with religion
01:02:58.160fanatically which is like life is hard we don't have answers for a lot of things i am going to
01:03:04.520latch on to the quickest or most charismatic thing that gives me an answer even if it's a false one
01:03:10.660charisma goes a long way and part of the challenge of science or media literacy communicators is
01:03:17.440needing some charisma. Thankfully, there are some really good ones, but there are definitely
01:03:22.080more in these sort of cult angle that you identified. I mean, they're not all cult
01:03:27.260leaders. Some of them do aspire to that. A general threat is they all want to be adored
01:03:32.840in some capacity. These influencers don't like being told that they're wrong. Whereas if you're
01:03:38.500talking to the true science communicator, they'll at least look at the evidence and try to weigh it
01:03:44.160out. But you're playing in a very uneven, uneven playing field of social media, because the
01:03:51.160charismatic people know how to exploit this medium. I'm an advocate for being as honest with
01:03:56.080the evidence as possible and being able to change your story when it's called for. And that's
01:04:02.400something you won't really find a lot with people in the spaces that you're identifying, except if
01:04:08.520it's to say, I used to do this until it made me sick. And so then I started doing this. And guess
01:04:15.880what? You can also buy this from me. Something that I want to talk about, like, I want to once
01:04:21.920again, give grace to some of the people that I have been critiquing, which is, I don't know,
01:04:26.800a common thread on this podcast is like trying to understand how people, you know, get the way
01:04:33.480that they are and maybe even do harm and not excuse it but explain it and maybe that helps
01:04:40.740you know the same behavior stop in its tracks in someone else you know how i want to address that
01:04:45.740in this particular instance is that like i think alt-right spaces are usually associated with men
01:04:52.300correctly i think they tend to make up more of these spaces but i do think the wellness and
01:04:57.780homesteading and natural living kind of thing offers a unique entry point into the far right1.00
01:05:04.120for women. And sometimes understandably so, right? Like I said at the top of the episode,1.00
01:05:09.780Christy struggled with infertility for 15 years. Tati Westbrook has also struggled with infertility
01:05:15.720for a really long time, which is something she's, I think, around 40 now. And she's documented her
01:05:22.640struggle with getting pregnant and how that's impacted her mental health, which is also
01:05:26.100something that famously in this country is usually not taken seriously. Tati has also struggled with
01:05:31.300endometriosis, which is a pretty brutal condition that's famously undertreated and underdiagnosed
01:05:37.640in women. On average, it takes 10 years to diagnose a woman with endometriosis. Women's
01:05:44.560health issues forever have been taken less seriously by doctors. Male bodies are treated0.92
01:05:51.260in medical science as the default. And so when I see, especially someone who has been victim to
01:05:59.560all of these structures and institutions, I understand why they would feel empowered to turn
01:06:06.440away. Absolutely. Not only were male bodies treated as the default, they were the only ones
01:06:13.600studied up until the 1980s. They didn't even look at female bodies. The challenge here,
01:06:20.660So first off, it's a matter of intention.
01:06:23.020It's something we talk a lot about in the podcast because there is a range.
01:06:26.900Not everyone who's involved in either consuming these products and ideas or selling them are being malicious.
01:06:33.800I think a lot of them are true believers in these things.
01:06:36.360So when I see someone selling something, the first thing I have to assess is are they grifting or are they actually really believe this is going to work?
01:06:43.440And that gives you different insights and it provides different entry points in how to have a conversation around it.
01:06:48.420But overall, what I would suggest is looking for an actual expert in the field that you're
01:07:08.100And as a cisgendered man who is married to a woman who will be going through menopause0.82
01:07:14.040at some time in the near future. I wanted to learn more about what that process is going to be like
01:07:19.460for her. So I read that book, and then we had her on our podcast to discuss these things.
01:07:24.100And that is someone I would turn to if I had questions about if I were a woman, I had questions
01:07:29.640about my body, I wouldn't trust someone as well meaning as their anecdote might be. Because I
01:07:37.460actually have my own strange health anecdotes that aren't actually supported by data. And I do
01:07:43.720talk about them, but I also never recommend them, I would still turn to an expert to understand
01:07:51.140what's going on to better assess it rather than someone who's selling me something and who doesn't,
01:07:55.840frankly, who's never studied the field. So you're saying that this
01:07:59.600Sephora halls don't make her an expert in health and wellness? How dare you?
01:08:07.080I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You might have to work me out of this podcast now.
01:08:12.960Have you considered that that might make you a misogynist, Derek?
01:08:18.300It is. I would be called one. I mean, I've criticized acupuncture on the podcast before,
01:08:24.960and a number of people said it's anti-Asian. And I just kind of, my eyes go wide at that because
01:08:31.640most of the literature that supports the fact that acupuncture doesn't work comes from Asian
01:08:37.220countries. I mean, it's just, but it's that idea. We conflate things all the time. We're like,
01:08:42.340oh, it's this thing, so it must work for this reason, instead of actually looking at what
01:08:47.960hundreds and thousands of studies have provided. So yeah, that's not criticism that I haven't seen
01:08:55.500before. Feminist author Caroline Criado Perez wrote, far too often, we blame women for turning1.00
01:09:04.520to alternative medicine, painting them as credulous and even dangerous. But the blame does0.99
01:09:09.300not lie with the women. It lies with the gender data gap. Thanks to hundreds of years of treating
01:09:14.320the male body as default in medicine, we simply do not know enough about how disease manifests0.97
01:09:19.160in the female body. And then she goes on to write about how basically we need to attack0.98
01:09:23.460those structures first before turning our sights on, you know, Tati Westbrook. And I don't know,
01:09:28.120that makes sense to me. Absolutely. You know, one of the things that you'll see the right,
01:09:32.960I mean, one of their main targets is critical race theory, and it gets to the same point.
01:09:37.020Critical race theory is the 101 entry point of being like, hey, we were a country built on slavery and all of these systems were put in place to keep the white man and the predominantly white man elevated. Let's look at those systems and see what we can change. And you see the Christian nationalists and right wingers by just say, no, you're being racist, which is absurd.
01:09:57.200In defense of modern medicine, the one hope that I have is that more women are enrolled in medical school now than men. And what you'll find is a lot of the criticisms you're saying are absolutely true. But there are a ton of researchers right now who are working at changing that system. And it's really refreshing to see.
01:10:21.080So I hope in the coming decades, we're going to see more good holistic science coming out of all of these people who are dedicating their careers to it.
01:10:30.620Yeah, the gendered element of this whole strange phenomenon we've been talking about this episode has really crystallized to me on the Trad Wife internet, which this could absolutely and perhaps should be, let me know in the comments, be its own episode.
01:10:46.940But Derek, I want you to tell me what you know about the Trad Wife internet.
01:10:53.100It's not something that we've done full episodes on, but I have looked into it.
01:10:57.760And referencing back to the pastel QAnon, again, it has its own aesthetic of someone who has the
01:11:04.500time and money to make every single meal from scratch and film it and light it properly and
01:11:11.100do the makeup and do the clothing it's pretty it's pretty tremendous how much effort is placed
01:11:17.320on this 1950s americana romanticized image is really troublesome to me and again to be fair
01:11:24.280like if this is something you do and you're raising your family this way you know more power
01:11:28.340to you but when you put it online and you're monetizing it i just think it's a bit gross
01:11:32.900this is a hot take that was a hot take you're gonna get some comments about that one derek
01:11:37.300but i agree with you but it's a hot take so okay if you don't know if you've been living under a1.00
01:11:43.180rock and you know what in this case good for you if you have been but trad wives are basically1.00
01:11:48.940online content creators they're women content creators who perform what they imagine life1.00
01:11:54.040would be like for housewives in the 1950s like you said some of the most famous ones are ballerina
01:12:01.520farm who has 10 million followers on instagram uh nara smith who has millions of followers
01:12:08.820on every social media platform actually both of them do nara smith is famous for going viral many
01:12:14.480times over for making things from scratch to the point where it gets ridiculous and it's been turned
01:12:20.140into a meme but like my kids this afternoon told me that they wanted bubble gum so i went back in0.95
01:12:25.900the yard and started fermenting she's like making like fucking i don't know water from scratch1.00
01:12:31.500in her house. Nara Smith is actually hysterical because she's played into the ridiculousness and1.00
01:12:37.200she's turned into a troll. Like now in her videos, like making cereal from scratch, she'll like wear1.00
01:12:43.400actual ball gowns and it's kind of hysterical. But in all of these trad wife content creator stuff,
01:12:50.580which have become very popular, there's an emphasis on homemaking, childbearing, cooking
01:12:56.840from scratch, pleasing your husband, if you're noticing some frightening levels of like some of
01:13:03.340those things seem normal and some of them seem really not normal, that is exactly what is so
01:13:07.480unsettling about these content creators. And the irony, of course, being that a lot of successful
01:13:13.020trad wife content creators are earning, you know, six, seven figure salaries and running sometimes0.79
01:13:19.840independent businesses by performing a version of femininity from, you know, a time that women
01:13:25.480could not open a credit card what is another interesting common thread through trad wife
01:13:31.280content is this conflation of like traditional lifestyle and traditional i.e conservative0.77
01:13:38.700politics but presented to an entirely new very young audience on tiktok there's a strong like
01:13:46.600kind of fundamentalist religion religious undertone to a lot of it both ballerina farm
01:13:51.940and nara smith are mormons which is something that doesn't get talked about oftentimes explicitly
01:13:57.920but it's just the ideals of fundamentalist religion are like carried through their content
01:14:03.520one of my biggest critiques of this kind of content that to some people might seem far-fetched but like
01:14:08.640to me just doesn't seem far-fetched is it seems like it's like sometimes unbeknownst to these
01:14:13.280women like it seems like far-right recruitment propaganda i think people unwillingly recruit
01:14:18.920without recognizing it. It might not be intentional. Sometimes it is. I mean, Mormons0.99
01:14:23.580are, from my interactions with them, are generally really nice people. Actually,
01:14:28.500I knew a number of them in Los Angeles. But like, I'm sorry, the underlying philosophies of the
01:14:34.240religion are insane. Wildly anti-woman, anti-black, anti-gay.0.99
01:14:39.320Yeah, absolutely. In every facet. So, you know, you're always balancing this fact that people0.98
01:14:44.600are complex. But you have to weigh out how much you want to be influenced by it. And also,
01:14:52.040what's interesting to me, I'm 49 now, and having lived through some generations watching these
01:14:57.040cycles, because time does not move linearly as we think. So in the 1990s, when I was going on
01:15:03.880Take Back the Night marches at Rutgers University, which were focused on women's safety, you had a
01:15:10.320really strong undercurrent of feminism and trying to create an, you know, equal gender equality at1.00
01:15:16.400that time. And so now when I see women in their young twenties talking about how great the 1950s
01:15:22.560were, it feels, you feel like you're being gaslit. Like I feel like it at that times, because I'm
01:15:27.960like, when I was that age, you know, you go through those cycles. And so you have to step
01:15:32.380back and wonder what the appeal is. And when you're talking about this, this appeal is a level
01:15:37.840of privilege because the two that you identified, the amount of money that has to go into the
01:15:45.420lifestyle that affords these videos to be made, I don't know how much that's talked about. But
01:15:51.280I do know that that's not most young people or even my age, Gen X person, that's not our situation
01:15:59.320where we can spend hours a day filming content. And so you create this illusion of a lifestyle.
01:16:06.020And even if you are living it, what happens with the parasocial relationships are people like, I want to live that too. And then you go out and you try to do it. And you're like, wait a second, how do they pull this off? And I think that's also, you know, something that needs to be talked about. If you are making a live and monetizing these things and living this, you should at least be honest about where all that money is flowing in, because it's not cheap.
01:16:29.700No, absolutely not. And also, I mean, just to tie it into like, the main, I guess, theme of this episode, it's like, the trad wife influencer feels like a really popular entry point for people to be like, it would be nice to wear an apron and cook a sourdough recipe. And then but like, after three months of following this person's content, they're like, and also Trump 2024. And women are primarily should be focused on pleasing their husband and giving birth once every other year.
01:16:59.100and also perhaps Trump, 2028 and 2032. Like, you know what I mean? It's like, it's again,0.92
01:17:05.440it's this like back to the land, natural living, and also like, women should be in the home.
01:17:12.440Even just pointing out the fact that how privileged we all are to live in environments0.98
01:17:19.140where we can control the temperature at all times, that is historically very new. And I think what
01:17:25.140happens is when you're born into something, you don't realize precedent. You don't realize what
01:17:30.200people had to endure to get to this place. And that's just blind privilege. I mean, that's pretty
01:17:35.240much anyone in modern society are living through that at this moment. The fact that you're using
01:17:40.300this super advanced technology in your phone to be able to film all of this content, that didn't
01:17:48.060exist just a generation ago. And so we take all of these comforts and luxuries that many of us
01:17:55.700are able to have, at least in America. And then we try to wrap that into this, again, I've used
01:18:02.280this term a lot, but romanticized image of what the past was. That leads to a lot of frustration
01:18:08.520because you're right, because the people who are able to present that life, whether they're good
01:18:12.700people, whatever their intentions are, that is the top of the heap. And for all the people watching
01:18:18.480it, they're always going to feel frustrated by the fact that they can't actually do what they're
01:18:23.300seeing on the screen. Do you know about the QAnon shaman? Yes, we've done full episodes on him.
01:18:30.360But it's not all women. And so before we wrap up this episode, I want to point out that just
01:18:36.080because of the place that I occupy on the internet, and probably if you're listening to this one that
01:18:39.660you're more familiar with like i've been focusing on how the wellness to far right pipeline tends
01:18:45.440to attack women but it absolutely comes for men too i mean like the third most popular residential
01:18:51.400candidate right now you know bless his heart he's probably dropped out by the time this episode goes
01:18:55.480up i've been getting texts as we've been talking it's happening right now as we talk rfk is done
01:19:03.300did he endorse trump yet that i don't know i haven't seen that on the text let's see
01:19:08.660oh oh yes yes he's endorsing trump well there you go in real time but i mean that's the thing
01:19:16.400about it right so rfk is someone who is kind of a wellness to far right guy i'm sure he wouldn't
01:19:21.960describe himself that way but that's what he is like he's a big vac like vaccines autism guy
01:19:26.800and he just dropped out as a supposed independent and immediately endorsed trump
01:19:31.540And so, you know, he's out there. I think Joe Rogan is responsible for a lot of this, like, just asking questions to, like, radicalizing men to the far right. And I think perhaps one of the mascots for this archetype is the QAnon shaman.
01:19:50.240The QAnon shaman, though you may not be familiar with his moniker, is someone whose image you most definitely know.
01:19:58.240He was at the January 6th insurrection, the guy who storms the Capitol with, I don't even know how, how would you describe this, Derek?
01:23:28.600I have two final questions before we wrap up today.
01:23:31.520Before we started recording, you know, and I want to bring this back to the Raw Beauty Christy narrative that we opened with, which was, again, if you recall, that she sent her kid to a private schooling co-op that it seems like she has some involvement in running that ultimately gathered for a July 4th parade where they all were holding like anti-LGBT, anti-public school signs, sort of this like kind of right wing grooming conspiracy.
01:23:57.520When I was talking to you about this stuff before we started recording, you said that most conspiracy theories always end, currently at least, in the place of like anti-Semitism and anti-trans slash anti-gay stuff. How do you think that applies here? Could you elaborate on that?
01:24:13.000Not just currently, first of all. I mean, anti-Semitism, most every conspiracy theory is rooted in anti-Semitism. It goes back there. And because there has been this longstanding, back to biblical times, perception of the Jews as having all of the capital. It goes back to being moneylenders in the Bible and Jesus overturning them. So that's where it comes from.
01:24:33.880And then it traces throughout history. Every time you want to point at someone nefarious, it's been the Jews. It's been anti-trans specifically more recently, but anti any sort of non-heterosexual lifestyle for generations before that.0.99
01:24:51.300So basically, any perceived unorthodox either person or lifestyle is a fitting victim because
01:25:20.540And I want to differentiate that from Christians overall. I mean, I don't believe in any of their ideology, but there are a lot of good Christians. And I would say most, most Christians live in some charitable mean or, you know, some light. Well, I can't say most because evangelicals are such a big part of American society.
01:25:36.440but the the idea of the other plays very well even in terms of the bible like satan was not a real
01:25:45.140major character in the bible like that came much later this idea that there was some sort of
01:25:51.400ultimate form of evil and when that ideology was being created centuries later that has persisted
01:25:59.880throughout cultures especially western culture and so getting back to it you need to point out
01:26:05.580some problem for why life is not idyllic or perfect. And so why not go with the easiest
01:26:12.380possible route that will get the quickest attention from people? And it tends to go in
01:26:17.600one of those two directions. The last question that I have for you is, how do we stop people
01:26:25.220from going down the pipeline? I know lots of people, as we all do, who have their own wellness
01:26:30.860practices, whether it be yoga or crystals or like whatever else brings them joy or makes them feel
01:26:36.440good. I'm not trying to step on your toes if you love your crystals or, you know, whatever else you
01:26:41.560do, right? Like, I don't give a shit. I really don't give a shit. But how do we keep people from0.99
01:26:47.520like being exploited by the far right through this path, right? If you want to look into the
01:26:52.980ingredients in your foundation, like, go for it. But how do we prevent people from like falling
01:26:59.000into it so that six months later, they're like, we must keep the children out of the gay public1.00
01:27:04.000schools. Unfortunately, it's going to remain local. I mean, the internet has really skewed1.00
01:27:10.820our understanding. I mean, as much as I love it, my father was a computer programmer from the 60s.
01:27:15.840I've grown up with computers. I love technology, to be clear. But it really has skewed our
01:27:21.560understanding of reality. And unfortunately, misinformation travels much faster than good
01:27:26.340information. And so the only systemic effects you can have is in regulations and trusts like
01:27:33.760breaking up trust, things like that. We don't need to get into all that, but we're pretty clear that
01:27:38.260we're not going to monitor social media in any sort of meaningful way. So the only thing that
01:27:43.860I've seen effective are one-on-one conversations or small group conversations with people you care
01:27:48.960about. So meaning when I do the work that I do, when misinformations do the work, we will put out
01:27:54.680good information. We'll do the best with it, but we know that it's not going to sink in across
01:27:58.940lines, especially with conspiracy theorists. So what you're left with is if you're watching a
01:28:04.840friend go through it, is stepping in and trying to help that person, is sharing good information,
01:28:11.580is not just laughing or yelling at them, is actually saying, oh, that's really interesting.
01:28:17.500Did you know this though? And then trying to share something that can shift them in a direction
01:28:22.820that's going to be more informed, more science-based, and more rooted in empathy and
01:28:28.060understanding of the broader population. I mean, I think that's specifically the vaccines because
01:28:33.360vaccines have been framed, especially since the pandemic, as an individual choice.
01:28:39.240It's not. I'm sorry. It's a public health decision. So when you're sending your unvaccinated
01:28:44.880child to school and they have measles, they contract measles, and then they spread it,
01:28:49.640that might be affecting an immunocompromised child who can't get a vaccine.
01:28:55.940So understand that these decisions are not always just about you, and that's really hard to do in
01:29:01.140America. But drawing back is you have to try to shift people's understanding that their individual
01:29:07.840choices are not always just on them. So yeah, if you think your crystal is bringing you something,
01:29:12.460I mean, that's not going to harm anyone. But when you get to these health decisions that we need to
01:29:17.940make and you're seeing people go down these rabbit holes, try to catch it early and try to just feed
01:29:24.040them people who actually know what they're talking about. And hopefully that can deflate some of
01:29:29.480what's going on with them. Yeah. Tati Westbrook, I'm not giving up on you. I'm not giving up on
01:29:34.960you, sister. Well, Derek, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here today,
01:29:43.660for shedding your decades of insight into this world