Episode description

🤑 CHIP IN TO OUR PATREON https://www.patreon.com/ARationalFear
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We’re gearing up for a big 10-week season of weekly A Rational Fear Podcasts — but before we hit full steam, enjoy this chat with the very smart and curious Sarah Wilson in a new ARF format called A Rational Fear Lite.

This week on the pod:

🤑 The Alex Jones $1bn Verdict.
🦾 No one at Meta wants to use the Metaverse. Great piece from The Verge
🕴️The 10 year anniversary of the Julia Gillard Misogyny speech. Hear the full interview with Ben Rhodes — the juicy bit about Abbott and Gillard speech hits around 35min in.

Sarah’s plugs:

🎙️Sarah's podcast WILD
✍🏻 Sarah's Substack THIS IS PRECIOUS

We’ll be back next week with a new A Rational Fear season.

And I’d love to hear from you. What shall we do next season? What do you want to hear more of? What would you like to hear less of? How can we delight our audience more?

Leave a comment on the Substack post for this podcast.

Cheers

Dan Ilic

Dan Ilic  0:00  
G'day there, Dan Ilic here with a rational fear lite this week. Yes, it is a light version just me and a guest. You'll meet them in just a second. Just kind of warming up for the next 10 weeks of regular recording. It's going to be exciting. I think we might have a sponsor as well. So next week, I'll tell you all about that on a rational fear. In the meantime, I'm recording irrational fear on the land of the Gadigal. In the urination, sovereignty was never seated, we need a treaty. Let's start the show.

Simon Chilvers  0:26  
A rational fear contains naughty words like bricks, Canberra, fed gum, and section 40 of our rational view recommended listening by image your audience.

Dan Ilic  0:39  
Tonight, Sydney takes over Canberra as the most expensive city to rent in Australia. In order to win back the title of Canberra and landlords are increasing levels of mold. And after Mark Zuckerberg released his new avatar with legs is promised to invest another $10 billion to develop a personality. And cuantas has hit a huge profit the first six months of the year earning $1.3 billion before tax, most of which they discovered was stored in baggage lost in broomed. It's the 14th of October just weeks away from a state street tax cut. This is a rational fear.

Welcome to rational fear. I'm your host, former coach of the Manly Sea Eagles, Dan Ilic. And this is a rational fear light, just me and a guest. Talking through a few stories, having a bit of fun catching up, seeing someone face to face. Oh, it's good. It's gonna be good fun. And when it gets we have journalist, thinker, doer, and most crucially, my neighbor Sarah Wilson, welcome to irrational fear.

Sarah Wilson  1:47  
I think it's absolutely apps that are on the diet version of the show, don't you? Because that's the reputation I've always had as peddling a diet. Yeah,

Dan Ilic  1:55  
this is perfectly fine. This is the sugar free version of a rational fire. Yeah,

Sarah Wilson  1:59  
yeah. I mean, I quit. I quit sugar. I don't know if everyone got that memo. But yes, I'm still associated as a diet. So I've never been on a diet my life. Dan, you've seen me eat. So

Dan Ilic  2:09  
like, yeah, I have seen you eat and I've had burgers with you. I'm robust. Yeah. The thing is, when you say you've quit sugar, and you've quit, quit sugar. Are you now back into sugar? Are you now investing? Double downing on sugar and double boosting sugar?

Sarah Wilson  2:23  
No, not at all. Not at all. I mean, nothing's changed. It's just that I'm not caught up in the tedium of running a business, which is just not my thing, right? And also a commitment I made to myself, blah, blah, blah, that when it made a certain amount of money, I gave it all away.

Dan Ilic  2:37  
Well, would you believe it? I'm not committed to running a business either. That is why we need your help on Patreon. On Patreon, and can I say Sarah's also got an incredibly interesting and thought provoking substack and she provides us on substack. But my partner loves your substack she absolutely enthralled with the stories of your travels and insights that you gather from people you meet on the road. It's a terrific subject. Should

Sarah Wilson  3:03  
I enjoy writing? It's a nice realm to be in, isn't it just having worked for News Corp for many years and ACP slash was a Bauer, the Germans Yeah, yeah. It's it's nice just to be to have my own space where I can actually yeah, get subscribers who want to read my stuff.

Dan Ilic  3:19  
What's it like being your own editor?

Sarah Wilson  3:20  
Oh, this is typos. Isn't there?

Dan Ilic  3:24  
Alright, let's get into the stories this week. A Connecticut jury awarded nearly a billion dollars in damages to 15 plaintiffs who were defined by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Now this is absolutely incredible like this, this landed today, a billion dollars Alex Jones is now gonna have to pay these poor people that he spent years defaming over the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting back in 2012. So long ago now but of course, the pain of this is a is a real thing. Back in August, he was forced to pay $50 billion he declared bank Texas

Sarah Wilson  4:00  
Yeah, one family yeah. Now it's eight families who've who are gonna have to split that $1 billion for defamation. Yeah, I think he's set up sort of companies with dad. Right. So some of his money has been siphoned off to family accounts and trusts a bit of sneaky stuff going on. But still I doubt he has enough to pay off you know, several billion dollars there's

Dan Ilic  4:21  
one estimate that is worth 300 million but yeah, you know at the most that is still a lot of a mushroom infused coffee beans you have to sell on the store. He's still selling like he's still he's still asking for money. I don't know if you caught this. This is him. During the actual verdict as the verdict was coming down. He was on air on his show. asking his supporters for money still from Remington.

Alex Jones  4:48  
That'll be happening ain't no money.

Unknown Speaker  4:50  
Damages. In this case, we award damages to each plaintiff and against Alex Jones and freeze October number one compensatory instructions fill in both numbers for each waited then goes I remember

Alex Jones  5:05  
I'm in bankruptcy we got two years of appeals. The money you donate does not go to these people. It goes to fight this fraud and it goes to stabilize the company they want to shut down that's why the analysts chaser did this by they use these families so save infowars.com are fighting Goliath will win because of you save infowars.com Infowars store.com Double Patriot points 10% off of 7076 right now at Infowars store but you see he wants me to fight for you. I'm doing it and you see what they do. So you want we want to fight? That's fine. It's your decision. But that's where we are. That's the whacked out system to the left. Do we hit a billion

Dan Ilic  5:45  
did we hit a billion guys? Like he's a he's like we'd like waiting for the big billion to land did we do it? Either way the bad guys well, yeah, you are the bad guys but there's completely shamelessness. Go on it at this time as the verdict was handed if if you had to owe someone a billion dollars because you are an asshole would you be

Sarah Wilson  6:06  
shutting my mouth but that's just not the way he operates. It's really interesting. I don't know if you ever followed any of Jon Ronson stuff on him. He's been following him for decades, like literally since he was like in his early 20s. I mean, I remember

Dan Ilic  6:19  
as a kid watching his early conspiracy theories about 911 probably like, early 2000 to 2003 Youtube wasn't even around then it was these these WMV

Sarah Wilson  6:31  
That's it. That's it. Well, Jon Ronson went and visited him because he was running the program out of his bedroom. And literally, he had Star Wars wallpaper. Like, you know, he was in his little room with Star Wars, you know, wallpaper with a single bed. It was his boyhood home. And that's where he was recording from

Dan Ilic  6:50  
from his mom's house is Dad's Yeah, well, that's only one step down from this situation where I'm renting to a landlord and I'm, I'm recording this from home.

Sarah Wilson  6:59  
Yeah, but just wait for 20 years get somebody to follow you now, Jon Ronson, to document his story now. But look, he's an absolute narcissist. And that court case, I've listened to bits of it. He really treated it like one of his programs, didn't he? It was it was a performance and he created chaos. And that's what a lot of these conspiracy theorists shocked Doc's I mean, that's what they love doing. It's what Trump did they create chaos.

Dan Ilic  7:25  
What does this defamation thing mean for people who want to be like, you know, the next Alex Jones like your RV, your Manny's your your right wing shock shock. So are your your crazy left wing shock jocks who want to kind of pedal in this mistruths space, do you think? Do you think they'll take notice? Or do you think this is just a sign to get more attention?

Sarah Wilson  7:46  
I think that it will actually rile people up for a while. I mean, he's still going, he's still making money. He has been deep platformed across all of, you know, like Twitter, Facebook, and so on. But then you have the Joe Rogan's of the world that get him onto their programs, and, you know, spread the message across Spotify. So he's still got a little bit of oxygen, but I do think the $1 billion thing will will resonate. I think there'll be anger they'll his fans will mobilize but I'm not sure how far it can go when you've been deep platformed to that extent,

Dan Ilic  8:20  
have you seen the kind of stuff he sells on his on his store? Alex Jones No. Oh, he sells like you know, supplements and the usual coffee beans infused with like, mushroom, by the broadcaster's there are these other things you can buy from the Infowars stores which are like literally buckets of food. You can put in your bunker

Sarah Wilson  8:38  
off prepper prepper stuff.

Dan Ilic  8:41  
It's like it's buckets of food that will last for like 10 years in a bucket for when the shit hits the fan. Do you think he's going to be hitting gear to his bunker to eat some of that food now? Is that the plan he's got so much of his food in the bucket he

Sarah Wilson  8:52  
might feel and buy up land in New Zealand because that's what he's done. He's built his bunker I think in New Zealand. Yeah, you want to cut? Yeah, the prepper realm? I mean, that's another realm where do we go from there?

Dan Ilic  9:03  
Zealand, New Zealand too far to go for Alex Jones. He's can barely make it out of his parents bedroom.

Sarah Wilson  9:08  
thing. Actually, one thing that really came up and struck me with the Jon Ronson deep dive idea over the last couple of days as this has all been going down, is he went back and actually spoke to some of his childhood friends. And Alex likes to tell the story of how you know his dad took him out of a school, which was just terrible at some stage. So Jon Ronson, went back and actually investigated and found that in fact, he was such a bully. He actually beat up some guy within an inch of his life. This guy, this was his best friend, by the way.

Dan Ilic  9:40  
Are you trying to tell me Alex Jones was a bully?

Sarah Wilson  9:42  
I know hard to believe. I believe it didn't just happen overnight. You're using different passionate about conspiracies, right. But he his best friend I think made a slur about a girl that he wasn't keen on or something like that. And he beat this guy up within an inch of his life. And this guy's now got permanent bro. ain't trying Oh, and he's I think he's in a wheelchair etc. The friends all got together because they were so sick of being bullied because he was the book classic bully. Everyone was too scared to stand up to him. But there was a conspiracy. They all got together on a Saturday night and actually gave him a pounding and off the back of that his dad moved him from town to another place, right? Yeah, so as a store of slightly different version of the story, right?

Dan Ilic  10:24  
Yeah, he's he's not the victim here.

Alex Jones  10:29  
I just don't want to catch him in bed with a goblin. I don't want to see him kissing goblins. Having political Succubus with goblins.

Dan Ilic  10:40  
This week second fear meta is kind of going through this bit of an epic transition because Facebook is struggling. Not many people are using it anymore. So they've got this big idea to kind of start the metaverse as people know, it's this VR experience. And the share price of meta has tanked. It's like half of what it was a year ago. And the metaverse is trying to come to bear and everyone's trying to push Metaverse on everyone. But here's the thing, not even the people that work at meta actually want to use it. This great report from The Verge came out today say that the internal memos are saying that not enough people are using the metaverse at work. And if you can't use it at work, how are people meant to use it in their everyday lives? And

Sarah Wilson  11:21  
well, it's affecting the development, right. It's saying that the developments aren't happening fast enough, because people aren't getting native with it.

Dan Ilic  11:28  
Yeah. And so people don't know how to use it. People hate using it when they fix the glitches. Yeah, people that work at Mehta just don't want to use Metaverse isn't that a headline

Sarah Wilson  11:37  
pops up in one form or another every six months or so we love a headline that says Silicon Valley don't use their own products. Right? My one of my favorites is all of the big heads, including Steve Jobs and Bill Gates as well. They send their kids to Steiner Schools where they play with wooden blocks. And technology's completely banned.

Dan Ilic  11:57  
Like, please, we need to get away from technology as much as we possibly Yeah,

Sarah Wilson  12:01  
I mean, it's a real thing. And I think it was only a couple of weeks ago, some inventors some big game doesn't let his kids play it. So it's not a new concept. This is slightly different because they're saying the product ship. But really it's a reflection on the metaverse, isn't it? Yeah, and the whole VR dream. Like, I'm seeing this happening more and more. It's a discussion I'm seeing Dan, with a number of my guests on my podcast where we actually do talk about the fact that this technology AI in particular, is just galloping ahead. But there's quite a few people, including the people who are inventing the technology who are going hang on, do we want this? Is this what we actually really want? And I think that question is becoming very, very loud.

Dan Ilic  12:47  
You are correct. This is a great insight. Nobody wants this universe. Currently, there is a great experiment happening with AI and somebody has managed to stitch together an AI Steve Jobs being interviewed by an AI Joe Rogan, just from everything, they've all said it kind of it I'm gonna play a little bit of it for you. So you can get a feeling for what it sounds like. We'll play the first couple of minutes. And just he kind of the back and forth from Steve Jobs and Joe Rogan. It is pretty uncanny.

AI Joe Rogan  13:21  
Welcome to another episode of The bro Joe Rogan experience. And on this episode, I welcome my friend who's difficult to describe. Fascinated by him, and I hope you will be too and he is weird, and brilliant and sometimes totally insufferable. So super psyched about having him in the house today. First time or? Yeah, we've had you on before, but not for a long time. Like Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore and ghost. You're a memory from the past. So without further ado, my friend who's difficult to describe and wonderful and I'm so grateful he came on the show.

AI Steve Jobs  14:02  
How's it going? Good to see you, buddy. It's been a long time since I've been on the show. I've missed this. It's always fun.

AI Joe Rogan  14:08  
How's it going? Come on. Tell me about jobs. It's always good to see you, buddy. I'm so happy you came on man.

AI Steve Jobs  14:19  
Yeah, it's great to be on the show. Your audience is just so different from your normal Apple users. And that's a good thing. It's cool.

Dan Ilic  14:27  
Isn't that uncanny?

Sarah Wilson  14:28  
It's a bro mash up. Right. I mean, it's slick and bro meets pod bro.

Dan Ilic  14:35  
And the AI is probably developed by white bros.

Sarah Wilson  14:38  
Exactly. Exactly. I mean, I don't know if they realize just, yeah, the irony. The triple irony, the triple pipe irony going on there. It is really interesting. I like how it segues from our last topic. Yeah. Because I measure I mean, well that's what that's what, that's where we've arrived and where everything is sort of not It enabled around everything else, you know, you've got these conspiracy theories, like we can't tell the difference between who's a left leaning person and who's a right leaning person. Like, everything is so fragmented and mashed up. Now it's so difficult to know what's real, and AI just reflects that. Yeah, like, what's, where does reality start and end,

Dan Ilic  15:22  
I never thought I'd need to use like, darly or something I could never see use for it for myself. I'm like, Who wants to create as Spaceman in a field of poppies? Like, like, like, why would I need that. And the other day, I could see how I could just put a whole bunch of people out of business because I was putting together the irrational fears show live at festival dangerous ideas, and I needed a bunch of graphics done in a hurry. And I, I hired a professional graphic artist to do it. But I'm like, wow, in about four years time, I could imagine these jokes as graphics, put them into a thing. And now they'll spit it out. And I'll be able to, I'll be able to use those graphics instead of hiring someone. And I immediately went shit. That is, that is a big, that's a that's a it's actually scared me by the person I trusted to put these graphs together. Pat, Forrest did an incredible job. And they're hilarious and beautiful, and stunning images to get jokes across to the audience.

Sarah Wilson  16:17  
But this is what we want. Because do we want to put people out of jobs? Do you want the delicacy that the imperfection that comes with human creativity to be eradicated? No, I don't think we do

Dan Ilic  16:29  
a what. And also for me, like, as a joke teller, like, I thought I could never use a program like that. Because comedy requires a certain nuance to kind of get an idea over real quick fashion. But seeing some of these images that are popping out of people's prompts, it's like, fuck, if you if you're a good prompter, you could you could absolutely create the image, you need to get the joke.

Sarah Wilson  16:49  
Yeah, got it. But you still got to have the human to create the joke. You've still got to have the nuance going on that I see. I don't even know think So You Think You think AI can be taught how to

Dan Ilic  16:59  
be funny? Yeah, I think I think so. And you know, the thing that makes me nervous about that, and this is the reason why I hate this game so much is Cards Against Humanity, Cards Against Humanity is just a non sequitur generator. And people find non sequitur is funny. And if you just jam two ideas up there that undercut each other people laugh and have a good time and move on. And so it's like, ah, that's, that's the thing that's going to kill us somewhere in the future, someone's gonna work out how to make

Sarah Wilson  17:26  
all the singularity, which is that moment when AI technology is meant to take over from human capacity. They're saying it's this century, like, it's close. And is there anyone out there? Is there a godlike figure? You know, and I'm guessing it's not Joe Rogan or Steve Jobs? Well, we know it's not Steve, are they sitting down and going, okay, ethical and moral implications of this? And are they just going that AI is made in our image, right? It's a reflection of our intelligence. And when we confront something that's weaker than us more vulnerable, we kill it. And so is AI going to do the same thing to us? I'm sure Mehta,

Dan Ilic  18:04  
a company, that department that's responsible for the genocide of large groups of Southeast Asian populations got unethical department, I'm sure they've thought it through.

Unknown Speaker  18:17  
Oh, God, who sues? Oh, rational fear,

Unknown Speaker  18:21  
we are still the company that designs technology around people. And finally, this

Dan Ilic  18:27  
week's third beer, Sarah Wilson is the 10th anniversary of Julian Gill ads misogyny speech 10 years ago, it kind of is strange that there are young people out there who are in their 20s, who were like 10 years old, when this kind of speech came out and they are magnifying it.

Sarah Wilson  18:41  
They're wearing the t shirt,

Dan Ilic  18:42  
they're wearing the T shirts. It's a fun, it's a weird kind of thing to kind of see how this speech has become mimetic as like a symbol of feminism in Australia

Sarah Wilson  18:52  
internationally, though, as well. I mean, that's the that's the funny thing about it is that here in Australia, it didn't really make headlines until it made headlines overseas, because as you know, it came off the back of a bit of a slippery basses. Peter sleeper was misogynist. Julia Gillard had a vested interest in keeping him in the Speaker's seat. And so that speech pivoted from that, but the American audiences, the German audiences who watched it, you know, virally, they don't know all of that. That said, it also came off the back of many, many years of horrible misogyny. Yeah, and it's occurring more broadly, as we now know, in Australian politics and in Parliament House. So yeah, it's interesting. It was always something that took a while for Australians to grasp. I think it was a bigger international phenomenon first.

Dan Ilic  19:48  
Why do you think that is? Why do you think people in global spaces saw their speech and were will

Sarah Wilson  19:54  
So partly because it was out of context. Of course, it's

Dan Ilic  19:58  
very difficult to kind of say, well, let me Talk about this guy Peter sliver of an asshole. He works for the National.

Sarah Wilson  20:04  
Tony Abbott. Let me explain the fact that Yeah, so I think there was that that's not all that it really is because I think Australia, and I'll say it straight. I've said it before as misogynist country. And I don't know that we've progressed all that further in 10 years. It's sort of the wallpaper to our existence, and we have to suck it up. We don't do the outrage around it. And I sort of think that we are expected to roll with the punches of it. Misogyny is very tied up in that bloke culture. The Larry can She'll be right, God, yeah, you're the one with the problem, because he can't take a joke, that whole vibe. And so when we see misogyny as in as women, I think, or as you know, good men, we don't notice it straightaway. And we don't call it out straightaway, we needed it to be seen through the lens of, you know, being these outlets in the on the other side of the world before we felt very ashamed about it.

Dan Ilic  21:00  
Speaking of somebody who saw this speech overseas, Ben Rhodes, who was on irrational fear, couple years ago, talking we were talking to him about climate change

Sarah Wilson  21:09  
this is this has resurfaced as an adult or became news back then didn't that irrational fear expose this, this particular story? But yes, please tell us the background. Yeah.

Dan Ilic  21:19  
So we were talking to Ben Rhodes about climate change and how you know, Australia so far behind in Australia, so backwards, and he was just saying, You guys are so backwards. You know, Tony Abbott is so backwards like we had to we had many debates with Tony Abbott. And we realized like talking to him was like talking to a brick wall. And why he was in power. Every time we had to deal with him. We watched the misogyny space. So here's Ben Rhodes.

Sarah Wilson  21:37  
Oh, what just for entertainment?

Dan Ilic  21:39  
Yeah, here he is, in his own words here, Ben.

Ben Rhodes  21:41  
I did not know that. I will tell you that whenever we were really annoyed with Tony Abbott. We would watch the video of that speech by Julia Gillard. Yeah, well, that speech got watched a lot. Let me just put it that way. You know,

Lewis Hobba  21:57  
and when sorry, when all those hand washing videos were coming out at the start, and they were like, You need to wash your hands for at least 20 seconds. People were giving you like sunglasses like wash it for the length of Happy Birthday. There are a lot of people who are going you just need to wash your hands for the length of Julia Gilad was such a nice

Dan Ilic  22:15  
seven minutes. It's heartening to know that Obama and his staff were watching that speech just to feel better about having to deal with Australia.

Sarah Wilson  22:28  
While we're doing segues, by the way, I actually had on my podcast last week, a woman called Marianne Sieghart. She's a BBC correspondent. She's been the associate editor of the Times for 20 years. And she wrote a book just recently called the authority gap. And in it she interviews Julia Gillard, or Dillard about the speech. And there's a bunch of things that she says in there, which actually have come out in the press just this week about how she wished she actually had said it done the speech earlier, she had actually sat on that rage and that need to call it out for quite some time, because she felt that Australians would settle into the idea of an Australian female PM. Well, they didn't. And eventually, she felt she had to give that speech. But Marianne, and I cover a bunch of things in the podcast, and she's got this great, I've got to share this one, she's got this great study that she references, where I think it's something like it's a huge, I think it's 3000 children across all teenagers, male and female, across nine countries. So it's a meta study, just to bring it all back in. Anyway, they get a bunch of 15 year olds, male and female, and they present them with a dozen or so mathematical concepts. And the children that are teenagers are asked if those ideas are familiar to them. Have you heard of these ideas? Do you know about these things? Anyway? In the blokes say that they have heard are far more of them than the women, the women go, Oh, I'm not sure if that kind of thing, right? The thing is about a quarter or a third of them. Bullshit, right? They throw in non concepts. But the blokes still say, oh, yeah, I know about that. I know about that. And the women say, oh, no, I don't think I know about that one. Anyway, the conclusion of the study is that men have a disposition to bullshitting. And, you know, it starts when they're young, and it carries on anyway. So if we're going to be talking to former male Australian PMS, the bullshitting thing comes through loud and true. But then to bring it back around, she also points out that Obama's staff also had this thing where the women got fed up with their ideas been interrupted and talked over in meetings. And so they got together and Obama picked it. And he actually got the women together and said, Hang on, what are you doing here? Have you heard about this?

Dan Ilic  24:46  
This is the echo. Somebody will say a point. And then somebody will come in and say it, and somebody will repeat the point. Yeah,

Sarah Wilson  24:53  
so a woman will come up with an idea and generally, any woman listening will know what I'm talking about. It'll just get ignored. But then In 10 minutes layer a bloke will raise it. And of course, it's a fantastic idea and they own the idea and off it goes. So what happens? The echoing thing is that women get together and go, Alright, we're gonna bring some a point, we're gonna make sure it almost gets, you know, tallied. Right. So great point, Martha. And then, you know, and that's how they do it. And Obama noticed it, and the women said, yeah, we've got to do it. Otherwise our ideas don't get heard. So anyway, that was a guest that I spoke to. And since we're doing segways I think that was a loop de loop segway. Well, Danville,

Dan Ilic  25:30  
you are the you are the master of the Segway. Well,

Sarah Wilson  25:34  
I don't know where we landed anywhere in interesting, but

Dan Ilic  25:37  
Well, speaking of podcast, Sarah, you've got a podcast. That was

Sarah Wilson  25:41  
a perfect handles. Your podcast is,

Dan Ilic  25:46  
you know, it's back in fine form. You're back on the horse who have you had recently and what have you learned?

Sarah Wilson  25:50  
This week's is actually an interesting one. It's a slight diversion. Matt Brown. He's an Australian academic. And he co hosts a podcast called decoding the Guru's. And it pulls apart these. Again, this is a segue, the Joe Rogan's of the world, the LEX Friedman's the Weinstein's they actually pull apart these segments bit by bit, and put it through a barometer a group to see if they're like for real or just got Messiah Complex. And it's really it's quite controversial. They're all blokes, you know, and yeah, this is Australia. He's an Australian academic, based out of the University of Queensland. And then the other one is an academic, he's Irish, and lives in Tokyo makes no sense whatsoever. But they've become quite influential and a lot of these gurus you know, the Jordan Peterson's Lex Friedman, who else is there, Sam Harris, although Sam doesn't quite fit into that bucket, Russell Brand. They are sort of targets of decoding the Guru's anyway. So I interview, Matt about all of this and we go into why it is that this is happening now. What it is saying about our culture, what it's saying about young men and their need for these gurus for these men that come out,

Dan Ilic  27:09  
why do we need Jordan Peterson to tell people to have tall rules to make their bed or to make their fucking bed? Yeah.

Sarah Wilson  27:15  
Well, if it was as harmless as that, that'd be okay. But the problem is that they go on to spread conspiracy theories. And of course, they all sell the same powders and products online. They all interview each other. So Joe Rogan used to have more women on his podcast. Now they just, it's just a bro fest. It's a bro orgy, they all interview each other, they all love each other, they all support each other. And when you've got Joe Rogan supporting Alex Jones, and Andrew Tate, and then you've got Lex Friedman supporting Joe Rogan, and they all support each other. It's just this echo chamber of quite frankly, misogyny.

Dan Ilic  27:50  
Well, can I just say thank you for supporting irrational fear by coming on?

Sarah Wilson  27:56  
Yes, well, and we did talk misogyny. And we did talk Alex Jones. But are we platforming? I don't

Dan Ilic  28:03  
know. It's hard to tell. So with that, with that interview, what's the one big takeaway from that conversation you had with with Matt? Um,

Sarah Wilson  28:13  
well, I think it would be for my listeners to just be aware of husband's friends who are listening to these people and be aware of the messages that they're peddling. Just about everyone I know has a partner who loves Joe Rogan is great, he's great. And thinks that their their research is legit. It's it's really not. Yeah. Anyway, I'd be a fan of Joe Rogan. I still listen to his stuff.

Dan Ilic  28:33  
So do your own research and do your own research on your research. shape or SIBO. Big thanks to everyone who supports us on Patreon. Also, big thank you to rode mics who sent me a wonderful new road caster too excited to test that out streaming sometime soon. If you are heading to purpose next week, we'll be there we're going to be recording irrational fear in the foyer at purpose. So do apply and say hi, and we'll catch you next time. There's always something to be scared of. See you then.

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