Decoding the Gurus

So here we are rounding off 2022 with a Guru of the moment, Elon Musk. Trust us, we want to stop hearing about him as much as you do but we have long had him scheduled as the finale for the tech season. Unfortunately, the Decoding the Gurus curse (most of the people we cover quickly become worse and spiral into conspiracism) seems to have become more potent. Now we don't even have to cover a Guru...

Join us for this special festive episode in which we initiate the fledgling Gurologist (and occasional journalist and author) Helen Lewis into the deeper and more esoteric levels of Gurology. Helen may have produced an excellent new multi-part series on the New Gurus for the BBC but just how many nut or shark-based anecdotes can you fit into a 30-minute episode? And is the BBC really ready for tru...

Today we are joined by Jamie Wheal, who comprised a full one-third of the subjects covered on our prior "Sensemaking Cubed" episode also featuring Daniel Schmachtenberger and Jordan Hall. Jamie has kindly taken advantage of our standing offer of a right to reply to all podcast subjects and here is our conversation in its entirety. As well as being a sometime interlocutor with Daniel and Jordan, Ja...

We are back with another academic-themed interview with the evolutionary/cultural/cognitive anthropologist Manvir Singh . That's right two anthropologists from the same relatively obscure field on the same podcast but don't hold that against Manvir, we promise he's much more insightful than Chris! Indeed, Manvir joins us to share his expertise on Shamanism and to examine whether there are any sign...

Racism is all around. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds white people together. And if you try to deny it, it only makes it stronger. That's Robin DiAngelo's thesis, anyway, and she calls this dark force (and the book that made her famous) White Fragility . You know you've got white fragility if you refuse to accept the truth of white fragility. Also, all white people have it. So that's p...

An interesting one today with an extended interview/discussion with Konstantin Kisin co-host of the Triggernometry YouTube channel and Podcast and author of An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West . Topics covered include potential biases in the mainstream and heterodox spheres, media coverage in the covid era, debate within the heterodox sphere, the dangers of focusing on interpersonal relationshi...

In this bitesize decoding, a conservative columnist, a religious icon carver, and a tortured ex-psychologist walk into a Daily Wire studio and try to hash out some solution of the meta-meaning-crisis. In an astounding twist it turns out it involves embracing traditional Christianity. Who could have guessed? Join us on Jordan’s religious powered rocket as we consider the esoteric mystery of tablewa...

Fellow decoders: a few weeks ago Chris and Matt were invited to virtually attend a lecture at Macquarie University that promised to be of interest for the podcast. And that lecture was presented by the philosophy professor Neil Levy on the intriguing topic of 'Intellectual Virtue Signalling'. That is the status-seeking advertising of what is commonly perceived as intellectual virtues. We found Nei...

It's finally here! In what has to be our most meta episode to date, Matt and Chris tackle the meta-philosophy / meta-spirituality / meta-science that is Sensemaking. You might say sensemaking is sense to the power of 2. But what is sensemaking, really? Well, that's a tricky question because as Jordan Hall says; no one can simply be told what sensemaking is. It is the escape hatch out of The Matrix...

Today Chris and Matt are visited by Helen Lewis, a journalist, editor, and writer with what could very fairly be described as a rather distinguished career in those fields. Helen has previously worked at the New Statesman and is currently with The Atlantic . She has also served as a Women in the Humanities Honorary Writing Fellow at Oxford University and also on the steering committee for the Reut...

A special crossover episode (long anticipated- at least by us) with one-half of the Knowledge Fight podcast. Specifically, we have Dan Friesen on to enlighten us about all things Alex Jones, the recent trial with the Sandy Hook parents, and to compare notes regarding gurus and conspiracy theorists. Not to mention to give Chris the chance to demonstrate his inner fanboy! Dan is a guy with an encycl...

Ahead of the forthcoming sense-making full course decoding of Jordan Hall, Daniel Schmactenberger, and Jamie Wheal (see here!), we offer a bite-sized morsel of sense-making to whet your episode. Here Matt and Chris engage in a 'short' session of gurunalysis, or guruology (if you prefer the original Latin). The subject of the gurunalysis is a conversation between the cognitive scientist & philo...

This episode is a little bit of this and a little bit of that. The main portion of the episode features an interview with returning guest, Elgen Strait, host of the Falling Out podcast. Previously we've had Elgen on to talk about his life growing up as a second-generation member of Reverend Moon's Unification Church (the Moonies) and also to help us decode some historical lectures of Moon. This ti...

As per Section 7, paragraph 3, item 2 in the Gurometer Constitution and User Manual states, "All covered gurus shall have a Right to Reply" and Robert Wright has taken us up on this invitation! Now, this provision is generally intended to allow the poor dears we cover a rejoinder to all the insults, smears, and canards we routinely employ in our 'take-downs'. But our coverage of Bob was almost ent...

Matt and Chris are back in the headspace of the Alchemical Lemon, Jordan Peterson, with what was supposed to be a shorter format decoding episode. You can judge for yourself how well that worked out! Nevertheless, this is still a 'recoding' episode of a previously decoded guru. For those interested, Jordan was covered way back in Episode 3 and jointly with Bret Weinstein in Episode 18 . It seemed...

What's this? Another episode? Well, sort of... Providing both a tantalising peak behind the Patreon curtain and an apology for the delayed release, we decided to release this week's Gurometer episode to everyone. Witness the science (/art) of Gurometry in action, as we fire up the Gurometer(TM) to calculate the precise Guru-nature of a techno monk and a perturbed social scientist. If you want to p...

First, we apologise sincerely for the delayed-release. Matt and Chris have been busy beavers splicing together this decoding which proved particular gruelling for all sorts of uninteresting (but on-theme) technical reasons. But finally, the wait is over and the long-anticipated episode on AI-aficionado and popular podcast host, Lex Fridman, is here. Although as the title indicates this accidentall...

In a way, we're all managing our personal brand in the infosphere aren't we? But Nathan Allebach, in a far more tangible way, really does manage brands - not just his own, but also for companies. And in managing the Steak-Umm brand on twitter, he drew attention by being one of the first to adopt a personal, authentic, and informative style - covering topics far beyond the world of frozen processed...

The season of tech is upon us! Hold on to your hats and press those non-fungible tokens tightly to your bosom, because we are getting into the thick of it. Matt and Chris kick things off with an exploration of tech pioneer Jaron Lanier. Sometimes referred to as the father of virtual reality, Jaron is a promising candidate for gurudom given his foreboding warnings of a bleak algorithmic future and...

Ahead of the Jaron Lanier episode a special preview episode of our ongoing Decoding Academia series. This week Matt and Chris take a look at a classic comparative study of social learning processes in chimpanzees and infants (Horner & Whiten, 2005). They discover the correct method to break into a puzzle box, that chimpanzees are sometimes more logical than people, and that popular idioms do n...

It's been a while but don't worry the DtG elves have been hard at work and a veritable bounty of content is on its way. The long-promised Jaron Lanier decoding is on its way next week, but this week the cross-overs continue as we are joined by Mickey Inzlicht, esteemed Psychologist, Research Excellence Faculty Scholar at the University of Toronto, and long term (retired) co-host of the Two Psychol...

In the most ambitious crossover since the Fraggles met the Muppets, this week we have a special joint episode with moral psychologist David Pizzaro and famed philosopher and ghost detective, Tamler Sommers . Also known as the hosts of a small academic podcast Very Bad Wizards . Stealing the format of their show we have a culture war heavy intro section featuring discussion of Joe Rogan censorship,...

This week's episode we have an extended interview with an independent decoder, the YouTube documentary maker, Timbah-on-Toast. A kindred spirit in many respects Timbah is perhaps the ultimate form of the 'I can't come to bed, someone is wrong on the internet' meme. He makes detailed videos analysing the content of a variety of internet pundits, especially those who are posing as something they are...

This week we return one more time to the disturbing world of Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, also known as the 'Moonies', this time with a historical decoding episode. We are joined again this week by Elgen Strait, from Falling Out podcast, who helps us with a historical decoding of Reverend Moon's speeches and Moonie promotional material. Due to the subject matter we cannot promise...

This episode is the first of two linked episodes in which we delve into the disturbing world of Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church also known as the 'Moonies'. Here in an interview episode we introduce Elgen Strait , host of the Falling Out Podcast which is "a podcast about leaving the Moonies and other cults, as told by the kids who grew up within them." The topic matter is serious...