He has appeared on podcasts including On Purpose With Jay Shetty (1.06 million subscribers on YouTube), the Marie Forleo Podcast (805,000 subscribers), and the in-house Goop podcast. Dispenza even got a shout-out in Goop, where the founder of a “plant-based meal delivery system” recommended his book along with her “Detox Lemonade” and an $84 face cleanser. Jordan Younger, the absurdly popular lifestyle blogger who goes by the name “The Balanced Blonde” and posts largely about her matcha lattes and supplement routine, recommends Dispenza to all her followers.

“Do not read this book until you are ready for your whole life to change.” It has nearly 14,000 likes. “Warning!” reads the text on one representative video, over footage of Dispenza’s book Becoming Supernatural. He does not have a TikTok, but he has managed to attain Andrew Tate-levels of omnipresence on the app, without the Tate-level misogyny or human trafficking arrests. Maria Shriver follows Dispenza so do Russell Brand, Maria Menounos, and Ana de Armas. When I looked him up, I noticed that almost every fitness influencer, yoga guru, recipe creator, and Instagram model I followed followed him too.

She started posting about Dispenza a few months ago, claiming his meditations had completely restored her gut health. I found Dispenza through a fitness influencer I follow-ostensibly for her workouts but, if we’re being honest, mainly for her abs. Or it could be something much more troubling: the fact that he markets his meditations as cures for deadly diseases. It could be his paternal countenance it could be his professed scientific credentials. But something about him has a chokehold on the kind of young, millennial influencer class that craves spiritual guidance and Insta-ready mantras. Joe,” as he calls himself, preaches a fairly standard combination of mindfulness mixed with manifestation mixed with something he claims is quantum physics but definitely is not. His book, You Are the Placebo, is a New York Times bestseller. His meditations have been translated into eight languages, his $2,299 retreats sell out in days. The 61-year-old New Jersey-born chiropractor with a striking resemblance to Wallace Shawn and a voice like your Italian uncle after inhaling helium has in recent months become the dominant spiritual leader of impressionable young women everywhere. In a world in which “self-care” is sacrosanct, in which coffee shops sell crystals and tech bros microdose mushrooms and self-help-author-slash-spiritual-leader Marianne Williamson ran for president, it can be hard for a single New-Age guru to rise above the rest.

Placebo effect joe dispenza