In this episode, we take a bit of a detour from current trends and examine a talk by the philosopher Daniel Dennett on evolution. Dennett rose to public prominence as one of the so-called four horsemen of the New Athiest movement but he always seemed slightly out of place with that cohort. Dennett's is most certainly a guru in the sense that he offers big picture 'what does it all mean' lectures linking together consciousness, intelligence, the emergence of complexity and evolution. But is there...
Feb 02, 2023•3 hr 34 min•Ep 64•Transcript available on Metacast Recently the Oxford Union (based in Oxford but distinct from the university) hosted a debate on "whether woke culture has gone too far". A very fresh question, and it's been good to see people finally discussing this important issue. Former guest, comedian, and host of the Triggernometry podcast Konstantin Kisin argued for the proposition, and his 10 minute speech has gone viral, garnering over 20 million views (and counting). Kisin has received lavish praise for his compelling talk from across ...
Jan 21, 2023•1 hr 8 min•Ep 63•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode we are joined by the irrepressible "Coffeezilla" (aka Stephen Findeisen), a man who is, it's fair to say, kind of a big deal on YouTube. And rightly so! His channel focuses on exposing "scams, fraudsters and fake gurus" and he has received a great deal of praise for the detail, depth, and quality of the research that he goes into for each episode. Coffeezilla has been particularly active in digging into cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and other financial Ponzi and pump and dump schemes. ...
Jan 14, 2023•3 hr 7 min•Ep 62•Transcript available on Metacast 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 just announce that we will and the spiral occurs. And with Elon what a spiral it has been. But we *t...
Dec 29, 2022•2 hr 27 min•Ep 61•Transcript available on Metacast 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 truly hardcore sensemaking? In any case, we indulge our new padawan with an extended discussion about t...
Dec 27, 2022•2 hr 17 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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, Jamie is an author of books such as Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, Navy SEALs and Maverick Scienti...
Dec 10, 2022•3 hr 35 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 significant parallels between Shamans and Gurus. Along the way, you will gain new esoteric knowledge int...
Nov 17, 2022•2 hr 26 min•Ep 60•Transcript available on Metacast 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 pretty straightforward at least. How do you fight the curse of whiteness? Well, it's a lifelong journ...
Nov 02, 2022•3 hr 8 min•Ep 59•Transcript available on Metacast 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 relationships, and whether the WEF is really using wokism to make everyone eat bugs and live in pods. It's fair...
Oct 16, 2022•2 hr 6 min•Ep 58•Transcript available on Metacast 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 tableware, how fiction is probably true, and try to uncover what’s the deal with atheist materialists anywa...
Oct 01, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep 57•Transcript available on Metacast 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 Neil's thesis extremely compelling, with clear applications to a lot of the stuff we observe week on an...
Sep 27, 2022•2 hr 57 min•Ep 56•Transcript available on Metacast 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, it is the finger pointing at the moon, it is a possibility space in an nth dimensional cube.... wh...
Sep 14, 2022•4 hr 37 min•Ep 55•Transcript available on Metacast 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 Reuters Institute for Journalism at Oxford University. Her books include Difficult Women: A History of F...
Sep 03, 2022•2 hr 17 min•Ep 54•Transcript available on Metacast 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 encyclopaedic knowledge of Alex Jones and some very astute insights into conspiracy psychology. In fact, M...
Aug 27, 2022•2 hr 15 min•Ep 53•Transcript available on Metacast 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 & philosopher, John Vervaeke and the amateur theologian/icon carver, Jonathan Pageau. Specifically, we join...
Aug 21, 2022•47 min•Ep 52•Transcript available on Metacast 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 time he is back to talk about the recent assassination of the former Japanese prime minister, Shinzo A...
Aug 20, 2022•2 hr 41 min•Ep 51•Transcript available on Metacast 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 entirely positive. As Bob says in this episode, "You liked me, you really liked me!". So, this was actu...
Jul 31, 2022•2 hr 25 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 about time to dip back into the ineffable well of the undisputed master of metaphors given that he s...
Jul 24, 2022•2 hr 37 min•Ep 50•Transcript available on Metacast 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 play along you can add your own scores for Lex, Haidt, or any of our previous gurus here: Rate the Gu...
Jul 10, 2022•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 accidentally turned into a joint decoding episode of his guest, the 'heterodox' social psychologist, Jonathan H...
Jul 08, 2022•3 hr 4 min•Ep 49•Transcript available on Metacast 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 steak. Far from providing the typical zero-calorie bland corporate platitudes, Nathan quickly drew ...
Jun 11, 2022•2 hr 7 min•Ep 48•Transcript available on Metacast 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 a penchant for opening tech lectures barefoot with impromptu performances of exotic instruments. In ...
May 30, 2022•2 hr 55 min•Ep 47•Transcript available on Metacast 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 not always house universal truths. For anyone interested in reading the paper it is available for fre...
May 24, 2022•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast 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 Psychologists, Four Beers podcast. Mickey has now hung up his podcasting headphones but like an old prizefi...
May 20, 2022•2 hr 12 min•Ep 46•Transcript available on Metacast 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, covid debates, Japanese maid cafes, and the great ghost debate of 2022. Following that we move on t...
Apr 29, 2022•2 hr 16 min•Ep 45•Transcript available on Metacast 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 not. If you have not experienced one of Timbah's documentaries you should go do so now. He has an e...
Apr 23, 2022•2 hr 3 min•Ep 44•Transcript available on Metacast 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 a barrel of laughs but we hope this episode offers some useful insights into the approach of a genui...
Apr 09, 2022•2 hr 47 min•Ep 43•Transcript available on Metacast 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 and Elgen deftly introduces us to the manipulative cult dynamics he experienced first hand, as well...
Mar 31, 2022•2 hr 31 min•Ep 42•Transcript available on Metacast Another interview episode - we've had a flurry recently but don't worry, we'll be returning to a good ol' fashioned decoding episode very soon. This week we just couldn't resist the opportunity to have a chinwag with our podcasting compadre Julian Walker , an eloquent writer on evidence-based & conspiracy matters and co-host of the Conspirituality podcast. Julian's a yoga instructor and (maybe even) a spiritual kinda guy, but has long opposed the conspiratorial, anti-science, and exploitativ...
Mar 26, 2022•2 hr 58 min•Ep 41•Transcript available on Metacast Hot on the heels of our Joe Rogan Trilogy, the big red phone at Decoder HQ rang with an intriguing proposal. Well, it was more of a DM, and it said, "Hi, love your show, would love to come on talk about Joe. Josh Szeps". "Josh Szeps?" we thought. "Who's that?" 5 mins of internet research later we found out it was none other than the voice of Olly the Kookaburra at the 2000 Sydney games! Well, we have to have him on, we thought. And as a bonus, he's also been on the Joe Rogan Experience where he ...
Mar 17, 2022•2 hr 43 min•Ep 40•Transcript available on Metacast 
