Conspirituality

Donald Trump's shitpost attack on Pope Leo XIV, followed within the hour by an AI slop icon of himself as Jesus, has cracked open the evangelical-Catholic coalition that has anchored American conservatism for fifty years. 

Matthew walks through Leo's escalating confrontation with Trump, from his November 2025 immigration remarks to his Palm Sunday Isaiah citation ("your hands are full of blood"), his Holy Thursday liberation theology thread on "imperialist occupation," and the Good Friday Stations of the Cross — in which Father Francesco Patton's meditations called out the passion of deportation, surveillance, and war atrocities. 

The backlash from MAGA Christians, including Marjorie Taylor Greene calling the AI image "an Antichrist spirit" and pastor Joel Webbon asking whether Trump is "demon possessed", reveals three deepening fissures: the Vatican-Trump feud over Iran and immigration, a theological split over Christian Zionism, and grassroots disillusionment over ICE enforcement near churches and schools, and blasphememes.

Show Notes

Pope Leo XIV's Palm Sunday homily, full text — Vatican.va

Pope Leo XIV's Holy Thursday homily, full text — OSV News

Good Friday Liturgy of the Lord's Passion, Vatican — EWTN News

Hegseth prays for "overwhelming violence" at Pentagon service — PBS NewsHour

Trump's Iran war is tearing apart his Catholic-evangelical coalition — Mother Jones

MAGA recoils at Trump cosplaying as Christ — The Daily Beast

List of conservatives rebuking Trump's Jesus image — Newsweek

AI Jesus might be the thing that finally breaks MAGA's faith — Gizmodo

Pope Leo responds to Trump: "I have no fear" — The New Republic

Military archbishop says Iran war hard to see as "sponsored by the Lord" — CBS News

Pentagon threatened Pope Leo's ambassador with Avignon Papacy — Letters from Leo

"When I Survey the Wondrous Cross," Isaac Watts (1707) — Hymnary.org

Trump faces "Leo Fever" backlash over Pope feud — The Daily Beast

Karoline Leavitt responds to Pope Leo's war prayer remarks — Newsweek
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Consider the bright-eyed students who signed up for tantric yoga and sacred sexuality courses through their local yoga studios, only to eventually find they were sending the guru photos of themselves in bikinis to see if they qualified for a private initiation ceremony.

What's unique about today's guru, Gregorian Bivolaru, is how his organization's in-depth courses reached into over 30 different countries, delivering a steady stream of young, starry-eyed women to be abused by him in Paris.

A new documentary series, Twisted Yoga, tells the story of the women who've come forward to expose what they allege are the criminal actions of the guru and his cult. Julian cover the nuts and bolts, Matthew digs into Bivolaru's Soviet-era Romanian background, and then Derek interviews director Rowan Deacon, who reveals some info not covered in the series, such as the “meditations for Trump” going on at some of Bivolaru’s yoga studios.

Show Notes

Gregorian Bivolaru official biography

POV Magazine: How Twisted Yoga Centres Care Amid a Web of Lies

Discourse Analysis of Public Communication Campaigns about Gregorian Bivolaru

ACT Database: "Sucker Love is Heaven Sent" — A Romanian Yoga Cult Under Investigation

NBC Bay Area: Romanian yoga leader Gregorian Bivolaru accused of sexual abuse

CNN: French police arrest yoga guru in connection with alleged rape, human trafficking and kidnapping scheme

Connexion France: 41 arrests over tantric yoga group accused of sex abuse in France

Marxists Internet Archive: Alexandra Kollontai, Theses on Communist Morality in the Sphere of Marital Relations (1921)

UPI (January 1990): Ceaușescu children lived it up while people suffered

Dispărut, dar cu conturile pline. Guru Bivolaru face milioane de dolari anual 

UPI (May 1990): Ceaușescu's playboy son on trial

UNADFI: Abus de faiblesse

Statute Law Review: Criminalizing Coercive Control — Cross-Jurisdictional Lessons
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When the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini received Western media in a small French village in 1978, he sat cross-legged in his robes and black turban under an apple tree in the garden. They described him as “on another planet,” with “eyes of steel,” and compared him to an Eastern sage or ascetic guru.

French philosopher Michel Foucault, most famous for his penetrating analysis of power, knowledge (and punitive coercion) was there as well. He called the holy man “an old saint in exile” who had no personal political ambitions. Visiting Iran during the revolution, the philosopher was captivated by what he called a new form of “spiritual politics” that he saw as “advancing toward a luminous and distant point.” Foucault dismissed Iranian feminists who warned of the true dangers of an Islamic state being established once the autocratic king—the Shah—had been overthrown.

Today, as the reckless and destructive American and Israeli war against the Iranian regime continues, Julian revisits the political history of Iran and the complex regional power struggles between nationalists, monarchists, communists, and Islamists that played out on the Cold War stage. He examines the connections between the controversial 1953 CIA coup d’etat and the hugely popular 1979 Islamic Revolution, which led to the one-party totalitarian theocracy that dominates the Iranian people to this day.

How did so many within Iran and in the West, including the most influential radical philosopher of his time, misperceive Khomeini and his ruthless intentions?

Show Notes

Foucault: What Are The Iranian’s Dreaming About

Did Foucault Disregard Iranian Feminists?

Dr. Taimur Rahman’s Red Star Lectures

The CIA Coup That Never Was

Iran’s Decade of Assassinations

Bayandor: Iran and The CIA

Foucault’s Iranian Folly

Foucault and the Question of Orientalism

The Shah, by Abbas Milani
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Billionaire tech bro Marc Andreessen recently claimed introspection is a pathology. Derek and Julian discuss the Trump advisor's claims while the investor continues making bank from defense technology.

Show Notes

The Mind is Flat: Nick Chater

The Mind is Flat | Nick Chater | Talks at Google

Susan Blackmore Review of The Mind is Flat

The Tell-Tale Brain: VS Ramachandran

Consciousness and the Brain: Stanislas Dehaene

This Is Your Brain on Music: Dan Levitin

Musicophilia: Oliver Sacks
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New Yorker writer Charles Bethea recently decided to attend men’s retreats—well, at least those who would admit him. His expose on the modern men’s movement got us thinking about what’s happening over those very expensive three-day weekends, as well as the inspiration behind these groups dating back to the seventies. And even how a movement tracing back to the work of Robert Bly was co-opted by the right-wing “alpha male” crowd.

Today we discuss Bethea’s article in the context of modern men’s groups: where they come from, what function they serve, and what they might get wrong…and horribly wrong.

Show Notes

The Camps Promising to Turn You—or Your Son—Into an Alpha Male

The ‘alpha male’ myth, debunked

Inside the high-priced retreats promising to help men reclaim their masculinity

Brief: Galloway and the Mooch — The Lost Boys of Capitalism (Pt 1)

Scott Galloway and Anthony Scaramucci, Lost Boys podcast

Of Boys and Men

A Statistical Book Review for 'Of Boys and Men'

How a White Nationalist Club Thought It Found Safe Haven in a Montreal Gym

The Fallout from Reporting on White Nationalism in Canada

Active Clubs Are White Supremacy's New, Dangerous Frontier

White Nationalist 'Active Clubs' Are Who 'Proud Boys Wanted to Be'

Whom Is ICE Actually Recruiting?

Experts Concerned About White Nationalist Imagery in ICE Recruitment Materials

Male Fantasies, Vol. 1

Interview with Klaus Theweleit on Male Fantasies Today
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