QAnon or New Age? Increasingly, in California’s vast health, wellness and spiritual worlds, there's an intersection between the two communities so pronounced that the phenomenon has a new nickname: “Woo-Anon,” and it’s coming to a yoga studio near you.
Today, we speak with L.A. Times investigative reporter Laura J. Nelson and yoga instructor Seane Corn about the growing movement, as well as the broken friendships and business partnerships that are happening in a once-placid scene.
An earlier version of this episode was published July 13, 2021.
NYDIG, the institutional-grade platform for bitcoin, is making it possible for thousands of banks who have trusted relationships with hundreds of millions of customers, to offer Bitcoin. Learn more at NYDIG.com/NLW.
-
“The Breakdown” is written, produced by and features Nathaniel Whittemore aka NLW, with editing by Rob Mitchell, research by Scott Hill and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Adam B. Levine is our executive producer and our holiday theme music is “Spike The Eggnog” by Two Dudes. The music you heard today behind our sponsor is “Dark Crazed Cap” by Isaac Joel. Image credit: BlackJack3D/iStock/Getty Images Plus, modified by CoinDesk.
I've been saving them up all year, and now it's time for the annual selection box of Bonus Bits! Things this year's guests said that couldn't fit into their episode, or weren't related to language, but ARE related to being a bonus bit. We've got percussive pan protests; the mating habits, and male-killing habits, of ladybirds; Icelandic aunts/uncles/cousins/wait which member of the extended family are you referring to?; Morse code machines; and a surprisingly heated topic, the semantics of salad.
Links to all the original episodes featuring these guests are at theallusionist.org/bonus2021, plus a transcript and the full dictionary entry for the randomly selected word.
The show will return in February 2022, but sign up to be a patron at patreon.com/allusionist for patron-exclusive livestreams in January!
The music is by Martin Austwick. Hear Martin’s own songs at palebirdmusic.com or search for Pale Bird on Bandcamp and Spotify, and he’s @martinaustwick on Twitter and Instagram.
The security situation is hopeless, following violent unrest and a presidential assassination—as one family’s epic and ultimately failed attempt to leave reveals. The sum total of the missing banknotes in the world is staggering, but what is worrying is that no one seems interested in finding it all. And meeting the man who unwittingly became Sherlock Holmes’s secretary.
In which a maritime comedy of errors in a Nova Scotia harbor leads to the biggest non-nuclear explosion in human history, and Ken learns why you should never buy an old yellow shirt. Certificate #21795.
He sees you when you are waking, he knows when you are asleep, and he puts your name on a list.
No, I’m not talking about an omnipresent surveillance state, I’m of course talking about Santa Claus.
If you think of Santa, you probably have a very firm idea of what he looks like, but how did this identity get developed? And where did all the lore around him come from?
Learn more about the history of Santa Claus and how his legend came to be, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
The Deportation Express: A History of America Through Forced Removal(University of California Press, 2021) details thehistory of the United States' systematic expulsion of "undesirables" and immigrants, told through the lives of the passengers who travelled from around the world, only to be locked up and forced out aboard America's first deportation trains.
The United States, celebrated as a nation of immigrants and the land of the free, has developed the most extensive system of imprisonment and deportation that the world has ever known. The Deportation Express is the first history of American deportation trains: a network of prison railroad cars repurposed by the Immigration Bureau to link jails, hospitals, asylums, and workhouses across the country and allow forced removal with terrifying efficiency. With this book, historian Ethan Blue uncovers the origins of the deportation train and finds the roots of the current moment, as immigrant restriction and mass deportation once again play critical and troubling roles in contemporary politics and legislation.
Ethan Blue is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Western Australia, and has published widely on the United States and Australian penal systems.
Catriona Goldis a PhD candidate in Geography at University College London, researching security, subjectivity and mobility in the 20-21st century United States. Her current work concerns the US Passport Office's role in the Cold War. She can be reached byemailor onTwitter.
On this week’s episode we’re revisiting a couple of holiday stories. Reporter Monica Eng answers a question about a shuttered Chicago jazz bar that one hosted the likes of Tony Bennett, Liza Minnelli and Lionel Hampton. Plus, we meet some of the people that run the Christmas tree pop-ups around Chicago.
