“What a tremendous irony it would be if avoiding our mortality posed the gravest threat to our collective survival,” he wrote. Expanding on the familiar humans-as-a-cancer-on-the-planet idea, he noted how cancer cells avoid programmed cell death - apoptosis - and thereby kill the host, much like humans, who try to deny death by spending trillions on plastic surgery, wellness products and private space rockets, all at a cost to Earth.

“Is avoiding death killing life on earth?” he asked in an essay called “A Void Dance” last June. Reading like a series of manifestoes from a highly caffeinated cultural omnivore, the newsletter takes aim at Silicon Valley self-empowerment mantras, for-profit spins on Eastern religion by wellness gurus, and sugar-high promises from reality-denying politicians. When asked for an elevator pitch on the newsletter’s focus, he launched into a minutes-long exegesis about the “commodification of spiritualism” and “the religion of self” that name-checked Descartes, Norman Vincent Peale, Galileo and Kellyanne Conway.īroadly speaking, Bad Guru is a blend of philosophy and cultural analysis, with a smattering of self-help. “Home” was such a runaway hit that it even popped up in commercials, including one for the N.F.L. The band got big overnight, hitting the late-night talk show circuit and leading giant singalongs at festivals, to adoring fans with actual flowers in their hair.

Maybe you’ve heard the ebullient chorus, “Home is wherever I’m with you!” Or perhaps you can recall the almost revival-choir hook, “Laugh until we think we’ll die, barefoot on a summer night, never could be sweeter than with you,” set to accordions, trumpets, and Seven Dwarfs-style whistling. In 2009, the founder of the Los Angeles folk-rock band Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros led a 12-member troupe of neo-hippie troubadours into rock ’n’ roll satori with the seismic single “Home.” “For a lot of them, that’s their primary occupation.” “No matter what any rock star tells you, they’re all conscious of the cult of personality,” Alex Ebert said, looking like a tenured musicology professor with his tan button-down shirt, shaggy beard and horn-rimmed glasses, while seated amid grand pianos and organs.

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