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- [00:01]
Matthew Rimsky
Queen Carvania stood haloed by the morning sun.
- [00:06]
Derek Barris
An army hung on her every word. My champions, I have sold my chariot on Carvana. Twas a lovely suv, an inexplicably queenly offer. They're even coming to the castle to collect it.
- [00:21]
Matthew Rimsky
Tonight we feast. An offer you can feast on.
- [00:26]
Julian Walker
Sell your car today on Carvana.
- [00:28]
Matthew Rimsky
Pick up fees may apply.
- [00:34]
Derek Barris
Welcome to the I Can't Sleep Podcast with Benjamin Boster. If you're tired of sleepless nights, you'll love the I Can't Sleep podcast. I help quiet your mind by reading
- [00:50]
Julian Walker
random articles from across the web to
- [00:52]
Derek Barris
bore you to sleep with my soothing voice. Each episode provides enough interesting content to hold your attention and then your mind lets you drift off. Find it wherever you get your podcasts. That's I Can't Sleep with Benjamin Boster. Hey everyone. Welcome to Conspirituality, where we investigate the intersections of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience and authoritarian extremism. I'm Derek Barris.
- [01:47]
Matthew Rimsky
I'm Matthew Rimsky.
- [01:48]
Julian Walker
I'm Julian Walker.
- [01:49]
Derek Barris
You can find us on Instagram and threads at Conspirituality Pod, as well as individually on Blue Sky. You can access all of our episodes ad free plus gain access to our Monday bonus episodes on patreon@patreon.com conspiracy spirituality. You can also access just our Monday bonus episodes via Apple subscriptions. As independent media creators, we really appreciate your support.
- [02:21]
Julian Walker
In spirituality. 315 Lifestyles of the Rich and Optimized Wellness for Everyone. That's how virtually every wellness event pitches their offering. If the every man and woman did these practices or or ingested these products or adopted these mindsets, we'd all be better off as a species. Yet what happens when the Wellness event in question is hosted in an expensive resort town on the French Riviera and features top tier celebrities like Oprah Winfrey speaking to guests who paid thousands of dollars to attend. Does it really remain for everyone?
- [03:01]
Derek Barris
Before we dive into what is called the Wellness Oasis at Cannes, which is of course on the French Rivier era, I want to discuss one of the speakers because his story is representative of where we're heading in this episode, you might have heard of toms, the shoe brand that pioneered the buy one, give one model that became a highlight of the social entrepreneurship movement. You buy a pair, a pair gets donated to someone in need. Great idea. Wildly successful TOMS was founded by Blake McCoskey in 2006. Born in Arlington, Texas to an orthopedic surgeon and a writer Mycosky was a tennis phenom in college until an Achilles tendon injury ended his aspiring sports career. So he quickly pivoted to entrepreneurship. His first business was Easy Laundry, a campus laundry and dry cleaning service launched after recognizing that smu, where he was going, lacked an on campus option for dry cleaning. His business did quite well. He employed more than 40 people at three university three universities and he generated roughly a million dollars in sales. So he kept going. He started an outdoor billboard company that he sold to Clear Channel. He co founded a cable channel that did pretty well until Rert Murdoch stole all of his advertisers and forced him out of business. And then he launched an online driver's ed service. In order to promote that company, he launched Closer Marketing Group, a brand development and viral marketing firm that end up playing a role in the success of Toms. And Tom' was his b biggest success to date. Myoski vacationed in Argentina while running while running his driver's ed business. And while there he met a fellow American who was volunteering with an organization that provided shoes to children in need. He ended up traveling village to village with her. He witnessed the effects of children growing up without shoes and decided he wanted to do something about it. So he launched Shoes for a Better Tomorrow. And that was later shortened to Tom's when he returned home to America. The shoes were modeled on the Argentine Alpargata, a comfortable canvas slip on every time someone bought one. As I said, a child in need received one. Since he was already running a marketing firm, he was able to get a lot of early press and he eventually built a massive company. Over time, Tom's expanded into eyewear, donating prescription glasses or surgery every time someone bought a pair of sunglasses. Julian, I don't know if you remember the Tom's Cafe on Abbot Kinney in Venice.
- [05:49]
Julian Walker
Yep.
- [05:49]
Derek Barris
Would you ever go in there?
- [05:50]
Julian Walker
Yep.
- [05:51]
Derek Barris
I used to swing by there to pick up bags of coffee because here we go again. Every time I bought one, they would provide a week's worth of clean water to someone when you bought that bag. And as it happens, Blake's sister Paige owns a company called Aviator Nation. Now this is a bit different. This is a super pricey sweatpants and hoodie company. It was right across the street from the Tom's Cafe on Abbot Kinney. Forbes ranked Paige among America's richest self made women in 2022. And as I'll get to he, she plays a role in Blake's recent pivot.
- [06:28]
Julian Walker
Yeah, so this, I mean, just to go a little bit into LA history and my experience of it. This all happens as Venice, California and Abbot Kinney Boulev in particular is going from being like this early 90s battleground for the shoreline Crips in the Venice 13 before we had the gang truce to gradually becoming home to super gentrified boutique shopping. Sometimes with an eco conscious philanthropic twist, which as as we know is always a bit of a mixed bag, but overall an improvement. I, I think by the 2010s that transformation was complete. And a lot of people say with the arrival of Pinkberry on Abbot Kinney that that was when we turned the corner.
- [07:07]
Derek Barris
I move 2011 and it was definitely complete by then. Now I had visited as early as the late 90s and it was quite a different scene for sure.
- [07:15]
Julian Walker
Totally, totally.
- [07:16]
Derek Barris
TOMS went on to donate over 100 million pairs of shoes to children in over 70 countries under MyCosky's reign.
- [07:25]
Matthew Rimsky
Yeah, it's, it's an amazing story. And there was also, there was a fair amount of criticism of Toms from like international development specialists on the net effects. I'll link to some articles in the show notes, but basically the company was examined for the kind of typical top down, you know, give and leave stuff, white savior mistakes of philanthropy that can disrupt local economies. It can fail to help, you know, build like the shoe industry where they're dropping off the shoes while they capture, you know, feel good marketing for global north consumers. Now to the company's credit, and this was after mycosky leaves, TOMS did a study on outcomes in El Salvador and they didn't bury it when it returned mixed results. Like the kids really liked they wore the shoes but there weren't any substantive positive health outcomes. And they could measure however an increase in what they called foster dependency or the sense that, you know, the kids expectations for outside help actually increased. And that's not a great thing.
- [08:25]
Julian Walker
Yeah, so that's the mixed bag piece of this whole like you know, green or eco conscious or social justice consumerism. At the same time, maybe we can say these are the entrepreneurs and consumers who perhaps with a little more information and education could improve the outcomes of their otherwise good intentions.
- [08:43]
Blake Mycosky
Right.
- [08:43]
Derek Barris
I would imagine Blake falling into sort of the effective altruism movement in some capacity. As we'll see with his recent pivot, he definitely has a bit of a salesman. At the same time, I would always take a free pair of shoes over Phil Knight who donated $3 million to the Republican party here in Oregon last year because he wanted more balance in the state legislature. And of course, he made all of his billions with Nike. So Mycosky wrote an entrepreneurial self help book of sorts in 2011 and then he sold half the company to Bain Capital at $625 million valuation, for which he netted about $300 million himself. The one for one model continued, though Bain also purchased the company's debt and the company would be restructured in 2019. Mycosky had continued to be the CEO and public face, but when the creditors came knocking, he fully exited at that point. Now, as it turns out, this led to a mental health crisis that Mycosky only started publicly revealing in 2025. Interestingly, he did start to fund and give money to some psychedelics for mental health initiatives as early as 2023, but he only started talking about his own struggles with depression around last year. I want to play a clip of him explaining what happened post Toms I
- [10:06]
Blake Mycosky
made a decision to sell the company and no one really prepared me for that at all. I lost my community, I lost a sense of purpose and so I started experiencing depression. I put a big strain on my marriage. I had all this money. So then I just started spending lots of money on external things, building the dream house, the vacations, the this, the that. I woke up every day. I didn't have anything to like drive towards and it got so bad that I thought about taking my life.
- [10:36]
Matthew Rimsky
Tarek Is that from like the promotional material for the new project that we're going to be talking about?
- [10:41]
Derek Barris
Yes.
- [10:41]
Matthew Rimsky
Okay. Yeah. I mean that's quite a moment when you sell or you get the exit package from the company that you built and what are you going to do? I mean, to me this sounds like if capital were a person. That's what happens. It suddenly stops flowing. It feels like things are dying. And I think that this turn to psychedelics is super interesting. For our Beat and archive friend of the Pod, Jill Ettinger has an article in Ethos on what he turned to in 2018.
- [11:12]
Julian Walker
I found myself experiencing tremendous emotional and mental pain, he wrote. To this day, I don't know what caused this dark period in my life, but it left me desperate to find a way out of my despair. At the urging of friends, Mykovsky found relief in psychedelics, mainly ayahuasca. The experience transformed me, reconnected me with my faith, and helped me cope with the pain I was feeling, he wrote. I consider myself lucky. Most people either do not have the resources to do what I did, or would prefer to use the Food and Drug Administration approved treatments.
- [11:45]
Matthew Rimsky
You can kind of See what's coming.
- [11:46]
Julian Walker
Right.
- [11:47]
Matthew Rimsky
So Edinger reports that by 2023, he'd invested $100 million in psychedelics research. So he's saying that that's a quarter of his net worth. And, you know, I didn't go deep into this, but I did a quick scan and found that the money was divided up between research institutes at Johns Hopkins. The Maps project, which I know you guys have covered, Colorado Prop 122, which legalized some psychedelics in November of 2022. And there are also private venture investments as well. And he also mentions returning to his faith, and he's talking about evangelical Christianity. There's not a lot out there on this, but it is referenced in a couple of places. And it seems like he's mainly kept that on the DL, except for facing progressive backlash in 2011 for speaking at a Focus on the Family event. Now, you. You guys, I wanted to ask, you're both more informed about psychedelic stories than I am. Is this one rare for featuring a return to a birth religion? I. I don't think I've heard that before.
- [12:50]
Julian Walker
I mean, I think it really depends.
- [12:52]
Derek Barris
I think.
- [12:52]
Julian Walker
I think a lot of people who are seekers who have maybe never identified strongly with, with, say, Christianity, if that's, if that's the culture they grew up in, I think tend to be drawn more to Eastern flavors of spirituality as a result of psychedelic experiences, or it sort of goes together that they're seeking that stuff out. I think also psychedelics, the kinds of experiences and especially visionary states that happen on psychedelics, actually map quite well onto Eastern archetypes and spiritual art, I think, because a lot of that, those, those religions sort of come out of various kinds of psychedelic experiences.
- [13:32]
Matthew Rimsky
There isn't the same kind of somatic stuff going on. I think in Christianity, I suppose you could have a trip.
- [13:37]
Julian Walker
Yeah.
- [13:37]
Matthew Rimsky
And like, I haven't done that, but like, I imagine you could imagine resurrecting or something like that. But.
- [13:42]
Julian Walker
Yeah, I mean, maybe, but. But I think. I think what maybe happens with people who grew up in. In a sort of more traditional Western religious setting who've maybe lost touch with that something happens with psychedelics where it can sort of reactivate a sense of awe and wonder and reverence and mystery in a way that then has strong associations in your neural pathways with Christianity and you find your way back to that.
- [14:06]
Blake Mycosky
That.
- [14:06]
Matthew Rimsky
Right.
- [14:07]
Derek Barris
Joseph Campbell said that, you know, Christians, I'm paraphrasing, but that Christians don't have visions of Buddha. And he was speaking specifically of people who are in Cultures that don't know about the other culture stories. That would be a bit different in the 21st century because we, we are awash in so many different ones. But I would add to what you were saying, Julian, that from my experiences on, on psychedelics and especially ayahuasca, there's a sense of nostalgia that comes up. There's a feeling of returning home like that, that somatically internally feel. And if you have certain triggers for certain archetypes that come from a certain religious faith, then it makes sense that you would be like, oh, it's actually being revived in me in a way that I, it was latent and here it is again. So I, I can imagine whatever you were born you. For some people that would resonate.
- [15:00]
Matthew Rimsky
So Derek, do you think that the Campbell quote applies generally to psychedelics in the sense that like in, in a ayahuasca experience you're more likely to dredge up what you're already familiar with and maybe less likely to move towards something that is just unknown to you?
- [15:19]
Derek Barris
Correct. Campbell, I believe, was talking about dreams and archetypes at that moment. But I, I think that would apply well to, to psychedelic experiences. And yes, you don't generally go seeking things you aren't aware of. So he was even talking about anthropological work that showed, you know, if you're in South America, you're not going to be Dr. Animals that are not indigenous to there. You're going to have the jaguars and you know what other animals are part of your culture already.
- [15:46]
Julian Walker
I also heard him talk about it with regard to sort of, you know, deathbed visions. And I think as an atheist it sort of goes, who's really fascinated with this stuff? It goes toward this place of asking, well, what's the ontological status of these visions? You know, like, are you actually tapping into something that's always there that you're awakening to? And along those lines you might say, well, you know, a Catholic nun is not going to have visions of Avalokiteshvara on the deathbed. Like, that's just not what's going to happen. And vice versa. Like someone steeped in a Hindu or Buddhist tradition is not going to see necessarily the Virgin Mary or Jesus unless they are fascinated with some kind of cross cultural spirituality.
- [16:30]
Matthew Rimsky
Right.
- [16:31]
Derek Barris
And I'll just. Last part, I'll add that the ayahuasca experience is extremely fractal. And if you look at Shipibo, art is very fractal in nature. And I think was your two, your point, Julian, A lot of Eastern art is. I also in my early mushroom experiences, everything looked sort of Aztec. So it because of just the way whatever neurologically happens and, you know, the three major Western religions are not. They're usually a lot more pronounced in their angles compared to older religions. And so it makes sense to me that people would associate that if they know about, you know, different indigenous artwork or faiths or even philosophies, because the various Indian religions would, you know, polytheistic religions have a lot more tolerance for a broad range of experiences. Now, on January 6, 2026, Blake Markowski launched one of his latest ventures. And here's how we ex how he explains it.
- [17:31]
Blake Mycosky
Hitting that kind of rock bottom forced me to get help. I started doing a lot of deep therapy and tried to understand, like, what is a core wound that I'm carrying. What came out of that was this realization with such clarity that since I was a very young age, I never felt that I was enough. And about that time I went to India when I was there and I was meditating, you know, sometimes eight, ten hours a day. The message was really simple. I am enough. I've always been enough. So we had this idea of like, okay, what if we had this bracelet as a daily reminder? And just wearing it every day is a reminder to myself that I'm enough. What I'm really excited about is seeing how this can not only be a way for people to share with each other their own mental health journeys, but also just to raise awareness for mental health in general. 100% of the profits from the bracelet will fund mental health organizations. If we're successful, we can also raise hopefully millions of dollars for these nonprofits.
- [18:35]
Julian Walker
We are now.
- [18:40]
Matthew Rimsky
That's a perfect music track with this great drop beat that hits as soon as he gets to his realization and then it sort of cruises up with the next entrepreneurial subject or idea shaping up like it has to. He has to do something with this. He found something. He's got to do something. And on we roll.
- [19:01]
Julian Walker
Yeah, I mean, I actually don't have any problem with any of it. I feel like this is a guy who's like being frank and open about his process and his therapy, and he's wanting to help other people who are maybe going through something similar. He's donating 100% of the profits. I mean, he seems very sincere. It doesn't have the smack of influencer, self aggrandizement and charismatic bullshit. I'm just like, eh, okay.
- [19:30]
Derek Barris
He also did found a marketing company, as I mentioned earlier. So he has chops, Toms So it's going to play over here. He calls Enough a cultural intervention. And structurally, it's a business fully owned by a nonprofit. And he made it legally binding. To your point, Julian, that 100% of its after tax profits are donated to a range of companies or organizations. The national alliance on Mental Illness, the Born this Way Foundation Project, Healthy Minds, and Active Minds. The bracelets are sold in pairs, so kind of reviving, Tom. You keep one and then you give someone to someone you care about. And his partner is his sister Paige, as Aviator Nation is the first retail and e commerce launch partner for the bracelet. Along with this initiative comes Blake's new podcast, which is called no Magic Pill.
- [20:22]
Julian Walker
Oh, again, hinting.
- [20:24]
Derek Barris
Yeah, we're, we're, we're inching towards it here. He talks about mental health struggles with a range of celebrities, including Matthew McConaughey, Michael Holland.
- [20:32]
Julian Walker
All right.
- [20:34]
Derek Barris
And Tim Ferriss. I wouldn't have felt the need to cover Blake if this was his sole project. As you said, Julian, like, just on the face of it, I'm like, oh, you know, these are all good sounding things. And again, I do like all of profit going to organizations that are credible. Everything mentioned is about a guy who came from generally humble origins with an entrepreneurial spirit, who found a lot of excess, both personally and charitably. It's the other company he launched on January 6 that raised my eyebrows. I'm going to run the whole Instagram reel here, Care, because it hits a lot of notes. The influencers that we cover on this podcast often repeat health gurus will tell you this.
- [21:15]
Blake Mycosky
Wake up at 5am Cold, plunge, journal stack 12 different supplements. I tried it all for years and none of it stuck. But here's what worked. My name is Blake Mycoski. Most people know me as a guy who gave away 100 million pairs of shoes. What they don't know is that after I sold my company, I went into a dark depression. The kind that just getting out of bed every morning was a project. And as I climbed my way back up, one habit really stuck. It was water, but not just water. Water with creatine, electrolytes and amino acids. It really worked. My energy went up, my weight went down, and my sleep got better. But here's the problem. My kitchen counter looked like a pharmacy. I had 12 different bottles with all these supplements. I wanted something simpler. So we built it. It's called Morning Water. It has five grams of creatine. It has electrolytes, amino acids, minerals, everything you need in the morning in one drink. And it's so simple. You just pour it in the bottle, shake it, drink it and get on with your day. I've been on it every single day for over a year and I would love for you to try it. That's why we're starting the morning water challenge. It starts on June 22nd. We start every single day with a very simple win one glass of morning water, five minutes of sunlight. That's it. And when you finish the challenge and leave us a review, I will send you a 30 day supply of morning water for free. And also one of the enough bracelets from my foundation if you want in comment morning and I will DM you all the information. I'll see you in the telegram group.
- [22:42]
Matthew Rimsky
Is this before or after he starts doing podcasts with Matthew McConaughey? Because he's starting to sound like Matthew McConaughey.
- [22:50]
Derek Barris
It all launches together. It's all this year.
- [22:53]
Matthew Rimsky
Yeah, there's a real theme developing here. Like he's leaning into his mental health story and the only reason he really gives for it, I mean, there might be a whole bunch of things going on, but he's just talking about this. You know, I became super wealthy and that ended up triggering a kind of depression and stripping meaning out of my life. You know. So I'm going to share this information at cans. Like, in your experience so far, guys, has this story of depression in the midst of super wealth, is this unique or are there parallels? Like I usually associate this narrative with like being a busy executive, you know, busy lawyer, busy doctor, but not with like ultra wealth, like 300 million net worth.
- [23:36]
Derek Barris
It's not unique at all. Depression can affect anyone. It's usually associated with some sense of loss of meaning, which would track with selling your company and exiting. So I, you know, there are definitely stronger indications of people in poverty being depressed because when you have to worry about paying a rent or a meal, that is going to increase the chance. But the thing about wealth is, is it's relative across communities, across nations, and then globally. So when you get into a place where you're comparing yourself to other people, it's always usually going to be people who have more resources than you. And unless you're a trillionaire who doesn't seem to have his mental health together anyway, there's always going to be a scale at which people judge themselves.
- [24:24]
Julian Walker
But I think the question Matthew's getting at is, is are, are you familiar with there being a predictable kind of arc where someone, you know, makes, makes that much money and then goes through depression and then Uses that as the way they talk about their pivot. Is that what you mean?
- [24:41]
Derek Barris
I've seen, I've seen it, yeah.
- [24:43]
Matthew Rimsky
I mean and specifically it's, it's about. There's a particular confession because we are moving into this era of considering the lives of the super wealthy on a daily basis. And I guess I haven't heard it at this level. This is, I've heard about like this, the busy professional, right. Who was doing really well. They might have been making six figures, but not like this kind of wealth. So that's, that's what I'm wondering whether that's new.
- [25:04]
Julian Walker
There's a little bit of this with Brian Johnson. Right.
- [25:06]
Matthew Rimsky
I suppose, yeah.
- [25:07]
Derek Barris
There's been research with. This isn't quite to that level of wealth, but just as a comparison there's research into first year law students who don't give a shit about what type of car they drive. And then by the third year of law school they're all talking about the car that they're going to buy after graduation. So again, it's relative scale. When you get up, we're also at a place where there has never been so many people with hundreds of millions of dollars, so. And who have microphones to start podcasts. So I feel like we're going to see more of it as we, as we continue along this path.
- [25:42]
Matthew Rimsky
Right.
- [25:42]
Julian Walker
Two things I found interesting about that, that Instagram reel that you shared, Derek. One is that, you know, the podcast is called no Magic Pill, but now he's, he's got the magic water, right? That's, that's the magic. It's the magic combination but it's in water so it's not really a pill. So I guess that's cool. And then the other thing is right at the end, end that you can, you can somehow you can interact with him on the Telegram channel. Right. He's on Telegram and that's where you can come and get the real stuff. It sounds like.
- [26:08]
Derek Barris
Well, yeah, that's something that has been adopted by Telegram is just a place. Telegram Discord, where a lot of more Silicon Valley forward startups will congregate. Because his target audience is obviously going to be in the biohacking slash SV space. So he's going to meet them on the channels they're already more familiar with.
- [26:29]
Julian Walker
Yeah, yeah. I mean I think of Telegram as sort of. Right, right. Coded old social media.
- [26:34]
Derek Barris
Sure. In what we cover. But no, it's pervasive across tech companies. Like it is definitely not just that people wanted a safer signal and Telegram are the two places that tech companies, you know, tech employees have used for a long time. So yes, the right did pick up on that and then use it as a place where they did they weren't being censored but but it's definitely more pervasive than that.
- [26:58]
Julian Walker
Okay, cool.
- [26:59]
Derek Barris
Morning Water isn't my K first wellness foray. So in 2020 he co founded a wellness program called made for a subscription service that delivers supposed science backed hacks as well as Move Lab, a human performance venture that involves wellness wearables and official officially launches later this year. I'm not going to debate my Koski's anecdote about being helped. If someone finds help in some thing, they dial in. I don't really care. But this pitch has all the elements of a wellness grift. We covered it. I fell into a dark hole. I tried everything. Then I dialed in the perfect combination of supplements and pulled myself out of my funk. You can hear it as well on the sales pitch on the Morning Water page. Replace your entire morning supplement routine with one stick.
- [27:51]
Matthew Rimsky
From the stack to the stick.
- [27:53]
Derek Barris
Hey, that's good. Don't give them any ideas, all right? You should at least get paid for that idea.
- [27:58]
Matthew Rimsky
I will.
- [27:58]
Derek Barris
The next line really gets me me everything your depleted body needs to start the day at 100%. Yeah, news flash. Your body isn't depleted of creatine in the morning. And I say that as a creatine user. I take it for a specific reason for strength training and recovery. If you're not actively strength training while taking exogenous creatine, you're literally just adding water weight to your body. As for electrolytes, you do lose a small amount in your sleep, but that doesn't deplete electrolyte concentrations. Because you lose more water than electrolytes overnight, your blood sodium concentration often drifts slightly higher by morning. Your kidneys are monitoring the balance constantly so you're not actually depleted. But Morning Water pitches it as quote did you did you know you lose 1.5 liters of water every night?
- [28:53]
Matthew Rimsky
Oh come on.
- [28:54]
Derek Barris
Followed by the work of sleep costing fluids, electrolytes and cellular energy. They don't talk about the balance because that's what really matters here. Or the fact that taking salts without exercising just increases your sodium levels for the day, which can have negative effects over time. So like so many other multi ingredient supplements like AG1, for example, morning water pitches it as nine clinical dose ingredients backed by research, which is just a way to skirt that their product has never actually been tested oh, you mean
- [29:31]
Matthew Rimsky
when they're all together.
- [29:31]
Derek Barris
Yeah, it's the whole synergy energy concept. This has been tested and this has been tested. So here's the voltron of supplements and you will get all the effects plus n, plus 1 or 3 or whatever they want because they say that it works. Yeah.
- [29:46]
Julian Walker
And they often leave out the, the dosage level that you would need to really experience any of those benefits.
- [29:51]
Derek Barris
Oh yeah, that's what AG1's entire shtick is. Morning water writes that it works, followed by I love this one. 97 of people keep going after 30 days, which is just like, what does that even mean? People keep taking it. That doesn't have any science effect. But when you don't have any science, that's the type of that you put on your website. And it's going to cost you $9 a month for the stick. It's $72 if you subscribe and according to their website, it's currently sold out for new customers. Not surprising given that Blake has been pitching it to his 125,000 Instagram followers for months now. He recently posted about his one year physical checkup, noting how he's experienced major increases in stre over that time. And then he says it's due to eating right, having less stress and oh, he's been taking morning water for over a year, so it must be that. Of course it reminds me of the cancer influencers who we've covered, who've had surgery and chemotherapy, but swear it's the supplements they're selling that really help them recover. Because again, no shade to Blake about the businesses he's built, his charitable impact as Matthew Cover, it's, you know, it's mixed but at the same time time, it did help some people and his latest endeavor for mental health. Awesome. You're giving to organizations. I'm just not sure why you had to launch a supplements brand with supposed health effects that are so easily disproven. It just, it feels like a vanity project. But enough did partner with the Wellness Oasis at Cons and Blake was a speaker of the event at the event, which makes perfect sense for Morning Waters target demographic, which is where we're going to turn to in the next segment.
- [31:37]
Julian Walker
But before we do, buyer beware. If you're feeling stuck, don't put your stock in replacing the stack with the stick.
- [31:48]
Matthew Rimsky
Hey, it's Matthew here from Conspirituality, recommending you tune in to the Trust Me podcast where cult survivors Lola Blanc and Megan Elizabeth talk to former believers, experts and sometimes even the people still inside to analyze how these systems work. They had me on to discuss my culty life and journalism and I found them super well informed and empathetic and funny. They bring you real stories about how how easy it is to fall for something that seems just right. So if you're into cults, coercion, or just wild human behavior, listen to Trust me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [32:21]
Derek Barris
On June 11, 1998, a deputy from
- [32:23]
Matthew Rimsky
the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department went missing.
- [32:27]
Blake Mycosky
Hey, if they'll kill a cop and bury him, what are they gonna do to me?
- [32:30]
Julian Walker
What really happened to the missing deputy? Valley of Shadows A new series from
- [32:37]
Matthew Rimsky
Pushkin Industries about crime and corruption in California's high desert.
- [32:42]
Derek Barris
Listen to Valley of Shadows wherever you get your podcasts.
- [32:51]
Julian Walker
We've got a very different kind of sponsor for this episode. The Jordan Harbinger Show, A podcast you should definitely check out since you're a fan of high quality, fascinating podcasts. Podcasts hosted by interesting people. The show covers a wide range of topics through weekly interviews with heavy hitting guests, and there are a ton of episodes you'll find interesting. Since you're a fan of this show, I'd recommend our listeners check it out. We have a fair amount of overlap. You know, Jordan recently did an episode on remote viewing and how the US Government spent millions of dollars on this ESP pseudoscience. You might also look up an episode called Saving Bros Society Soul from Alt Right Rabbit Hole. Anyway, you can't go wrong with adding the Jordan Harbinger show to your rotation. It's incredibly interesting. There's never a dull show. Search for the Jordan Harbinger Show. That's H A R B as in boy I N as in Nancy G E R on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
- [33:48]
Blake Mycosky
Hi, it's Blake Mycosky and I'm so proud to announce that Enough has partnered with Wellness Oasis now. Now. This partnership felt so organic from the start because we're both really focused on helping people with their mental wellness journey, making stronger connections and practicing self care. Like this is not your typical brand collaboration. It's actually just two communities coming together to help people on their mental wellness journey and support each other and I'm really proud to be part of it.
- [34:17]
Derek Barris
So there's Blake again announcing his investment involvement with the Wellness Oasis trademark. I had to read the trademark part aloud given his assertion that has nothing to do with brands. Let's hear the mission statement of the event producers of the Wellness Oasis 4B
- [34:34]
Julian Walker
advisory 4B collaborates with brands, organizations and people of influence to scale our shared mission, supporting those seeking to better their mental health and well being by normalizing stigmas, delivering credible information and making resources accessible.
- [34:50]
Derek Barris
We'll unpack the brand brand thing as we move along. Branding is what made me interested in this event to begin with. For over six years we've clocked the evolution of wellness conferences on this podcast through its weird online days during the height of the pandemic when so many influencers went political to the return of in person conferences where, as is the case with this one, politics are again separate from wellness, which is really just about finding yourself man. Yeah, in this case in the resort city of Con, France, nestled on the French Riviera where the average hotel price in the summer runs $727 per night for a Wellness for Everyone conference. Let's step back before we get into the guest list, which is what we're going to be looking at for the rest of the episode. The Wellness Oasis is part of the Con Lions International Festival of Creativity, which is the largest gathering of the advertising and creative communications industry in the world. The five day festival is held yearly in June and draws approximately 15,000 attendees from 90 countries. The Wellness Oasis, presented by LinkedIn, is, according to the marketing copy copy, a community and event platform dedicated to helping people with their mental, physical, spiritual and emotional well being. This year it was hosted and moderated by well being expert Debbie Brown, founder of Karma Bliss, a retail and lifestyle style brand specializing in tools designed to kickstart your self discovery journey, including healing crystal collections, healing crystal jewelry and centerpiece meditation chairs. But the event, as Blake said, is not about branding. The 2026 lineup featured 27 experts and advocates in nine panels and workshops including topics like authenticity and self trust, social media and mental health, men's wellness and longevity, motherhood and ambition and identity. Beyond career. Speakers included Gary Breca, one of RFK Jr's good buddies, and biohacker grifter extraordinaire. You have Diary of a CEO podcast host Stephen Bartlett, who we covered a couple months ago, John Legend and Chrissy Teigen. And then there were a number of pro and former athletes, likely because 4B's founder Jared Schoenfield worked in sports entertainment for 15 years before pivoting to wellness. And then there was a surprise guest, Oprah Winfrey. I want to note too, Schoenfield pivoted due to working with the Chopra foundation where his personal conversations with Deepak Chopra inspired him to enter the wellness space. We're going to analyze what such a wellness event represents in the broader field of this industry and we're going to specifically drill down on a few of the guests. But let's start off off with this moment when that the Oasis's social media team decided to clip from Oprah Winfy's presentation. And let me remind listeners that we've been critical of her platforming some of the worst grifters. Julian's going to run down a list in a moment. As well as her own milk toast approach to spirituality, which I feel is captured perfectly in this moment.
- [38:19]
Matthew Rimsky
That feeling that you have, that little feeling that I had, that you have, has led me to this seat right now in camp. And if you just get still enough to follow that feeling, but you can't, you can't do it if there's so much noise. You cannot do it. You cannot hear it, you cannot be connected to will. It will absolutely leave you a bad you. If you're asking everybody else, if you're asking the world to tell you what it wants from you. So it wants your stillness, it wants your reverence, it wants you to know I am here. That's the still, small voice of your soul speaking to you. And if you listen to that, I did declare before all that I know to be true, you will not be led wrong. And every single time I've gotten myself in trouble or I was in a crisis or I was in a challenge or I was in something I didn't, it's because I did not listen to that. I did not listen to it.
- [39:30]
Julian Walker
Wow. So I, I guess somehow she beat out all those Buddhist monks who spend hours upon hours in stillness every day but don't make it to Cannes. We all know about Oprah. She's built a billionaire media empire largely by platforming just about every pseudoscience, magical thinking, moral panic topic that makes up our back catalog of bonus episodes. I'm talking from alien abductions to ritual satanic abuse to vaccines cause autism, to thought creates reality and on and on. She's also been a kingmaker in that several rich and famous peddlers of such nonsense got their start on her show. Like our current administrator for Medicare and Medicaid, Dr. Oz. So too tuft talking TV therapist Dr. Fel and weight loss guru Bob Green. She also hosted as you know, Matthew Lawrence Pastor and Michelle Smith to talk about their seminal satanic panic bestseller, Michelle remembers.
- [40:24]
Matthew Rimsky
She's also really good at scrubbing. You know, the episodes that are you know, part of the worst part of her legacy, like she got rid of the John of Gaunt episodes. I think that Pazder and Michelle Smith are nowhere to be found on the catalog anymore. I think what's really cool about Oprah is that in this quasi ritual retirement, she can do these speaking gigs now where she just basically pulls quotes from the Oprah LLM trained on decades of guests. Right. Like she, she, everything that she said was something that she probably heard on stage. So she's the host who, who's become the guest.
- [41:00]
Blake Mycosky
Yeah, yeah.
- [41:00]
Julian Walker
And in that way she's actually very similar to Stephen Bartlett. Right. He's also pretty high profile, even though he's, he's coming more from the, the podcast scene. But he's got one of the biggest podcasts, I think it's the second biggest podcast in the world. And he does a very similar thing where it's the oh gee shucks isn' fascinating. I'm going to listen to these experts with no filter in terms of like who he platforms and so all kinds of crazy stuff goes on.
- [41:23]
Matthew Rimsky
Well, I, I guess that. Is he going to go on then to sort of be the vessel for all of that knowledge as he takes his own place as, as a guru? Is that what you're saying?
- [41:32]
Julian Walker
I wonder. I wonder. Yeah, I mean, I mean he's found his way into being a presenter at this conference, even though his, his, his gig is really being an interviewer and his claim to fame is having been an entrepreneur. So that's probably part of what gets him in the door. Oprah's defin the bill. She's probably top of the bill on any, at any event she's at. But alongside her, as you mentioned, Derek, is an upand cominging charismatic black former broadcaster named Debbie Brown. Her bio describes her with all first letters in the caps of this description as a master, well being educator and healer. Which oddly is the job I applied for actually guys, before settling to being
- [42:12]
Matthew Rimsky
a podcaster, I didn't get.
- [42:14]
Julian Walker
She got it. She's an expert on the healing powers of crystals. Apparently, as you mentioned, Derek, that's a topic she actually published a book on. But beyond all of this fluff, she seems to have created a role for herself as a kind of corporate facilitator and conversation host that has led to work with heavy hitters like the Milken Institute's global conference and Amazon Prime's event called the Sessions. She's also the voice of the daily meditations on Deepak Chopra's well being app.
- [42:45]
Matthew Rimsky
So that's weird.
- [42:46]
Julian Walker
A lot of people have a parasocial relationship with her at that level. I'm sure, I'm sure most of the audience saw her being that voice for Deepak Chopra as a positive. But that would not be the case for us in our demographic.
- [43:00]
Derek Barris
I'll just continue to be amazed that Deepak has mostly seemed to escape scrutiny for the jokes he shared about young women with Jeffrey Epstein. It's just really too bad our attention spans are that short.
- [43:12]
Matthew Rimsky
Well, yes, but my question is, like, what did anyone expect might come of any of those disclosures? I don't think Peter Attia has been dinged either. It's almost like the epistemic crisis that we usually look at in terms of like, well, fragmentary information. It's hard to put together like a coherent narrative of the world. It's that when we do get something like that, when we know things, it doesn't seem to matter. Like, that's the flip side of it.
- [43:39]
Derek Barris
It's a very weird, weird world did get dinged. He lost some of his sponsorships and he lost his CBS News role that was coming up. So there is actually measurable things that he lost. I don't think Chopra, besides having to cancel a couple of events, I don't think he lost anything. But the fact that these people are still clinging to him as some sort of spiritual guru and they're, they're associating with him and using it in their marketing, to me is, is the bigger red flag. I mean, Atiya, for all of my gripes with him, he never presented himself as a spiritual guru. So the Deepak level just hits a little differently, especially in spaces like what we're discussing today.
- [44:19]
Julian Walker
So as I looked, other speakers on the list for this elite wellness infused salute to selfhood in addition to the corporate experts speaking at the event. So, like VPs from LinkedIn and Nespresso, the CMO from Google Health and Google Home, the CEO of Air AI R, I noticed some informal categories emerging alongside those. So first up, there's like the entrepreneurial wellness product speakers. So as you detailed, Eric, we have the human biologist and longevity expert Gary Brecker. And he ties in with the husband and wife team of Durana and Shahab Elmi, who run a supplement company called Symbiotica, whose central selling point is that they use liposomal delivery systems for a range of otherwise familiar products like vitamin B, creatine, glutathione and others. And liposomes are like this fatty bubble that gets that the active ingredient kind of gets inserted into and it's touted, I think on some good scientific evidence as making it more bioavailable and protecting it from gastrointestinal degradation as it makes its way through your body. Now from personal experience with some of this stuff, I can also tell you that the, the, the lipospheric technology means that instead of standard capsules, you're kind of sucking down little pouches of thick mucus like goo, which I just never found myself getting, getting used to. It was always gross. You may have noticed, Eric, that one of their listed selling points is that they had have quote gold standard clinicals on finished product. Kind of a RFK reference there.
- [46:01]
Derek Barris
Interesting language like that's the marketing language they're using. Jesus.
- [46:04]
Julian Walker
Yeah, that, that. I can imagine the focus group where they came up with that odd grammar and they run quote independent clinical trials on real people with their actual product. They also have a Quote Science tab on their menu and that's me putting on the quotes there. Which leads actually only to more sales cop sciency explanations but no links to any actual research. So this is like the familiar style of pro science positioning while actually having a sort of moderately or just openly pseudo science sort of product instead of claims. And wouldn't you know it, Gary Bea is in fact one of their main expert partners on that website for the Symbiotica products. He has his own protocol but bundle of their products that's available for purchase on the website endorsed and recommended by him.
- [46:53]
Derek Barris
Bundle, stack, stick, all the buzzwords. I've recently been looking into two companies that offer clinical trials to wellness companies providing something they call and I wish I was getting proof as service. Depending on how many tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars you give them, they market themselves as literally making the proof, to borrow some of RFK jr's words, for a fee. All the while unironically their services as gold standard science. I'm going to be reporting more on this in the coming weeks.
- [47:25]
Julian Walker
It's a total turnkey service for going from pseudoscience to having some kind of evidentiary claims, right? Yep. All right, different category. These are the elite athletes. We have NBA all star Chris Paul, seven time Olympic gold medalist sprinter Allison Felix, NBA champion Jaylen Brown and his mom Michelle Brown. And then slightly different, there are two Dancing with the Stars champions and these are Emma Slater and Alan Burst in. They're also listed as being wellness advocates and as it turns out they're a couple who seem to be in the midst of that particular pivot into endorsing healthy lifestyle ideas and products. And services. Jaylen Brown and his mom Michelle seem to be doing legit work supporting underserved communities in developing leadership, activism and science and technology summer education programs. So that's great. And there is what looks like an emphasis on including people of color, color and or speakers from other cultures in this lineup. Like Durana Elmi is Afghan American. Her husband Shahab is Iranian American. And they also champion women's rights. And the elite athletes I just mentioned are all black. And that, that was a note, something that was just noticeable when looking at the roster for the first time. Like, wow, a lot of people of color, people with non western names.
- [48:44]
Derek Barris
The same with 4B Advisory. I should point out the team there is very diverse. It's predominantly female and it's, it's ethnically diverse, which is something to note. And I always think that's a good thing in general because you get a lot of different inputs in terms of athletes. I often view them within a raised eyebrow when they're in these spaces, but at the same time, I just consider some of them collateral damage of the wellness grift. Meaning these are the most elite physical specimens we have in their chosen professions. And their training regimens are likely packed with a wide range of performance and recovery tools. I had a imagine it's quite easy to think one or the other is doing something extra beneficial. And pro athletes have a shelf life. Most of them are done with their careers by age 40, if they even make it that long. So there needs to be some sort of career pivot. I'm happy to hear about the advocacy work. And I'm going to guess these sessions were more honest and less grifty than, say, Gary Brea's session.
- [49:41]
Julian Walker
Yeah. And to your point, like, these are, these are genetically gifted people who've worked really, really, really hard. Like when you describe their training regime, like it's a full and yeah, it lasts for a certain amount of time. And then you stop being able to compete with the young up and comers who are similarly genetically gifted and working as hard as you are. So the idea, and I find that often professional athletes will be invested in some kind of alternative recovery or nutrition or healing modality which they believe really helps them. And it does tend to make ordinary people think, oh, that'll give me the edge. Right.
- [50:21]
Derek Barris
That's how it's marketed. That's the whole, like Steroid Olympics we recently covered, which was a supplements grift.
- [50:28]
Matthew Rimsky
But the edge they need is not the edge that regular people need at all.
- [50:33]
Julian Walker
Right.
- [50:33]
Matthew Rimsky
Like if they need some sort of extra magic to sort of, you know, lower their finish time by, you know, a tenth of a second or something. That's just meaningless to most of us.
- [50:42]
Derek Barris
Well, there's been research on this in terms of bicycles because I am a cyclist. And so the whole thing is that you're trying to take weight off the bicycle to get a faster time, right? When for, for pedestrian riders like me who just like to be challenged and exercised, there's virtually no difference between about a $2,000 bicycle and a $15,000 bicycle. But they're sold in such a way to make you think you're going to have an elite performance. And granted, the more expensive bike does have better, better gearing and all of that with it, but for the average consumer, it literally doesn't make a difference because if you're not racing or sprinting for time, none of that is going to make a difference. It's all marketing. And I would imagine that cuts across all these different sporting industries.
- [51:29]
Julian Walker
Next we come to the mental health aspect of the wellness oasis. As you mentioned, Derek Blake Baikowski's post, Tom Shoes personal growth journey is part of his new brand as a mental health advocate. But in terms of this cluster of people, the only truly qualified psychology professional is Sarah Kubric, who goes by Millennial Millennial therapist on Instagram. And the other somewhat accomplished mental health speaker is Maya Raichura, whose claim to fame is being Nike's first official mental fitness coach. And Matthew, I know you're going to look at Sarah Kubric in more detail later, but Maya Ratchura for her part, as it turns out, has a degree in geography and innovation, but has cultivated this media image as someone who teaches neuroscience informed visualization techniques to optim performance. And a little bit of a red flag here. She also claims to have healed her ulcerative colitis through these visualization techniques.
- [52:30]
Derek Barris
Right, that's just some Joe Dispenza right there.
- [52:33]
Julian Walker
I know, I know. I'm so disappointed. I used to follow her on social media and I thought she was pretty legit, but these things are not good. Related to, but sort of just below this tier in terms of the mental game are the Influence Influencer authors. So there's this 38 year old guy, Casey Kenny. He's quite accomplished. He has a BA in East Asian languages and lists having stud Mandarin, Arabic, Hindi, Urdu, Italian and Latin, which of course means he's going to talk to everyone about, you know, the importance of knowing about language. Oh, wait, no. He's a mindfulness expert. He spent 20 years studying linguistics, neuroscience and optimism and how self talk shapes perception and emotion, which is an obvious, you know, next step. After studying Urdu, Italian, Latin, Arabic, Indian, Mandarin, he's published two bestsellers on this topic and has appeared as a keynote speaker across the US on the language of optimism. He also hosts a very successful podcast called New Mindset. Who dis now in a similar Tip is the 39 year old Vex King. He's of Indian descent, born and raised in England, has a degree in business systems, but somehow ended up being a spirituality and personal development author. He's much more in the vein of the new age vernacular we tend to criticize here on the pod. You know, maintaining a high vibration to attract your best life, healing trauma and developing self worth worth as part of that he he first became famous for coining the hashtag good vibesonly, which is another great example of something the attendees probably swooned over, but that we roll our eyes over here at Conspirituality. So that's almost all of the speakers. I mean, we've got John Legend and Chrissy Teigen lending their star power too, but overall it's a bit of a mixed bag. It kind of seems like some harmless invitation only gathering of elites who want to get real about peak performance and self love on the rooftop of a luxury can while being catered to by a diverse parade of inspiring and pretty people. And I didn't say this yet, but yeah, they mostly are all pretty easy on the eyes and and soothing on the heart. There are some dips into trauma and social justice, but methinks it's a largely frictionless glow that suffuses the event. I'd feel bad bashing the whole thing, although some of what we've gotten into that I that I hadn't listened to yet in in the clips makes me feel less bad about that, but there are some good causes in there. The organizers seem to have prioritized platforming nomite voices, as we've said, who may well find benefactors in the audience to support the good work they do in the world. But given the emphasis on entrepreneurship and positive mental attitude as a path to blissful wealth and success, I'm happy to throw now to Matthew Remsky, who I'm sure will have plenty to critique.
- [55:27]
Matthew Rimsky
I'm Nomi Frye.
- [55:28]
Julian Walker
I'm Vincent Cunningham.
- [55:29]
Matthew Rimsky
I'm Alex Schwartz and we are Critics
- [55:31]
Julian Walker
at Large, a podcast from the New Yorker. Guys, what do we do on the show?
- [55:35]
Matthew Rimsky
Every week we look into the startling
- [55:37]
Julian Walker
maw of our culture and try to figure something out. That's right. We take something that's going on in the culture now.
- [55:42]
Matthew Rimsky
Maybe it's a movie, maybe it's a book, maybe it's just kind of a trend and we expand it across culture as kind of a pattern or a template.
- [55:51]
Julian Walker
Join us on Critics at Large from the New Yorker.
- [55:53]
Matthew Rimsky
New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Alex Goldman. You may know me as the host of Reply all, but I'm done with that. I'm doing something else now. I've started a new podcast called Hyperfixed. On every episode of Hyperfixed, listeners write in with their problems and I try to solve them. Some massive and life altering and some so miniscule it'll boggle your mind. No matter what, no matter the problem, no matter the size, I'm here for you. That's Hyperfixed, the new podcast from Radiotopia. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts or@hyperfixedpod.com.
- [56:32]
Julian Walker
Hey, do you have trouble sleeping? Then maybe you should check out the Sleepy podcast.
- [56:40]
Matthew Rimsky
It's a show where I read old books in the public domain to help
- [56:43]
Julian Walker
you get to sleep.
- [56:44]
Matthew Rimsky
It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom. Classic stories like A Tale of Two
- [56:51]
Julian Walker
Cities, Pride and Prejudice, Winnie the Pooh. Stories that are great for kids and adults alike.
- [56:56]
Matthew Rimsky
So whether you have a tough time snoozing or just like a good bedtime story, fluff up the cool side of
- [57:02]
Julian Walker
your pillow and tune into Sleepy.
- [57:04]
Matthew Rimsky
Unless you're driving, then please don't listen to Sleepy.
- [57:07]
Julian Walker
Find Sleepy wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Sunday. Sweet dreams.
- [57:18]
Matthew Rimsky
You know, one of the latent themes in my review of J.D. vance's memoir last week was that as time marches on and as the MAGA movement searches for new bearings post Trump, I think we're going to see an increased level of sophistication amongst Christian influencers who feel compelled to maybe distance themselves from the excesses of the Oval Office, the prayer circles, you know, speaking in tongues, covering over the farts. I think Vance is making a play to find a kind of new maturity through his Catholic big tentism and intellectual depth. Whether he's pulling that off or not, I am going to say I'm going to predict that something similar will happen in the wellness mindfulness biohacking space as the industry becomes more saturated and the critiques provided by people like us are harder to ignore. And that's why I wanted to spend this this segment looking at Sarah Kubrich who's known as the millennial therapist on Instagram, with 1.7 million followers, I think she represents a real upgrade in the therapeutic coaching discourse that dominates Instagram and, you know, leads to a speaking gig at a cans event like this. So I read through enough of her book. It's called it's on Me. I think she put it out in 2023 to get the gist and, you know, I watched a bunch of interviews and stuff. And she does hit some common markers for success in therapeutic influencing. She has a singular, quotable, memeable concept. She calls it self loss that she can bring every problem back to. And she has a relatable story of trauma recovery and personal transformation that she's able to generalize in to a universal cure. So I don't know how that fits in with Blake's podcast name. What's it called? No Magic Pill. But there's a little bit of a magic pill. And so I think though her experience lines up well with Mykovsky's vibe, but I'll get to the solipsism involved in a bit. She's also white, she's millennial, she's good looking. And because her recovery story is about fleeing the war zone of Serbia at the age of nineteen nine, I also think there's a way in which he's able to capture a current of refugee narrative that a lot of folks in this set don't typically have access to at the moment. Like Mycosky has hints of that as well in his backstory. You know, he saw a lot of the so called real world through a lot of his global south travel. And I'm not saying that she's disingenuous about this or she's stealing some sort of glory or tragedy, but I think it is serendipitous to her boy brand. And my impression is that trauma recovery in current popular therapy often stays on the familial and relational scale. But I think the war refugee background gives her a geopolitical register, kind of like Gabor Mate and the existentialist philosophers she relies on. And that's her main hook. She says that she practices existential psychotherapy therapy. And this is a practice that holds that suffering arises from failures to confront the fundamental conditions of human existence which are, as defined by most existentialists, the questions of freedom, responsibility, mortality and meaninglessness. And the challenge is to live authentically in response to these questions in good faith. As Sartre would say, understanding that existence precedes essence and that no one can give your Life meaning. But you now, I think that this can be pretty attractive to the Davos level wellness set because I think she's able to deliver a reasonable performance of this narrow wedge of philosophical and existentialist thought. She cites Aristotle, Plato, Sartre, Kierkegaard, Frankl, Martin, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky, Rollo May, Irvin Jalom, Carl Jung, Hermann Hess, Merleau Ponty, even Simone de Bervoir and Albert Camus. And so she brings a library with her and I think that's probably that feels very good for this crowd at the end. I'll get to what she does with that library because I don't think it's very existentialist. But Derek, you'll appreciate that she came to her views through recovering from a panic attack at 24 that she describes in great detail, like harrowing detail. She's on a trip to LA from Vancouver with her sister and she's 24. She's getting increasingly honest about her unhappiness in a family arranged or family pressured Christian marriage. And she's frustrated with her program in counseling psychology where she feels like her training clients are maybe getting advice from an imposter. And so that's the context for a full on physiological break on the plane ride home. Bad enough that she has to leave the plane, I guess it didn't take off, but she gets off before it takes off. She seizes up in the airport, she goes mute. Super awful experience. She felt like she was going to die. And as she narrates it these years later, the comedown from that involved realizing she was living this never network of lies. So she leaves the marriage, she leaves school, she leaves the cramped apartment and her crappy van and she travels back to Serbia with $800 in her pocket and no plans. This is definitely like an existentialist short story, right? When she eventually gets back to grad school, her advisor is Alfred l', Engle, who is an Austrian psychiatrist and psychotherapy therapist. He's born in 51 and he's a pupil of Viktor Frankl. And Langel heavily informed her understanding of what it means to be one's self and what it means to be lost to one's self. So Kaburic notes that her book it's on Me wouldn't exist without l' Engle and his theory of existential analysis. But in Discovering this lane, she repeats an epiphany that I remember coming across in Camus. It's actually the opening line of the mythology of Sisyphus. So this is 1942. He writes, There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. And I was really impressed by that as a teenager. It haunted me for a long time. And so Kubric comes across it while reading a transcript of a session where a therapist confronts a depressed client by asking, so why don't you kill yourself? Have you guys heard this confrontation before from Camus or, I think, anywhere else?
- [64:11]
Blake Mycosky
Yeah.
- [64:12]
Derek Barris
Yes.
- [64:12]
Matthew Rimsky
Yeah. So it's meant to point out that as bad as the patient is feeling, they're still there. Like they're living for something for some reason that they haven't investigated. And the task is to find out what that is and whether it can be built upon, which is like kind of an amazing idea. Existence precedes essence, right? Like, you don't know why you are who you are, but you know that you're there. And so you can start there and start to build a story out of that. So the main thing that Kubric gets from Lengle is the idea of inner consent, which is a felt sense of affirmation of one's own existence and right to be here. It's a little bit metaphysical, to be honest, and it seems to me to be hard to reality test, but it comes from what he calls four fundamental motivations. So Kubric renders this as kind of four conditions a person must be able to affirm in order to exist fully. So the first one is, I'm here, but can I truly be? Can I exist? And this is about whether an individual has the necessary safety, support, and protection to trust themselves in the world. So that sounds grounded, but it's as close to pinging the social determinants of health as she gets. Because if you look for details on the material conditions of safety and support, there's only. There's her own self. Reflection on how during the war in Serbia, she recalls, you know, sheltering from bombardment with her family and food being scarce. But this is also a signpost for her to ping Viktor Frankl's basic theme, which is that even in the midst of a holocaust, you can draw on inner resources and agency. So that's the first foundation. Okay, so the second one is, I am alive, but do I like it? So it's an evaluation if one's way of life aligns with one's values and the people around one third is, can I be myself? This is whether an individual feels that they have the right permission and space to be and express who they truly are and do I have meaning in life? And this is l' Engle's last condition listed, but Kubric argues it's probably the first proposed or that should be proposed, because tackling the why of existence is prima facie to existing. So if you don't have good answers to these questions, Kubrick says you will probably head towards self loss, which she associates with chronic alienation and periods of crisis when a person realizes they've been so distracted by conditioning and self perception, they're just not anyone they don't know. But by my reading of the memoir Self Help Guide, she has this exploratory and fruitful bond with Lengle, but unfortunately, it kind of narrows her lens. So when she goes out to find more literature to help support the self loss thesis, she grabs these bits and pieces. And the best example is that it doesn't seem like she values the difference between the early Sartre and the late Sartre. Like in early books, like being in nothingness, 1943, this is during the war. He is on about living in good versus bad faith. He is talking about existence preceding essence, and he's talking about radical freedom, especially in the sort of in the midst of chaos. But, and this is not even something that I knew until recently, because I was really. That was the Sartre that I grew up with. He was also a Marxist, and he became more so over his lifetime. And he publishes, like, the Critique of dialectical reason in 1960, and it's an explicit attempt to synthesize existentialism with Marxism. And his later view is that no one can account for authentic freedom without accounting for the class conditions under which it's exercised or denied. So he basically moves into the social determinants of mental health.
- [68:10]
Julian Walker
And he's also, is he not, Matthew, kind of the opposite of a tanky in that in 56, he's opposed to what the Soviets do. And he develops a critique of Soviet state capitalism, essentially.
- [68:21]
Matthew Rimsky
Yeah. So he's very prominent in the New Left that way.
- [68:25]
Julian Walker
Like a libertarian Marxist.
- [68:27]
Matthew Rimsky
Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how he's classified, but I think that probably his rootedness in early existential thought gave him a commitment to, okay, well, what does individual private dignity really mean? And also, like, how can it be held onto even when the political system that I favor or that I am going to champion is going to push against that in pretty radical ways. Right. So he's invested. Invested in that contradiction.
- [69:04]
Julian Walker
Yeah.
- [69:05]
Matthew Rimsky
So I. I think that locating her project in the early Sartre vibe also makes her content resonant with mindfulness discourse, which I think Everybody at this gathering is going to be more familiar with because the framework there is intrapersonal doubt and chaos, like the swirling winds of social demands and identity anxieties that are accelerating by doom scrolling. If we go right back to Ron Purser's McMindfulness book, this great, great book that we all read a long time ago, he shows how various imported meditation techniques that were commodified in the 60s and 70s were kind of stripped of their cultural and ethical commitments and were deployed as wellness practices in corporate settings. And in that sense, that sort of vibe that, that discourse has always been a depoliticized thing that tends to never rub the powerful the wrong way because on the level of internal stor weather, of course, we're all equal. We all face the same problems, right? So Kubric hasn't written a bad book in my estimation, and her approach on the whole is benign. But in addition to the depoliticization, I wanted to call out two contradictions. One of them kind of surprised me because I hadn't thought about it before. I mean, the first one is easy. My understanding of existentialist thought is that it refuses to provide a single answer to anything that's almost definitional. That like there's this realization that you're here and that to live in good faith means you'll have to adapt to any condition and derive a self from that adaptation if you derive one at all. And so self help reductionism would be part of a new conditioning, you know, part of what they would be fighting against. You know. So having said that, I, I do have to say that Kubric does say I can't answer these questions questions for you. But she does point to the sort of like the fundamental problem that you have to resolve and you have the will to do it. And that leads me to the thing that I hadn't really thought about before, which is this real contradiction and paradox at the heart of some of this stuff. So this came to me while I was walking and listening to the audiobook. There is one line in which she offers a broad view. So I don't want to ignore that she does write self loss is not merely a result of action or inaction. Sometimes it's a consequence of misdirection. In other words, you've been led astray or something from the outside has pushed you off. However, the overwhelming bias is toward self responsibility to repair your sense of self loss. Okay, so here's a couple of quotes. It was on me to accept the fact that my choices had created my realities and to take the necessary steps to change things. I mean, you can back that up with all kinds of existential citations and quotes, but it will still sound New Agey. Right? Self loss is our failed responsibility to be ourself. Quote meaning self loss ultimately happens when we allow it to. We do not lose ourself without our permission or participation. We are shaped by society because of our passivity. The self loss, the complete disconnect from who we are is ultimately accomplished through the process of self deception. And finally, part of taking responsibility for my life meant recognizing when I was being the problem.
- [72:26]
Derek Barris
This all tracks completely with what Oprah said, which is all that Course in miracles bullshit. Which if essentially, you know, because if that happens, if Oprah is only in that place because of all of her life choices, then everyone who's living in poverty or who has been, you know, hurt in any capacity. It's just it that. That is the reason that I wanted to cover this conference in the first place. Because it's. It's just people who've made the right choices end up being in the right places and they don't realize the collateral damage those sorts of ideas have. Have when you go downstream.
- [73:00]
Julian Walker
Yeah. The danger is that combination of victim blaming and self. Self rationalization for privilege. Right. That all of this gets bundled together in some spiritual sounding way. And I just have to say too that like anyone who's read any of the existentialists would have a hard time characterizing them as being champions of positive thinking or something like finding. Finding optimism.
- [73:22]
Blake Mycosky
Yeah.
- [73:23]
Matthew Rimsky
Not. Not at all. And I can't say that the writing is feel good. There is a somberness to it for sure. So I don't hold that against the material. But yeah, I think that the advantage here is that she really is able to make a certain type of. She's able to drive the victim blaming self responsibility drive underground underneath these very sophisticated references. And. And I think that pulling out like this contradiction was really important for me because I'm listening to these mantras and I'm realizing that the whole thing depends on this assumption that might be a cognitive error because she's saying that in periods of self loss you are responsible. What the fuck does that mean? Isn't that yourself as well? So it seems like the framework requires a self capable of taking responsibility in order to recover the self that was lost. But what if the self loss is real? Where does the agency to begin recovery come from? Kubric's vibe is that this just happens. And if it doesn't happen, you have to make it happen, the self has to make it happen. The self that is lost has to find the self. This is why I find it metaphysical solipsistic. And this is why I think the existentialists she quotes would probably hate, hate it, because most of them were atheists. Most of them had no truck whatsoever for solipsism or for sort of circular reasoning.
- [75:00]
Julian Walker
Yeah. Or mind body dualism. And the Buddhists would also reject this, Right. That there's some kind of self that is rescuing the self when there's no self anyway. Yeah.
- [75:10]
Matthew Rimsky
I mean, I think the paradox is that in my personal experience, and I'm sure this is true for even people at Ken, you, you don't know why it is or how it is that you pull yourself up out of something. Right. Like, you know, I will have periods of poor, very poor mental health, and I know that there are things that I can do, and I guess it never has gotten bad enough that I have forgotten for long enough or I have been alienated for long enough from those things. But I know that that could happen. And I think maybe, you know, if you haven't been in the sit situation where it is just impossible, it is just impossible to pull yourself up by the mental bootstraps, then this cognitive fallacy will make sense. It'll make sense to you to say, oh, yeah, I found something inside that just was able to pull me out. It was still intact.
- [76:10]
Julian Walker
This is the real danger of the self help movement, is that it makes all kinds of actual diagnoses in which by definition you were unable to do anything about it, seem like they're in this category of like. Well, if you just realize that you're doing it to yourself, then you can make better choices and then you can have free will and then you can pull yourself up by your psychological bootstraps.
- [76:30]
Matthew Rimsky
Yeah. So I think that, but I think that there's something very. It looks sophisticated. So I think Kubrich is going to do well in this space. And I also, you know, I think that, you know, she has enough of this literature on board. I really don't want to sound patronizing, but like, I suppose, I suppose, like I would just say there's more there.
- [76:52]
Blake Mycosky
Right.
- [76:53]
Matthew Rimsky
Like, if you, if you got these books on your shelves already, there's more there. And maybe, you know, being the millennial therapist for 1.7 million people, I don't know, maybe it does, maybe it doesn't encourage you to, to, to go farther, but I just think there is more there. So anyway, I think what she does will resonate for people who don't have to think about their their material conditions while they enjoy the pleasures of Cannes. Grainger knows when you're a procurement manager for an office park, you're not meant to managing one building. You're managing all of them. And to stay ahead, you need to see through walls and around corners. Lights about to fail, filters ready to clog H Vac on its last leg. If you wait until something breaks, you're already behind. Count on Grainger for quality products, easy reordering and 247 support. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.