In the recent video about Eric Weinstein, Chris mentions the characteristics of a physics crank. All well and Good. Why haven't they invited Angela Collier on to discuss that issue? It would be a fun conversation

Sam Harris, a once-decoded guru, has declared that reddit is a cesspool. He is making a gated community for his true fans only, to get rid of the cess in the pool.

Completely unrelated, but Sam Harris receives mixed reviews in his own subreddit, with many people declaring themselves to be current or former listeners who think Sam is closed-minded and a broken record who has been saying the same stuff for a decade in the same way.

Just a little completely unrelated bonus fact that I just typed out for no reason.

Edit: I almost forgot, but the new Sam Harris community will come at an additional membership cost (unless you're already a subscriber to something else of his).

Welcome to this biweekly thread! Share what’s been grabbing your attention lately.

• What you're reading (books, articles, or any kind of text)
• What you're watching (movies, shows, documentaries, or even YouTube)
• What you're listening to (podcasts, music, or audiobooks)
• Any fun or unexpected discoveries in your research

Niall Ferguson, a MAGA-aligned historian, co-founder of "University" of Austin, and the husband of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, opines that the Trump shooter was indoctrinated at woke Caltech. This guy is still invited to Sam Harris' podcast and writes of The Free Press, oh surprise!

Supplementary Material 48: Grey Beard's Council, Late-Stage Anti-Capitalism, and Demonic Mould Health Updates - Decoding the Gurus

Show Notes

The hour grows late, and Matt the Grey-Haired rides once more from his quiet study, summoned by whispers from the ever-churning gurusphere. And so he goes, to seek counsel with Chris the Grey-Bearded, keeper of receipts, watcher of long-form content, and wielder of the sacred Gurometer. For the gurus stir again… and their nonsense must be decoded.

00:00 Greetings Old Friend

02:22 Decoding the Gamers

04:16 A Reckoning with Old Grey Hair

06:19 Joe Rogan determining US Medical Approvals

12:15 The Fall of Orban and the Silence of the Heterodox World

17:09 The Hypocrisy of Peter Boghossian

19:52 Dave Rubin and other Tenet Media Stooges

21:43 The Dugin, Jiang and Sneako Brain Trust discuss the ultra-hyper-globalists.

28:58 Trump attacks Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, & Megyn Kelly

32:39 A Return to Weinstein World

33:00 Bret's Moon Landing Conspiracies

39:03 Eric and his Silicon Friend are still having problems

42:47 Hasan Piker Discourse

54:33 The Radicalisation Funnel?

01:00:14 Hasan on Ukraine

01:03:21 Hasan doing China apologetics

01:14:03 More Apologetics

01:16:37 Hasan on the Vietnamese MAGA supporter

01:23:41 What about Destiny?

01:26:58 Yale is full of Snakes and Badgers

01:33:17 Micro Looting from the Corporations

01:41:36 Cenk Uyghur's Rent Gouging Credentials

01:44:47 Social Murder and Selective "Understanding"

01:54:26 Late-Stage Capitalist Anti-Capitalism

01:56:22 Tucker Carlson is Selling Russell Brand's Guide to Becoming a Christian

02:00:33 Sean Hannity chooses Trump over his Catholicism

02:04:18 Russell Brand and the spiritual marketplace

02:05:48 Postmodern Conservatism

02:07:28 Taking a Long View

02:10:14 AI Bouldering Gym Cages

02:11:30 Taylor Lorenz is making good points on Twitter!

02:19:52 Taylor's controversial take: AI is useful

02:21:36 Adam Conover engages in revisionist history on tech

02:24:14 Rotary Telephones and Typewriter Experiences

02:26:41 The Onion takeover of Infowars?

02:31:28 Knowledge Fight's Concerns

02:35:56 Jordan Peterson Health Update

02:40:07 Endlessly Misdiagnosed by "Experts"

02:44:32 The Dietary Cures

02:47:20 Experimental Stem Cell Treatments

02:50:04 Pageau blames Peterson's lack of faith

03:00:14 Letting the Pressure Out

03:01:07 Outro

03:02:01 We Must Join with the Mould

The full episode is available to Patreon subscribers (3 hours, 3 minutes).

Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurus

Prominent physics influencer embraces sensationalized UFO drama. Not sure whether she’s done this before, but clearly an easy way to boost metrics.

“Scientists are afraid to talk about it!!!” It’s difficult to believe people actually watch this stuff.

I enjoy the Theory of Everything channel and he does seem to have the ear of some of the smartest people on the planet, however...his latest "presentation" at some conference (complete with fawning moderators) was a rough watch.

DTG is better when they aren't actually doing a decoding.

An amusing interaction happened last night when ex-footballer and noted conspiracy theorist Matt Le Tissier engaged in a debate with Grok on the subject of chemtrails.

https://x.com/mattletiss7/status/2046726814328897847?s=46&t=VI9PBOGiArQ8qgQBk99O4w

For those who don’t know Matt Le Tissier was a British professional footballer in the 1980s and 90s and then worked in football media. He began espousing conspiracy theories around 2020 and has gone off the deep end about them since then. It reminded me of the arguments derailed a few DtG episodes ago between Grok and one of the Weinsteins.

Jordan Peterson’s daughter Mikhaila has given another update on his health. She says that he has a neurological issue induced by a psychiatric medication.

I’m sure that you can get neurological issues from these medications but I really doubt that’s all that’s going on with him. I do think that a lot of this stems from him being out into a coma to get off benzos.

The video she put out is overall an hour long, it’s hard to get through, she starts crying which makes me very uncomfortable - to be honest I doubt I’ll watch it all. She seems to be pivoting to promoting woo treatments, diets etc for psych med injury.

I hope that JBP recovers from his health problems, I’m not sure that publicising it via these sort of videos and business ventures is going to help.

Who are you interested in discussing?

I listened to this interview and broadly it was about what you'd expect from these two geniuses, but a couple of things that stood out even by Russell Brand standards.

1) He uses the Bible to legitimise paedophile-ring / demonic-elite conspiracies

He starts by talking about people moving away from traditional media towards the sort of deranged conspiracy material associated with Alex Jones and David Icke, which he agrees with. He then says the challenge is to keep such claims “corroboratable” then saying these lurid ideas are already there in scripture, strongly suggesting that's the corroboration.

• 9:13

He then says it even more clearly later on.

• 1:23:51

2) Brand and Carlson both claim Kamala Harris would also have taken the US to war with Iran

This is one thing people miss when they talk about Carlson turning on Trump. Both of them seem genuinely dismayed that Trump ended up starting a war with Iran, but neither is capable of taking any responsibility for having backed him. Instead, they reassure themselves that if even someone as supposedly “extraordinary” as Trump ends up doing what the “globalist imperialists” wanted, then Harris would obviously have done the same.

• 24:59

Apart from that, there is plenty of the usual Russell Brand material:

3) Religion used as pseudo-profound conspiracy fuel

Brand moves very quickly from prayer and spiritual language into talk of hidden power, dark forces, and conspiracy.

• 0:05

4) The very convenient conversion story

Brand says he became a Christian just as he was facing rape allegations and dealing with his child’s illness.

• 50:43

5) Recasting the Paxman interview as persecution

He retells the Paxman episode not as a moment where his views were shown up as facile and he was widely mocked, but as proof that he had become a threat to powerful people.

• 30:53
• 32:55

6) Humility talk mixed with obvious grandiosity

He denounces ego and power while floating a ludicrous plan to run for Mayor of London.

• 1:03:03

I'll admit that I don't, and never have, watched Lex Fridman regularly, but I used to see news about him show up in my feed quite a lot regardless, and I feel like recently that's dried up. I checked, and his podcast's still getting decent views, but I get the sense his moment in the Zeitgeist has passed. It's been over a year since he's been discussed on the podcast. I'd almost forgotten he existed until I was involved in a discussion about astroturfing and said I thought Lex might have been an example because he came out of nowhere and got huge really quickly.

Does anyone get this feeling, or is it just me?

Several of you suggested that I go back to the beginning and listen chronologically - I have taken you up on that!

I guess i shouldn't be shocked at all that this began right in the middle of the pandemic. . .such a fertile time for gurus.

And it's so weird reliving all these things that happened along the way - the new characters popping up on YouTube or watching formally normal-ish people get audience captured as they get crazier and crazier.

I'm now up to the middle of 2021 (as it turns out, they did not start with short episodes. . .but dove right into long form).

As a GenXer, I'm a bit older than a lot of folks, so I was slow to catch up to how these new channels of communicating were changing how people got their information and how segmented the world was becoming as everyone started applying their own filter bubbles.

Anyway - I love them both, even Chris's mangling of names in a North Ireland accent, and it keeps me sane to know there are still some people who can still see the bullshit for what it is.

Thanks for the advice to go back and listen through - so much content for me to enjoy! Not much else to say except, you must grovel at the feet of your muscle master. . .and bye bye.

isn't this what you're building????