Decoding the Gurus - Contrapoints: Making Philosophy Fabulous Again

Episode Date: December 28, 2020

Natalie Wynn is kind of a big deal. Her YouTube channel Contrapoints explores not only philosophy, but also politics and social issues. Praised by august publications such as the New Yorker and the Atlantic, there's little doubt that she has her finger on the pulse of contemporary internet culture (and its wars). The production values, costumes, and set dressings are all a sight to behold... and completely invisible on this podcast.Nevertheless, armed with a menagerie of alter-egos, Contrapoints does delve into some pretty deep waters and has garnered quite a cult following, despite (or perhaps because of) her self-deprecating humour and refusal to take herself too seriously.So, what is going on here, behind the cat eye contact lenses and elaborate costumes? Does she actually back up the insights she purports to provide with careful arguments? Will the duo decide that Contrapoints is just like Russell Brand: all style and no substance? Is her deprecating humour merely cover for a rampaging and performative ego? Will Matt ever find out where he can get his hands on that fabulous wallpaper?All these questions, and more, will be answered in this exciting new episode!LinksJustice (Part 1) VideoNew Yorker article on Contrapoints

Hello and welcome to Decoding the Gurus, the podcast where two academics listen to content from the greatest minds the online world has to offer and we try to understand what they're talking about with me as always is the podcast's most valuable player the man whose dark energy makes it all worthwhile chris kavanagh hi chris how are you ah that's it's a very touching sentiment coming from matthew smith it's beautiful it's beautiful so thank you thank you yeah we value your your sarcasm oh sorry sorry matthew brown matthew brown i i will remember this one day i'll i'll get it thank you chris it's it's it's a real mystery why you get into so many fights on twitter i don't get it yeah i'll have to work out why that is one day. But yes, good morning, Matt.

Good morning, good morning. So we've got a few things to get through before we get on to the person of the hour. We got some shout outs. We got some, we don't have corrections, but... Well, I do have a correction to surprise you with. You remember Scott Adams? If not, I can do the chuckle for you so that no need no need i remember yeah so this isn't a correction but just a couple of people mentioned

that we didn't really dwell on that he he has a background in hypnosis and neurolinguistic programming and we did talk about you, the science of persuasion stuff, but some listeners said it's a big part of all that stuff that we're talking about, that he regards it as he's a master manipulator based on his understanding of hypnosis and neuro-linguistics and so on. And I do think it's true that those techniques he's actually intentionally trying to employ them so just to say i agree with the people that that is a significant part of why he's such a terrible terrible person yeah i agree with that too i was vaguely aware that he's had some sort of sort of background in that in persuasion but just for the record yeah neurolinguistic programming

is a load of bollocks so i think hypnosis is mostly as well so i mean he's a it's kind of like saying he's a master of pickup artistry true true well i guess another um not a correction but a little bit of background to add to our last interview with Dan is that he's a very modest young man and he didn't shoot his own horn. And we are such inept interviewers that we didn't actually ask enough questions to reference his background. So people might have noticed that he had a surprisingly good grasp of maths and economics and above your average internet user or academic for that matter so so why was that math that's because he's got a phd in statistics from cornell chris so that's um yeah that's the kind of thing one would often mention when introducing i guess yes so yeah um but thanks again to denga

but that was a great interview and yeah we have to talk to him again sometime hey yes mainly because of him so yeah we enjoyed that um so next month we have a quick update to do about the patreon which we launched last time and it's going very well we now have as of today 48 patrons which i think it's fair to say is maybe 45 more than you as i expected um and so so that's this is very good yeah thank you it's very good i'm just wondering i mean it's very flattering and we're so grateful i'm just wondering how much of it has got to do with our budget pricing of $2 a month. Just don't spoil the illusion. We are a successful podcast. We are in several charts in different countries, top 200s.

Oh, I was going to save this for later, but I'll spoil the surprise now. So first of all, we've been let down by the Icelandic contingent. We're out of the top 200 charts there, but we were briefly in the Lebanese top 200. We're also out of that now though. And where we are, Matt, Where we are, Matt, is try not to get too excited, but rank 241 in Slovenia. Slovenia. What does it say about us, Chris,

where we always seem to be appearing in the charts in countries that don't speak English? Yeah. Well, I think that just speaks to the diversity of the intellectual appeal that we have. And really, our message crosses all language barriers. That's it, Matt. Some people don't even understand English and just listen to the podcast.

They kind of absorb by osmosis, I believe. Even though I'm pretty sure it's Slovenia and all of those countries that we have mentioned with the exception of Lebanon. Lebanese might be the common tongue there. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's Slovenia. Of those countries that we have mentioned with the exception of Lebanon, Lebanese might be the common tongue there. Yeah, I don't know. But anyway, I'm sure people are just picking up the vibe. They're feeling it.

They know what's going on. Yes. So there we go. We'll keep you up to date on our ever-changing position on obscure charts. But to get back to the Patreon, so we have a bunch of tiers. We have the conspiracy hypothesis tier, the revolutionary thinker tier, and the galaxy brain tier.

And to say thank you to people for signing up, we are going to give a couple of people every week a shout out until we get through everyone. To make that slightly more entertaining, I copied another podcast I like called Knowledge Fight, which is about Alex Jones. And they prepare these little sound bumpers when they're giving everyone a shout out. So I have prepared three lovely sound bites for our three tiers. So you haven't heard these yet. So this will be a live reaction from Matt. So the first person to say thank you is Kevin, who is a revolutionary genius. Maybe you can spit out that hydrogenated thinking and let yourself feed off of your own thinking.

What you really are is an unbelievable thinker and researcher, a thinker that the world doesn't know. Wow. Kevin. Thank you, Kevin. Thank you, Kevin. All of those things and more. That's right. And then we have David Bridgman, who is a galaxy brain guru.

You're sitting on one of the great scientific stories that I've ever heard. And you're so polite. And hey, wait a minute. Am I an expert? I kind of am. Yeah. I don't trust people at all. Oh, my God.

The chuckles, Chris. The chuckles. You had to do that. that yeah it kind of feels like peeing for people but congratulations david bridgman you've extended the level of a galaxy brain guru thank you david david you're so polite but we don't trust you yeah yeah then we have a friend and collaborator of mine rohan kapatatni, who is a conspiracy hypothesizer, as I've often suspected. Every great idea starts with a minority of one.

We are not going to advance conspiracy theories. We will advance conspiracy hypotheses. Wonderful. Wonderful. Rohan, thank you, Rohan. You're in a minority of one. Yeah. It would be very depressing to know how long I had to search to find that

wise thing. But anyway, moving on, before I think more about my life choices, we have David Love, who is a galaxy brain guru. So Scott Adams is coming back. You're sitting on one of the great scientific stories that I've ever heard. And you're so polite. And hey, wait a minute. Am I an expert? I kind of am. Yeah. I don't trust people at all.

Oh, I love it. I love it. Yeah. And we'll hit one last one for this week. Lucy Greaves, who is a conspiracy hypothesizer. Every great idea starts with a minority of one. We are not going to advance conspiracy theories. We will advance conspiracy hypotheses. Thank you, Lucy. Congratulations on your hypotheses. Thank you, Lucy. Keep hypothesizing.

Don't let the bosses get you down. Keep hypothesizing, indeed. And we do have an AMA planned at some stage for the Patreon. We're still trying to work that out. So if people have any questions, whether or not they're Patreons, it would be nice for them to submit them to the email account, decodingthegurus at gmail.com. We'll probably release the AMA on the Patreon first and then later on the feed, something like that. We'll work it out. But if you have any questions, send them because if no one sends any questions, I have unilaterally decided that the AMA will just be ask Matt anything. And I'll just ask Matt everything I want to know about luxury space communism for an hour. You haven't signed up

this Matt, but that's the plan. So you may hope people send in questions. Yeah, this is going to incentivize people because if they don't have real questions for us, they'll just hear me talking about some harebrained utopian concepts I've got. That's right. Something for everyone. Okay, good.

All right. So yeah, that'll be fun, the AMA. So yeah, please do send us in your questions or just anything that you want to just work out. Oh, ah, Matt, last thing before I shut up is that I wanted to read one review this week because unfortunately we're just so good that we are only getting five-star positive reviews.

And, you know, I usually read a negative review and a positive review, so I don't want to toot our horn too much. So I'm just going to toot it a little bit with a select review. So this is from Do You Go King? And the title is Action Packed. Imagine Chris O'Dowd and Chris Hemsworth teamed up to take on the world's most brilliantly maniacal Bond villains. Are you imagining that? Good. Now take that down from an 11 to a 3 and basically you've got this podcast.

So there's a little bit more, but just before we go on, I want to say, I didn't remember who Chris O'Dowd was and looked him up. And he's the IT crowd guy. You know, Irish people are all the same anyway. But, you know, Chris Hemsworth, I presume I'm the Irish one, right? And Chris O'Dowd is a funny guy, but he's kind of dumpy compared to Chris Hemsworth. So I get the better end of this deal. You got four. Imagine four, even like a level three, four. It's still, you know, it's better than a level three Chris O'Dowd. So I'm just flagging up. I'm not sure I'm down with

this. And I will note that this segment has now made me self-conscious about my th pronunciation because i i have received feedback from listeners about the way i butcher the th side uh so talking about four is not a good one for me not a good one yeah that's right i thought you said four and i was thinking what was he mentioning, like, were there some rating of us from three and four? Shut up. I figured it out eventually. I don't know how to make that sound.

It's not an Irish thing. It's just a me thing. So anyway, you barely need that TH sound in your life. But that was some excellent negging there to compare us to some famous actors and then to take it, take it, ratchet it down from an 11 to a three. So that, yeah, full respect. Excellent review. Yeah, there's more of it, but it is actually very nice and praiseworthy. So I'll feel bad

if I read this about ourselves. So instead I'll just read this very short one from D.H. Thompson, instead i'll just read this very short one from dh thompson 38 which says great potty that's the title never heard a podcast called the potty one of my favorite new podcasts it's a bit weird on twitter though though though listen to that um because dr brown tweets like dr kavanaugh talks is that an egg for you or an egg for me matt who who is that neg for i'm not sure dr brown tweets like dr cavanaugh talks does that mean look chris i don't i don't tweet like an angry irishman do i yeah well well matt you tweet like a sophisticated insightful irishman or i talk no wait it doesn't work yeah i talk like a yokel aussie uh bogan bogan bogan there we go with the aladdin your your racial slur or whatever that is um this is so sad people don't even know our slurs i actually have to help people

out with it yes go on yeah i think it's bogan is the equivalent of spied in northern ireland or chav in england anyway enough pejoratives enough reviews that is that's our housekeeping stuff isn't it not quite correct no it's not no we've got more one last little shout out we want to give a shout out to a friend of the cast. And you too, listener, can get this kind of special shout out. You only have to tirelessly promote our work, pile on to any arguments that Chris finds himself on Twitter, and also reply to all of Chris's DMs when he's whinging about shit that's happening online.

It's to Aaron Rabinowitz, who is the host of, what's he the host of? Embracing the Void, which is a fantastic one that I'm a subscriber to and I do enjoy a lot. Would you agree there, Chris? Oh, yeah. You clearly do. You remember the name so well. And he hosts a bunch of shows, Matt.

He doesn't do one thing. He has science fiction podcasts and all that stuff. So, yes, I concur with your shout out not not just because we have both been on this show and he has kindly promoted us but uh yeah well that's good that's good yeah he's a he's a great guy i mean politically he's a little bit complicated so you know he's a bit woke bit of a social justice warrior i think he's a bit woke, a bit of a social justice warrior. I think he's some kind of neo-communist. I did hear a rumor about him. I don't know if I should say it on air, Matt.

I've heard that he might be a philosopher. Oh, God. Chris, you shouldn't have mentioned that. We don't know if he's come out to his family yet. I mean, that's not something that I think he necessarily... I don't hold it against him. Some of my best friends are philosophers, but it's just you get used to it. Exactly.

You're not going to hear any prejudice and discrimination against philosophers on this podcast. We support them. We think that they're valid and that they can potentially make a contribution to society with our support. Yes, that's right. So philosophy, Twitter, you are seen we we see you and please don't cancel us or something like that's how it works right you just need that and then that never happens so yes i know we are pro philosophers we want to end discrimination against philosophers there's so much of it that's right we have at least three or four philosophers

who have said that our podcast is good. So they can't all be bad. That's right. Not all philosophers. Hashtag not all philosophers. All right. So I think that's all of our endless preamble. Are we done, Chris? Yeah.

So that's all for this week, folks. No. So we normally have been doing a state of the gurus roundup. have been doing a state of the gurus roundup. But in back pod chat, we both noticed that that tends to have quite a negative valence to it, partly because of the people we've covered. And also because when you're mentioning people, it's usually negative stuff that they've done that gets attention. So we're not going to do it every episode, just if there's something noteworthy, the state of the gurus will only come in when necessary.

Is that fair to say? Yeah, that sounds like a good plan. We're going to keep it positive. We're going to keep it light. But since it's the farewell to a beloved segment, I do have one thing to tell you, Matt, that is about one of our previous gurus and is very important that people know about because it's still a couple of days before Christmas. Maybe not by the time you've heard this. But anyway, Jordan Peterson's book, Beyond Order, I think this. Anyway, I noticed that he posted up on his account

that it's available as a Christmas gift. So you still have time to order it for your loved one, put it in the stocking. Oh, but wait, it's not coming out till March. So what you'll be, what you'll be supplying your, your significant dollar with is a voucher or a pre-order printable PDF receipt for a Jordan Peterson book in three months. Just what everybody wants. Just what everybody wants. No, I disagree, Chris.

They should definitely order that. They should give it to the kids, stuff those stockings with those receipts, and look at their smiling faces on Christmas morning. Yes. They'll have a receipt beyond order. stuff those stockings with those receipts and look at their smiling faces on christmas morning yes they'll have a receipt beyond order so that that's that's the that is our roundup of the the state of the gurus like james lindsey continues to be a nightmare on twitter just take that as a granted you couldn't resist mentioning that i couldn't yeah it's just it's just that will just continue in perpetuity so

okay i tell you what what we should do is we're going to mention exceptional things we should maybe make a point of mentioning it when when he stops being a nightmare on twitter that's probably a good point oh yeah not we can't do that because it will never happen. So yeah, if he makes a reversal of fortune, you'll hear it here first. Good. All right. So should we talk a little bit about who counts as a guru and the scope of the people that we're covering, Chris? Yes. So this does not come out of the ether. Because of the person that we're covering this week, who is ContraPoints, Natalie Nguyen from YouTube. It's fair to say that when we mentioned that we might cover her, we got kind of mixed reactions, which we talked about a bit with the episode with Dan on the interview.

And it led to this question of what counts as a guru and how are we defining gurus and what do we mean by that and all these kind of serious points i think liam bright another one of those philosopher types online also a neo-communist also a neo-communist we're just noticing a pattern that's all just we're not passing judgment just saying but um But he summed up nicely the common objection. So I'll read his tweet. It said, I guess I would typically take guru to involve at least some of, one, positions themselves as a leader.

Two, claims access to esoteric knowledge, maybe especially that ought guide how you live your life. Three, claims somewhat general expertise. She fits none of those. So I'll let you go first, Matt. What do you say to Liam? So I think what it points to is a bit of a tricky thing in terms of how we define or

what's the scope of people that we deign to cover and also another fuzzy category of people who kind of do things to one degree or another that is guru-like with these sort of negative connotations which is the stuff that Liam is hinting at a little bit so we can obviously define it any way we like. And what I suggest is that in terms of who we cover, I think we want to cover anyone who's interesting, who seems to have takes and commentary on a broad range of things, is perceived to have a sort of deep insight

and some special kind of knowledge in some way, shape or form, and maybe attracts a bit of a loyal following. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that they are doing the bad guru stuff or deceptive or rhetorical things that we tend to focus on, but that's kind of what we do. We listen to them and decide to what degree that stuff is happening. What do you think? So I would agree with Liam and all the people that made the same point that ContraPoints is not a guru in the same way that, say, Scott Adams is. And to draw a really tight parallel between them would be a false equivalence.

But in the sense that I think they can be classed together is kind of the point that you were making that some segment of their audience, regardless of how they position themselves, treats them as a guru. Because I think when we initially were interested in this topic, we were looking at some of the prototypical figures that we've covered, you know, Jordan Peterson, Taleb, Stephen Molyneux, Eric Weinstein, these kind of people. into the sphere of being thought leaders or people with significant influence who are more self-deprecating and have a greater level of self-awareness. And I also agree that it doesn't necessarily hold that somebody who can be categorized as a guru is somebody that's having a negative impact on the world or using manipulative techniques. That isn't the point. There's certainly a lot of gurus who do that, but it's more about

their status or perceived status that I think makes them fit. And I will note that one of the reasons that we even considered to cover her was when we asked people about left-wing gurus to cover. She was one of the people that was most recommended. So it's clear that for some people, she is a guru. Yeah. Yeah. And I think we're treating our scope pretty broadly. I'd include, say, people like Richard Dawkins or Noam Chomsky within the remit of people that we might potentially cover. I'd see it as pretty much anyone who you might see doing a TEDx type or a TED talk with that. And it's not necessarily a bad thing, but some of them are being a guru in a performative kind of way and going through the motions of offering substance without actually offering any substance. So I

think the fun thing that we can do is take some of their content and listen to it and overanalyze it and try to figure out whether or not they appear to us to be substantive thinkers or not. So yeah. We mentioned in the first episode and have hinted otherwise that we do want to cover people not only we agree with, but might even admire. And I'm under no illusions that that would be an easy thing to do. By the nature of this podcast, we are inherently critical of the people that we're covering because we're looking at the arguments and being analytical of stuff. So there is an element of criticism inherent to it, but I would genuinely like to do it with people that we share ideological views with or might regard as genuinely people worthy

of admiration. And it's fair to say that with ContraPoints, I actually enjoyed listening to her content. listening to her content. And after Scott Adams and Russell Brand and JPCers, it was just nice to have something that was enjoyable. It definitely was. Yeah. I think in a nutshell, the important takeaway here is not to read too much into the mere fact of us covering someone i kind of feel a little bit bad about putting really anybody next to scott adams in our lineup actually we feel bad like even for alex jones maybe you know maybe he maybe he'd be the exception but like yeah scott adams is such a vile human that just even being in the same feed as him

is somewhat polluting. Oh, Chris, Chris, you've just reminded me of the other innovation we wanted to announce before getting into ContraPoints, which was the ratings system we might introduce. Oh, yeah. We talked about this in an earlier version of this segment, which may or may not

have been recorded and destroyed. But yeah, this is the idea that, again, that Knowledge Fight podcast that I listened to, they've listened to more episodes of Alex Jones than any human should ever have to. And they've done a deep dive on all the episodes. And I was thinking it would be really nice if they had kept records about the content of the shows, you know, when he indulged in anti-Semitism, when he was overtly racism, and you could trace when narratives come online and stuff. And they do that in a qualitative way. But my social science-y brain was thinking, since we're at the start and we've only covered it, people are so, so far, and we have this issue about different degrees of guruness,

that it might be an enjoyable thing to attempt to quantify that, you know, to have a bit of a think about what characteristics we're seeing repeatedly and rate the gurus on various aspects and then come up with like an overall guru score that is just for our entertainment. Although, you know, who knows, maybe we can convert it into a publication like all good social scientists opportunistically. But yeah, it might be the case that ContraPoints is very low on the guru scale, whereas Scott Adams is very high. Yeah. Was that a terrible job of explaining that? It was pretty bad, but that's okay. I did it better the freaking first time. I think I took you by surprise. That was the problem.

No, it's all right. Okay, Chris, I'm on board with this idea. As long as we can call it the gyrometer. Oh, yes, that's very good. The gyrometer, yes, it rolls off my tongue, as you can hear. It's almost as good as being in the G. Yes, it is, which we should probably explain to people because like people listening will have no reference that this is simply when you share our patreon link because of whatever dimensions i made to the

header it cuts decoding the gurus into ding the g so yes, somebody pointed that out. And I think it's a catchy catchphrase. It's already caught on, Chris. People on Twitter are talking about dinging the G. Yeah, many people are talking about it. Many people in many coffee shops are talking about it. It's very street. It's very hip. It's very now.

I love it. It is. But it's always good to tell people that are listening about the actual references that we're making. Because not everyone listens to every single tweet on Twitter, Matt. Nobody listens to them. They read them, Chris. That's very good.

So let's move on to the next segment. Because I have nothing to say back to that. And the next segment is indeed the actual segment that people came for the main point of the podcast to look at contra points yeah do you want to tell us who contra points is a bit i can sure i contra points i'm looking at, I've got the Wikipedia article in front of me. Yeah, this is the professionalism that people come for. Yeah, so what does Wikipedia say about Culture Points? Well, Culture Points is an American YouTuber whose videos explore politics, gender, ethics, race, philosophy. Yeah, so look, I'll start again.

So, Natalie. I like that. Yeah, well, it's right. It's Wikipedia. You know, it's edited. I'm like, oh. Okay, yeah. Yeah, so Natalie produces YouTube videos.

And to be honest, Chris, I had seen only a couple prior to us, prior to preparing for this episode. And that's just because I think I'm the wrong demographic, being uncool and old and everything. Ancient. Ancient. Ancient, yeah. So I was only dimly aware of her, but I knew that she was pretty hip and happening.

So, yeah, she produces very interesting videos. They are kind of a mix of art and science i was going to say but i guess it's more like art and philosophy so the production values are really high and she has a very distinctive and theatrical style of presentation and she does grapple with pretty intricate and i think interesting topics almost the kind of stuff you might see in a university course, for instance, but doing it in a very artistic way. Yeah, would you agree with that summary? I mean, she's got a really distinctive aesthetic

and also it'll be slightly weird to analyze them without the visuals attached because that's at least 50% of them. The audio doesn't do justice to it. So it is worth watching. And the video that we're covering is justice part one. You might know that that suggests there will be a justice part two, which isn't out yet. So we may actually do a follow-up when she releases that because this one was fun. But I also wanted to note that her videos are not only a mixture of philosophy and... Politics and social commentary.

Yeah, thank you, Matt. But also massive amount of ironic pop culture references and like internet culture stuff and culture war stuff. So it's kind of like this very postmodern mix of references. Oh yeah, we should probably also mention that she's a transgender person and that she made her transition publicly in her videos, documenting it and reflecting on the process in videos in quite an intimate fashion, which I think gives people like you or me, Matt, maybe insight into an area that we know very little about. But that isn't the topic of this video. And there are also some controversies within the trans and non-binary communities. And she has made videos about being cancelled. And there's a whole bunch of debates back and forth.

And basically, cowardly people that we are, we are not going to focus on them because we don't feel particularly qualified to. focus on them because we don't feel particularly qualified to. And to be honest, from the bits that I've dug into, it does seem to be quite a lot of inside baseball to those communities. So I'm not really sure that we have a ton of stuff that we could add. Yeah. I guess the other comment I'd make too is that I think it's a bit reductionist to think of ContraPoints as being merely a commentator on that insider baseball type stuff. Because a lot of her videos, like the one we're reviewing today about things like justice, are their own thing. And so she's a very interesting character putting aside all of those issues. In contrast to a lot of the people that we've already listened to, her stuff is legitimately funny, not like JPCers or even Russell Brand's kind of funny stuff.

It's funny. And that makes analyzing somebody who's actually funny, it can have a kind of cringy nature to it, right? Like because you're dissecting jokes. So I want to flag up that hopefully we're not doing that or we don't intend to do that. It's but it's slightly unavoidable given the nature of her content, because like humor is a big part of it. And also the fact that it's enjoyable. I think maybe this is a good place to start. This content is clearly left leaning liberal and more to the progressive side of that. And one characteristic feature of that, which I think is kind of catnip for liberal people, is the amount of irony and layers and

layers of irony that is present in this video. There's irony making self-deprecating comments about herself. Then there's irony directed at critics and responses to critics and the YouTuber ecosphere in general and conventions of online videos and so on. So it's sometimes hard to pinpoint who the target of the ironic reference is. And it's very likely that you and I will miss a whole bunch of stuff. But yeah, maybe it would be good to give an example of that to see what I'm talking about. In ancient Babylon, there was a king called Hammurabi who enacted one of the first law codes in the world around 1750 BC, an era that scholars refer to as history times. The code of Hammurabi looked like this. The laws were crudely scratched into the stone using some primitive

attempt at writing. I mean, it was like a thousand years ago, so I'm sure they were doing their best. It's very good, sweetie. I'll hang it up on the refrigerator for you. I was expecting this replica to be bigger, sort of a spinal tap stonehenge situation. The actual... Yeah, so that's like a random clip in the middle of things but i think it's a good illustration of giving information making sardonic asides and then breaking the fourth wall to talk about the small size of the hamurabi replica and making a joke out of it like it's it's all of those things together yeah it's generally funny and entertaining isn't it like just the little things like referring to this stuff it's the history

times and um it's self-deprecating as well so it's um yeah it's an attractive an attractive mode of presentation very attractive it's definitely funnier than us that's fair i'm feeling less and less funny the more i analyze as we analyze humor well there's some things to be said about i think the use of irony but i will note that the topic for this video is justice and a philosophy video about justice is something that you could imagine in the rationalist sphere of YouTube. I could imagine Sargon of Akkad producing a lecture about that. But she does a really good job of combining actual information

and interesting philosophical views with humor and ironic stuff. So yeah, as you're saying, Chris, we chose this episode partly just because it was a new one. And we'd seen a few other episodes and we thought it was pretty representative. And it's true what you say.

The interesting thing about it in terms of the actual content she's presenting, it's not particularly partisan. It isn't littered with hot takes. It's actually presenting a lot of very orthodox information the kind of stuff that people might otherwise get in an introduction to philosophy type course they were taking at university but of course the difference is is contrapoints is presenting it with a whole lot of flair so she's

really performing a kind of intellectual outreach, I suppose, in terms of bringing stuff that happens in stuffy lecture theaters to a much broader public. Yeah. And one example of that, which I think shows both the overlap in content with other YouTubers or online philosophy type and the distinction is when she had this segment which reminded me of Evo Psych Twitter. But as you'll see, also very distinctive from that. Social animals like humans and chimpanzees often practice revenge,

probably because it serves an evolutionary function. If another monkey in your monkey troop steals your bananas and you don't get revenge, then other monkeys will learn that you're a doormat monkey. But if you get revenge on the thief monkey by, I don't know, letting her boyfriend pick parasites out of your fur, then that sends a message to the other monkeys that it is not profitable to mess with you. So our little monkey brains have evolved a taste for vengeance. mess with you so our little monkey brains have evolved a taste for vengeance yeah so it's kind of brave of her being on the very much uh left side of politics to make an evo psych uh interpretation

i think in in this context but i think she's right chris about the instinctive um desire for retributive justice that we have i I think this is probably the first hot take or slightly warm take that I identified of hers, that we're evolutionarily wired to get a pleasant kick out of seeing justice being served or revenge, if you prefer. But personally, I think that's a good take and pretty accurate. What do you think? personally i think um that's a good take and pretty accurate what do you think yeah i also thought though that she was kind of casting shade at the evil psych people because she's using that kind of explanation and legitimately invoking evolutionary history but she's also making a funny just so story with monkeys and bananas so So my take on it, and this is probably a good illustration

that you can read things in multiple ways, was that that was intended both as an illustration and a little bit mocking of the kind of traditional evil psych explanations. Yeah, I think that gets back to that point that you were getting at before about the use of irony. And I agree with you that it is like it's very prevalent it's it's not just contrapoints but it's it's a lot of people um including us

that uses that mode online and publicly and i think that's a personally i suspect that it's a bit of a defense mechanism like defense mechanism or a protective mechanism because it does allow one to always retreat if one does experience. And we all know that we could experience just a ridiculous amount of criticism and pushback for what might be a relatively anodyne point, being accused of all kinds of things. So it's actually quite helpful to use that ironic mode because on the off chance that you do get some really harsh criticism potentially unjustified one can retreat to oh i had my had my tongue firmly in my cheek as i was

making that yeah so it works on a couple of. There's an example which speaks to that kind of, if it's not an intentional tactic, it's just thing which is useful when you make that kind of presentation. This is in a segment where she's talking about the police and police violence and her awareness that people criticize her. So let me just play that.

Look, maybe you're assuming I'm one of these libtarded, Antifa-sympathizing, big government anarchists who sits behind my iPhone with my latte, criticizing the police, even though I could never do a job one-tenth as difficult as theirs. And to that I say, how dare you assume things that are entirely correct? This is, excuse me, a damn fine cup of coffee. And she continues. But I think that's a nice example of judo flipping criticisms that you raise them in advance and basically endorse them in an ironic way which means that

if somebody brings them up they kind of look stupid because you already acknowledged the issue and like made fun of it yeah i think you're right about that it is definitely an um a rhetorical technique and my take on this is it's a very, well, first of all, it's not just ContraPoints who does it, we all do it. And one justification for doing that is that you can signal to people that you're aware of that criticism and you don't really want to engage with it now. So for example, this particular episode is about justice. And if you don't want to be derailed and spend the next 30 minutes addressing all of these potential criticisms, you can, in a relatively short segment like that, signal that you're aware of them.

So I guess that's my defense, I suppose. And it's not illegitimate to do that. The point, I think, is with all of these rhetorical techniques that we talk about, there are some that are more illegitimate than all those like God Adams, again, the prototypical example of a human rhetoric creature is mainly using bad rhetorical techniques. But there are ones that are neutral because to make any argument, the philosophers are probably scratching their ears out. But I think you do inevitably use rhetoric to present your argument in a convincing way. Now, hopefully you have substantive points behind that, but it would be very rare to see

a person who never engages in any form of rhetoric. And another example of how she does this, which I've seen in other videos as well of hers and other people, is to create a parody of somebody sending an email to complain about something. So there's this segment where she's talking about Albanian sworn virgins, which are people who were women at birth, but are kind of socially and for all intents and purposes, allowed to live as men. And she was talking about this. Well, we'll see. Okay, so here's that clip. I think it shows how devastating the blood feuds must have been because only desperation would lead a European country hundreds of years ago to support trans rights. No one wants that, so you know it was a last resort.

Um, sworn virgins weren't transgender. Most were compelled to... Yeah, I know that, Sweaty. It was just a joke, okay? Calm down. Yeah, so I guess the useful thing just to be aware of is it's quite innocuous. It's just one should be aware that when one does that,

one isn't actually addressing it. One is quite deliberately just putting it aside and saying, look, I'm not going to address that here, which is fair enough, but one shouldn't get the mistaken impression that it's been dealt with because it has. I think it's a nice illustration of the exact point you made that if you want to acknowledge a point, but you don't want to dwell on it, you can just like flag it up and say, yeah, yeah, yeah, I get that. But you know, let's move on. And it works, right? It feels like a kind of sister tactic to the one that we have flagged up in other episodes where people mention awareness of a criticism or a point,

but then they don't actually address how they are then not falling into it. Yes. For a fourth wall breaking example, we often poke fun that we are two opinionated middle-aged white guys, right? But that shows that we are aware of that criticism but it doesn't actually mean that's not what we are or that criticism doesn't land so like we do it too everyone does it but uh it remains unresolved chris unfortunately we can't change that at least yet so okay so while we're still on this i have one example, which made me feel a bit

better about our decision not to focus on the cancellation episode or one of the more controversial episodes. This is her talking about cat girls versus dog girls. Revenge cycles also happen on a larger scale between communities, nations, ethnicities, religions. I'm worried if I give a real example, I'll be canceled for seeming neutral about a conflict where I'm supposed to take a side. So in the interest of cowardice, let's say that the cat girls bombed the dog girls, and then the dog girls bombed the cat girls. Right. You get, you get the point. Yes. Yeah. I just thought parallels are own in the interest of cowardice. I think wrong with cowardice.

As long as you admit it as well, I think that's helpful, right? Yes. But also an awareness of potential controversy, because it's also a legitimate point. If you take the Northern Ireland conflict or you take Palestine and Israel, you know, there's a lot of phony issues to navigate. So, you know, dog girls versus cat girls, it's funny and it's easier to make a point that won't make one group of people very mad. Yeah, and I think it's a good technique because like the setting aside potential criticisms before, it allows ContraPoints to stay on track with the topic of this episode,

which is about justice. So in taking a purely hypothetical thing, it's a little bit like, you know, the example of talking about little Indians or big Indians. I don't know if people are currently aware of that, but that's, you know, what the hell is this man oh look i'll um we could put a we could put a thing in in the notes but it's like one of these prototypical arbitrary divisions between two camp and it's a useful completely abstract example to give when you don't want to be distracted by giving a concrete example like israel palestine conflict which is just going to distract everybody from the more general point you're trying to make so i would once again classify this as good rhetoric is this like little indian small indian like you know racist um native american indians no it is not chris. It's Indians with an E. Indians. Oh, okay. I thought you were

giving an example of people dodging a 40 issue by invoking a non-PC term for Native Americans. Look, this is a complete aside but it's just it's a purely arbitrary decision in computer science in terms of data representation but it's been sometimes used as an example to describe two camps which are separated on entirely arbitrary grounds so it's very non-emotive and won't get you into any kind of trouble. That's right. Much less trouble than big Indians and little Indians. So kind of still sticking on the point of irony and self-deprecation. I think that there's a definite genuineness to the self-deprecation that is in the video. She quite often makes self-deprecating comments and they're endearing, but they kind of function in the same way

of making like a comedy defensive wall. I'll play two examples and then we can discuss them. So here's the first one. This technique was used in one of the first books ever, The Odyssey by Homer. I stole this copy from my high school and I stole this copy from my college. I still just read the spark notes. Well, let's read it now. See, I knew this would be useful someday. So that's that's one. And number two is the philosopher Francis Bacon defined revenge as a wild justice, according to the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article about revenge. Research.

I am very smart, meow. Yeah, so self-deprecating humor, right? Yes, but I think also has a point of marking how easy it is to appear authoritative in YouTube videos, right? By just putting up disembodied quotes and stuff. So actually Socrates didn't say this quote. I just made it up, but that just proves the point I'm making. So maybe you should hear me out. So I don't know. To me, it's like meta irony because she also does that in the video, right? Like she is putting up the quotes from philosophers and is doing research on Wikipedia, but is also pointing out the absurdity of that or like

why you shouldn't be so impressed with just this embodied quote. This technique was used in one of the first books ever, The Odyssey by Homer. I stole this copy from my high school and i stole this copy from my college i still just read the spark notes well let's read it now see i knew this would be useful someday it's like poking fun at the genre and still using that yeah am i explaining things that are incredibly obvious yeah i guess i'm struggling to see any issue with that because i don't think there is any issue with giving quotes from philosophers or anybody in a youtube video so no no i'm not saying like that she shouldn't do that i actually mean it more

like it's a feature of her content i see that self-aware, much more self-aware than any of the previous people that we've covered and stands in distinct contrast to say someone like Stefan Molyneux, who was a YouTube guru type on the slightly different edge of the spectrum, to put it mildly. But he did that thing, right, of showing graphs and showing quotes, but he didn't do the self-reflective self-deprecation. So by her doing it, it is implicitly criticizing the people who use that as a means of hearing authoritative, like Sorgan of CAD or Stefan Molyneux that that's how i read it um

but but maybe i'm reading too much i think you are reading too much into it but i think it's a good point that this is one of the major things that distinguishes contra points from the other gurus that we've covered even the ones that we don't mind too much like ritka bregman in that in general if ritka shows a bit of humor and self-deprecation but in general they tend to take themselves extraordinarily seriously and they present their material in terms of these great insights like they've been carved into marble or something and ContraPoints while actually providing a lot more substandard material which we haven't talked about too much yet um and the quotes for instance that she's presenting are

completely um opposite and relevant and useful but at the same time is endlessly criticizing or or mocking herself or being self-deprecating and And I agree with you, part of it can be, with the irony and everything, can be a bit of a defense strategy, which is, I think, understandable, especially given the amount of criticism that someone like her tends to attract. So I think it's pretty understandable to be a little bit cautious about that. But in general, yeah, I think it's an interesting point of distinction from the other gurus that we've covered yeah so maybe i'm expressing myself badly because i don't think that it's just a defensive technique i think it is inherent to her nature and the nature of the area of bread tube or left wing YouTube that she inherits,

that everything is drenched in layers of self-referential irony. And this does distinguish her and others within that sphere from the right wing side. I mean, I don't know these areas. I'm not super familiar with YouTubers in general. But from what I've seen, people like Sargon of Akkad and Stefan Molyneux look like they take themselves a hell of a lot more seriously than Hitchbomberguy and ContraPoints. Yeah, no, I get what you're saying now. I think you're right. I think it does indicate a much saying now. I think you're right. I think it does indicate a much higher level of maturity and self-awareness. And I think you're also right in that it's a general thing that you see across the left, but that doesn't actually mean in many cases that people are more self-aware. It can be taken too far, I think. And sometimes you don't really know what somebody is saying like do they ironically like Stalin or

do they unironically like Stalin it can be sometimes hard to hard to tell not that I think at least from what I've seen the contra points does go too far but I think many people do take that ironic mode much too far and it becomes very hard to understand what it is they're saying unironically yeah so like i mean i think that people are good at realizing the issue with this on the opposite side of the spectrum right when the alt-right shit posters are posting nazi stuff and saying well but it's just ironic nobody think well not well, not nobody, lots of people buy that, but people on the left tend to quite easily see the issue there, right? Like the irony doesn't mean that you're not just posting Nazi shit, but there is a greater tolerance on the left for irony around gulags and guillotines and that whole sphere, which, you know, I'm not a hundred

percent sure that the, you know, it's kind of the point that you made that irony is a really useful thing. And I'm not saying like, I expect that our philosopher friends, for example, want to guillotine all moderates. But I am unclear sometimes about how much the including images of Stalin or whatever is ironic versus, well, he is an important figure in communist history, you know, so we should feature him in things. Good points, good points. But I think we have wandered away a fair bit from ContraPoints herself, haven't we? Yeah, well, she's usually the person arguing against that point of view. She has all her videos where she debates in the form of all her characters, people arguing for revolutionary views and the ironic or non-ironic presentation of totalitarian communists from the past. So

it's just an aside from her content that comes up. But to get back to her, so we haven't mentioned Matt yet that this entire video is done with her dressed up in a, I don't know how to describe it like an anime cat girl in like a exaggerated maid outfit kinda i am doing a terrible job of describing it but uh can you do better with your luxury aesthetic sense i probably can't do better it's um because it is hard to describe people should just go watch the video but it does remind me of that fashion that was very popular in japan for a while which amongst a small subset of young women wearing these highly stylized french um rural um outfits do you know what that was called chris since you're in japan now or is that too long ago uh well from that description ma it sounds like you're describing the maid outfits and kawaii

culture in general yeah there was a much more specific fashion thing but i'm sorry it's since i can't remember what it was called it's very helpful. There's a ton of them and they're all flying around my head now, but lots of them are politically insensitive. So I will avoid suggesting them all. And instead just mention that she, like we heard in that clip where she was poking fun at Cackle reacting to the Hammurabi code and then saying jokingly,

we don't deserve rights. That she has another part where she is talking about this website here's a typical justice search post woman sets p-e-d-o husband on a fire after catching him r-a-p-e seven-year-old daughter, titled, This Man Got What He Deserved. Instant regret. Predator exposed. To be honest, when I wrote this part of the script, I forgot I was going to be wearing cat ears. I'm really out here trying to have a conversation about immolating sex offenders while dressed

like an aging bargain bin Belle Delphine impersonator. Well, dress for the job you want. Yeah, that's an interesting one, isn't it? So it includes a couple of things. It includes that fourth wall breaking and that self-deprecation and I guess personal kind of reflection on what the hell am I doing here? At the same time, she is doing it. As she describes, these are scripted and it's not just an off-the-cuff

thing so it's a little bit unclear as to what the i mean it's funny i suppose but is it is there i'm done with it it just seems to be an awareness of the inherent absurdity of what she is currently doing in the video. And it is intentional, like you say, but it's okay to point out the absurdity. And maybe that's part of what makes her appealing. I have this clip here. Maybe we'll get onto this next, but which is her laying out some quite clear philosophical stuff and then breaking into reference, trying to do that while wearing cat eye contact lenses. And it's a good example of the kind of combination of her content and what's unique about it. All of this raises a lot of questions. Questions like like what should the consequences be for bad behavior who should impose these consequences and under what circumstances and for what purpose if we

were to abolish police in prisons what would take their place oh my god these contacts i'm literally doing a whole video with fucking sideways cat eyes ridiculous yeah as you say chris this is really contra points in a nutshell because it seems like a lot of the interesting stuff that she's doing is trying to reconcile these two completely different things that she's doing. irony and the performance with some pretty dry and straight down the line but interesting to me because i'm a nerd um philosophical discussion about justice so that's the the eternal thing with contra points videos i suppose and that combining these two these two things that really don't combine very well and continually doing this juggling act which i think is uh part of the thing that makes her so interesting yeah and i and when you say don't combine very well just to be clear you mean they don't intuitively seem that they should work

together but but yet they do work together in her content right yeah like a like a jazz chord like a discordant jazz chord you know it's it's very difficult to to combine some very analytic philosophical material with art you know it's combining science and art and people do do it and it's it's interesting and challenging and yeah yeah it's not something we could do for example we don't have that as aesthetic flair or the pop culture references even the internet deep cut to do what she does yeah that's right and look cards on the table in terms of my personality or whatever i don't prefer combining those two things in terms of content that i like i'm like i'm quite happy with dry and boring and analytic didactic without any of the flair

and i that doesn't surprise me it doesn't surprise anyone i'm sure i mean listen to listen to our podcast for god's sake but ch, Chris, I do have an artistic side. I do enjoy it. I'm not the one saying this. This is you saying this. But, yeah, so this is me, cards at the table. I like to keep my world separate, but ContraPoints is definitely getting those worlds to collide.

And even though it's not my cup of tea, I can definitely see the appeal. It's very interesting. But I think one of the things that we've neglected to do, because we've jumped straight into these little facets or bits of rhetorical flair that she does, is that we haven't really provided the bigger picture of what she's doing here in terms of building up that analytical side of the argument, which I think she does in a very deliberate and well-crafted way. So do you have any clips that could illustrate that?

Yeah, I do. So the video opens with a discussion of the character of the Punisher, the comic book character, because his icon was displayed on some American police cars. And she wants to talk about what that suggests. There's been a lot of TV and movie adaptations of The Punisher. And as research for this video, I did watch all of them. And my conclusion is that the best one is the 1989 version where Dolph Lundgren dyes his hair black to pass as Sicilian and runs around naked and sweaty in the sewers,

worshipping the god of vengeance at a shrine of trash. You know, just like the police do. Yeah, so what ContraPoints is doing, she introduces this episode or incident regarding cops adopting their Punisher logo to serve as an introduction to the thesis that she spends most of this episode setting out. And it's very effective and appropriate in that it inspires interest, like it sets up the question, which is whether or not this is problematic for cops to do this. And of course, it is pretty problematic because The Punisher is all about this eye for an eye, extrajudicial vigilante revenge stuff, which obviously is not what cops are meant to be doing. It's inconsistent. So that sets up quite nicely the relatively dry content, which is talking about the distinction, if there is a distinction, between revenge and retribution and justice? And what does

justice even mean anyway? And are there different kinds of justice? And is it serving different kinds of purposes? So even the way I'm describing that now, because I'm a boring person, it sounds boring, right? And it could easily be boring to 95% of humanity. So I think the special talent that ContraPoints has got is injecting that flair, injecting that engaging interest to make what could be an extremely boring topic very interesting and engaging to a broad audience. Would you agree? Yeah.

interesting and engaging to a broad audience. Would you agree? Yeah. And I have a clip which speaks to the distinction that you were just mentioning about retributive justice versus revenge. So I'll play that first. There are supposed to be these differences between revenge and retributive justice, which is why it's so inappropriate for law enforcement to identify with the outlaw punisher. Modern criminal sentencing accepts retribution as a goal while rejecting revenge as lawless. However, I feel that retributive justice is still spiritually akin to revenge. It scratches the same emotional itch. It's basically revenge by proxy. If revenge is wild justice, then retributive justice is domesticated revenge. In both cases, there's a drive to restore the moral order of things, to balance out the

karma by harming the person who caused harm. Yeah, so that's a good illustration of the kind of content that you're talking about. That segment there doesn't have so many humorous interludes, but many of them do. And one thing that struck me, which I think you were already hinting at, is that compared to all of the other content we've looked at, and I would even include the Rutger Bregman interview, there's a real sense in this video that she's constructing an argument, right? Starting off with the punisher and what that signals about the American police and the relationship to justice. Then going through these different types of justice, at least two or three different types, to circle back to what reviewing both of those can then tell us about the initial example

related to the Punisher. And there's various other examples given, you know, going back to Hammurabi and talking about the justice served message board. So the thing that was refreshing was it actually was a coherent argument and not a kind of collection of dispersed views or elongated metaphors held together with fairy dust and willpower. Exactly. And, you know, people, you know, a casual viewer might potentially, I don't think serious viewers would miss this, but a casual viewer might miss that because of the presentation style and think that it is casual and artistic. And it is artistic, but at the same time,

she's putting together a very carefully constructed argument and is clearly working towards a particular thesis here. And as you say, it doesn't rely on intuitive hand wavy analogies it actually relies on relatively careful reasoning now you and i aren't obviously aren't philosophers we don't specialize in the philosophy of justice right so maybe she's making some errors but at least for a you know introductory level of audience which is where you and i are at it's very careful and well put together. The other thing that I like about it is that she doesn't speak to priors. She doesn't speak to points that her audience might be assumed to find just emotionally or intuitively appealing. So for instance, although she points out that this preference for retributive justice is

something that we generally associate with a right-wing authoritarian personality, she very quickly segues to talking about that kind of satisfaction of retribution that can occur on the left side of politics or just among people generally. For example, a woman setting her pedo, I'm using quotation marks here, pedo husband on fire, or it could be someone getting sacked and their family getting sacked because of some incorrect comment. So I admire the way in which she is often talking to points that are going to make her audience uncomfortable and force them to think and reflect a little bit. Yeah, she has a reputation as somebody that can reach out across ideological and political divides, most famously to reach people in the alt-right or like Jordan Peterson's fan community. And she's also expressed frustration at being regarded as an outright whisperer. But I think that this is an example of why she was good at that. There's an even-handedness to her presentation, even when it is clear that she is pushing a specific view or editorial line.

She still takes the time to attempt to present competing points of view and to do so with some degree of charity. So this is the clip that you were talking about where she is saying that it isn't just right wing people who take joy in retributive justice. But I don't think this longing for retribution is distinctively right wing. Left wing people have the exact same emotional response. They just have it in different situations. Think about the jubilation on Twitter when they get a racist Karen fired. Remember that ugly hag Lisa who harassed a black man in front of an apartment building?

Karma. And she got her husband fired. Dumb bitch really should have minded her business love to see it yeah so that's that makes for uncomfortable viewing for people who are in her audience you know it would be quite easy to project the unpleasant aspects of retributive justice onto some kind of out group right But what I like about what she's doing is that she doesn't give the audience the opportunity to do that.

She goes through a number of different examples, but essentially covers the entire gamut, making the point, which is a true one, I think, that every one of us is susceptible to a kind of rationalized sadism, enjoying or deriving satisfaction from, I guess, what you'd call legitimate violence, people who deserve getting hurt. And, you know, that makes for an uncomfortable

thing to think about. And yeah, that was probably the point in this episode where she really got my attention because I began to think that she was doing something very useful. Hmm. So maybe this is the segment that you're referencing. So this punitive retributive impulse, no matter how righteous it feels, is still basically a situational form of sadism, of schadenfreude. The satisfaction of justice served is the pleasure we take in inflicting or witnessing the suffering of someone who deserves it. Now, the phrase deserves it is doing a lot of work here. Yeah, and she's right, of course, that that phrase, that kind of enjoying the suffering of others without any justification is, you know, serial killer, like really crazy stuff.

The correct use of that phrase is the difference between a morally well-adjusted person and someone who's hiding bodies in the crawl space. It puts the lotion on its skin, yeah. the lotion on its skin yeah and it's pretty uncomfortable to think hey except for that little phrase oh but they deserved it then we're all kind of in that category yeah that relates to the reddit message boards that are focused on people getting no just desserts and the name of the one that she was talking about was Justice Served Board. And she mentions in that a quite graphic description of people taking joy from all their suffering. I dream of the day I catch the thieves that stole from me

and kick the life out of them. Criminal fail. Prank gone wrong. So when the righteous zeal for justice becomes the cloak of bloodlust, that is off-putting to some people. Yeah, it is very off-putting. Yeah, just a bit, but it's a good way to make that point. And it's more effective because it's funny. I think if you said it in a very po-faced, serious manner, it might land as well. I guess it depends on the delivery.

But for her style of content, it is off-putting. It lands much harder than a deep stare into the camera lens and full sincerity. I think it does, yeah. So this is the magic of bringing in the art, I suppose, where it forces the emotional engagement with the material. So to put this in context, the argument that she was setting out was starting off with a bit of a nod to the evolutionary origins of punishment behavior, which not just people, but animals do do. You can think of it as behavioral conditioning, where if somebody hurts you, then you slap them

back. And that because there's a consequence to their actions, then it deters the thing you want to extinguish. And then that lays a bit of the groundwork for talking about the psychology of bloodlust, to use her term, which I think was all pretty much spot on, including using those examples. And she also uses historical examples. You already played the stuff on Hammurabi. And she talks a fair bit about the Odyssey by Homer. Anyway, when Odysseus finally gets back to Ithaca, he finds that his house is full of men who are eating his food and drinking his wine and trying to marry his wife.

So Odysseus, and this is the hero of our story here, he murders all of his wife's suitors as payback. And then he rounds up all the slave women who slept with the suitors and he has them all hanged. And this one suitor, Melanthius, Odysseus ties him up and cuts off his ears and nose and feet and then rips off his genitals to feed to the dogs. In reading this, I guess I find myself asking, was this really necessary? Like as a test reader, my feedback for Homer is, maybe workshop this?

I mean, super unlikable protagonist, really kind of kills it for me. I guess it's a male protagonist and you can get away with making them unlikable because men love hearing about assholes. That's why they watch my channel. But yeah, I mean, she makes a very good point that the kind of retribution that Odysseus exacts on the suitors and even the presumably innocent slaves, that sort of vengeance he

enacted, it's quite chilling to the modern sensibility. It's quite chilling to the modern sensibility, but she explains very well why that kind of retribution is necessary in a society that doesn't have any kind of organized law, because you have to exert very strong vengeance, and the stronger the better, on anyone who disrespects you. And if you don't have recourse to a powerful third party in the form of a legal system, let's say you're in the mafia or you are in a tribal Scottish situation, say, which was famous for having these endless cycles of retributive violence, then it makes a kind of logical sense despite being gruesome and horrible. Yeah. So on the subject of the even

handedness when dealing with topics, she references the concept of toxic masculinity and does highlight the contemporary view on the harm it does that, you know, what would be the mainstream liberal view about toxic masculinity. But like you say, she then goes on to contextualize earlier forms of masculinity that would relate to that type of masculinity and how they were functional in the previous societies. But for people in situations where appealing to community or state law enforcement is not an option, such as kings of ancient Mediterranean islands, or gangsters who need to resolve conflicts outside of the law, or wild west cowboys, hard masculinity has a function.

It's a warning signal, like a skull t-shirt, or the stripes on a poisonous snake. And the poison is vengeance, justice served. So revenge is arguably the most basic form of retributive justice. Yeah, so I really like the kinds of points that she's making as you say, Chris, that what we consider aberrant or unhealthy behavior is socially situated. So we have these modern sensibilities where certain things are condemned or condoned. But I like the point that she's making, that we do tend to feel an instinctive or natural kind of joy at seeing justice served.

And that's a thing that we're probably all susceptible to. And likely there is a biological basis to that. So yeah, I think these are good points. These are uncomfortable points. They're interesting points. And she does an excellent job of laying them out and explaining them. Yeah. So there's another example that shows her chops at being able to explain historical context, like what you were just talking about, like the honor cultures in ancient Ithaca. And I keep thinking in these situations that if this was a Sargon of Akkad video, the same content would be patronizing, content would be patronizing pretentious and extremely annoying but she's able to explain that and give actual facts but not come across like a giant prick yeah yeah well that's right i mean i think what's really important is what what she doesn't do yeah like there's this absence

of speculative hot takes like there's a there's an absence of finding some tenuous way to relate this to showing how Trump is a Nazi or social justice war is a really fascist or something like that. You know, like there's an absence of bullshit, which is extremely refreshing. Yes, it is. Although I might contradict that with the next example,

but first I will play the Ithaca. And on the island of Ithaca in the year 1000 BC or whatever, honor was everything. Because this was a pre-legal society. No laws, no courts, no cops, schools out, fuck 12. So honor is a code of conduct enforced by reputation. And that's what kept people from stealing and lying and murdering each other, though it was also often the thing causing them to murder each other. Yeah, so I think it just serves as a bookend for that point that there's the humor stuff and all in there as well. But there also is just description of honor cultures and the role that reputations and fears play in them and i like it that style of presentation appeals to me agreed

yeah yeah but matt i said that perhaps you spoke too soon okay i'm not sure why i've dropped into shakespearean prose but this is not the kind of hot take really that you're talking about. But I just wanted to flag it up. So there's one section talking about religious alternatives to justice. And I want to describe the way that she characterizes Jesus and his doctrine. So here we go. And the main love and forgiveness guy is a preachy lib you may have heard of called Jesus of Nazareth. Okay, so that I think this is okay, referring to Jesus as a preachy lib. That's okay. That's okay to me, Chris. I don't know what you're talking about.

Yeah, that's a tick. But what about this one? You know, religion is a very subjective thing. And I have my own Bible interpretations. And my personal view is that a lot of what Jesus says is actually sarcasm. Like, consider Matthew 538. Why is no one talking about Matthew 538? Jesus says, is no one talking about Matthew 5 38? Jesus says, you've heard that it was said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also. Think of the drama of what he's asking you to do here. Someone strikes you across the face and you go, ugh. This is not pacifism. This is passive aggression, some sort of primeval Hebrew shade. This is the Christianity of, okay, well, I'll pray for it. I just want to add there, Matt, that the image of,

you know, sarcastic Jesus is something that deeply appeals to me. And I can already see the objection that one, it's not serious, but two, she flags up at the start in a way that people like Jordan Peterson don't. That, yeah, this is just my subjective interpretation. So even if it wasn't humorous, it would already be flagged as, yeah, I'm offering a hot take and that's all right. And I just enjoyed that. But she does go on a little bit more about other aspects of religion and its potential role as something that provides a supernatural third party punishment, right? This is from my field where religion gives you

the ability to outsource moral judgment to a supernatural force in another life. People say there's a special place in God's kingdom for little angels taken up so soon. And then they'll fantasize about the killer going to hell and being anally demolished by fire demons or whatever. People reassure themselves like this because it relieves the stress of enduring unresolved injustice. In the Bible, the book of Job deals with the problem of injustice. Why do bad things happen to good people? And the answer is, just don't worry about it. It's part of God's plan. It'll all work out in the end. It's fine. Everything's fine. She does go on a little bit more being about jesus's philosophy a disciple tries to defend jesus from being arrested after judas betrays him but jesus says

put your sword back in its place spartacus all who draw the sword will die by the sword now some people read that as saying that violence begets violence and should be renounced, even to the point where you shouldn't defend yourself, which is peak radical centrism, denying the right of marginalized people to defend themselves. Rethink this. Yeah, you know, Leslie, I actually just realized I just enjoyed that concept of Jesus telling people not to lift the sword would be seen as hashtag problematic telling minorities to accept their oppression she has a point it's yeah and it is she has a point and it is quite funny to think about that yeah i guess

where he's struggling is that um it's not entirely clear where she's just spitballing, having a bit of fun versus being ultra serious. And maybe that's okay. I don't know. Yeah, although I think it is fair to say all of these clips I've played are pretty clearly tongue-in-cheek. But there is a segment where she talks about the role of religion in justifying oppression, about, you know,

turning the other cheek or not raising a sword against oppressors. And she does caveat that with this. I guess I should disclaimer that hashtag not all religion and obviously many political activists have been influenced by faith, but let's put a pin in that for now. Yeah, I think she's right to put a pin in it, because it's a complicated thing, isn't it? Obviously, historically, not just Christianity, but things like Hinduism has played an important role in rationalizing the hierarchical social structures. So people have their role in life, and they deserve it. It's pretty terrible. But just have a stiff upper lip and don't worry because your rewards will be in heaven. And don't worry about the people who are

being horrible to you because they'll get their just desserts later on as well. So it's tongue in cheek, but she has a point. It certainly is a little bit problematic from a social justice point of view in rationalizing oppression. The prior point she made about turning the other cheek and about it being a kind of form of passive aggression is pretty funny too. I was imagining a woman doing this sort of demonstrative hair flicking and turning the cheek that way. She did that in the video.

That's maybe why you're... That's why I thought of it, right. Yeah. You know, I think that people have no issue when they're thinking about religion's role in justifying oppression to imagine Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism about the historical role that they've played,

but to annoy people who may be fans of Buddhism. Some of the traditional Buddhist doctrines about why people are disabled are not very social justice compatible because they're the definition of victim blaming in that it is a karmic reward for past misdeeds. So this is just me hashtagging that all religions have their aspects that you might consider questionable. But then also, like she says, has the power to motivate people to seek out justice or to be reformers or social reformers and so on. So it's a mixed bag, that old religion thing, Matt. It is a mixed bag. And look, thing, Matt. It is a mixed bag.

And look, we are focusing on the hotter takes, aren't we? So it's probably important to emphasize that that's what we're doing. We're pulling out the hottest takes. In between is an awful lot of pretty solid material that isn't the slightest bit hot takey. No, it's generally just funny. I have quite a few clips that have in brackets funny at the end of it. So maybe I'll just, I'll spin a roulette wheel and play one of those now to see if it is funny

completely out of context. A lot of this content has kind of a right-wing feel to it. Unmarked police justice. Criminal gets shot after fighting cop. Home invader takes shotgun blast to the balls. Arizona. Just Arizona. What more is there to say?

Arizona. Justice served. Punished. It is punished, yeah. arizona justice served punished it is that that's talking about the titles on the justice served board but yeah and that like thumping music and stuff i you know approaching these videos in an analytical like i watched it once and enjoyed and then started to watch more critically or analytically. And aside from noticing some of the things that we've pointed out about the arguments

and use of irony and whatnot, blah, blah, blah. The other thing you start to notice is the care taken over the construction of the video because she has music cues for individual segments. Like the Punisher segment has this kind of beat behind it and it returns at the end as she, you know, switches back to summarizing the Punisher element. And yeah, it's something that I think you wouldn't generally pay attention to, but it's a level of craftsmanship or professionalism, which is good good which probably is related to why her videos are

so popular yeah it's more than good it's completely remarkable isn't it that you really can't overstate how high the production values are so yeah and what it creates is you know extremely engaging content it makes me feel bad for what we're producing, Chris. Where is our thumping backdrop and elaborate costumes? The only consolation, I suppose, is that I do dress in an exaggerated leprechaun outfit for all recordings, but because it's an audio only thing, you don't see that. And I believe you tend to walk around with hats with corks in them and a crocodile bag that you fashioned from some poor beast that you slaughtered that morning. True, right?

Yeah, it's true. Just a pair of crocodile boots and a pair of Speedos, which we call budgie smugglers. Well, there we go. Extra information. So aside from that yeah we don't have much visual flair to us so i feel inferior in a way that i didn't with our our galaxy brain previous gurus even with their deep expertise they didn't make me feel that bad about our podcast basically because they're producing something similar

just long waffles so yeah yeah so yeah we have to acknowledge that we are analytically deconstructing and sometimes criticizing somebody who's producing content that is several levels above what we produce so that just needs to be said yeah glad we pointed that out for everyone no i go listen to control points instead stop listening to this look look two dollars it's it's good it's good yeah it's free matt you don't even need to pay that but uh but her content is also free so that doesn't help us but uh But there's probably ads or something in it. Anyway, okay, let me try and tear her down a peg or two. So there is the fact, like it's not a criticism,

it's just an inevitable thing, that she does have a political opinion and a skew. And it's much more evident than some of the other videos. And I suspect it will come up more in the part two of this video, which seems to be dealing with how we should reform the police or what we should do if the police cannot be reformed. Right. I think this is going to get more into the abolish the police topic, which might be more

controversial. But she does, at a couple of of points express liberal views that fall into the stereotypical category. And now I might share them, but I just thought I would play one or two as an illustration. Mainly because we do this whenever we have people who are presenting right-wing talking points. Like I feel bad bad enjoying the parallel, but I think that's partly because I agree with the talking points. So here's one on the NRA and guns. Again, it reminds me of the NRA rhetoric about how you need a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with a gun. There's only eight-year-old boys playing cops and robbers.

Good guys and bad guys. That's my impression of an eight-year-old boy. Good impression. Also, I think a good point. But okay, maybe this one is a little bit more on the nose. So things need to change. The Punisher police have got to go and a lot of the rest of our justice system with them.

We need to imagine a whole new approach to justice. And to be honest, that might take more than one YouTube video. I know at the beginning I said I was going to explain what justice is, but I lied. I'm sorry that I can't fix America. I'm just a lonely cat.

Yeah, sorry, I kept the cat for M because it's like a Monty Python food stall. But you got the point, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, so she's talking about the political implications of what she's talking about. She makes a pretty good argument that the Punisher logo has to go, but I don't think all the steps between that and, you know, more general reform

of the police and other political stuff has necessarily been spelt out. But, you know. I like that. Look, I think it's just the sense that there's a couple of steps between police in various countries, especially the US, need to improve and that there are serious reforms that are necessary. And the slightly farther step, which is the entire justice system needs to be torn down and built from the ground up, right? Those are two different things. I think what I wanted to say was that it's not that I agree or disagree with that.

It's more that the argument for that opinion hasn't been spelt out in the video. Yeah, so agreed. It's not fair to judge it. But I also think it's fair to flag up that is something that would require a significant justification. A more moderate approach that's saying that you need to reform the system and not tear it all down first is easier to justify. I'm not saying you can't justify more radical reforms, especially in America. There aren't ways to illustrate that the system is fundamentally broken. But yeah, like you say, it isn't done in this video. Well, there was a point that I wanted to get to in terms of the justice arc that she gets to, which ties up the whole Punisher point. It's essentially that the police shouldn't be the

judge, jury and executioner in a functioning modern society. And this is drawing the notion that the Punisher represents a fantasy which is impossible to achieve because he's a character of black and white, vengeance served cold and immediate. And the reality is that there's always shades of gray. So this is her making that argument. Jose quotes from interviews with military Punisher fans who say things like, Castle doesn't see shades of gray, which unfortunately, the American justice system is littered with, and which tends to slow down and sometimes even hinder victims of crime from getting the justice they deserve. Frank Castle is the ultimate definition

of Occam comments is at the psychology of how people think about justice at a gut kind of level between good guys versus bad guys seeing things in terms of black and white rather than shades of gray sometimes people do illegal or bad things and there is at least some justification for it it's not always it's not always simple and having a go at the reflexive opinions that people have that are emotionally satisfying but are actually really bad ideas when you think about it so if i've understood it correctly i think uh totally on board with where she's going with that i mean you know with that stuff about the nra or talking about how the criminal system needs reform, these are obviously political talking points. And I don't think she's provided the argumentation to

support those in this video. She's just sort of jumped to them a little bit. But more generally, I really like that point that she's making, which is basically against those emotionally satisfying attitudes about justice yeah and then i kept thinking in this segment where she's talking about the police that their role is limited the image that kept popping into my head oh she didn't play this in the video i was kind of surprised was judge dread right like because that is maybe even more so than the punisher that's the character who embodies that in the future the police are judge jury and executioner i think that's even like the tagline of that comic and i just remember sylvester stallone you you know, saying, I'm the law! I am the law!

Yeah, I actually really liked Judge Dredd. I used to read the comic 2008D when I was young. And yeah, but I was aware that he was a neo-fascist at the same time. I imagine as a comic book fan, you must have been a big fan of that movie. Yeah, no. It captured the world so well but there was a good film a couple of years ago about it anyway so okay matt let me try and give us something that we might find hard to actually deal with our voice opinions on oh great so there and so on. Oh, great. So there is one part where she discusses, well, let me just play it and then I'll get your reaction. So we get this no angel discourse that comes up every time a black person

is murdered by the police, where they bring up the victim's criminal record or a picture of them looking like a scary thug, as if that proves they deserve to die the problem with this of course is that no one is an angel there are no angels walking this earth we're all flawed we've all made mistakes we've all done bad things that doesn't mean we deserve to die a violent death well i you built that up as if i was in danger of saying something uh problematic but actually yeah i i agree with that because that that because it's something I've noticed too that when people in the United States are talking about guns and gun ownership and home defence, there seems to be a real ambivalence

about shooting someone dead for trying to steal some of your garden furniture or something and well they they're a bad guy they're committing a crime so you're defending yourself so it's all good and yeah i've always found that pretty weird yeah maybe i have just set up myself to give a idw shape take good. Good. Go for it, Chris. Dig your own grave. Look at it this way. Maybe you'll provoke me into saying something.

Yeah, that's the way to do it. So, of course, I agree. The police shouldn't be in the business of killing people or killing people as a first response to an escalating situation. Plenty of countries can manage to get by without that. And there definitely seems to be a rationally tinged element to those encounters. But the part that I kind of felt that there was a leap in logic was that, okay, so Tucker Carlson and all those that like

right-wing media, they do latch on to any criminal past or any negative aspect of somebody who has been killed by the police and really seek out to justify that there was a reason for what happened to them. So that's true. I'm not disputing that. I do think, however, where she presents it as nobody is an angel and everybody has things that they do wrong. And it doesn't mean that you therefore deserve to die. You know, even if you're a drug dealer or whatever the case may be, you don't deserve to just be executed. I agree with that. But I also think that if you're involved in lines of work that are criminal, that involve criminal acts, that your likelihood of having a difficult encounter with the police and your likelihood of something going wrong for various reasons, it just becomes higher. So it isn't necessarily

a morally valenced thing to take that into account. It's not saying that drug users deserve to die, but it is saying that people who are on drugs are likely to have a worse encounter with the police by the very nature of being on drugs that's kind of the point i mean is that terrible yeah no i don't think that's terrible let me try to make your point for you i guess i'm reminded of the reason i mean australia has far lower rates of police shootings or killings than the united states States. So it does make the headlines when they do shoot somebody. And quite, quite recently they shot a suspected terrorist who I believe was resisting arrest and was armed and all of these things.

And I should say this person was a member or had links to terrorist organizations whatever but i don't think had necessarily themselves committed any large-scale terrorist acts so from a moral point of view i don't think at all that this person deserves to die on the other hand it doesn't necessarily follow that the police did the wrong thing in using violence against them i don't have all the details to hand but let's just for argument's sake say that the the circumstances of it meant that it was not straightforward to apprehend the person without without violence so yeah i guess that's the point to put itly, I think the flip side of the not all angels rhetoric is the notion that people who are killed are morally good and virtuous. But that's not true.

People who die are neither good nor bad. They're just people. So she is making that point, but I think she's calling out the right's tendency to demonize the people who are shot and whatever, but not the left's tendency to call out the right. Yes. That's the point that I wanted to make. Yeah. That's a good point. That's a good point. Yeah. So in highlighting this, it's not the question, basically any of the fundamental points she makes about somebody being shot by the police. It doesn't make them deserving of that.

And she's right to call out the right-wing tendency to seek out justifications that the police should have, you know, were well within their rights to kill the person. We're well within the rights to kill the person. But it's just to say that there is a bias in calling out simplistic portrayals. And predictably, it has a left-wing bias. So that's it. I don't know if it's a point that needed to be said, but I feel like we would call out these inconsistencies if it was a right-wing person doing it in the flip. Yeah, I think that what ContraPoints and you were saying is that in that there is no angels is entirely true.

And actually, the causes of violence are often situational. And it's a very good thing to look at ways to minimize it and reduce it whenever possible. But it's not helpful to demonize anybody really. Yeah, exactly. So well summed up, Matt, and hopefully not peak both-siderism for me. I've got more, I can go.

That's so... But let's save that for justice part two. All right. So Matt, we've waffled as usual about a whole bunch of stuff. And in this case about a person that I think it's fair to say we enjoyed and who we might have a lot more sympathy for her argument. So that's undoubtedly biased some of the level of criticism, but hopefully people have got something out of this episode. So I don't think we need to do our customary

say something nice about the person. I think we've done that enough, but do you have some penetrating, insightful, funny thoughts, maybe with, with you know pop culture references and asides about your cat girl contact lenses oh no i've got nothing on that level so i'll just stick to the bread and butter look i think one of the things i like about what we do chris though is that we're not afraid to call a spade a spade. So when we covered Scott Adams, we really didn't beat around the bush in saying that he was reprehensible and there was just nothing good

we could think of to say about him. So I don't feel the pressure to go the other direction. You know, we have some quibbles, but if we can't think of negative things to say, then I don't have a huge problem in doing that. So, yeah, for me, ContraPoints represents the peak opposite. I do think people like ContraPoints are the kind of people

we want to be covering in our podcast, if for no other reason than to throw people like eric weinstein into sharp relief because it shows that it is actually possible to do basic things like set out a logical argument and actually provide opinions that aren't complete non-secateurs from what you were just saying and to use a logical and analytical frame of discussion rather than talking in metaphors and illusion so what does what doesn't gel for me naturally i think is that mixing of art and science although i recognize what an amazing performance it is to actually be able to keep those balls in the air and to actually do that.

And I can see how it makes it so much more engaging for a much broader audience, the kind of people that wouldn't necessarily be enraptured with an abstract academic discussion of justice. So it's quite an exceptional thing that ContraPoints accomplishes in making a discussion of the history and the psychological foundations and the philosophy of justice to relate it to pop culture and online culture and make it personal and relatable, while at the same time largely avoiding making any leaps of logic or dodgy comparisons so yeah i think it was pretty amazing and for me she's currently holding the

prize of good guru she is scoring very high on the gurometer we haven't figured out our gurometer yet but i do but i can say that given the crop of people that we've got so far, she is absolutely in prime position. for having more guru-ish qualities and that generally, you know, more galaxy brain ticks, more egocentrism and less ability to be self-deprecating is going to push you up our guru scale. I don't know.

I don't know the metrics yet for the gurometer. Can I put it this way? She's scoring gooder on the gurometer. Yeah, yeah. That's good. That's good indeed. How about you, Chris? What do you think?

So I echo your sentiment that I think it's very fitting that she comes after Scott Adams because like it's only fair to us that we don't have another person like him immediately after. And so even if you think she doesn't fit the theme, just indulge us, you son of a bitch. Look at all of the horrible people we've had to talk about, and we will have to talk about more of them. Not that the gurus are horrible that we've done, just saying some of them. That issue aside, I think that one, this content that we chose is not her most controversial

stuff. And in that sense, it makes it a bit easier for us to deal with. So I think the second part of this episode might be more rhetoric heavy than the first part. So I'd be interested to see it. And I'd also be interested after a gap to go and look at some of the more controversial material and just see like how that stuff compares. Because in this episode, she doesn't really touch on personal issues or in all her videos, there's a kind of

jokiness around potential alcoholism, for example, but I think it actually demonstrates genuine vulnerability. And I think that stuff is interesting in terms of a contrast from the intimacy that we've seen some of the other gurus display with their audience, right? I think it's a kind of different character, but it's still displaying a vulnerability and intimacy with your audience. And anyway, I'm talking about things that aren't in this video, but just to say, I think there's more to be said about her approach and the things that make her unique. On this content, I really enjoy, maybe it's because I'm liberal or maybe a left, like a left-leaning person, or maybe it's just my sarcastic nature that I appreciate somebody who revels in irony and sarcasm. And I, I do,

I think I am the cat with the ball of yarn in trying to dig through the layers of irony and sarcasm. And I think I am the cat with the ball of yarn in trying to dig through the layers of irony and self-parody to detect the targets. So I think that's unique because the self-deprecation does feel genuine and it feels like a feature which is maybe more common amongst left-wing gurus we've seen it with russell brand and rick gregman to a certain extent but it's much more on display here um that's a good point actually the other left-leaning gurus that we've covered have also been much better on not taking themselves too seriously or at least given the appearance of not taking themselves too seriously in terms of that emotional connection with the audience i agree with you chris this has been more of a abstract kind of episode and hasn't had

so much of those personal things although like you i have seen other episodes where she does do that. So it comes across to me as extremely genuine and good. But also having heard interviews with her fans, I've also seen that they do definitely respond to that and feel quite a strong personal connection with them. So I don't think she encourages that parasocial relationships, but she certainly inspires it. Yeah. And that is probably my main takeaway that in the guru types that we look at the characteristic of having a genuine sense of humor about yourself and your content and not taking yourself so seriously, not setting yourself up as this figure on high, dispensing your wisdom from the clouds. These are the issues that Liam noted that makes ContraPoints an ill-suited guru.

And I think fundamentally that's true. And it contrasts with the people that we've looked at, but it potentially does make her a more appealing figure for a particular category of person, which is possibly more common on the left and like farler wings of the left as well. So yeah, that's my takeaway as meandering and unclear as it was. Yeah. The interesting thing you made me think about is this issue of charisma because someone like ContraPoints has it or at least people like us respond to it on the other hand among Eric Weinstein's fans they would definitely consider him to be a charismatic person or Jordan Peterson's fans. So I'm just

wondering, I don't really have a point with this, but it's just got me thinking about this, this role of charisma and what it plays in people gathering a large audience. There's nothing bad about being charismatic. It's great to be charismatic, but yeah, it's always got to play a role, hasn't it? Yeah. and she definitely is charismatic and the videos themselves a kind of art project. So yeah, I don't know. Maybe our hot takes were not as hot as usual and our crushing cynicism was not as bleak as it usually is. But hopefully this represented a little bit of a change of pace.

I think that's okay for nine again um yeah let's call it a welcome break a welcome break from incessant criticism and cynicism and that leads to the next person i i believe i'm springing this on you matt so if you object to this character we'll we'll talk about it offline but i thought You can see who wears the pants in this duo, but go on. Yeah. I think you do have veto power. So the person I was thinking to cover is Douglas Murray. Ah, Douglas.

Yes. Old Dougie. Old Dougie, yeah. No, he should be good. Definitely a change of pace, a bit different. I don't know much about him, but I do know that he's almost certainly not as god-awful as Scott Adams. On the other hand, I don't think we will agree with him quite

as much as ContraPoints or even Rutger Bregman. So he could nestle in nicely in the mix, I think. Yeah, I think you might be surprised at how much you may disagree with him. But in any case, that will be a welcome surprise for you for the next episode. And yeah, so that's a wrap. Let's call it a wrap. Let's call it a wrap. Let's call it a wrap.

Okay. All right. Thank you. Oh, wait, wait, wait. Matt, no. You can reach us at decodingthegurus at gmail.com. And we have a Twitter account. And we have a Patreon, which, like, it's easy to find.

Just, you know, decodingthegurus. Type it in use google okay but you didn't give the twitter account address so can we start again is it but it's the same thing like if you type decoding the gurus into twitter don't you get us it's gurus pod though okay oh is it right Yes, it's Guru's Pod. All right. We got to write this out. We got to script it. Yeah, that's right.

But this time it's free flow. Yeah, it's all very free flow. So get in touch with us at decodingthegurus at gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at Guru's Pod. And you can find our podcast on all good podcast providers or by typing decoding the gurus into google thank you mark perfect that's a wrap all right bye bye Thank you.