Decoding the Gurus - DTG Christmas Quiz 2023 with Helen Lewis

Episode Date: December 22, 2023

Seasons greetings from Decoding the Gurus!Time to grab a hot chocolate, cosy up to the fire, and wrack your brain to see how much attention you've been paying to all those gurus... that's right it is time for the annual Guru quiz!Luckily for us, the esteemed journalist and author, Helen Lewis, is back as a combined special guest and quiz master. Prepare for stunning revelations, scintillating dystopic erotic fiction, and more nootropic stimulation than you can shake a stick at.So who will triumph this year Chris or Matt? And how will Helen fare when the tables are turned? Join us, find out, and have a happy Christmas/non-denominational Winter holiday season!And don't worry, there might be just a little bit more DTG goodness to come before the end of 2023...

🎵 Hello and welcome to a very special Christmas episode of Decoding the Gurus. I am Professor Matthew Brown this Christmas. He is Associate Professor Christopher Kavanagh this Christmas. And with us is Ms. Helen Lewis this Christmas. Welcome, Helen. Hello, Christopher. I'm not any kind of professor. So, Chris, for once,

you can feel smug and superior. Oh, that's right. Not even an assistant professor, eh, Helen? A girl can dream. A girl can dream, eh? Now my chance to lord over someone else. Yeah. You know, Matt got told off by one of our listeners for doing that constantly putting me down talking down yeah but they actually said

they said you did well by not mentioning it last time so you got your positive I've sworn it off I won't be mentioning titles anymore but it's Christmas so anything goes oh okay so there you go helen and no titles forget it we're all equal here this is now i left this podcast um welcome to the revolution so long overdue helen for people who might not know last year you had a series on the new gurus on the bbc video sounds right and bbc radio forum bbc sounds yeah so it's still on bbc sounds i don't i don't know why anyone would know the difference but if to the bbc it's very important that those are two distinct things it is it's very important and i was basically correct in what i said. So that's the important thing. And you also work at The Atlantic, a publication of note, and The Private Eye, which is also a publication of note.

Matt, do you know The Private Eye? Is that to The Atlantic as associate professor, as to professor? What's the relationship there? It's a British satirical magazine, which is basically print only. And I do their podcast. So I now finally am on a podcast

as nature intended, which is nice. Chris, you forgot to mention the most important thing that happened to me this year, which is that I made a bonus episode of The New Gurus featuring the insights of...

That's right. Chris Williamson. No. Yes. To be fair, Chris Williamson, but also won Christopher Kavanagh. I was there. That's right. Chris Williamson. Yes. To be fair, Chris Williamson, but also won Christopher Kavanagh. I was there. That's right. Was that my first appearance on the BBC? Maybe.

No, I think I was on the BBC complaining about something at one point. So there you go, Helen. My second appearance, but probably the only one that anybody actually heard. Yeah, I enjoyed that. I got to talk about Giga Chads and Sigma Meals and various embarrassing phrases

that probably I wouldn't want my parents to hear me utter. So yeah, but that was fun. It's good that someone finally explained giga chance to the radio for audience and i think we talked about brazilian jiu-jitsu as well i went off and did a brazilian jiu-jitsu class to find out what all the tech bros say in it and it's quite aggressive cardio like i can i can see what they what they like about it but to be honest really being mashed into some sweaty man's ball sack in the morning was not my idea of fun so probably not going to go back to that one

again oh that's a yeah that's you know horses for courses but i i i can't remember if i mentioned on the podcast or not it's probably not the thing that you want to start to mention but in public but i was training with one heavy set guy it was actually in in judo in UCL's judo center. That's the setting. Except for you, Helen. I know you know London. So that was in there and there was a relatively heavy set

elder man. Not like a really old man, but you know, just... You beat up an extremely old man. You beat up Gandalf, essentially. That's what I'm envisioning. Fat Gandalf, okay. Well, what fat...

He wasn't... He was more like bald Professor Gandalf. well what fact it wasn't it was more like bald professor Gandalf that's the way I would put it and we were doing Nehwaza grappling on the ground right in in a kind of Brazilian jiu-jitsu-esque fashion and he had his judogi kind of flapping around as happens when you're tussling and we're both sweaty and he was above me and the sweat like glistened down i think to like his chest or connection to the belly and i seen that and it was just above my face and then it dropped off and i felt like the salt fire across my taste receptors before i could avoid it and that was was, thank you, in a way, that was a deeply dysphoric moment.

And it wasn't even, you know, a technique, not an official technique. Well, Chris, it could have been Wes. It could have been the bull sack. Yeah, that's right. It could have been. I mean, I've been around plenty of Paul Sacks in prison, jiu-jitsu, but I'm not sure which is worse. I'm not sure, Helen, if this is the way that I imagined the podcast beginning, but it probably is fairly standard for your last appearance too.

Welcome to the intellectual salon that is Decoding the Gurus. Yeah. Why do we not get invited to the intellectual dark web dinners? This is the question with this kind of scintillating feedback. But Private Eye is an institution in the UK. It's like a little, I'm channeling Konstantin Kissin. I recently heard him going off on how the feeling private eye had to target him in order to try and increase their relevance oh yes so yes that's a private eye that rings a bell yeah yeah yeah no i've heard of private eye i just thought it was a men's magazine something like that

well um no no I don't. It has little pictures with funny captions on them. That's what I remember. Cartoons. That's cartoons, Chris, as we call them. No, it was photos. Oh, yeah, yeah. Like caption covers.

Yeah, there'll be a photo of the prime minister saying something amusing. That's what they do on the front cover. Yeah. They got into quite a bit of trouble recently because they did quite a spicy cover about Israel-Gaza, saying that perhaps, you know, Israel was going to go a bit over the top in its response and everybody kind of piled in.

And then I think now we're kind of several weeks on is kind of tapping their feet and sort of pretending that they never got that upset about it because in fact, Israel did go in pretty two-footed to the extent that, you know, President Biden, noted dove President Biden thinks it's all a bit much. But yeah, work at yeah i work at the atlantic which upsets one set of people and then private eye which upsets another set of people so i've been really maximizing the level of offense that i've been able to deliver this year that's right but have you been active

enough in the podcast space that's the question helen like you know you have to always work the angles you not got any new podcast well you're on a podcast in fact you are on page 92 i do my i do my time 94 yeah i do my time in the year i yeah i did them a quiz that was all about british stuff so i've got my eye in this year about the quiz so your quiz will probably be the best quiz because i've had so much practice oh yeah and so many many people many listeners were asking is helen coming she was just there someone some callous listener responded she was just there to spruik her her own show because it was about guru fame she wouldn't lower herself to return for her second year how wrong they were yeah yeah yeah i they see they've got it all wrong

they they just bad judges of character the people online but we are thankful that you lowered yourself to return and to um take up your mantle as quiz master i i can't suspect it's partly because you enjoy being a quiz master, like you'll go on any podcast if you're a quiz master. If there's a quiz on offer, you're there. Is that how it is? Wow. That is way harsh, Ty. Yeah,

that's broadly true. No, it's really fun. I have to say this one of all of the quizzes that I've ever made probably made me feel the most ill in that I did. Well, you'll see. You'll see what I had to wade through in order to deliver piping hot content to your listeners. What I did to myself. Oh, you know what I will do, Helen, but I'll do it for the magic of podcast editing. So you'll just have to like replay it in the image in your mind. Because it was, you know, we do little updates on

what the gurus have been doing. And there was a Uber guru who felt the need to target you specifically recently on a conversation. Jordan Peterson discussed you with Chris Williamson. And for the listeners at home, he said, The interviews that have done me the most good in the long run were the two interviews that were most hostile. One by channels for Kathy Newman, and Kathy, Kathy at least had a sense of humor. Another one by Helen Lewis who had no sense of humor at all and doesn't seem to have learned anything at all in the interim. But I think that one has 80 million views now, twice as many as the Kathy Newman interview. It just keeps racking up views. And it was because

Helen Lewis, she has like 50 tricks or 100 tricks. Kathy had like four. And they were pretty blunt. 50 tricks or a hundred tricks. Kathy had like four, you know, and they were pretty blunt and she had a sense of humor about them. But Helen Lewis, she was just all tricks and lots of them and smart, you know, and it's quite something to talk to someone who's quite smart and quite educated, but all tricks. He said that Helen was humorless. I had no sense of humor, which ironically I find extremely amusing. So I don't know, checkmate Jordan Peterson on that one. He's had a lively year. He just gave an interview to the Telegraph, which is a right-wing British paper saying that Labour will probably get elected in Britain next year and it will turn the country into quotes Venezuela, which is really

funny because in any other, well it's not really a mean thing to say, in any other situation be like, mate, did you go to sleep in 2017 and only just woke up but sort of i think that is genuinely what happened in that that was the conservative attack line on jeremy corbyn in 2017 you know you'll have a leftist economy we'll have hyperinflation it'll be like venezuela but since then the leader of the labour party has changed to now being somebody who is in kirsten as seen as being a kind of stealth Blairite. Like I know someone who refers to him as the Manchurian Blairite, like he's been a sleeper agent for like centrist dads.

And Labour is just in a completely different place to where it was. But someone who has not updated their notebook on this is John Peaton. I begin to think he hasn't been paying that much granular attention to British politics. I'm shocked. I'm shocked. How dare you, Helen? The most weird thing about it as well, not that I follow these people too closely, is that Michaela has had a secret baby. Have you seen this? I did. I did notice that. The secret baby that appeared on Twitter. Right, but she kept her pregnancy secret.

Oh yeah, that part. Yeah. And then announced it eight months and then of course i completely forgot that her new husband is called jordan so she was like it was lovely to have jordan with me in the delivery room and i was like oh bit much well it's it's still unclear it's not entirely uh certain that that would refer to her husband given their odd relationship but yeah so that's right she replaced the guy who had like a a demon inside him called victor or igor right wasn't the demon sorry his name might have been victor and the demon was called igor but um and this just feels like anti-russian propaganda

chris i think you're just but that's true that's what said about, she wrote this kind of love poem on Instagram to her previous partner and not, not afterwards, like during the time when she was with him. And she, you know, said he's a master of the blade. He's like a stealth assassin. He has a demon inside him called Igor. And he's, you know, the craziest, he's possessed by a demon called Igor and blah, blah, blah. There's all this international amount of mystery. But possessed by a demon in a good way. Yeah, that wasn't clear. I think it was supposed to make him seem mysterious.

But I guess that's a line that works on some people. Like, I'm possessed. Hello, you look great. Personally, yeah, I wouldn't put it on your Hinge profile. I'd probably lead, like I'm possessed. Yeah, hello, you know, you look great. You can tell that. Personally, yeah, I wouldn't put it on your Hinge profile. I'd probably lead with like six foot one. You know, great sense of humor, loves to travel, possessed by demon. Called Igor.

Yeah, good with the blade. It's something that James Lindsay would say in a very animated fashion when like getting flustered. There is another of your gurus with whom I had an encounter. I went up and said hello to James Lindsay because he was on Decoding the Gurus in which he expressed his desire to have Anthony Fauci hanged at the Hague for war crimes, unspecified. And I went over and said hello to him and he was very nice and very pleasant.

Anyway, then I wrote in my piece that he seemed very chipper for a man who believed that America was wracked by civil war and civilization was falling, which he found overly sarcastic so he called me a hag. Oh, well, that's half of the cause. It's fair, isn't it, Matt? That's what you're thinking. It's only fair as I am getting cracking on a bit.

I've got my differences with James, but you know. Did I slip into a coma because I thought Helen said that James Lindsay appeared on our podcast this year. When he appeared on the... On my podcast. He's in the New Gurus.

Oh, your podcast. Ah, the New Gurus. Okay, that's right. The knockoff. The New Better Gurus. Yes, thank you, Chris. Yeah, so I said hello to him. And I also said hello to another Decoding the Gurus favorite, Brett Weinstein, who I

have to say I couldn't resist because I'm a human troll, but I think it's okay to be a troll if you actually have the balls to do it in real life. Yeah. Which was that he, I don't entirely blame Chris for this, Matt, sent me the fact that Brett and Heather had discussed me

and Barry Weiss talking about him on his podcast. And I had said, it's a shame, you know, lots of people who see it go through cancellations, you know, they find that a really psychologically wounding experience. But you can end up like Brett Weinstein into a completely conspiratorial space.

And Yasha Monk also used him as the kind of flagship example of a kind of descent into conspiracy thinking in a big New York Times op-ed around his book. Anyway, what was the exact phrase that Brett used about me? I can't remember. It was very funny. I think he said just like women matterattering away or something like girl talk. It was girl talk. Yeah, I know. Me and Barry Weiss doing a little bit of girl talk, just, you know, talking on nails, slagging people off. Anyway, so I said, I went up to him and said, oh, hi, Brett, it's really nice to meet you. I'm Helen Lewis. You know, the one who was having some girl talk with Barry Weiss. And he genuinely looked at me like I had just, I'd pissed on his

chips. It was, it was just completely rabbit in the headlights just like had no comeback which was a really interesting insight but in case of both of them that James was lovely to me Brett was obviously petrified by me but there was very much like big man in tweets not so hard man in the streets uh cases both of them it's very surprising to hear that. It's funny, isn't it? But you often find people who are very conflict-averse in real life, and then suddenly the internet allows them

cost-free to unleash this side of themselves that they can't. There was a theorist by Alice Marwick about the idea that actually online abuse was about the fact that we'd made it less acceptable now to be overtly racist and misogynist in everyday life. So suddenly the provision of social media

allowed people just to kind of splurge out all the stuff that they, you know, it was a kind of facet of driving out of this unacceptable speech from the public sphere. That was what drove it to flourish on Twitter. And I think that's probably my insights from meeting some gurus this year suggests that people who love giving it all the chat

on their own podcast, in their own safe space, actually probably don't want to do a public debate. I mean, I know this is, you know, you've said this many, many times, but it was a very stark illustration of the fact that people find it much harder to be rude to people in real and everyday life. It's why moving stuff online has been catastrophic in many ways. Yeah. Yeah. It's just like cars, right? You're in a car. People beep the horn.

They yell with their fists. But if you actually confront them face to face, then they... I like this idea that you're getting out there with your tyre hammer going straight to my face. Well, I didn't, but I've told Chris this story. My brother, who's my hero in some ways, he's like me,

except he's a little bit smaller. And gay. And gay. And there's this young guy in a great big truck behind him, being a very aggressive driver and so on. And he's driving his little town car. And he just stopped it in the middle of the road and got out and walked back to

him and knocked on the window to have a chat about about this and the guy was he was like james lindsey or brett weinstein like most people don't want to actually you know i'll i'll say as well matt that i feel people would imagine that i will be meek and retiring in real life. And actually, actually, I would point them that I am actually usually smiley and nice and friendly. It's just that people online mistake sarcasm for anger and fury and like in a much, you you know a much stronger way shall we probe the sort of psychological weirdness of essentially you scrappy do moving to the most notoriously polite and repressed society in the world what's that about chris well look i managed to find the only john campbell fan in tokyo who showed up to my talk to start uh at the beer with me about john campbell so

i can't get away from them and you know i travel all the way over here and they still hunt me down but you're probably genuinely the most argumentative man in the whole of japan that must feel quite good he was he was very deft he was very competent in handling that heckler but you know helen the thing, like with most people, the tragedy is that we're completely different people online and in person. But with Chris, his tragedy is that he's exactly the same. There's a tragedy. It is unfortunate.

I know what I am. I know what I am. But, yeah, so enough banter. That's the allotted banter. It's finished, Matt. The timer has went off. We're not allowed to exceed the quotient. And Helen, you have a job.

I do. To do. So we had a Decoding the Gurus quiz last year, and this will be the second year. It's now a tradition. I'm, yeah, I think it's, I've kept it nice and tight this year so we don't have to have the round about irish literature because i felt like maybe that was not not what the people wanted but are you ready there are i'm going to keep a score there are 12 questions so would you like to would you like to play this together

no or separately competition and no man not again we're not doing it again like oh let's say it at the same time no it's a competition me versus you mano a mano okay i don't like this this is i think i think it's i think it's fine you'll be fine matt i think it's fine okay i can like let me lure you in with a nice easy one. What has 75 ingredients in a single scoop? Oh, I know. Oh, I forgot you say this every time. Is it this nootropic drink that Chris has? Can you have a scoop of that drink?

Does that even make sense? How many ingredients has it got, Chris? Well, that does. I can see in front of me. So that would be cheating. I will tell you that that drink does not have 75 ingredients, Matt. That will help you. But one ingredient and that's caffeine and another ingredient that is presumably food

coloring. And that's basically it as far as I can see. Cognizant and a big guy. Yeah, I know the answer. 75 ingredients. Really? Okay. All right.

But you go first, Matt. Do you know the famous thing about Red Bull, by the way, which I'm sure Chris Williamson's nootropic drink has also learned from, which is that they deliberately, from an advertising marketing perspective, made it taste disgusting. Because if they'd made it taste sweet, people would be like, oh, this is just like a fizzy drink. If they made

it taste horrible, they could market it as like a performance drink. Who would drink this for fun? You only drink this because you're so hard. So the fact that you like the taste of that nootropic drink is further proof that there's something very wrong it's got a very metallic tang to it i would say that but i like that i'm like yeah so uh but so is there a buzzer can i just tell me tell me tell me the answer yeah go on a g1 a g1. Athletic Greens. Ah, Athletic Greens.

It is, in fact, Athletic Greens. Why? Do you know why it's AG1? Is there an AG2 on the horizon? Or is it? I don't know why it's AG1. I know it's Athletic Greens, but I don't know what the one is there for. Hmm.

Strange. Look into that. Okay, number two. Which one of these is not a real Elon Musk tweet? A. Have you ever eaten your own earwax? Surprisingly bitter. B. 10,000 bottles of burnt hair sold. C. At least 50% of my tweets were made on a porcelain throne.

Or D. nuke Mars. Oh, God. I'm going D. I like doing these ones because you're like, oh, my God, three of these are real. Yeah, that's right. You're going with nuke Mars. You think nuke Mars is fake? Yeah.

I think you love Mars. I'll go porcelain. I'll pick the porcelain throne. I regret to inform you are both wrong. Those are both real Elon Musk tweets. The fake one is, have you ever eaten your own earwax? Surprisingly bitter, which is a riff on Dumbledore and Harry Potter.

I don't know where that came from in my brain, but it did. Yeah. The burnt hair one is a reference to the fact that at some point he was talking about selling a perfume that smelled horrible and it was about burnt hair. I have to say,

I completely wiped that one from my brain. Okay. number three. In September, trigonometry guest and Manosphere influencer Pearl Davis tweeted, the best women are married before 25. Everyone else is left over. Don't shoot the messenger.

How old was she at the time? 29. Matt? Any advice on that, Matt? 24. Ask yourself, what would be the funniest age for her to be? 26. Yeah, 26.

Okay, I'm going to say that, Chris, you already went with 29, and Matt just said 26, so Matt gets the point. Oh, my God. Thank you. She said that when she was 26. That's not favouritism Chris that's just fair. It is fair. You need all the help. Like a golf handicap it's fine. You are slightly less online and therefore you know that's a that's a good thing for you. It does. Okay which of the following things did Sam Bankman Freed not say when testifying in his fraud trial? A. That he aimed to get down to only 60,000 emails in his inbox every day.

B. That he didn't cut his hair because he was busy and lazy. C. That his one regret was not appearing on Lex Freedman's podcast. Or D. That he knew basically nothing about crypto before starting FTX? Which one did he not say? Yeah, three of those are real. One of those are fake. Oh, no, I think he said the last one, so he didn't say. Lex.

I say the Lex one is fake. I'll say the one about the cutting hair. Busy and lazy. Chris, you are correct. See? He didn't say that his one regret was not appearing on alex friedman's podcast but you know he probably still could from prison so that yeah i just like the fact that other people have inbox zero and he had inbox 60 000 um like what was even what even was all that stuff mostly spam i was gonna say the man did not

have junk filters and that's that's not to his credit. Number five, what caused severe eyeburn this year at an NFT festival? Severe eyeburn? It sounds like something out of House of Usher. Eyeburn. So it's got to be a bright light source of some kind oh good matt you're sciencing this you're like the fucking keep going keep going right it's got to be like from first principles and i appreciate that i'm

gonna say a laser show then like some fucking laser show sorry where was this festival where was this conference? That's a good point. Let me just see the magic of podcasting. What's it going to change? Well, I was going to say the Las Vegas... Oh, the big ball. The sphere.

It was the Bored Ape Yacht Club festival in Hong Kong that took place in November. Ah. Well, it's got to be lasers of some kind. Stealing my answer, old man, but okay. We're both saying lasers. Some kind of lasers.

I'm not going to give you that because it's not quite right because they decided it would be super awesome if they had UV lights and what's better than a normal strength UV light that you would put in your home, for example, a black light, but an industrial strength UV light used for basically cleaning hospital grade equipment. And so they installed incredibly strong UV lights

that basically burned people's eyeballs. One of the attendees reported that it felt like microwaving your eyes. That's like, didn't Donald Trump suggest doing that? Like to get rid of COVID, you know, like swallow light or put light all over you. Maybe that's, they were just, just patting the sink. They were just ahead of their time. Hygiene. Yeah.

And someone pointed out that the ball-dape signal is actually like, it's supposed to be a monkey with like laser beams coming out with eyes and they were like, oh, I didn't realize actually the laser beams go into your eyes. But yeah, UV and laser are not the same type of light and people will write in if they say that they are. Yes, they will. Save your emails, we're not getting the point.

Okay. Number six. What did Joe Rogan do with Elon Musk at a safe distance in a warehouse this year? I know. Let's give Matt Solbran a chance to get those cogs wearing. What do you think he did

in a warehouse with Elon Musk? What would those two rascals get up to? Well, it's from a safe distance, so it couldn't have been wrestling. Oh, look at this science rain. Yes, Joe Rogan did it while musk was at a safe distance watching him um flying kick okay good cool it's he probably did those as well just off camera

he shot the bow and arrow at the cyber truck he did and so i can't remember whose tweet it was but they were like this is really good because i have always worried about being attacked by mongolian horse archers on the school run or or joe rogan just popping out of the line to try and spear you and cook you at the you know in before it's cold plunge like that could happen if you're in texas yeah so i had been enjoying the videos of the people like extremely weak looking kicking kicking the cyber track with their loafers and ineffectually does that that doesn't like if you kick a car like that a normal car like do they would like are people denting cars via kicks usually is that something that normally happens with like a just like a normal truck i guess if it's a supercar

and it's carbon fiber then actually it's really easy to dent it right because it's just so light but that comes across but yeah i don't think if you've got a basically a normal family car then just a light like if you know i just also when is this going to come up? Like all of these, as you say, all of these people live in Texas and they drive to the food truck to their factory and back again. They don't have to any point gone to sustained assault from a panzer division. Like it's just not coming up, is it to be fair it is america where there is the possibility of just like random people opening fire on you um so maybe it's more of a priority in in that neck of the woods the other thing that's really fascinating is the british car series top gear once had a whole

series where they took a toyota hylux truck and they tried to destroy it in as many ways as possible which eventually culminated in them putting it on the top roof of a building that was scheduled for demolition and then blowing up the building and then dragging out the wreckage at which point with just like a little bit of oil and a kind of bit it still started and it was a kind of classic example i don't know whether or not it's apocryphal of like you know the way that the ak-47 has become the weapon of choice for jihadists because it's basically it hasn't got very many moving parts and you can buy you know replacements for and fix it really quickly and the same thing with the apocryphal story i think about the you know the americans made this biro that worked in space and the russians took a pencil

but there is a kind of aspect to that of the cyber truck right which is just quite old by bang get an old banger and you know one of those old cars that's just like a workhorse car and it will probably do most of the things you want and if you need bulletproof glass then probably have a think about your life choices and what you did to get here but then you wouldn't be cool and edgy like literally edgy in the case of the cyber truck like that's it's edge embodied i was gonna say you want your car on your truck to to bend to to dent if you kick it because if it doesn't then it means it's got ridiculously thick steel

and that is a waste of weight they pop right back out this is good anyway you want a Toyota basically you want a Toyota that's the best car you want an AK-47 and you want a Toyota and a Toyota that's right these are the tools for the 21st century terrorist or man about town.

Yes. I've got a Honda. I got a Honda. That's very nice. They're okay. I'm sorry, Chris, but as soon as you said that, I start hearing the rest of baby got back in my head. I got a Honda.

My baby's got a Honda. It's got a very Japanese name. It's called the Honda Freed. Like freed. I was freed. From your Honda. It's got a very Japanese name. It's called the Honda Freed. Like freed. I was freed. From your Honda. Well, my Honda freed me from the shackles of walking. So yeah, there you go.

And anyway, that's my car for anybody who wants to look it up. That's very good. I'm sure people can go and do their own research on that one. Number seven, which of your gurus or people you've covered on the podcast at least told Swagger,

the magazine for entrepreneurs, I don't consider myself a journalist. I get information the way most people get their information, whether it's from Twitter or Instagram or YouTube. I tell people what I think.

I try to talk to the camera in a way that is like talking to a friend. There's so many of them. That could be. Which of them is most likely to talk to Swagger, the magazine for entrepreneurs? Elon Musk.

Again, Elon Musk. That would be a lot of Elon Musk, though. Matt, I'm going to give you two and say it's someone else I did also see lurking around the edges of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship along with Conceptual James and Brett. Fucking know who it is. American, lives in Florida.

Weird. No, I don't know who it is. You decided he wasn't actually that much of a guru who is just annoying. His name rhymes with Maeve Boobin. His first name is Dave.

Now I know. Now it's embarrassing. Say it, Matt. Maeve Boobin. The point goes to Matt. Thank you. I was thinking it was Constantine. Yeah, I was going to go

Constantine because that's the sound. But Constantine, is he being interviewed by Swagger yet? Not yet. Give it time. But then I guess that is the model, isn't it? I like the revelation of like,

I just hear things and then I just pass them on without passing them through any kind of filtration system at all. I was like, oh, you just, you said it out loud. That was, how kind of you. I know I'm interrupting the quiz, Helen, but you know, Logan Paul has a podcast called Impulsive. So this is not, hang on a minute,

this is one of the two brothers, Jake and Logan Paul, who are both influencers slash now mixed martial artist boxers. Yes. Remind me which one of them it is. So Logan Paul. He's the boxer one. No, he is the, well, they're both boxers now, but Logan Paul is a WWE guy, but he's the one that went to the Japanese forest and looked at the dead suicide person.

That's him. So the older brother, but he has a podcast called Impulsive and they had a co-host on it called George Janko, who was like the third wheel on that podcast. And he was kind of, you know, the one that was beat up in joking terms. And he was Christian. This was the kind of thing that kept me in front of him for being religious and being into Jordan Peterson or this kind of stuff. And he said nice things about Andrew Tate. And he has just recently, a week ago, interviewed Andrew Tate for his YouTube channel. And it's got, you know, whatever, like 7 million views or whatever. And I listened, I saw him just, I was watching the intro to it. And he was saying,

he was talking to his wife who brought on the podcast and was like, you know, you had all these preconceptions about Andrew T and then I told you to do your own research. And you know, you, you find out that all this stuff about him being a misogynist and all, it was just wrong. You know, you just gotta do your own research. And you, you find out that it's all nonsense, like none of the accusations. And you're like, this is not true.'s that's the opposite but he was he was just you know saying you've got to be responsible got to do your own research and you'll find out that

you know it's all lies what they say about andrew tate and you're like no that's that's not true it's not the thing about that is that andrew tate god bless him in some respects he will just flat out say i'm a misogynist I just don't think women are that good. They should stay in the kitchen, right? It's not like this kind of dance of the seven veils where it's like, who can even say, no, you're being really uncharitable to him. Like he's pretty, he's pretty open about it. I know.

That's what makes it quite impressive. And actually that guy, the George Janko guy, he was like the sympathetic guy getting beat up by the mean, evil Logan Paul. And he's just a little religious stolt and then um no he's he's like a gullible manosphere dickhead so there you go but it's actually like it's a huge insult to andrew tate right in the same way that sometimes people will say things like that about jordan peterson they'll say well he doesn't really use christian imagery or whatever and you're like i can't believe that i've actually listened to the things that he has said from his own mouth and you haven't.

It's very weird, isn't it? Yeah, this is the trouble with people. They don't listen to what the gurus are saying. They should be paying attention to them more. And we're often saying that. It's true. Perhaps they could consume them through the intermediary medium of some sort of podcast about the whole

sphere. Apparently there is a way. Right, right. Number eight. Sort of is a way. Right, right. Number eight. Sort of on a similar theme. Who said this year, if you're into flat Earth and you feel very good about it, that you believe that the Earth is flat, the idea you should censor that is ridiculous. If it makes

you feel good and you're becoming the best version of yourself, I think you should be getting as much flat Earth as possible. Sounds like something Dave Rubin would say, but it's not him. And we've already had me of boobin. So who would say that, Matt? Who would be pro flat earth?

The kind of person probably who would say it with love. Lex Friedman. Lex Friedman. You said the magic word. Matt would have done that too. I could see the glint of recognition in Matt's eyes, but he was just less. Of course it would be Lex Friedman. Of course it would. You're becoming the best version of yourself. Obviously a version of yourself that can't fly to Australia because how would you reach it? But nonetheless, you should be heard.

Yeah, he said that to Andrew Huberman and I'm afraid I'm going to have to go and look up and see whether Andrew Huberman went, are you on glue? Which is what he should say to that. The answer is... But I suspect he didn't. No, he didn't.

He did not, Mr. Huberman. Okay, continuing the theme, number nine. I've numbered these wrong. Oh, well, never mind. No one will ever know. Who said, journalists annoy the hell out of me, so I understand from Putin's perspective that journalism,

journalists, can be seen as the enemy of the state. Annoy the hell out of me. Okay, but I'm going to give Matt a first go at this. Well, it sounds like Jordan Peterson. He gets annoyed by you. You're a journalist, Helen. It's true, but think about true but who think about the loving Putin aspect of it

I say Constantine but he famously hates Putin it's not Constantine so Chris I'm afraid I'm benching you you incorrectly interrupted so I'm going to deduct five points from you yes oh no, it's really happening we're not doing well this year deduct five points from you. Yes. Oh, no.

It's really happening. We're not doing well. We're not doing well this year. Matt, would you like to take a guess? Who is perhaps softer on Putin and understands his hatred of journalists more than the average American podcaster? Oh, see, it's not Jordan Peterson, even though that is totally,

that fits with him. He's sympathetic. I hear someone else is sympathetic. It may be someone who's been in an answer previously again. Well, Lex is sympathetic. He's sympathetic to everybody. Lex? Correct, Matt.

That is correct. Point for you. Point of order. So far, Matt is on four points and Chris on minus one. Wow. Point of order. Pay attention, Chris. You might learn a few couple of things. I'll try. But I do just want to say that Konstantin, even though he's famously a little bit lukewarm towards Putin,

he did come out saying, you know, Ukraine needs to give it up now. They've done enough. And then he was profiled by various sources that cover Putin apologists pointing out that he's actually not that good on Russia. And he's repeated a whole bunch of things that they have essentially pushed. So I'm just saying I wasn't completely off base. That's all I wanted to say. In a very real way, the fact that you could even think that it was constantine says a lot thank you it's stunning

it's stunning thank you for that thank you for that cope okay this is the one where i feel like i really earned my corn because i read elizia dakowski's multi-page forum style like interactive also written by other people erotic fiction called project lawful and i i it's possible may never recover so which of these is not a real passage from elizia dakowski's erotic fiction project awful okay not real okay one i'm gonna say that these are all quite long because the man loves a comma. Okay, here we go. Well, personally, were I given the run of the Archduke of Sirmium's summer villa, I would go look at all the bedrooms before I decided which one I was claiming and probably take his own personal bedroom unless he's decorated it grotesquely

like with the skulls of his enemies. But if you're terribly eager to go to bed, we could just ask the staff what their plan was and I'm sure they'll have a skull-free, very lovely bedroom. A. Okay. B. My ambition before I ended up here was to fairly make a billion labour hours and then marry about two dozen women and have about 144 kids. That was B. C. Callistria, god of women who want to leave their husbands, get abortions and get revenge. Why this doesn't also apply symmetrically to men who want to leave their wives is one of the things he didn't have time to ask Carissa.

That was C. D. Kelton felt a pulse within him again, deeper this time, like the first time he beheld the beauty of the void space. Shafara always had this effect on him, damn it, and his pressure suit was too tight to contain any excitement. That was D. Which is... So, Archduke of Sirmium's summer villa bedrooms, one.

144 kids two unequal sex differences of like leaving husbands and wives c or the beauty of the void space d that's amazing i'm gonna go with one um and i'm just amazed that he wrote three of those whether i'm right or wrong. I think B is the fake. Okay, so you think, Matt, you're going for the Archduke of Sirmium's Summer Villa bedrooms. That's the one with the skulls, right? That's the one with the skulls. That sounds like something you would make up. Isn't it there's only one that is not

real? Yes. You're picking the fake one. And you're going, Chris, with the 140, the billion labor hours and having 144 kids. Yeah. You are both wrong. Those are both real sentences

from Project Lawful. What's the fake? Which one did you make up? The fake one is Kelton felt the pulse within him again deeper this time like the first time

he beheld the beauty of the void space. And I was like, as I was writing it, I was like, do like do you know i think i've got a future in this this is quite good that's the one that made me want to read it yeah i'm gonna write extremely horny reddit based fiction that's my pivot for the new year skull one is real the skull one is real he wrote that also the one that's obviously real is the bit about like, oh, I see. So it's okay for women to get abortions, but not men.

Yeah, that's obviously. And you were like, oh, I can hear that one. It's obviously real. Who said this year, say what you want about Hamas supporters, at least they know what a woman is. Oh. Constantine hasn't been the answer for anything yet but who would say something so stupid tucker carlson russell brand um elon musk they were the problem is helen there's so many. Many of them would say that. Gadsad. Gadsad. That sounds like a Gadsad kind of joke.

Yeah. Matt, are you going to be led astray by the other children or are you going to come to your own answer? Oh, well, I do like the sound of Gadsad. Now Chris says it. No, I'm going to go for Jordan Peterson because the answer's got to be right sooner or later. It was Constantine Kizan No

That is a very Constantine thing to say It is But like by comedians, there's so many Is it a God's Heart joke? Is it a Constantine? Is it a Francis? No, it's not Francis No funny voice It's never Francis See, Matt's the nasty one There, Helen picked it up Francis. No funny voice. It's never Francis.

But see, Matt's the nasty one. Helen picked it up. Just saying. That's all right. I'm the Francis in this conversation. Just trying to keep up. To be fair to Constantine Kizhin, I was at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship and his speech got the best reception

because he had put some jokes in it and everyone else was talking about birth rates or accepting Jesus into your heart. I would say he had definitely the most upbeat of all the speeches. So credit to him on that one. Number 12. Which of these is not a real product shilled by Andrew Huberman? Okay, you ready? A. Honkat and Fidogia supplements to synergistically uplift energy levels.

B, rugged enemas use royal flush for 15% off. C, LMNT, which I realise now is lemon tea, tagline stay salty. Or D, Maui Nui venison, the healthiest red meat on the planet. Wow. See, I've... Three of those are real. I have browsed his product offerings, and I've come across, like, dozens of them,

and I've not come across any of those. Like, how many of them are out there? What is he endorsing? Being the enema one feels on the nose? Yeah, I was going to say enema. I thought of it before him. I didn't say it, but I was going to say enema one feels yeah on the nose yeah i was gonna say enema i thought of it before him i didn't say it but i was gonna say enema but i also know i've listened to lots of podcasts matt and enemas and like faded boxer briefs are and and the stuff like man skipping balls are things that podcasters

often advertise in that really yeah because because i actually because i actually went for that because i thought that's not a practical thing to market. No, people really like enema. No way. They don't like enemas. But what do they sell? They like bidets. They like bidets.

It's not the same. It's not the same. I'm thinking, I was thinking of a bidet. Yeah, it's not. He didn't market enemas. No way. Look at you just laughing about the fact you're living in a country that's

got toilets with little like built-in enema sprays but um if you have you watched the mad uh russell brand interview with florida uh governor and presidential candidate ron de santis where he throws away from this very serious discussion with ron de santis obviously wants to be president of the united states to advertise a type of underwear that keeps your balls essentially dry. And it is like the sort of most peak guru moment of like the fact that the sheer indignity of the fact that this entire industry runs on like the kind of adverts you got at the back of a newspaper that everyone pretended didn't exist and weren't your business line.

Now it's like the thing that you're open about. Look at me. Look what I'm shilling. I'm shilling ball underwear. There's two. I'm Toronto Santas to talk about wokeness. There's two products that I hear promoted on podcasts from people who are not, you know, like their podcast image is not like sex themed

and they're the manscape, like make your testicular region shornorn and the other one is blue too a viagra pill that will that will apparently have the effects of viagra but it's very jarring to hear you know like a kind of dad style podcaster be like do you need help in the bedroom and you're like hey what you shouldn't be chilling these so yeah we might have to do that we might need to do that you know i'm just warning you uh that's some that that's funny because i i'm pretty sure i read that um halitosis as a concept was sort of invented by the advertising industry i mean in the era before toothbrushes to some extent everybody had pretty bad breath and like

but the concept that there was a condition called halitosis that one could have and then you could solve it with i know presumably this was the 1920s smoking was supposed to make it better or but mints and i sort of think that's a bit the same about like men waxing their balls i just think if you're a straight man you're having sex with women they aren't they just aren't they just don't care and it's a sort of heroic attempt to create a whole new category of thing that is just probably not, it's going to founder on the rocks of women being really having very low standards. Do you remember the, whatchamacallit, the Mitchell and Webb thing where they had the execs talking about toothbrushes? And they were saying like, we'll put a thing on the back of the toothbrush and we'll tell them that they need to brush their tongue. And they said, nobody to brush their tongue and they said nobody will brush their tongue like

it's not and say they will if we tell them they'll brush their tongue god damn it they said but brushing your tongue makes you rich and they said it doesn't matter so you know that i yeah that stands the reason so but we're going with enema. It's our final answer. Millionaire style. You are correct. It is enema. Although I don't think I'm a really should be person to tell you this, but it is possible to do enemas at home. There's a very interesting, I'm trying to remember which astronaut it is,

but one of the things that they had to do before qualifying for NASA's space program was have a colonoscopy. And I think it's one called Tom something. I think it's called Tom Jones, but that was also the Welsh singer, so it seems unlikely. And he talks about the fact that he basically did about

three at-home enema kits because he wanted to be sure that he aced his colonoscopy, which I'm not really sure is quite how it works. But just a little bit of edutainment for you there, Matt and Chris. Good to know.

Yeah, well, Hubermans find one product that they can expand into so there we go we've helped him out if he listens to this that's true okay last question number 13 as it turns out which of the following insults did james lindsey not use against jonathan this year in an argument over the enlightenment okay with enlightenment. Okay. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. A, icon wanker. B, con artist. C, artsy-fartsy philosophical amateur. Or D, fucking clown.

We must have said fucking clown. That's definitely James. Nailed on. Yeah, I'm sure. Mm-hmm. Oh, artsy-fartsy. What was the first one? Icon wanker.

Icon wanker. He's not British. He's not British. Does he know what a wanker is? I mean, he is a wanker. You may have tipped your hand. Wait, why have I? What have I done?

I've given Mark the secret key. Okay, final answer from both of you. Icon wanker, con artist, artsy-fartsy philosophical amateur, or fucking clown? Icon wanker. Yeah, I've got to go for the wanker because, yeah. Yeah, arms linked, Chris go for the wanker because, yeah. Yeah. Arms linked, Chris.

You are both correct. Chris is entirely right. It is an overly British insult, which I picked entirely because there was once a comedy series called The Inbetweeners, which was about kids at a school, and one of them started taking a briefcase to school and all the other kids would shout, briefcase wanker, at him. And I just thought the idea of following Jonathan Paget around the internet going i call wanker this is the key

this is the key this is the magic key for for winning at your quizzes helen you don't forget about the subject because it's impossible to know all this bullshit about all these people what do you do is you think about helen and you think about helen constructing this thing and you think what would helen do making an artificial thing? But you couldn't do that with the Eleizer. The Eleizer. It troubles you, doesn't it, Chris? You're going to go and read Project Lawful now and be like, oh.

Did he really not say that? I'm going to have to read the whole thing just to fact check that. Does that mean I lost, Helen? Did I lose this year? I was going to say, would you like the final scores yeah which is that you you both scored six points however because of chris's minus five penalty for interruption matt is the winner oh no yes oh well look you know there's no there's no iron team right we we're a team you're not going to set us up to compete cause division cause contention it's true it's a team but you're just the best member of the team

the senior member of the team can I show you what I have prepared like because let me show I don't know if it's going to work this will be either way it'll be enjoyable for you. So let me see if it works. Nothing's happening. Oh, yeah. So unfortunately, I couldn't use that. So the people who are listening couldn't see, but there was a laser show, which I went off on my video screen. So Chris, actually um i know about this

right this this thing where gestures in zoom generate those effects and i know because my colleague it somehow became activated for him and he didn't even know what would set it off but just every now and again oh no and those things would happen. I can say, thank you, Helen. Oh my God. Can I do like, what? Okay, that one doesn't actually work. I haven't seen Fred do this. No, it's not going to work for you.

It only works for me because it's a Mac thing. So like, I think I can do this. Exactly. Yeah. You can't see it because my background's blurred, but yeah. And it makes you explode, apparently. Yeah. Well, that's lovely, Chris.

Thank you, Chris. You said you prepared something special, and I didn't realize it was emojis, essentially. I do have one other thing, although I do realize this might slightly tick up your morning, but I'll try to do it quickly, Helen. So in a reversal is that reversal isn't that a game americans play with cards the reversal uno something like that i've played the reversal card i've twisted the table as now i'm the quiz master

look at me helen look at me i'm the quiz master now i'm me, Helen. Look at me. I'm the quiz master now. I have me. I need your help here. Yeah. Because no one is as online as Chris. And you have to spend a lot of time with him. So you have the better insight into his psychology on this one. So we're going to have to work out. What would Chris find a good answer?

No, no, no. I will help you. Yes. This is not a quiz about... Hello, Matt will help you. I think he should. But this is a quiz specifically to test your journalist bona fides, because it's all about the gurus you covered, what

they've been up to since you've covered them. Have you just discarded them like wet tracks in the rain? Like tea is in the rain. Somebody might be throwing wet tracks away in the rain. Yeah. Somebody might be throwing well-trained so away in the rain. You don't know, Helen. This is all about people you've covered on your new Guru series. So who is the responsible person covering Gurus? Is it you? Is it us? We'll find out with these themed questions. So let's see how you do in this new new gurus quiz okay i'm ready all right so uh there's there's basically one for each of your episodes so there's well there's there's eight questions

okay i'm gonna lose a quiz about myself this is this is this is gonna be worse than your t-shirt horror last year right okay i'm ready i also skipped the one about the guy who died because he felt a bad taste to create a kind of humorous question about what he's been up to. So yes, setting that aside. First of all, in a letter to a friend from 1973, Steve Jobs wrote, Tim, I've read your letter many times. I do not know what to say. Many mornings have come and gone. People have came and went. I have loved and I have cried many times. But how did he finish this paragraph? Four options. Okay. But in, depths, the truth whispers.

Can you hear it too? Option two. Yet, beneath the waves, the core remains untouched. Do you see it? Option three. Somehow, though, beneath it all, it doesn't change. Do you understand? Option four.

Still, beneath the ebb and flow of life, the essence persists. Can you feel its presence? Now, one of them he finished that letter with. Which one was it? I was really hoping that one of them would be like, P.S. I've invented the Apple II and I think it's a banger. No such bone was being thrown to me. This is before he went on his pilgrimage to India. If that helps you.

I don't know what you think, Matt, but I'm tempted to go with the ebb and flow of life, but that might just be recency bias, and because they all sounded vaguely like mystic woo bollocks, I've just latched on to the last one. You have in my depths, beneath the waves, somehow beneath it all, and the ebb and flow. I like

in my depths. I did like in my depths. That was good too. What's your answer? Final answer? I can't help you Helen. They all sound equally... Do you know what? I'm going for A, in my depths. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Somehow though, beneath it all, it doesn't change. hmm yeah you know i'm going for i'm going for in i'm going for a in my depth oh sorry sorry

somehow though beneath it all it doesn't change do you understand that was the correct answer so yes that's uh sadly but you know that's just the first one there's many chances to come back from this and and steve jobs was a particularly an odd fellow and to be fair you did an interview on the episode you just came up. So here's another. I can however let me ask you one. What was Steve Jobs' last words according to the Walter Isaacson biography of him?

My god it's full of stars. Almost. It was supposed to be oh wow, oh wow. Okay, okay that's pretty good words to go ahead on yeah like quite if you're gonna that's your whole vibe that you're kind of like merging with the universal consciousness so it's quite a funky set just you know bear in mind for the your distant future that's quite a banger set of last words rather than what's the

what the famous like one that's always misattributed to Oscar Wilde, which is like either that wallpaper goes or I do. Oh, yeah, yeah. I like the one who's that English admiral? He was expressing his love for his... What'd they say? The famous Nelson. Is it his mistress or his dog?

No, no, his shipmate, his captain, his second-in-command command captain you know in the that very was it 19 is that not that's is that the one that's always disputed whether or not it's kiss me hardy or kismet hardy is that the one yeah no no that he he he went on for quite a bit about his his strong affections for him but you know that was how i spoke of those days but his very last words were something i was something very weird it was something um yeah i think there was the blood was not getting to the head so everyone i mean a lot of last words

must be quite must be quite trippy because people are either ebbing away or on very very strong drugs so there must be a lot more like kind of you know the pigeons are coming then you do recall do recall brett weinstein's inventive evolutionary theory that, you know, something that occurs, especially when people are being hung is... No, no, we're not. No. No, thank you, Chris. No. The post-mortem ejaculation. It's adaptive, okay? I'm sorry. It's science. Don't blame the messenger. Maybe other men, but not Nelson, chris not nelson yeah okay well on that from that rude comment we'll turn to someone you know well helen a man who drinks his own urine from time to time will blunderfield lovely will blunderfield yeah a nice man some odd habits but what has he been saying so

But what has he been saying? So which of the following is not a post that he made in the following month on Facebook? So three of these are real. One is false. Which one is one? If you're naming your fitness brand Spartan or Warrior, but hitting the gym fully clothed, you might be a poser. Spartans worked out naked.

Just saying. Hashtag real warriors. Hashtag gym poser. Option one. Okay. That's real. I'm sure that's real. Well, he does like, I mean, he notoriously does butthole signing in Vancouver.

He's quite, his whole shtick is the wild naked man. So that's not an implausible. And also very true about the Greeks, you know, frankly. That's not going to help you. Next one. 40 dudes sign up for full moon yoga, which is exactly what it sounds like. Helps with the flexibility, shocks the passerbys. Hashtag mooning meditation. Hashtag bear asanas. That's number two. Bear asanas. That's number two. Bear asanas. That's quite good. Yeah. Good pun.

Option three. I wear a kilt because it lets my balls breathe. Option three. No, that's just something that you've written. What's D? Option four. The Matrix wants you to feel gay panic. Oh, sorry.

The Matrix wants you to feel gay panic to lower your procreative propensities yes i believe that one because he has a quite a tortured relationship with his sexuality uh and now defines himself as sort of beyond label so i'm gonna go i don't i actually have never seen a picture of him wearing a kilt so i'm going kilt chris good yep that's true i think that's your celtic nature just creeping out there you would be wrong the false one was the one with the pun the bare ass and us i i did that was me that's right i just um i'm genuinely impressed because i did not know that you had an intricate enough knowledge of yoga positions in order to be able to craft a solid buttock based yoga pun and i i apologize to you for that well chachiPT may have helped out with that pun.

But anyway, we'll continue on with that. You wrote your quiz with ChatGPT. I did not. Do you think ChatGPT cannot be coerced into being rude unless you try very hard? But I did seek its help for some pun, I have to say. So credit to you, ChatGPT. It seek its help for some pun i i have to say so credit to you chat gbt it deserves the credit for that pun ali abdel productivity uh hacker person man recently

provided doctor yeah oh yes doctor nice guy on your show actually recently provided a nine step sleep routine on twitter which of the following oh sorry no sorry, no, sorry, I've reordered this. So here are the first seven steps. Get your hours in, build a sleep rhythm, start with sunlight, morning exercise, caffeine control, catch the evening sun, set dark mode. That's steps one to seven okay you're almost there now i steps seven or step seven eight no steps eight and nine the last two steps three options i'm sorry i would like to say i retract me being nice about your puns when it turns out you can't count to nine look at there's a lot of numbers in this thing that i've written down there are three options and these are the two to finish that list. Yeah, that's it. So expect the spike, keep your cool. That's pair number one. Next one, dim the lights, evening reflection. Next one, tech timeout, sleep cycle.

So which one is it read me a again uh expect the spike keep your cool that one sounds plausible because having a cool bedroom is definitely much better for you right like it's much better to have a nice big duvet or blanket on but in an essentially cool room so i don't i don't know what i expect the spike would be though maybe you do maybe that's the bit where you get into bed and then suddenly you spend an hour scrolling tiktok and you should expect that and not find yourself watching paul t it's when it's at 11 p.m it's when the new tonic kicks in i hope he's paying you i really do otherwise this is just embarrassing you are like hooberman shilling like the healthiest red meat

on the planet yeah i would say he's not paying me but he can pay me with more of these drinks that's the only way are you now addicted to chris williamson's nootropic i am i am i'm 100% addicted i've replaced one addiction with that and i'm gonna run out i think it's it's been part of his long-term strategy. But let's forget about my addictions. Let's focus on the steps. What is it? What's your answer? Matt, do you have thoughts? My hunch is that one.

I quite like the second one. It was boring, but so were the rest of the steps. Chris, what was the second option? Dim the lights, evening reflection. Yeah. That seems plausible. So who are you going to go with, Helen? Your intuitions or old man Matt?

Well, I'm going to stick with mine, and then Matt can stick with his, and then he can win this quiz as well, which will be the crowning achievement of Matt's year, surely. Unfortunately not, because you were right to dump the old man. You are correct. Expect the spite, keep your cool. Although dim the lights, evening reflection was created by me, Matt,

which is why you liked it. So there we go. That's just why we're podcast fans. I have to say, if there's anyone that I would look to for sleep advice, it is, of course, you. Yes, that's right. Yeah, yeah. Take time out of sleep cycle.

I did spend a long time on this. Coming up with possible alternatives, but yeah. Yeah, you've got no right to talk about Chris. Chris, sleeping. Your sleep cycle is to sleep two hours underneath your desk at three o'clock in the afternoon, and that's it. Oh, okay, okay. He doesn't need to sleep.

He's beyond sleep now that he's got, what is it called? It's called something like, it's called something sinister. Yeah, look, you're making me shill it. You're making me shill it. Yeah, what's this drink called again, Chris? Remind us. New Tonic, productivity drink available. 12 facts, but yeah.

So Helen was right. Helen got that right. One point for you. Now, the next one. We're not in diversity, aren't we? So is good i'm i look forward to you getting i can remember the order of episodes so yeah this was this was diversity gurus this one yeah this one was a bit tricky when regina jackson and sarah raw raw were dropped by their theater agent at caAA for their comments over the conflict in Gaza. How did Sarah Roa describe it?

Rao. Rao. Sarah Rao. How did Sarah Rao describe it? That's a hard one to say. Option one. This is McCarthyism on steroids and ethnic cleansing. We are disgusted but not shocked.

Option two, the desire to be perfect and to avoid conflict at all costs are characteristics of white supremacy culture, which we will not abide. Hashtag no silence. Option three, they will not abide hashtag no silence option three they will not silence us we black indigenous and brown folks are not each other's enemy regardless of what they say hashtag stand together option four caa have shown their true colors adding you to the list of fascist American media organizations. Hashtag Free Palestine. The first one doesn't have a hashtag. Is that right, Chris?

Oh, no, sorry. It should have a hashtag. It should have hashtag Free Palestine. Sorry, I missed that. Yes. Interesting, Matt. Interesting that he missed the hashtag out of that one. Yeah.

I like the first one nonetheless. I know that I don't have a good track record of being your brain's trust talent, but just for what it's worth. I like the first one too, and I quite like the second one because there is a lot of chat about white supremacy. And I know that Sarah Rau did do a tweet afterwards, which was amazing, about the fact that how terrible it was that Taylor Swift hadn't weighed in on the conflict

because she could, quote, end it with one Instagram post, which just poses the question, what would the Instagram post say? Like, what would all that involve? I tell you what, let's do the spread betting again. I'm going to go B if you're going to go A, Matt. I'm going to go white supremacy culture is about conflict avoidance. Oh, Matt, one point for you. Helen, zero.

And I will mention, though, that your sense was not wrong. That is a real tweet from Sarah. It's just not about this particular topic. So that's why you recognize that. That was cunning of you. That is cheating. A real tweet cunning of you. That is cunning. A real tweet from another time. That is cheating.

That is cheating. No respect for the law of the quiz. You're not both equal on one point. It's heating up. This isn't a competition. I'm Helen's advisor. If she doesn't choose to take my advice, doesn't listen to her elders,

I can't do anything about that. Okay. Well, that was good. Now, number five. Matt, you should get this one. The Sensemakers famously had a session that was aimed at making sense of sensemaking featuring Daniel Schmachtenberger, Jimmy Whelan, Jordan Hall.

Which of the following is not a title from the Rebel Wisdom channel? Okay. So there is one of these, which is not real. Which one is it? And here are your options. In Search of the Third Attractor with Daniel Schmachtenberger. If we don't fix sensemaking, we won't survive with Daniel Schmachtenberger. War on Sensemaking with Daniel Schmachtenberger. War on sensemaking with Daniel Schmachtenberger. Wait, that's real, Helen. That's real. Sensemaking and society, a critical dialogue with Daniel Schmachtenberger.

Better. One more. There's one more I'm going to add. Oh, why? Better sensemaking with Daniel Schmachtenberger, John Fervacki, and Sarah Ness. Does anyone at any point ever ask Daniel Schmachtenberger what is sense-making, though?

Can you just sum it up in a tweet? Bless him. Four of those. How much time have you got, Helen? You could ask him that if you've got four or five hours to spare um he's running too many paradigms for me which one do you think it is yeah my advice to you not my not my guest but my advice to you for your guest is for sense making in society a critical dialogue yeah it's very funny that this is sort of allied with a movement that

complains about post-modernism all the time because this is like the titles of things i had to read as an undergraduate you know the next level the next level you you cannot you cannot overstate how i mean the thing about the sense makers is you have to understand just how seriously they take themselves that's the thing oh no i love that about them it's like it's actually genuine this is what i mean like the nice thing about covering is very unselfconscious people and you know sometimes that can lead to incredible creativity and sometimes it leads to just people making endless youtube videos about the war on sense making yeah yeah it's like people with warhammer 40 000 or model train sets you take it you, really get into it. No, no, they would never talk about a dialogue

between sense-making society because they're moving on. They're creating new societies. They're thinking about the far distant future. Trust me, it's got to be three. That's the one. Four. That's four. Four.

You make a very compelling case. Chris, I'm going to go with that one. That was correct and well worked out, Matt. You're very clever. Very clever. See, you science it. You was correct. And well worked out, Matt. You're very clever. Very clever. See, you science it. You science it. Would you have got this one?

It's like Sherlock Holmes. You eliminate the improbable. Don't get cocky. Don't get cocky now. But there was, I didn't have an alternative that I came up with, but I didn't use it, which was navigating information overload, the future of sensemaking. Would that one have, would you have got that?

No, that would have rung my bells too. I know them too well. I'm in their heads. I'm living there. That is really incredible that that's the one bit of gurudom that you've just like, you vibe with. You're a fucking whisperer.

You've got 78 paradigms spinning around. I just like the funny stuff where people have really bitchy arguments on the internet and have slap fights, but you're there and they're going, like, tell me more about the phenomenological instability of chronological time. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, yeah. No, I generally do appreciate them, kind of for the reason you said there,

Helen, because the other ones, especially the political ones, they're boring, they hate this this and they're angry about that whereas the sense makers are just pure like they are the pure essence of guru-ness untainted by by the mere trappings of reality society or politics and you have to respect that well free we're on the the final three they're coming up Helen we're not going to keep you forever, but there are three left. And this question, you might notice it's a little bit of a the coaching gurus question disguised as a question for you. But Matt, maybe you can help out.

When Peter McCormick was discussing Bitcoin with Eric Weinstein, to what did Eric not compare aspects of bitcoin to right so he compared bitcoin to a number of things uh one of these he didn't compare uh bitcoin to so option one the concept of bida or innovation in islam option two or innovation in islam option two an enormous revolver from a russian mobster in snatch option three hamas for example that they do social services in gaza but also fire rockets option four a water wiggle a water what a water wiggle a water wiggle yes a water wiggle it's a like a little thing that you hold that moves around you're not are you not familiar with the water wiggle thing i've genuinely thought this is one of those times where it's like chris is saying

a word that i completely know and his accent means that i'm going a water wiggle and he says yes everyone knows it and you find that he's actually sort of trying to say like, you know. Well, I didn't know about it. I didn't know about it until Eric Weinstein famously wiggled a water wiggle with Joe Rogan to just grow. I think, am I right, Chris? Correct me if I'm wrong. He did use a water wiggle in an interview with Joe Rogan.

You are correct. So it is something that he has done before. What is it? I feel like I'm going mad. What does it do? What is it for? It's like a toy, like kind of slippery thing that moves around. It's a bit like, you know, the balloon arm man,

but like in water tube format. He was using it to explain his theory of physics. Yes. He was in that instance. Yes, he was. He must have brought it with him, actually. I just realized. He didn't just have it on him.

He brought a prop with him to Joe Rogan. So did he bring it two times? So this is relevant context for you, Helen. You've got to ask yourself. Yeah, but don't you think that maybe that's the thing that Chris has added in as the rogue extra thing? Because it is a thing that Eric owns and has gestured to before but he's cunningly moved it across

to this paradigm. Precisely. You're on the right track. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking too. Maybe I think you're fine. I knew that you would think that. Maybe he's using the water wiggle every interview. We don't know. What do you think about the US presidential election? He's like, well, very much like the water wiggle every interview. We don't know. What do you think about the US presidential election?

He's like, well, very much like the water wiggle. Well, unfortunately, you are both correct. But in my favor, I thought that Ma had such a bad memory that he wouldn't recall. He would just have a vague memory that Eric was holding the water wiggle and be like, oh, yeah, didn't he compare something to a water wiggle? Which he did,

but he remembered Joe Rogan was there. This is very funny because I did a quiz for Blockton Reported and Katie Herzog has been smoking a lot less weed this year. And let me tell you, it's really like a dramatic uptick in her scores.

So Matt, clearly, whatever nootropics you've been on this year have had a similarly great effect on you. My nootropics is coffee been on this year i've had a similarly great effect on you my nootropics is coffee and whiskey that's the body needs apparently it's really helped yep yep all the core elements and nutrients that the body demands okay well here you are second last which podcast inspired this reaction in peter turchin and this is in Peter Turchin? And this is Peter Turchin now. I almost never listened to podcasts, but for this one, I registered with Spotify

and listened through the whole thing. Three fucking hours. Unbelievably good. I mean, the thing is that in a way, that sounds like a massive diss of Joe Rogan, but it could be a massive diss of Decoding the Gurus. Well, yeah. So sadly, I should have put Decoding the Gurus as one option, but I didn't.

But I do realize. I like this podcast, but it was, if anything, a bit too long. Option one, Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson debating the concept of truth. Option one, Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson debating the concept of truth. Option two, Joe Rogan and Brett Weinstein discussing COVID and vaccines. Option three, Lex Friedman and Elon Musk discussing AI, interplanetary civilization and the Ukraine crisis. Well, jokes on you because that one surely came in only three hours. That's possibly true.

Option four. Constantine Kissin and Jordan Peterson discuss Western privilege and the counter-war revolution. Now, which one did Peter Turchin find unbelievably good? My only rationale about this, Matt, is the fact that he said he registered

for spotify whereas rogan is obviously spotify original and quite hard i don't know it's like youtube clips and stuff like that but oh yeah would you have to register for spotify to listen to any of the rest and maybe to get the full sam harris i guess that's a good point yeah no i think with sam harris you need to you subscribe to his specific app i don't think it's a good point. Yeah, no, I think with Sam Harris, you need to subscribe to his specific app. I don't think it's a Spotify thing. So I think you're right. That's what leans me towards Joe Rogan. Yeah, I would have gone for Lex.

I was going to advise going for Lex, but given what you said, I mean, it has to be the Joe Rogan. Or maybe Peter Perturcin, who I had dinner with as part of his publicity tour. He's quite good fun. But I can imagine him being slightly boomerish in the fact that he'd never used a podcast before. And this was for him his first ever podcast app. And he's less like, he doesn't

understand the existence of Overcast or whatever it might be. So unfortunately, having narrowed it down, I've now un-narrowed it down again. So let's go with Lex. If the heart says Lex, then let's go Lex. The gut says Lex. That's the kind of drivel that people would find life-changing and important.

Final answer? Yeah. No, you were incorrect because, unfortunately, he was talking about Joe Rogan and Brett Weinstein and you smartly worked out the thing which I was like, oh, for fuck's sake, that's Spotify. But then you were too smart and you wrote yourself. Yeah, we overthought it. You know, that's what we did. We overthought it, Helen.

Oh my goodness. Wow, I dodged a bullet, but disappointing from Peter Turchin. I did respond to that tweet, but there we are. Did he care at all? No, I mean, I'm sure he cared, but he didn't respond to my pointing out that that was not a very insightful episode.

But there you go. Can't trust academics about vaccines. Who knew? Yeah, well, I think the thing is, his book End Times is very interesting and talks about these cycles of history and has lots of interesting, provocative stuff But there you go. We can't trust academics about vaccines. Who knew? Yeah, well, I think the thing is that the book, his book End Times is very interesting and talks about these cycles of history and has lots of interesting provocative stuff in it

about empires kind of essentially collapsing from within. And, you know, but there is some slightly odd stuff about feeding stuff into a big computer, which when people start talking about it, you know, in those kind of terms, as if the big computer is going to solve everything, you kind of, it's a slight red flag. And then there's a bit where he's quite nice about Tucker Carlson,

which is also another slight red flag. Tucker Carlson's, I mean, of all your gurus or people that you've covered tangentially this year, Tucker Carlson has had one of the worst dissents, right? In that the Dominion lawsuits for him get kicked out of Fox and he's now reduced to interviewing people who think they've seen UFOs and the guy who claims he slept with Barack Obama in 1999 or whatever it was. Not been a

banner year for old Tucker. So, yeah. There we go. The last question. You're both collectively on free. We're on like one point. No, you're free. You're both on free. The water wiggle helped. I'm an advisor. I'm a conciliary.

But you sometimes advise badly. So this last question. No, but you were the MVP. You were the MVP on the water wiggle, which I still don't entirely believe exists, but I'm willing to concede probably does. Well, I'm going, this last one, were you to go different ways,

there's two points in it. So somebody could race ahead, okay? Chris Williamson, who did feature on helen's podcast has developed a new tonic drink a new traffic drink three of these are real flavors of his drink you are you're in the spaceship? Two of these are not real flavors. Which ones are they? So there's going to be five.

Two of them are not real. Okay. Options are wild citrus,, Orange Sunrise, Tropical Ice, Pineapple Paradise, Lemon Zest Rush. Which two are not real? To be fair to Chris, they do all sound quite nice. As you were reading them out, I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, sounds lovely. Yeah, I'd drink something with only three of those in it. And yet two of them are not real.

Well, unless you're seeing leading brand development for the new Tropic drinks, and they will be seeing the special, like, Chris Kavanagh-approved new flavours. All right. I think a good strategy here is to pick the ones that sound the least sexy. So Lemon Zest is a bit...

Lemon Zest Zest Rush is a bit basic bitch, isn't it? Yeah, it is. I'm going to have to get that. What about orange sunrise? I also thought orange sunrise was dull. Yeah, that's a bit 1970s, isn't it? Yeah, I think we choose those two. Read us the remaining three, Chris.

Wild citrus, tropical ice, and pineapple paradise. Yeah, I think so. Sorry, the second one. Tropical ice? Tropical ice. Yeah, I think so. The ice, sorry, the second one. Tropical Ice? Tropical Ice, that's definitely in it. It's already a flavour though, is it? Ice. That's the...

It doesn't have to be. Tropical Ice. Tropical Ice. It's all just made up words. It doesn't matter. In fact, I'm going to defect. I'm going to say Tropical Ice is one that is made up just so that we can have an interesting split, opening up the possibility that it might triumph again. So I'm going to defect. I'm going to say Tropical Ice is one that is made up just so that we can have an interesting split,

opening up the possibility that might triumph again. So I'm going to go with... I'll stick with Lemon Zest Rush, but I'm also going to go Tropical Ice. Okay. All right. Final answers? Final answers?

Yep. Lock them in. This is for the championship of New Gurus 2023. By any chance, do I win a pallet of Chris Williamson's nootropic drink if I come first in this? I'm sure I can arrange that. Williamson, if you're listening, hint hint.

That's it. So, well, you were both correct that lemon zest brush is a basic bitch and that was invented by me. Or chat GPT. Let's be honest, chat GPT. Come on, Chris. Me,GPT, let's be honest. ChatGPT, come on, Chris. Me, ChatGPT, there's no difference anymore, Helen.

We are one. But the other one, unfortunately, you both lost. You were both wrong. Orange Sunrise is indeed. In fact, I have one right here. That's not orange. This is orange sunrise. indeed in fact i have one right here that's not orange this is mustard yellow the orange sunrise it is and tropical ice is indeed it's kind of smirnoff ice flavor that's what you can imagine um in but that's the best drink in the world well smirnoff ice so much

wow i'm gonna love chris will Williamson's new Tropic drink brand. That's right. So Pineapple Paradise, that was Chachi BT slash Chris Kavanaugh invention. So I prompted it. Okay. It didn't make it up on its own. So there you go. So that means in the end, you're both joint champions.

You both win. Everybody wins a prize. We all win a crate of new tonic, new tropic drink. There we go. I imagine that will go very well over Christmas with my turkey and stuffing and the delicious taste of, I don't know, which one's the real one? Orange sunrise. I'm probably going to be jonesing when I'm down at my wife's family's place in Kansai. Like, where's the productivity juice? So, yeah, I'll have to plan that out in advance.

But, Helen, you did well, reasonably well at the quiz. And I, that was very satisfying for me. It did take a long time to research that. So I have great appreciation for the effort that you put in. Me to research that. It took a long time for me to enter things into ChatGPT. I only use ChatGPT for assistance.

It's only an assistance. But it did help. I will say that. Thank you to ChatGPT2. Thank you to Newtonic for their sponsor show this episode. And yes, that was it. So Helen and Matt are joint New Gurus champions. Matt is, unfortunately, he defroned me,

and is the coding champion for this year. So, you can teach an old dog new tricks. And it was a totally fair competition, Chris. The better man won. What can I say? And Helen was very impartial, I thought, very fair in adjudicating it. But, you know, better luck next time.

Who knows? Maybe 2024 will be the year of Kavanaugh. Should take a P.H.I. to James Lindsay. Bitch! Whore! Start doing this. It was a snitch-off. Yeah, next time I see you, I'll punch her in the face.

Sorry. Please don't attack me. That's just the deutropics talking, guys. Side effects include swearing at women. It's possibly true, possibly true. Well, will you come back next year? We haven't put you off. We're locking you in now before you get even bigger, Helen.

You have to agree. So any controversies that we bring or you bring, we're locked into this relationship. It must continue. I will only come if any of your gurus do anything ridiculous in the course of the next year. So we'll just have to see. We'll have to see if that happens.

We can sign off on that. We can sign off on that. Yeah, that is true. And lest we all forget, I did not make up the line about wearing kilts to let your balls breathe. That was someone else, not me, despite the aspersions cast upon my character.

I just wanted to make that clear before we finish. So important, important note to end on. Matt, have you, or Helen, both of you, have you got any New Year's resolutions? We're a little bit early, but not that far. What are you going to do in 2024? I might finally get off Twitter because I looked at Blue Sky and Threads

and it's all people complaining about Twitter. And I thought, yeah, maybe it's time to gracefully let social media sail off on the Viking longboat aflame into the sunset. It's just, it's lost its joy, hasn't it? Ah, you're a TikTok Twitch streamer, I see. I was thinking about a joke from Red Dwarf

where there's like a toaster that's obsessed with making toast things. In fact, no one around here wants any toast. Not now, not ever. No toast. How about a muffin? Or muffins. We don't like muffins around here.

We want no muffins, no toast, no tea cakes, no buns, baps, baguettes or bagels, no croissants, no crumpets, no pancakes, no potato cakes and no hot cross buns and definitely no Smeg and Flapjacks. So anyway, it's a very, very specific British reference. I always appreciate a Red Dwarf reference, but I went on TikTok and it was just too good so I came back off it again yeah I was just spending

a lot of time watching people although I do obviously now miss understanding what young people are talking about and the words they use like Riz

and Drip Cringe Cringe Drip yeah that's what that guy dropped on your dropped into your mouth during the

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Cringe Drip yeah that was Riz that was Riz Yeah. That's what that guy dropped into your mouth during the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Climbing Strip. Yeah. That was Riz. That was Riz, Chris. That wasn't Riz. That was anti-Riz.

But, Matt, what about you? What's your resolution for decoding the gurus in 2024? What are you going to achieve? I feel certain that there's, like, lots of new single malt whiskeys out there that I haven't tried yet I'd like to really just dig in put my mind to it and try as many as I can I like that I'm gonna finally

publish that feckin paper that we've mentioned for two years in a row that we'll finish we'll get that we'll publish that paper on gurus we'll be there we'll still be first we'll still be first that's right there's not like a crowd falling over themselves to beat us to it for some reason no you know if if you'd asked us a year ago we could have said something about writing a book um but we've given we've given up on that we know that's not going

to happen well maybe maybe at some point in the future we'll see but um i heart as someone who has now been writing a book for approximately 3 billion years I heartily endorse the idea of not although my book as I said does quote one Matthew Brown and Christopher Kavanagh in it on Galileo syndrome so yeah that will have it flying off the shelves. Helen

that thing that you should ask and in the case with you it's actually of interest do you have any exciting projects coming up that we should know about any uh knockoff decoding the gurus yeah any any more spinoffs my uh my next radio 4 series is going to be about the group chat and various versions of it you know telegram uh whatsapp and what versions of it you know telegram uh

whatsapp and what that's done to politics telegram irc discord yeah i'm hoping to go back to the days of icm and msm messenger yeah right remember that great times and uh yeah and it's hopefully going to be called slightly narcissistically helen lewis has left the chat um oh that's great that's a good note for me to for me to finish on by in many ways now leaving the chat yeah wow what an answer so this is the history of the group chat of the is this is a history it'll have a bit of history in it because it's um it's the bbc and they really love that and also because that the history of the kind of chat slightly mirrors my own experience on the internet you know i remember being young and being on yeah uh no icq not icm icq and then yeah um you know the kind of do you remember kids today just do not know what asl means you know and that was like a great staple of my teenage years

age sex location now obviously i realize that every single every single person asking that was a 57 year old man in his basement but you know you know, that was the kind of time that we lived in. So, yeah, and I think WhatsApp for me has become the social network that I use most of. And that is probably healthier. So I think there's a really interesting story to be told there about the way that social media had a kind of brief crest. And then everybody remembered that it's mental to say things in public all of the time, constantly to an audience you don't really understand who's in it. And it might be to your six friends or it might be to everyone in the world.

And you'll be on Fox News Chiron the next day. And everybody's now in the process of retreating back from those public social networks into more siloed. And you can see that even on Facebook. People are ending up in Facebook groups rather than just saying everything to their entire friend group. But certainly, you know, Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp has become a huge feature of parliamentary inquiries here in Britain. It's a huge feature of the COVID inquiry because all of the government, basically the ministers were just WhatsAppping each other. And in this very colloquial way that implied they didn't think they were being overheard. So now everybody's learned to switch

on disappearing messages. So this will never kind of happen again. But for this one one brief moment you're getting an unvarnished insight into what very quick policy making and decision making was like on the group chat and the dynamics that encourages right so i found some academic research about the fact that you will not be surprised to know that in most group chats particularly like parents group chats one or two people just absolutely dominate it and then there are probably like side group chats where some of the people go, oh my God, she's off on one again. But the kind of the group dynamics are fascinating and not that much studied because it's not, you know, not like Twitter mobbing, which happens right out in public where everyone can see it. These are things that are happening in little containers. I do have to mention that somebody in this chat might have been on a Zoom call

sending cheeky messages about the you know meeting that they were in and not realizing until afterwards that all of the messages are retained by the host of the the the chat the head so somebody somebody helen that uh some some boomer who doesn't understand how this technology works well i, I think it sounds bad, like retreating to silos, but it's obviously probably a healthier thing, right, for a more natural human grouping. Yeah, that's how human societies have functioned. And, you know, there's lots of really interesting discussion

about the move to cities during the Industrial Revolution and how that both spurred innovation but also kind of caused cholera. So I think having these very big groups that are way beyond anything spurred innovation but also kind of caused cholera you know so i think there are kind of there are you know having these very big groups that are way beyond anything that our brains were designed for has obviously had some pretty mind-bending effects and i know you can see why people would want to kind of retreat from that um well well i'm all for it i'm going to retreat to a small community or a silo as soon as i can find one that will have me so So Chris, I know, has got his little groups. You've got your group chats and things.

I hear about them secondhand. No one's invited me to them. That's all right. That's all right. Yeah, I need to have some space, Matt. You know, the other thing is, hell, one, this is just making me interested to hear your series. We'll probably have to demand you to come on

and speak at length about it but the uh like fuck what the hell was i gonna say it was really insightful and i'm incredibly like important just carried away by the thought that you were simply too cool for matt that was and then you're like yes i am it's true and then you couldn't think about anything else oh i got it look it came back and i was briefly stunned by how cool I was, but I've recovered from that. And I was just thinking that, you know, patrons, the little walled gardens that people make on locals or sub stacks, much the same way. There's a very low hurdle, right? Sometimes it's only $1 or something like that. But people feel more free to express things when there's like a little bit of a barrier, right? And that kind of stuff. So it speaks to what you're talking about, that people are constructing their own little ecosystems within social media networks. So yeah. And not to go back to one of your gurus, but Nicholas Nassim-Tamaleb's concept of skin in

the game is kind of interesting here, right? Like, so why have trade unions, labor unions for American movements been more effective at driving workplace change than is kind of interesting here right like so why have trade unions labor unions for american it's been more effective at driving workplace change than the kind of identity-based movements that you've seen on social media part of it is because you have a coherent community of people in a workplace and also because you have to pay your dues you have to literally say well i think it's worth 30 a month for me to be part of this campaigning organization and i have a real stake in it i want it to succeed rather than these much more loose affiliations. And I think you're right. Like, you know, I have lots of friends with whom I, you know, only really communicate with through WhatsApp because we live in different parts of

the country or whatever it might be. And we see each other once a year. So I think that's interesting because it's a type of social media that I feel quite positive about, much more so than I feel about public social media, but it comes with many of the same downsides of people who can't read tone, for example, or people accidentally posting in the wrong chat group, or, you know, we're going to talk about Slack and the way that that led to some of those kind of work, you know, that it adds an element to workplace dynamics

that actually some people find is really burdensome, the idea that you have to go and perform in Slack as well as just turning up and doing your job and what things are being rewarded. So, yeah, I'll be delighted to talk about this more at length when I've done all the research for it. If we were Tao Lin, we'd be saying, well, I guess this is all because we're all becoming autistic and the world is autism and that's why we're all retreating to these little spaces. autistic and the world is autism and that's that's why we're all retreating to these little spaces and and on his feet towel in the red scare from yeah from red scare but i think there's something about that right which is a very interesting thing that which we've ended up with these

forms of communication that strip out all of speech and phatic communication and like this is the thing you were talking about in your grometer episode about this about the fact that if people hear you speaking maybe they think you that you're quite sarcastic, but they see your tweets, they think you're a monster. That's true. And it's just because Northern Irish sarcasm doesn't really like carry across. She said it. Helen said it, not me. Okay, I didn't mention Northern Irish sarcasm, but it's true.

Right. But text-based communication is really hard for a lot of people who can't necessarily read nuance, and it does require a certain level of emotional intelligence. Chris, yeah, Chris. I'm fine. No, I read the nuance. All the people don't read mine. Oh, right. That's right. It's the children who are wrong. Yeah. But there is also a thing that's happening at the same time, which, and I don't know how I'm going to phrase this as i said i'm still working on this book about genius but our valorization of the tech genius has become wrapped up with a certain kind of emotional unintelligence and whether that's autism or diagnosably so or whether or not that's just a normal variation in personality but there's a

famous tweet about one of the guys who worked at open ai saying all the people at open ai who can make eye contact only joined in the last six months. And like, that's where the business has gone wrong. So there's this idea that if you are good at coding, you should also, this is the sort of stereotype you have to live up to. And it comes back to the Sam Bankman free trial. You know, that quote I had about the way that he didn't brush his hair was a deliberate strategy to look like the guy who is so busy thinking about how he's going to revolutionize the banking system that he can't,

you know, wear a normal suit. And so it's very interesting. Those two things have happened at the same time. Yeah. But I mean, I get how they're, they're,

they're aping the, the look because that's because the look is associated with good things, but it's still true. Like on a university campus, the only people wearing suits are freaking idiots. The guy shuffling around with sandals and socks, he's the clever one. Or woman. A woman wouldn't wear sandals and socks, but to be honest.

I can actually think that's probably one of those things that is now so unfashionable that young people wear it just to show off how attractive they are. Like I can still be attractive even in sandals and socks. Yeah. So you may be inadvertently right there that can still be attractive even in sandals and socks. Yeah. So you may be inadvertently right there that young women are wearing. The sandals and the socks, I mean, I have been known to wear sandals and socks. It's like a stag's antlers, you know, if you can. The peacock's tail.

Yeah. The stag's antlers are functional, Matt. They're not just for show. You've used the wrong analogy. No, it's right. When Matt gets into fights with other professors, he can kick them because his sandals and socks are less fashionable than theirs. And they have to respect his dominance.

My sandals and socks are functional too. They breathe. They breathe. They allow air circulation. But they keep warm. Yeah. But it's your peacock's tail is what you're saying. It's your social signaling

of like I've got to an agent status where I no longer have to care about your petty dictates of wear closed toed shoes with socks it's your red ass

that's been a massive what a lovely name to end on Chris yeah that's good wrap this up I hear you should and thank you so much,

Helen, for all your time for the quiz and for enduring the lengthy recording time as always. So it's a pleasure

and we'll follow you again soon enough. Bye. Bye. Thank you.