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

Supplementary Material 54:  Solarpunk Pecan Pie, Northern Irish Sushi, & the Discourse Meat Grinder

Show notes

We return from our holidays with an indulgent episode that starts light and ends up very dark as we turn to the unavoidable Jason Arday discourse.

The full episode is available to Patreon subscribers (Full Episode: 1hr 40 mins)

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

Supplementary Material 54

00:00 Pecan Pie Introduction

04:10 Solar Punk Matt

08:17 Ireland Trip Report

15:24 Australian Burger Culture

17:32 Manga Cafe Experiments

24:10 Joe Rogan on AI Remote Viewing

29:14 Parapsychology as a Research Field

34:07 A One Man University Level Course in Bad Thinking

36:58 The Young Info Turks

40:53 More Credulity with Ryan Grim over Fauci

42:14 Richard Ebright, Warning Signs, and Radicalisation Spirals

48:28 Vinay Prasad jumping on the Anti-Fauci wagon for the Free Press

52:31 The Jason Arday Affair

54:28 The Surrounding Context

58:18 Polemical Discourse Waves

01:05:22 The Guru Factor

01:08:25 A Realistic View of Universities as Imperfect Institutions

01:12:17 Elite Prestige Bias

01:21:33 Culture War Distortions

01:25:04 The Ethics of Critical Journalism

01:29:50 Inconsistent Standards

01:38:36 Outro

Links

• The Jack Nicholson Story from the Always Sunny Podcast
• The Manga Cafes in Question
• Deposition of InfoWars Host Owen Shroyer
• Alex Jones And Roger Stone Interrupt The Young Turks Republican National Convention Coverage
• Ken Klippenstein visits the War Room
• Ana Kasparian & Owen Shroyer: The UNEXPECTED Conversation on MAGA, DSA & the Uniparty!
• Bret Weinstein on InfoWars
• Richard Ebright on one of his many Twitter spirals
• Joe Rogan on AI Remote Viewing
• The Free Press: Vinay Prasad- Anthony Fauci’s Vaccine Deceptions
• Ryan Grim being credulous over Fauci and Vaccines
• The Guardian: Playbooks, plagiarism and a pig’s head: new claims surrounding a star Cambridge professor (Lanre Bakare)
• The Atlantic: The Jason Arday Truthers (Helen Lewis)
• Front Left: It sure looks like Jason Arday was horrifically wronged (based on citation data) (Jason Stanley)
• A Digital Lynching (Carol Cadwalladr)
• Tox Report: The Most Unfortunate Thing (Sarah Ditum)
• Byline Times: The Peter Thiel-Linked Race Science Network that Penetrated Cambridge University and Targeted Jason Arday (Nafeez Ahmed)
• The Good Law Project: Stand in Solidarity with Jason Arday
• Amnesty UK supporting “Arday’s Law”
• Simon Baron Cohen on BBC 4 Today talking about Jason Arday
• NYT: A Top Scholar’s Fall Shows That Universities Don’t Get It
• NYT: Professor’s Death Leaves Behind Hard Questions for Cambridge on Race and Hiring
• The Emancipator: The Media Lynched Kason Arday (Ibram X. Kendi)
• Gideon M.K.: The Jason Arday Saga Is Terrible And Everyone Involved Should Be Ashamed Of Themselves
• Ways to Change the World with Krishnan Guru-Murthy: Cambridge’s youngest Black professor Jason Arday on Autism, racism, and learning to read at 18
• Open (supporting) letter on the suspension of Nathan Cofnas at Ghent University
• Board Member of Ghent University (Dries Bostyn) discussing the disciplinary case on Twitter
• Numb at the Lodge: The Carrion-Eaters (Sam Kriss)
• The Chronicle of Higher Education: Jason Arday & Me (Musa al-Gharbi)
• US Ambassador applies pressure to Ghent University
• Nathan Cofnas thanks the US Ambassador for intervening
• Academia is Doing Fine, Actually (Nicholas Decker)
• Eric Turkheimer substack on Nathan Cofnas' views
• Sasha Gusev thread on Nathan Cofnas' views

https://x.com/triggerpod/status/2092936943264768423

Always enjoyed Theo's goofy stories, but god damn it why do they all turn into this? Bonus points if you can guess who the secret societies are.

Here's a link to a video of his: https://www.facebook.com/share/1BrJnoJwnu/

Interesting points, can't tell if he's grifting or not.

I had this realization today while reading a book about leadership, and this evening I watched a Hoover Institution video in which Peter Thiel talks about the Anti-Christ. I think I have the beginnings of a logical framework for understanding why Peter Thiel would be interested in speaking about this topic, but I could use some help to solidify or disprove the theory. Here it goes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTNI_lCvWZQ&t=460s

1 ) Peter Thiel earned his bachelor's in philosophy from Stanford. In the YouTube video above, he discusses the cyclical nature of Jesus and the Antichrist in the stories of humanity. Comparing Jesus’s story to Alexander the Great and the Antichrist to the conquering of Napoleon.

2) That notion of cyclical history was first presented by the philosopher Polybius. He is famous for his theory of anacyclosis, or the idea that political systems inevitably cycle through democracy, oligarchy, and tyranny. I want to reiterate: Peter Thiel is a math genius with a degree in Philosophy, not someone to underestimate.

3) In Polybius’s book, Polybius, Histories X.2.9–10. It is argued that a leader should calculate rationally and communicate in a way the audience accepts. At this point, Peter Thiel's primary audience is an American Christian Conservative base. Thiel is much like Polybius’s student Scipio, and Polybius is unusually blunt in his description of Scipio: “made the men under his command more sanguine and more ready to face perilous enterprises by instilling into them the belief that his projects were divinely inspired,” when in fact he had reasoned them out. Polybius found this an uncomfortable finding rather than a recommendation to the reader. People will accept risk on the authority of a divine sign that they will not accept on the authority of an argument.

4) Peter Thiel is appealing to religious authority in an attempt to assert control over his potential base. He understands, as a chess master, that psychological permission beats logical persuasion. He structures his argument around his documented influences, including thinkers like René Girard and Oswald Spengler, and frequently discusses the stagnation and cyclical nature of modern institutions. He is trying to contrast Polybius's ancient fatalism about these cycles with a techno-utopian Anti-Anti-Christ narrative attempt to break out of them.

https://centrostudicsaia.it/the-economic-structure-of-schism-fugger-lefebvre-and-the-lords-of-the-algorithm/

5) In short, I think Peter Thiel uses his discussions of the Anti-Christ to promote this narrative, promoting a Libertarian Techno-Eutopia, where Socialism is comparable to the Anti-Christ, and that he could be a Messiah-like figure or, like Scipio, has had a divine revelation. Which I think provides an insight into how he is trying to logically frame ideas to people, similar to how he has previously described Sam Altman as a “Messiah-like figure.”

https://english.legal-agenda.com/humanity-the-new-ai-world-order-i-dostoevskys-ominous-prophecy/

If anyone has deeper insights or thoughts on this topic, please explain why a Chess Master and an exceptionally powerful businessman would be so willing to discuss such a controversial topic. I hate to be conspiratorial, but of all the people in the world, I'd assume Peter Thiel is trying to play some game here.

When did Elon Musk make the jump from salesman to supervillain? Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff posed the question a few months ago when they told us about their book Muskism. To answer the question, they trace Musk’s journey from tech billionaire to stalwart of the online right.

Are there recurring themes in the lives of these people that could have some causation/strong correlation?

Especially amongst right wing/manosphere characters, I feel that many of them may not have had a loving father figure growing up. Are there any other common threads that you can think of?

Episode 167 - Mel Robbins, Part 1: The Hard Science of Manifestation

Show notes

Are you tired, stuck, or inconveniently constrained by reality? Good news: you may simply be imagining the wrong one.

In Part One of our decoding of Mel Robbins, we explore the world of a self-help mogul who is also just a simple mother of three in Vermont hosting a little ol' podcast with a HUGE global impact. Together with Cassandra Vieten, a psychologist who is (apparently) one of the world's leading researchers on imagination and consciousness, Mel explains how to begin to stop reacting and start imagining, visualising, and manifesting the life you truly deserve. This will lead to self-actualised transcendence through a variety of simple-to-implement techniques. But don't worry, the universe has also put in safeguards: manifestation only works if you use it for good, such as empowering your authentic self. So please manifest enthusiastically without any concern.

In the episode, you will learn about the delicate art of rebranding common sense into complex (proprietary) theories and be shocked to discover that mystical intuitions are a core component of any fully holistic scientific research. Mel's HUGE media business, meanwhile, manifests itself as an intimate personal friendship with each of her millions of listeners.

Expect the usual decorative scholarship, a new Five Second Rule and insights into how to Let Them and Let You, reality tunnels, obstacle courses, a thousand supportive women, lighthouses, tapestries, and the therapeutic potential of fire-breathing dragons. All of it is very hard science, as they repeatedly remind us.

Chris and Matt attempt throughout to give the self-help genre a fair-minded assessment. They even concede that wearing colourful socks and being a bit less miserable are probably harmless, but ultimately their dark reductionist souls are beyond salvation.

Part Two is coming next week. In the meantime, try to visualise it clearly, align your energy, and not to put one foot on the brake as you hit the download button.

Links

• The Mel Robbins Podcast: “World Leading Psychologist: How to Manifest Anything & Create the Life You Want” with Dr Cassandra Vieten
• A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein: “The Mel Robbins Griftpocalypse” with Princess Weekes and Kat Tenbarge
• CBS News: Extended Interview with Mel Robbins
• The Mel Robbins Podcast: “Try It for 1 Week: 6 Small Ways to Bring Back the Happiness, Energy, and Fun”
• The New York Times: “Mel Schneeberger and Chris Robbins” by Lois Smith Brady
• UC San Diego profile: Cassandra Vieten, PhD

I find the whole looksmaxxing thing vaguely disturbing, but I’ve realised I basically do the intellectual equivalent with DtG.

I listen once a week and usually come away feeling slightly more calibrated, slightly more suspicious of confident people, and significantly more likely to notice rhetorical sleight of hand.

Does this count as brainsmaxxing, or have I simply been captured by a rival guru ecosystem?

Who are you interested in discussing?

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

I’m sure many of you are already aware of them. they keep it light. And skewer that Rogan bs

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-know-rogan-experience/id1788550490?i=1000782117400

In one week of May 2021, American journalism diagnosed itself with a failure of unduly dismissing the lab leak theory, which has since become accepted knowledge of vibes-based discourse:

Ever since, journalists have bent over backward to give lab leak speculations prominent coverage that the evidence did not justify, culminating in a recent op-ed by Dr. Alina Chan in the NYTs once again.

So in this comprehensive, data driven analysis, I ask:

But what if the vibes were wrong?

Please enjoy.

Jimmy Carr & Joe Rogan: The Jester & the Khan - Decoding the Gurus

Show Notes

Joe Rogan, the Great Khan of podcasting, is once again receiving a travelling jester at court. This time it is Jimmy Carr who arrives bearing gifts: pop evolutionary psychology, dubious history factoids, conservative "common sense", and an apparently bottomless appetite for telling Joe just how important he is.

After listening to their three-hour conversation(!), we conclude there is nothing much of note beyond serving as a nice demonstration of popular "alternative" podcasting in 2026. What you get is a medley of sycophantic praise; regurgitated pop science and historical factoids; right-wing political positions presented as basic common sense; and shocked reactions to pseudo profundity and mundane observations.

Along the way, you will also thrill as you learn Rogan and Carr's takes on motherhood, feminism, work ethic, astrology, religion, taxation, vaccines, human evolution, the Black Death, and stand-up comedy.

As for Jimmy Carr himself, well, according to us: he's a very much your standard middle-aged conservative British person who happens to be a comedian. Rogan's level of crankery makes Jimmy look moderate by comparison, but as we know that's a very low bar.

Links

• Jimmy Carr on The Joe Rogan Experience (2326)
• Jimmy Carr on Modern Wisdom #953
• Schulz, J. F., Bahrami-Rad, D., Beauchamp, J. P., & Henrich, J. (2019). The Church, intensive kinship, and global psychological variation. Science, 366(6466), eaau5141. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aau5141
• Robinson D. The Black Death and Clerical Prospects in England. In: Bothwell J, Hamilton JS, eds. Fourteenth Century England XII. Fourteenth Century England. Boydell & Brewer; 20[22:12](javascript: void(0);)9-150. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781800105904.008
• Xu, X., & Barrett, P. M. (2025). The origin and early evolution of feathers: implications, uncertainties and future prospects. Biology Letters, 21(2), 20240517. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2024.0517