Decoding the Gurus - DTG Christmas Quiz 2024 with Helen Lewis & Badstats

Episode Date: December 13, 2024

In this special festive episode, Chris and Matt are joined by seasoned decoder and quiz master Helen Lewis to discuss the myths around genius, extract her 2025 Guru predictions, and, of course, participate in that most sacred of DTG traditions: Helen's annual Guru Quiz. Once again, the decoders must prove their mastery of the gurusphere’s esoteric knowledge, and once again, one decoder will come up short. Who will it be? You already know... but do your best to feign surprise!But that’s not all! Discourse/Discord creature and DTG Weinstein correspondent Dan Gilbert (Bad Stats online) also makes an appearance to enjoy another mystery quiz and a dystopian guru squad-building game. Play along at home and see if your chosen guru team can match the synergistic power of our curated champions.LinksHelen Lewis on SubstackDan Gilbert on Twitter and YouTube

Music Hello and welcome to Decoding the Gurus, where a psychologist and an anthropologist listen to the finest minds the internet has to offer and try to work out what they're on about. What a feminine voice you have this week, Matt. That was insulting. He spent too much time in America and he's been drinking all the soy, presumably. You need to go home to Australia and drink some raw milk, Matt. That is not Matt. That's not Matt. That's Helen. That's Helen.

Welcome Helen. Thank you very much for having me back. Is this my third time now? It feels like more. It is your third time. I feel like you're the podcast too fairy. No, I think I'm the holiday armadillo. Yeah, that too. But you know, a nice surprise, right? The Tooth Fairy is a positive thing.

When they come to visit, you are given rewards. Teeth. Oh yes, they know they take away teeth. No, they do. They give you money. As is traditional, although as you can probably tell from my voice, which is still a bit husky, I've been a bit under the weather, but I have managed to write a 10 question quiz for you, five of which are about animals. I'm sorry, two of them are about animals. And then I thought, well, this is getting a bit weird now if I have three.

So let's just lean into it. So yeah, five general knowledge, five about animals. That's good. I feel like I have a chance this time. I know about animals. It's true. Animals and Irish politics, it turns out, the one thing in which you have an edge, Matt. Yeah, that was my concern is less than nice because as long as five of the questions aren't

about contemporary Irish politics, it's possible. Of course, there's just been a big election in Ireland, which I'm sure you've been following extremely, extremely closely. There's no T-shirt yet. No. Hell, not yet. See, I don't think that I didn't spend today checking into such things. But yeah, but I did know that.

And I know that Northern Ireland has a government again. The sitting maps. True, they're back in Stormont. They're setting maps. It's true. They're back in Stormont. They're loving it. Yeah, you know, over there in the functioning state with a government, an interesting government system and they've managed to agree that they will sit and do things again. They usually don't do that so this is a good step forward. This is politics for you.

Can I ask whether or not, as you know I've been covering the US election, and I know you've done a couple of shows talking about it. Did you enjoy the kind of the gurus of the US election going mainstream? Because it really felt to me like lots of people I'd had my eye on for now, several years were kind of like break, well, sort of literally breaking America in both senses of the word. I didn't enjoy it. It's definitely, I know you think you think we'd be some experience of sort of satisfaction to see that our very niche into highly online interest has become mainstream and so important but oh my god I so much wish that wasn't the case but yeah no it's been surreal to

see it entering like this really online stuff these weird fringe characters and all of those memes seeping in to mainstream politics. Not healthy, not good. Did I say David Sacks? No, David Sacks is the new crypto guru. Yeah, he's the new, I think he might be crypto czar, actually. Is that a position? It is now. I foolishly signed up to the Trump, you know, like the Trump press list in order to be able to find out where all

the rallies were and stuff like that. So I now get lots of emails from various people on the Trump team. They will always send you, every time he does a truth, they'll email it to you. Great new truth. It would just be like a load of all cap stuff. There's a slight difference between the ones obviously written by him and the ones written by his staff. They did send me a statement. David Osaks will be the

White House AI and crypto czar, spelled C-Z-A-R. In this important role, David will guide policy for the administration in artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency to areas critical to the future of American competitiveness. So that's one to look forward to for you there. Those positions, it feels like a couple of them, like the same with the doge. It does seem like these might be positions where there isn't actually anything that happens except that they say annoying things and make loud noises online or like target people, but don't actually do anything.

Is that possible? That is the best case scenario very much, isn't it? But basically, what happens is that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy go like, Oh, we're going to cut the entire budget for veterans affairs. Who needs that? And then the load of veterans go, we're old soldiers who fought in American wars, and we'd like to get our pensions, please. And they go, okay, go well, fine, fair enough, then. And then after about a year, they don't get anything done. And they get bored and wander off. wander off. That is currently our best case scenario for all of those things.

Yeah. I think this is my prediction. I think the perception is that the US government budget is totally consumed with like bullshit positions, you know, people doing DEI, for instance, you know. But, you know, I saw a breakdown of the, and I think it's like 13% of the budget is spent on salaries of all kinds. And then all the rest of the big chunks of the rest of it are all the stuff that you would expect, education, veterans affairs, mainly social security. And you cut any of those, or defense,

you cut any of those things, then there'll be a nasty shock. So it's not gonna happen the way that people think, right? Yeah, I think, and also if you look at the way that, you know, Trump specifically ran on not cutting social security, right, he is not a kind of like Paul Ryan or Rand Paul style, you know, libertarian, incredibly dry budget cutter. He's very well aware of the fact that if you take money away from

people, they are less likely to like you and vote for you. But what they could do is they could just destroy, for example, a lot of regulator agencies. They want to destroy the Security and Exchange Commission. They want to relax the rules. Already there's been a big relaxation in your area, right? Which is online gambling in America has absolutely just exploded over the last year or so in ways that are just deeply unhealthy for American households, but also have corrupted the sport in a number of ways. There've been a couple of sports people who've been done for betting on their own matches and stuff like that. So that's the real danger is that they'll just go and blow things up. One of the best books I read this year was Character Limit, which is the

account of two New York Times journalists, account of Elon Musk Takeover Twitter. And he basically brings in a load of people from SpaceX and Tesla, including his cousins and like his brother. And they just kind of go, you can have three people in every department, which three do you pick? And then it'll be fine. And then, but quite often, he realizes that the people he's fired are actually integral. And then he has to go kind of crawling back to them and try and rehire them. It's presented all the way through as like this is hard-hesited startup business and then quite often it's intensely counterproductive. And then obviously it's been in financial terms disastrous.

It's just you have to work out whether or not you think it's been worth comfortably several tens of billions of pounds to Elon Musk to buy Donald Trump's attention and favour. Is that worth more to him than however much billions he's destroyed in value of Twitter's valuation? Maybe it is. Yeah. Well, he's lost a lot on Twitter, but hasn't his other companies jumped? The share prices have jumped quite a lot. Right, because the assumption is that the regulatory environment is going to be for what? Who can say what reason? Very suspiciously friendly to them. You know, he's going to he's going to get a lot of great government contracts purely on merit, I'm sure, in the next couple of years.

Trump has said that he's going to remove the government handouts as they're presented to the electronic car area. Oh, yeah. No, it's a very funny bit. I watched him do his stump speech and his stump speech obviously had to like have a certain bit of reworking on the hoof after Elon Musk endorsed him where he just went, these terrible cars, you know, people are against fracking. We call it liquid gold here in Pennsylvania that America's just everything under it's, you know, under it is liquid gold. And then he just saw some bit of like some

tiny little neurons sparked in the back of his brain that he remembered that Elon Musk had indicted. Of course, electric cars are good for some people, not for everybody. We shouldn't force them on everybody, but some of them are quite good. It was really funny to watch him in real time go like, you can almost hear the kind of change of gear and they're like, as he reversed back out of his previous rhetorical position. I enjoyed that quite a lot. It does seem like he's able to, I mean, he's able to get away with everything in general, it seems like, but also that thing about like, you know, no, the thing is, oh, they're going to cut the military, the wasteful budget spending and all that. But like Trump's

whole thing was that they're going to have the biggest military, like they're going to put the most money into the military and bump it up and you're like, wait a second, those two things surely are conflicting messages. We're going to cut spending on military waydine, but increase it beyond the levels ever seen before. But I guess it doesn't matter. He manages to square that by implying, like Matt said, that they spend a lot of money on DEI. So there was an advert that they played during the rallies on the Jumbotron, which went from Rachel Levine, who is the trans woman who is Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services, also an Admiral in uniform.

And then a load of military guys in like drag queens, basically lip syncing to Padom Padom, the Kylie's Minogue song. And then cutting from that to full metal jackets with people being screamed at. Full metal jacket? Full metal jacket, with people being screamed at. Full Metal Jacket? Full Metal Jacket, that's an interesting choice. I put it to you that Trump, a man whose favourite film is Sunset Boulevard, has probably not watched Full Metal Jacket all the way through to the end.

And so it was picked as being like, this is what proper military discipline is like. This is a film that is about uncomplicatedly good military interventions by America, in which everyone is happy. But it was that, that's his theory, right? Is that all the way through, it's presented in this, like the mix of the culture war and the kind of straightforward Republican deregulation tax cutting agenda is actually kind of brilliant to watch the two things mess together, as if the main problem in America's military is that they're not spending enough on soldiers and tanks and like manly stuff because they're

spending too much on lipstick. And you're like, I'm not sure the lipstick budget is actually that fast guys. Really? How much can you spend on lipstick? Come on. Helen, I know this is not yet. I'm doing advanced promotion for you. It's rare. We don't do this. We don't allow people. People ask us all the time, but we say no. But you have a book and it's topical, it's not out yet, but you've written it and you've submitted it. I've finally written it, yeah. The Genius Myth, right? Next year.

Next summer, yeah, out in the middle of June next year. Maybe even published in the US this one. My previous one was very British, so I only had a British publisher. But the final chapter is Elon Musk, because I think that he is the... So one of my contentions in the book is that whichever people get nominated as geniuses, as this sort of special category of people, tell you a lot about what are society values, or the arguments that it's trying to work out amongst itself. And so, in the Romantic era, it was the kind of the poet, right? And then it flips in, you know, the end of the 19th century to being the innovator, you know, Thomas Edison is the real exemplar of this. And if you look at Thomas Edison, what he did is very similar to Musk in some ways. So

Thomas Edison had a couple of inventions that were absolute bangers, right? The phonograph, incredible. People, you can't imagine now how much people freak they're not. For the first time, you could hear the voice of somebody who was dead, No longer did speech and linear time have to coincide. People thought it was like a ghost in the machine. It was just jaw dropping. Like Elon Musk, he had a couple of undoubted successes, but he also had a laboratory, which was really important. Almost everything good was done by people in the laboratory and maybe, you know, and they had the logbook. So other people's names are on everything. He couldn't have done it without this huge team around him.

And then what happened is that after a couple of successes, he kind of just got moved up into a category of kind of like special sage that we want to hear from. So people would go to him, journalists would go to him, they'd take the train line. He was also a very easy train line down from New York. So it's a bit like being on Twitter, like he was very available to journalists. And he would come and he would just weave some story

about some amazing thing that he was gonna do. And journalists got kudos from being the like Edison whisperer. And he got kudos because he was now, they called him the American Prometheus, right? He was the symbol of what America saw itself at the time, which was this incredibly innovative, white, hot-heated technology country

that was not like boring old Europe that was kind of forging onwards. And this symbiotic relationship developed where the more they puffed him up, the better it was for their careers and the better it was for their sales figures of their magazines. And as he became less and less interesting as an inventor,

he became more and more sort of celebrity. And that's, I think, probably pretty much, I would say, the trajectory that you can feel that Elon Musk has been on, right? Maybe he's got a second night, maybe he will get to Mars, but so far there have been an awful lot of, you know, I'll build the boring company tunnel between wherever and wherever, you know, it should have already happened by now. All these milestones that he's absolutely blown through, vaporware as they call it, that is something that has got great lineage all the way back to Edison as being what you want from these kind of big brained inventor types because they're just spinning near, they're the kind of profits of the future.

Like Tesla. Yeah, like, yeah. But the thing that I enjoy about Tesla is Tesla, actual original Tesla, Nikola Tesla, spent a bit of time in Edison's laboratory and then went, oh, I don't like you at all, mate, I'm back off to Europe. See ya. Just couldn't get, I couldn't get on with him in the end. Helen, did you cover Feynman, Richard Feynman in the book? No, only every, every so briefly so often. But I think there's a very funny bit. I actually

really liked the film Oppenheimer. I don't know how you felt about it, but one of the things I thought it did really well was it didn't try to pretend that Oppenheimer had made all of the discoveries himself. It was actually a rare kind of great man of history film that was actually about someone who's a really good manager, like a really good quartermaster almost, right?

And actually, if you ever read any military history, you will find out that generals are really important, but the quartermaster is also extremely important, right? If the army does not turn up with any boots, or they will have to eat rotten horse meat and all die of dysentery, you know, these are bad things. And so what I really liked about that is there's a very brief shot of Feynman just playing his bongos in the background. And I thought, after all this kind of relentless puffery that we've had of Feynman as the current great band of science, that was it. You know, he was just there just drumming away. He's one of 20 brilliant physicists in that. Subtract any one of them and does the Manhattan Project succeed? The Manhattan Project is a really

good example of a kind of group genius. This is what I argue in the book at the end is that the Greeks had this idea of genius that it was something that came to you. You were visited by a genius, like the muse of poetry spoke through you. And we should kind of get back to that idea rather than having the idea that there are special people and everything that they do is special. And one of the people you might have come across is William Shockley, the chemist, physicist, who won a Nobel Prize for his involvement in the transistor and then embarked on a very, very brisk career of scientific racism, obsession with IQ. And he was in that classic mold of somebody who, yeah, he'd been really smart, but almost no one could work with him. And really,

the foundation of Silicon Valley dates back to all the people who left his company because they hated him and went and founded their own companies. But he became obsessed with how special he was. I feel like the alpha and the omega of this is that Isaac Newton has got to be the best example of that, right? Like such an insane person and was into some insane shit as well as being a super big deal. He seemed to have a personality that was even more obnoxious than Elon Musk. Well, I think the thing that's interesting about him is that he did a lot of his best work when he was living in a Cambridge college, which is like somebody did his laundry, somebody provided all his meals, all he had to do was get up in the morning and be Isaac Newton.

And that's a really underrated bit of the kind of thing. But you're right, he spent most of his life obsessed either with alchemy or biblical chronology. Jordan. Well, exactly. Maybe Jordan at some point will come up with a discovery as amazing as gravity. And that's the only bit history will remember. And they'll never remember the bit about how dragons are real. I'd be like, oh, is it funny when the guy who discovered gravity also thought dragons were real? Yeah, it can happen. Did you notice, Helen, that Feynman thing? There was a YouTuber that did a long video essay about the kind of movement around him, the cult of personality that exists around him, but also around people we cover and you know that you covered on the new gurus series are like charlatans, right? Like they haven't actually done anything, but they have these like puffed up personas and you know, kind of Weinsteinian characters. But then in this case, like with Feynman and with Newton and stuff, they did do things right? Or there are plenty of Nobel Prize winners as well. But they seem to have the same puffed up narcissistic personality traits. And I was like, Oh, no, maybe like, they're all like

that. You are the Eric's Eric's Eric Weinstein's in like theory of whatever it is cosmological oneness is actually going to turn out to be really good. And everyone's going to go, they didn't see it in his own time. No, it's not that. He's worried that this trait of narcissistic bullshittery is not diagnostic. They all seem to have it, but the people that really do do things and people that don't. Genius is at the middle of a Venn diagram between charismatic narcissists and has actually good ideas and achievements. And there are people who have really good ideas and achievements, but don't relentlessly self promote or turn themselves into an icon of the age in some way. And there

are people who are just charismatic narcissists and never achieve anything. And occasionally what happens is those two things collide and you get someone like a Picasso who was both a very talented artist, incredibly technically talented artist, and made himself into a symbol of something at the particular time. My example right at the beginning of the book is the difference between Tim Berners-Lee and Elon Musk, right? And Tim Berners-Lee did more than anyone to create the modern internet, I think you could probably argue. But his children are called Ben and Emily, right? Elon Musk's children are called Techno Mechanicus, X hash Y Z-Y-Z, Exeduct-Sedereal. And like he constantly goes on about

how he's Iron Man and Tony Stark, right? And so there is this, what we tend to do is just take at face value people's constant assertion of who they are. And if they're charismatic, the fact that they have people following them. And that's what we call genius. It's not actually related to achievement.

It's achievement plus cultishness, I guess. Well, I can't wait to read your book because it seems to be dealing with the theme that I've been thinking about so much, which started from, you know, online, there is this IQ, intelligence quotient has this cultural currency, right, which is now completely divorced from what the measure actually is, the actual from what it actually is, the actual measure as it exists in psychological research. And like you see that people cannot differentiate between success and being rich, like an Elon Musk.

For them, that is like high IQ. Like high IQ manifests itself in being extraordinarily successful and high social status. And I found it really interesting that the modern age has sort of reified this thing. And they sometimes call it IQ intelligence, whatever. It doesn't have anything to do with any technical definition of it. What it has everything to do with is high social status and being perceived as a success, mainly today, as in making a lot of

money. And that is the proof that's in the pudding. Like there is no way you could be rich and successful and not be a high IQ individual. You are going to love, I fell right down the IQ rabbit hole because I agree with you, you spend any time online and you get the kind of Steve sailors or Noah Carl's or you know, all of these people who are obsessed with a very early 20th century version of IQ that it is essentially like a number that floats over your head that sort of says how worthwhile you are as a human being. And you get very interesting, before that, you know, like Charles Darwin writes a letter saying, I don't think I'm the most intelligent person in my family, which is really interesting, right? That he didn't think I was a super brain and therefore I made, you know, I came up with the evolution through natural selection. What he thought of himself

was as an empiricist, right? He was the guy who got on the beagle and spent three years looking at finch's beaks. And actually, actually having the tolerance for boredom and interest in small birds was actually ultimately more important than the kind of one great intuitive leap that he had to make to put that theory together. So I go from Francis Goltan, who's actually Darwin's cousin, and his idea about hereditary genius, which then leads to the IQ test, which are developed in actually to help kids with what we now call sort of special needs get on at school, right? It's to find kids who are falling behind.

It's not supposed to be identifying special echelon of top people. And then I go through Lewis Terman, whose genetic studies are the gifted, it's incredibly good, rich longitudinal data about American life. But what it doesn't do is reliably identify geniuses. And he actually changes the name of it as it goes along to not be about genius, because he realizes that you can't you can't find these people, you can't administer IQ tests to people at the age of seven, and kind of pick the

winners like that. You'll find smart kids, right? By any standards, they did better than the average American. They had more degrees, higher paying jobs. They were healthier, you know, all that kind of stuff. But one of the people that he misses, to go back to it, when he's administering these tests, who doesn't pass is William Shockley does not make the cutoff to become a termite. His IQ as a kid is not, and he's one of the only people in that potential sample who wins a Nobel Prize. And so that's the kind of great irony that this is the

guy becomes obsessed with IQ and race in later life when he was an also Ram. Did you say he missed the cutoff to become a termite? Yeah, you had to have a cut. Yeah, yeah, termines termites. That's what they were called. Okay. Like not, not like a little tiny crawly. It insect. It was also, it was in some ways a really brilliant piece of sociological research, in some ways a bad one because Terman would also like help his little termites get into good schools and stuff like that. And so there is a kind of, as ever with like any of these studies of the gifted or anything like grammar schools, you're putting your thumb on the scales really heavily and there is a great deal of Hawthorne effect.

You know, you are changing the conditions of the experiment by observation and sometimes by intervention. But yeah, and then I get onto, and this would be the thing I think may be most interesting to what the stuff that you cover is I get onto the high IQ societies. And I find the high IQ societies incredibly fascinating because having studied left-wing politics, prone to schisms. Let me tell you, high IQ societies are the most schismy things you could ever have. Because by definition, yeah, and some of the more self-aware people within them write about the fact

that if you're really smart and you've got a personality that you can get along with other people, you can succeed within conventional paradigms, right? You become a doctor, you become an architect, you become a physicist, whatever it might be. If you're really, really smart, but for some reason people don't like you or you find it very hard to work with people or hard to hold down a physicist, whatever it might be. If you're really, really smart, but for some reason, people don't like you, or you find it very hard to work with people, or hard to hold down a job, those are the people who gravitate to the high IQ societies. So the high IQ societies end up being a kind of home for people who don't understand why they haven't got what they think they should have done. And that happens from the very earliest versions of them in the middle of the 20th century, is that they become... There's a terrible anecdote of someone who had to edit the...

I think it was the Mensa magazine, and it drove them nuts because people would send in 9,000 word articles, refused to be edited, and say, but no, but I think I made actually a lot of really important points all the way through this. Which from academia, I imagine you've met people a bit like that. It sounds like Substack. They're super smart, but yeah, Substack being a very classic example. They're super smart, but what they can't do is accept the total kind of lack of self-awareness that goes along with that. But I've got an IQ of 150, why am I not president? And you have to say, I'm sorry, actually, IQ is interesting and it's predictive of a lot of stuff.

You'd rather have a high IQ than not in terms of being healthy and lifetime earnings, but it is not like a number that floats above your head that says how worthwhile you are as a person. Exactly. Exactly. That's fascinating. Well, so when does it come out, Helen? When can we read it?

When can everybody read it? Well, everybody can read it in June. You can read it before then because hopefully we should have proof copies. Once the lawyer has read it, we should have proof copies after Christmas. Well, see, I knew it would be relevant and topical. And this is advanced buzz. We're generating buzz. We are the trendsetters here. You are, the avant-garde. Yeah, that's what people often say about us. And Helen, I know we have you for a limited time, and we should get on the air quiz. But there was a request that some people had,

and I think it's important. It's an empirical test of your predictive abilities. Yours too, Matt. You have been an observer of gurus, political and otherwise, over these past years. And like you said, a bunch of them have rose to prominence in the Trump administration or incoming Trump administration. But what people in our Patreon were wondering, who are the movers and shakers that you predict for next year? So when we come back next year, we can say, ah, you said that this person would be like a guru to watch, but actually they have fallen into oblivion and are no longer relevant or they become the prime minister or president or whatever the case might be. So this is a question for both of you. I have my ideas too, but who's going to like arise, ascend in the guru excellence?

Anybody you have your eyes on? I have lots of people. I actually gave myself some credit. I wrote a long piece about Joe Rogan in April and I went to Austin and I watched him do stand up and I watched the supporting act. And Tony Hinchcliffe, later to become famous from the Madison Square Garden rally

where he was at Rued about Puerto Rico, was one of the support acts. And I remember thinking, oh wow, like everybody's acting like, oh my God, it's Tony Hinchcliffe. You know, he's got that aura about him, everybody's acting like, oh my God, it's Tony Hinchcliffe. He's got that aura about him that everybody's kind of... And Kill Tony, his podcast is massive. I think in terms of influence, I think there's an issue with Rogan, which is I think almost

Rogan has entered his sort of late imperial phase, right? He feels very much like Rome post-Julius Caesar now, right? He's still incredibly powerful, but you sort of think, I'm hearing rumblings from Germany. He does have a decrepit aspect to him increasingly. But go on. Right. And so, you know, obviously he can sustain that, but actually Tucker Carlson is sort of nipping at his heels in terms of taking that number one spot on Spotify, which I think would be really interesting. But anyway, so my predictions, I have all the kind of gurus, sort of comedy people, the one I was most impressed by was

Theo Vaughan, whose interview with Trump was actually genuinely very revealing of his psychology, particularly the terrible effect of having a alcoholic older brother who died from that disease. And that's one of the things that's rarely mentioned about Trump is that he doesn't drink, right? And he hates people who do get drunk. I think it's about behind a lot of this kind of germ phobia and that kind of style of stuff is having watched his brother succumb to this really unpleasant illness and having had a father who was deeply unsympathetic about it has shaped his psyche a lot. And so, you know, for all that, I was very rude about lots of those podcast streamer interviews that Trump did. Like the Lex Reedman one was just abysmal. The Logan Paul one was objectively very boring. but the Theo one was genuinely insightful. So I wouldn't be surprised if he does a lot better. I don't know if he wants to become explicitly

political in the way that I think Rogan has now turned to being a political podcaster, refusing to have Zelensky on. He actually just doesn't want to be challenged now and have a loose unstructured chat. He wants to stay in his safe space. So I think David Walliams, who might not be a name that's familiar to people, but David Walliams was in a comedy called Little Britain. He's a very successful children's author here, but he has been dogged for a long time by these slightly, what's he like to work with? Like, why did he got sacks from Britain's Got Talent for having said rude things about the contestants.

He's done, he's come off doing a little tour with Josh Zepes, who was a smart eye for the next kind of polemicist. And I think if, if Williams gets any more cancelled, then for him, those mainstream opportunities are going to close. And he is a charismatic narcissist. The obvious place for him would be to end up somewhere like Rumble. So I've got my eye on him. I've also got my eye on the trigonometry lads, who I know are faves of yours, because my God, they are ambitious. They were Rogan's guests, the one after Elon Musk, right?

Immediately after the election, right? They want it so bad. And so I think, you know, they've got the drive that is required to just force themselves into that. That's so horrifying. IDW sphere. Why haven't you got that drive, Chris? Why are you not hanging out with these people? Well, one, I think you're right.

The dark horse is Francis. He will rise through the ashes of the bodies of his fallen enemies and the send the scurrying throne. He'll be there at the end. Constantine has had like a proper Hollywood makeover, right? Like he, he wants to be on TV. Like he now he, he's had, he's had the work done. He's, he's done, he's done the work and had the work. I was actually talking to Matt about this recently, um, was saying like, you

know, there was the profile of him in the New Statesman a while back as well, and like, you know, various critical coverage of Constantine. And he was very, he's very prickly about it, right? And to be fair, the New Statesman, I think called him like a fish eye guru. But in any case, like he had a very thin skin response and was when we covered his speech at the Oxford Union, he did this episode that was extremely revealing because he basically presented us, this is the crowning achievement of his career, his life, his intellectual output was this 10 minute speech which we looked at and was just completely rhetoric. It was red meat rhetoric

for conservative populist stuff, but it was really shallow. But he said on the show, I could look my wife in the eye, people were calling me up saying, you've made it to the big leagues. And it was all like- Did it make you very snobby? Did you like, actually some of us spoke at the Oxford Union, you know, at the age of 19. Did you speak though, when you were 19? Yeah, I mean, I thought they were all wankers, really. But I would have spoken in like an adjournment debate or something, because why wouldn't you just

for just to sort of troll people. But I thought what was really interesting is that he's absolutely nailed the thing that guru-dom and like presenting as I was being outside the mainstream media while having a huge platform allows you to do, which is to say everyone's against me. And when they're attacking me, they're attacking you, my audience. So what you can do is just some fairly straightforward boasting. Can you imagine if I went out there and went, I don't know if you guys know, but I actually went to Oxford University. Yeah, I got a first class degree. I, I, I objectively am great. People think I was the biggest tosser in the world. Correctly so.

But because of his like outsider positioning, he's able to go, I spoke at the Oxford Union, I was amazing, it was amazing. And that means you were amazing. And he somehow nails the landing of saying, and it's in a way, isn't it all of our triumphs? And it's like, not really, it's just you, really, just you. But yeah, so I mean, he's super smart and he really wants it. So I think

you'll get there. But in that case, we find that kind of public crowing, you know, it's not very nice to watch it's like this tearful, right? But Americans don't mind it. I know you're Irish, but that's your British upbringing, you know, speaking. Yeah, yeah. So I was saying to Matt, like essentially that, that even though, yes, it was cringy and all that kind of thing, but Constantine was right because like he did get

invited onto bigger shows. He did get onto mainstream talk shows as a pundit and his profile did increase. So like he was right that that's all it took, you know, like a 10 minute barrel video and you are, you're in the big league. So I think Trigonometry is a good bet. And I think Francis is long for the ride or maybe he's like the puppet master behind it. I also think that Jimmy Carr, I don't know if he'll go into that, but he has pretensions of like being a philosopher comedian from what I've seen of his recent podcasts. Yeah, but I also think it depends how much money, and I would say at the moment he could make much more money from touring stand-up comedy.

And I think if you remember his tax affairs a few years ago, he's very motivated by money. But he's also very motivated by, like he, one of his tours was called Joke Technician. And like that is also the attitude he takes to his career as well, right? Again, like Constantine, he is very much, not mercenary, because that sounds unnudely rude about him, but like he will go where he thinks the money and attention is. And as I say, until he, you know, has sex with a horse or whatever it might be, or accidentally says the N word in, you know, he can be on channel four, he can do that mate, and then he can turn that into a comedy career.

So I know what you mean. He's been on like diary of a CEO and there's a very funny TikTok, I think, taking the piss out of him, which is basically like him on diary of a CEO is like, you know, just think in 15 years time, you'll give anything you owned in order to be as young as you are now. And then the Jimmy Carver standup is like, you've got a smelly vagina. It's just like, this've got a smelly vagina. It's just like, it's just two completely disparate personas. And I guess, yeah, he can probably just do, he can probably ride both of them at the same

time. And I, yeah, I know what you mean. I think he would, he only would do, I think a guru pivot post cancellation and he's not at the moment canceled. So he doesn't need to. I think David Williams is a good bet as well. Matt, do you have anybody to add to the Brazier? Brazer, Brazer, what do you call the thing? The thing where people burn. Isn't there like a thing that you've heard? Brazier? Brazier, yeah. That's the one, yeah.

Thank you. We covered Sabine Hostenfelder recently. Oh, yeah. That was just interesting. Like not a major trend, but it is interesting because she is someone who genuinely produces good educational content, has a genuine background in theoretical physics, but just more and more is finding the YouTube algorithm and feeling the effect of that. And I just think it's so interesting, like her tweets, her retweets of political things and conspiratorial things, anti-institutional things, just keep keep growing. And that theme is getting injected into more and more of her videos. And those are

the videos that really do numbers that do and you know, this is 100% of where her income comes from. So I don't think that's a big deal. But I've seen, again, this, who's that theory? Is it theory of everything? Here's the interviewer guy, Chris, Kurt. Oh, Kurt Jamungle. Jamungle? I don't know his surname, but. But he interviews complete cranks, right?

Like he's had Eric Weinstein, of course. He's also had this other guy who, I forget his name, but he is the crankiest crank of physics crank you've ever heard of. He's the 200 IQ guy. That's his line. He's got a 200 IQ. The thing about that is that that's always a bit dodgy because realistically to get that high on an IQ test, it's one where you had to take it when you were like sort of six years old and there's a ceiling on the test, right? And then you just say, well, if you

manage to hit the ceiling at this particular age... Helen, you don't need to debug this claim. Okay, sorry. Just putting it out there. I went and did an IQ test as part of reporting this book. And you know, for all we think, Stephen Jay Gould, right, and the environmentalist critique of IQ, you know, that it's all like IQ just measures what's going good at IQ tests. That was overdone, right? There is definitely a hereditary component to IQ. Nonetheless, these IQ tests are genuinely, like the culture dependent ones are embarrassing. One was a question about lions and savages, savages in the year of our law 2024. And another one was predicated on the idea that all women took their husbands name or marriage,

which I huffily refused to answer in a sort of feminist kind of... But like, it was a good insight into the fact that actually some of the critiques of IQ were correct, right? And that it does to some extent measure, are you a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant familiar with the kind of like culture of the 20th century? Not to sass this guy, I'm sure. I'm sure in his own way, he's very clever and special. Yeah.

So I think it's just interesting to see someone who kind of is or was respectable and can be respectable, be drawn into that crowd of complete cranks and oddballs and conspiratorial weirdos, almost. And it's like the cause is structural. You know what I mean? I don't think it's like, you know, Sabine has a personality that, you know, is a bit grouchy and all that stuff, but really it's not about her. It's actually about, you know, that's where the YouTube algorithm leads you.

It forces you down the path. Yeah. You think you have to think of like these people often as being like plants growing towards the sun, right? I think that a lot about the kind of, you know, all the pieces that got commissioned in the 2010s about, you know, is girls racist, is, you know, whatever, to some extent, were they genuinely held opinions? Were they opinions that did very well under the kind of conditions of the

internet at the time? Yes. And so I'm sure, you know, people have obviously like tendencies within them, but the cultural conditions bring them out. And in this case, I think, you know think the fact that we all know that the YouTube algorithm rewards certain things has made a lot of people grow towards the sun in that way. Yeah. Go on, Chris, you said you had another one.

I, Matt prompted me. I have three, but they're all together and they are just... You two are so prolific. They're quick fire. I have a quick one. No, this is partly your inspiration, but the Ken Klippenstein, Taylor Lorenz and Anna Kasparian, they were all already there. So Anna Kasparian is doing a very interesting, you know, I didn't leave the left, the left

me thing, right? Yes. I said I'm a liberal mugged by reality, so now I'm a conservative. And there is a massive market for that, particularly as a woman, because there aren't enough women in that area. Like, you know, so yes, I agree with you. Taylor N is now freed from the shackles of having an employer and therefore able to, for example, think it's very funny that a CEO got assassinated because

he's a US healthcare provider. She's putting out like contract hits. Right, but also that again, like, she, you know, in the same thing that I've talked about, Graham Linehan becoming worse when he got to sub stack. That's also the same thing can happen to people on the left too, right? You say things that are edgier simply because you get rewarded by your fans. They see it as a mark of you being anti-establishment and an outsider, and there is no commercial downside to doing so.

So yeah, I can see that. Ken Clippins, was he the one who got briefly banned from Twitter for something? Remind me about this. JD Vance, leaking JD Vance's OPPO report about when he was going to be vice president, right? He leaked the opposition research on JD Vance that had his social security number in. Yeah, and he's currently doing the Tilo Lorenz thing about like, you know, finds it very funny that the CEO was, you know, finds it very funny that the CEO was, you know, assassinated and is dancing on the edge there. But he's putting out a bunch of things that he's setting up. I think he almost described it as like an info war, war room,

without noticing the connotations where he's, it's all about, you know, like the mainstream media is old, it can't break news. So it's like the, it's a Constantine playbook and Taylor is doing that on her sub-stack as well. And like for me, every time I read it, I feel cringe. Like I'm like, you know, internally like, Oh, don't say that you're the savior of journalism. Don't say, you know, nobody else has the power to fight back against the system, but they get rewarded for doing that. It's such a pose, isn't it? I know two people who have sub-stacks that do genuinely brilliant investigative journalism. One of them is Jim Waterston. He used to be at Buzzfeed and then The Guardian. He runs a site called London Centric. And every week he has a really great splash, like an undercover investigation. One of them is into the fact like why are there all these sort of weird wizard themed shops? This is this week's one in the center of London. And it turns out

they're all registered to some random woman who lives in outskirts of Oxford who doesn't even seem to know that she's on the paperwork for them, right? So there's some, let's be honest, probably some fishy tax business going on there. And then there's a guy called Jason Garcia who does Seeking Rent, which does a similar thing of like public service journalism in Florida, who I talked to when I wrote my piece about Ron DeSantis. But they're just actually doing investigative journalism. What they're not doing is constantly going on and on and on and on about how the mainstream media has failed us. They're actually just doing journalism.

And there's a big, I think lots of those people, and this is going to make me sound very snooty in establishment, are doing what I think of as kind of journalism effect wallpaper. Where actually what they're doing largely is either writing op-ed columns, just independently, or hosting chat shows. Right? And then frankly, I could do with them a bit less of kind of carrying on like your, you know, Anna Politovska or Woodward and Bernstein, when what you're actually doing is having a nice chat with someone who basically agrees with you for half an hour every week, or three hours every week. It's the kinds of conversations that are going to save our civilization, Helen. I don't know what you're talking about.

It's true. Only once Lex Friedman has interviewed both Putin and Zelensky, can the war possibly continue? I think not. It's fine. As I say, some of these people are really good. Theo Von is a really good chat show host. He's very funny. He comes from weird perspective.

He asks genuinely interesting questions that other people wouldn't ask. But like, let's not pretend that it's the same thing as spending hours going through the Pentagon papers. It's not, it's two different things. They can both be done extremely well, but they're not the same. I'm sure Dean Starks in Lex and Joe as well, because I think, like you said, that Joe was in his post empire period, and especially because he went all in on Trump. And when the Trump administration is in, it's not going to be a fun time. And it's hard to position yourself as the counterculture to the, you know, like the administration. Trump was unpopular last time. When he left office, he was really unpopular. And luckily for him, it took four years and everybody forgot about it.

But yeah, it's going to be very hard. And I think the thing that's going to get really unpleasant is all of those people who aren't really prepared to knuckle down and do a day's work, you know, the people that he's brought into the administration from like Fox News or from podcasts or whatever it might be, are going to not, I would say when they fail, it's going to be pretty ugly because they're going to have to find somebody, they're going to have to find the deep state of the enemy within whoever it might be, right? It will never ever be that they had it, they gave it a good crack and it turns

out it's harder than it looked from the outside. They just don't have psychologically have that in their toolbox. And Lex will not solve the conflict in Russia and Ukraine and will give softball interviews to Putin. And so he'll just continue, but I think it's dark. Right, but Lex's problem was that his interview with Trump was very boring, right? Like it wasn't outrageous, it was just mediocre. Yeah.

You know, it wasn't even as fun as Logan Paul deciding to break off halfway through and sell his energy drink, which I really appreciated as a kind of ultimate streamer thing. Or like Adin Ross giving him the customized cyber truck, right? Lex essentially did a normal broadcast interview of the type you would have gotten 60 minutes or whatever it might be on, you know, on a sort of sit down with Brett Baer, just not as well as those people would have done it. And with more questions about like, tell me how you, how is the CEO, what things you bring to the government, stuff that Trump doesn't have anything interesting to say on, because he's

not a deep strategic thinker in that way. So I think that's, that's, that's the problem for Lex is that he's, he's not outrageous and if he's not outrageous, what is he, you know, when he was doing 17 hour conversations with tech guys, that was quite interesting, but that market's pretty saturated now and we feel we've sort of heard from those people. It's, he's got a tough patch ahead. I'd be interested to see how he reinvents himself. Yeah.

So that is, that's a good crop of predictions. Right? Okay. Well, all these predictions are wrong. You're missing the big picture here. The big picture is Gadzad. Gadzad is to the moon. He's going to be, 2025 is going to be all about Gadzad.

Trust me. The joke's under the table. That's going to finally hit gold. Part of me is looking forward to the inevitable Elon Musk, Donald Trump fallout. I think that's the thing that everybody who's feeling quite miserable about the prospects of American governance is like, well, at least that's going to be funny. Yeah. Yeah. Shall I give you my quiz? Because otherwise I'm going to... So I don't want to...

Yeah. I did realize that it's not like us to go on tangents. Otherwise I'll have to like run off and leave you. Okay. You're going to have the animal round first. I hope you're happy about that. Okay. This is Matt's chance. Shall I make a note of who's winning or shall I just assume that it was Chris?

Giant Swatch Chris Kavanagh. I'm preparing myself to lose gracefully. Okay. In his discussion with Richard Dawkins, what, apart from dragons, bears and eagles, did Jordan Peterson suggest was a predator? Bing, bing, zip, zip, bing. Do we buzz in? Come on, just imagine it. Imagine Dawkins just going, I'm not interested in dragons, I'm interested in reality.

Fire. It is fire, Chris, that is correct. Yes. It's fire, a predator. And Richard Dawkins looks him like, fire isn't alive, you fucking idiot. Say, well, there's no such thing as a dragon. It's like, okay, is there such a thing as a predator? Of course. Well, that's a meta category. What's the category of predator?

Bear, eagle, if you're a primate, fire? Is fire a predator? Well, it's complicated because a fire kills you. So is there a worse predator than serpentine, flying, fire breathing reptile? Is that not the imagistic equivalent of predator? Great, great moment. Okay, what animal did Theo Von say that cocaine turned you into in his interview with Trump? Oh, being, being, is this an owl on the porch or something like that.

It was an owl. You're right. Okay, we'll turn you into a damn owl, homie. You know what I'm saying? You'll be out in your own porch. You'll be your own street lamp. Okay, I'll turn you into a damn owl, homie. You know what I'm saying?

It'll you'll be you'll be out on your own porch, you know, you'll be your own street lamp. You're freaking... And is that a good feeling? Well, it's a miserable feeling. But you do it anyway. He then went on to complain to Donald Trump that cocaine was both not very good quality and too expensive these days. And Donald Trump sort of nodded along like this was something he'd get the

federal government to look into. Great, great moment. Okay. Two points. Yeah, two. I know, I'm keeping track. Which animal did Donald Trump suggest to Joe Rogan that he would like to act as a psychiatrist to?

He wondered if they were being affected by wind farms? Does this come back to you now? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's not, is it? You're pretending that it's not. No, I know, I know. Bing, b's not, is it? You're pretending that it's not. No, I know, I know. Bing, bing, bing, bing. Okay.

It's wheels. It's wheels. It is, isn't it? It is wheels. Whales. I'd like to be a whale psychiatrist. Because what are they thinking when they can hear wind turbines? This is why he's opposed to wind turbines.

How did you know this, Chris? How do you know this? I know things, Matt. What do I do with my time? He watched Joe Rogan's interview with Donald Trump freely of his own volition, unpaid, as it turns out. And possibly one of the only people who actually watched all of it. I see.

I've been at an incredible disadvantage here, I just want to say. Being a normal human being. Admittedly, I am the co-host of this podcast, but even so, I still shouldn't be, okay, go on. I like this question. Keep going, this is great. This year's, I know. I bet he is.

In his interview with Logan Paul, which animals did Donald Trump suggest could solve the border crisis? Just think of an animal. Wolves. Okay, that was good. Do you know what the really weird thing about that is? That I tried this quiz on my husband last night and he also went, is it wolves? And I was like, why?

Oh no, actually what he said was, is it bears? And I was like, well, how would bears solve the border crisis? But I think he was referring to the film Cocaine Bear, right? I think he thought you could smuggle the cocaine in the bears. No, you're both wrong. It is the German Shepherd. You spend $2.5 million for machinery, he said, and the dog is much better. Okay.

Yeah, that makes sense. Final animal question. You will remember the story about how RFK Jr. picked up a dead bear cub and then posed it in Central Park as if it had been hit by a cyclist. However, when he found the bear cub, what other animal related activity was he enjoying? Oh, I know. Or was on his way home from enjoying?

Bzz, bzz, bzz. Hunting? Well, it's a type of hunting. I can be more specific, falconry. It was falconry. He is a master falconer. Okay, right. Half point for Matt, surely, for he goter. Okay, right. Half point for Matt, surely.

He got hunting. Okay, yeah. Sure, I'm sure he won't feel patronised by that at all. So condescending, Chris. But I'll take it. I'll take the half point, though. Okay, general knowledge. Well, not general knowledge, general guru knowledge.

The application form for Who's Reality TV show asks potential contestants, are you willing to be buried alive? Oh, I know. But Matt, do you want to try? Yeah, I want to guess. Who's Reality TV Show? I'm guessing a reality TV show. Yeah.

I can't think of any reality TV shows. So... This is being done by somebody who's on the internet, who's now pivoting to mainstream television, I believe for Amazon. Oh, wait, I double booked them double. I was going to be wrong, but now I'm right. Mr. Beast. It is Mr. Beast.

Oh, Mr. Beast. I was going to say Fear Factory. Or Fear Factory. No, no, no. That Fear Factory, sadly, ever since the one where they make the person drink a pint of Donkey Seamen has been off air. Um, why might the singer Grimes not want to listen to Ride of the Valkyries? Ride of the Valkyries.

I'll give you a clue. It's related to the word Valkyrie. Oh, because the Valkyrie rocket is a rocket that Elon Musk made and it makes us sad. Does the rocket call Valkyrie? No, she wanted to call any daughter she had Valkyrie, but Elon Musk gave it to one of his babies with the Neuralink executive Siobhan Willis instead. Oh, he's a terrible person. No, the more I hear about him, I just think, oh, a few issues there. Who suggested this year that the American people had been a quote,

bad girl and needed a quote, vigorous spanking. Oh my God, you might actually have missed watching this. This is one of the genuinely, you should drop this in as a clip. It is one of the most insane clips of the year. I still can't quite believe it happened. Sebastian Corker? Who would say the American people needs a spanking? That sounds like a British person.

Stop Googling it, Chris. I can see your screen lighting up reflected in your face. Aha! Deduct points. I was not looking for a spanking in the middle of the quiz. It'll lead you anywhere good. This is Gadsad. This could be Gadsad, couldn't it?

It is not Gadsad. The forequote is, Dad comes home, he's pissed. And when Dad gets home, you know what he says? You've been a bad girl. You've been a bad little girl. You're getting a vigorous spanking right now. I'm not going to lie. It's going to hurt you a lot and it hurts me.

And you earn this. You're getting a vigorous spanking because you've been a bad girl. You're only going to get better when you take responsibility for what you did it has to be this way. Nigel Farage? That is of course Tucker Carlson. Oh yeah I know he did say that. That makes it so much worse. If you allow your hormone-addled 15 year old daughter to like slam the door of her bedroom and give you the finger you're going to get more of it. And those kids are going to wind up in rehab. It's not good for you, and it's not good for them.

No. There has to be a point at which dad comes home. Yeah, that's right. Dad comes home. And he's pissed. Dad is pissed. He's not vengeful. He loves his children.

Disobedient as they may be, he loves them. Because they're his children. They live in his house. But he's very disappointed in their behavior. He's very disappointed in their behavior. He's very disappointed in their behavior. He's very disappointed in their behavior. He's very disappointed in their behavior.

He's very disappointed in their behavior. He's very disappointed in their behavior. He's very disappointed in their behavior. He's very disappointed in their behavior. He's very disappointed in their behavior. He's very disappointed in their behavior. He's very disappointed in their behavior. He's very disappointed Because they're his children, they live in his house. But he's very disappointed in their behavior. And he's going to have to let them know. He's going to have to get to your room right now.

And think about what you did. And when dad gets home, you know what he says? You've been a bad girl girl you've been a bad little girl and you're getting a vigorous spanking right now and no it's not gonna hurt me more than it hurts you no it's not I'm not gonna lie it's gonna hurt you a lot more than it hurts me and you earned this you're getting a vigorous spanking because you've been a bad girl. And it has to be this way. It has to be this way because it's true. And you're only going to get better when you take

responsibility for what you did." It's just like, oh, should we leave? Okay, this is a Chris Bate question if ever I heard one. Which event is being described here by one of its organisers? This will be an event in the same way that Woodstock was a music festival. I know of the event that must be in reference to. Go on then. That's the answer. It should be Rescue the Republic? It is Rescue the Republic, Mr. Robert Weinstein. Well, I knew that.

Why didn't you say it out loud? Well, I just, I just want to, I was wanted to remember what the event was called, but I was just imagining that event. You understand the concept of the event. Okay, I'll give you half a point for understanding the concept of the event. Okay. Which popular internet celebrity was forced to defend himself this year with the words, people said that was my penis, based on nothing? Destiny?

Yes, that's like something Destiny would say. So, so very close, extremely close. Close to Destiny or not, allegedly. Oh, Nick Fuentes. It is Nick Fuentes denying that he was in a sex date with Destiny. Well, look, Matt, it's not about winning or losing, is it? Helen, who won? What is that Hollywood discourse? This is the fun that we had along the way.

I agree. I agree. I agree. I think... Didn't I win last year? You always win, Chris. You always win. Yeah, but he's the real winner here. He's winning at life. You know, I've lost a quiz and I've gained so many hours in my life. The respect of our listeners. I don't need that.

All right. No, no, that was fun though. And I liked that I was imagining the correct answer to at least a couple of them. Well, Chris was... of them while Chris was before Chris was saying it. Yeah, which shall. Helen, I know that you have to escape. Well, I have to go.

Yeah, at some point I'm going to get a phone call and then I have to go. So thank you very much for your services to the Discord, services to this podcast, you know, but it just doesn't feel like the end of the year until we have been quizzed by you. Until Matt has lost a quiz. Yeah, but and the book, we look forward to it. Okay. And in the meantime, you can of course read me at the Atlantic and on my sub stack, HelenLewis.substack.com.

And on various podcasts. You're also on- I'm on Boxer Imported. The page 94. Oh, and I'm on page 94. And I'm on my own podcast called Strong Message here with Amanda Iannucci, writer of Veep, yes. But let's not, we're not here to plug me, Chris.

Oh yeah. Okay. Thank you, Helen. See you next year. Bye bye. Bye. Okay. So Matt, on this special end of year episode, we have another guest, another celebrity from the discourse has manifested in some ways we've willed him in the existence.

It is discourse creature and I'm sorry, discord creature, Discord and Discord creature. Dan Gilbert off initially Weinstein fame, but it's fair to say he's become broader than that. He's spread out. Jordan Peterson, Elon Musk, none escape the eye of Dan. He's bad stats on Twitter. Is he still on Twitter? I think he is, but he's probably on Blue Sky as well. And we welcome Dan. Thank you. I think I was on this podcast four years ago.

So I'm happy to make my once every four year, you know, Decoding the Guru's appearance. No, you've been on... We should talk about the Weinstein's once again. You've been on since then, haven't you? Not that I know of but... We talk about Dan a lot. Yeah it's probably because we steal your clips. It feels like... My clips have made appearances. Yeah that's right and insider information so yeah it feels like you're always here with us in a way.

It's spirit. It's spirit. Yeah, that's it. So as the unofficial Brett Weinstein correspondent for Decoding the Gurus, if I would check in on you two and just make sure that you're keeping up with your Brett lore. This is important because Matt's just had his dignity and self-worth damaged by losing badly in another Guru quiz. So this is his chance to restore it.

This is your chance for redemption. Yeah, Matt is very good with remembering the details of like specific things around Guru. So this is this is great. Yeah, great. Well, there are seven questions in this quiz. So I'm expecting a score of seven out of seven. Anything less, I will consider to be a disappointment. Yeah.

Okay. Should we get started? Yeah, me versus you, Matt. That's the way this pounds out. Okay? Me versus you. We're not a team. We're not a team.

Not a team. All right. Go for it. Go for it, Dan. All right. So question one. Which of these things does Bret Weinstein think is the primary cause of the disease known as polio? A, wokeism, B, the polio virus, C, pesticides, or D, nutrient deficiencies?

B. That's my guess. It's a guess. What did you say? B? You said D. D. Don't try this. Which one was D? Nutrient deficiencies. Yeah, I'm tossing up between nutrient deficiencies and pesticides. So to just make things interesting, I'll go for B.

It obviously cannot be B. It cannot be B. That's the only one you know for sure that it can't be. Yeah. All right, so final answer, Chris, D, Matt. Are you going D or B, Matt? Which one was pesticides? C is pesticides. D is nutrient deficiencies.

I kind of think it's nutrient deficiencies, but. That's fine. That's fine. Stick with it. Don't worry. All right. I'll stick with nutrient deficiencies. All right. Okay. You are both wrong. The answer is C pesticides. God damn it.

That'll be a zero in the first row. I should get half a point though. Cause I was originally, cause you were, you were in the win. Yeah. Maybe you should give him a half point. Maybe you should give him a half point down. I controlled a couple of points out of Helen as well, just continuing the... Anyway, go on. There will be no sympathy points here. We don't do grade inflation. This is not a woke university.

Question two. Which of these things does Bret Weinstein think is the primary cause of excess deaths during the Spanish flu pandemic? So during the Spanish flu pandemic, A, was it Spanish flu? B, over reported deaths? C, Proto SARS COVID 2? Or D, aspirin? Going for B. B, over reported death from meth. D. D. That's what I'm about to say. Chris is suspiciously confident that it's D, aspirin.

All right. The answer is D, aspirin. Basically, the Spanish flu was a non-issue. The only reason people died during the Spanish flu was because they were over-rescribing aspirin and that's what was killing people. It's almost like I heard that question. He's always stupider than you expect. Yeah, it's like I heard that question on Pidron or something.

I just had this sixth sense. Chris may have gotten to pre-empt that question. We might have to strike this question from the record. Strike it. Strike it. I agree. Question three. So in order to help make sense of this complicated world, Bret Weinstein likes to invent helpful concepts. So which of these is not a Bret Weinstein coinage?

So three of these are Bret Weinstein coinages, one of them is not. One is fake, one is dumb. You want to find the fake one. A, the Cartesian crisis. B, the Psyop Cyclops. C, the Coalition slicer dicer. And D, the time traveling money printer. I know the answer, but I don't want to give Matt a hint. So I'll let him go first. Well, I think it's either B or D. And I'm going to go for B. Just read me B again, just to check that I'm...

B is the PsiOp Cyclops. Yeah, I'm going to go for B. It is B. All right. B is correct. A point for Chris and Matt. My Psiopsiop... I can't imitate Brett. He's too unique.

My Psiopsiklops was too obvious. Yeah, that sounds like something you didn't do. It's also that the yellow ones are quite memorable. Like the coalition... The coalition Slicer Dicer in particular. That stands out for me. Yeah. So question four. Brett Weinstein is a

leading evolutionary theorist. Which of these is not one of Brett Weinstein's novel evolutionary hypotheses? So A. Fashion trends originate as an adaptive response to predators. By frequently changing the patterns on their clothing, ancient humans could confuse predators and increase the likelihood of survival. I mean, whether you thought of that or Brett did, I love it. I love it. Yeah, go on. B. China's one child policy is the result of a genetic adaptation in humans that causes them to pass government policies which create a gender imbalance in favor of males when they sense war is coming.

That's totally a different thing. I shouldn't be helping Chris. I shouldn't be showing my thoughts. You don't need my help. That's what you think, hey Chris. All right, go on. An evolutionary analysis reveals that although perhaps Hitler was evil, the Holocaust was rational from

a genetic perspective. Yeah. And D, men when hanged ejaculate. This is an adaptation which confers a reproductive advantage because of the slight chance that the semen will end up in a vagina. Yes. Okay. Well, I know my pick.

Would you like to go first, Chris? I'm locked in. I'm afraid, Dan, that although it was a good attempt at imitating the master, you don't have the evolutionary lens that Brett does. So A doesn't quite cut it in Weinsteinian evolutionary theory. All right. So that's an a from Chris and Matt. Yeah, I for me too Question five again. Wait, wait, are we correct? Yes, you're correct. Of course one child policy the Hitler was brash Nolette genetically and The men went hanged ejaculating in case it might end up in a vagina I feel like are too iconic of you know bread theories.

My mission in life is to get everyone to know that these are bread theories so this just means it's working. Yeah well I don't want to step on another question but I thought you were going to reference the renting a hall to explain gay people. Explain the origin. The problem is he never actually got around to renting the hall. So I don't know what his evolutionary theory of homosexuality is. Otherwise I would have included it. And it's been how many years since he's been promising. He's only given like the tiniest little hints. So I'm dying to hear it. We can only imagine. We can only dream. But yeah, why not all those rams? We'll all do that.

Question five. So Brett Weinstein recognizes that we live in an increasingly treacherous world. Which of these concerns has Brett not mentioned? So A, residual radiation from Fukushima has traversed the Pacific and is interfering with his camera equipment. B, Brett will need to cook his steaks well done to denature the mRNA proteins found in

the meat of cows vaccinated with mRNA vaccines. C, Brett's enemies are trying to intimidate him into silence by hacking into his phone and causing it to display threatening words like suicide. And D, since the recent aurora bore borealis increased solar activity may be interfering with the GPS device on his bicycle causing him to get lost. I think I know the answer, but I demanded you go first, Matt, because I feel you don't. did you go first, Matt? Because I feel you don't.

Oh, you know, you know, don't don't rule me out. I think I'm going for B. Read me B again, just to just to check. Brett will need to cook his steaks well done to denature the mRNA proteins found in the meat of cows vaccinated with mRNA vaccines. See, that's that's that's plausibly Brett, but I'm going to go for B anyway. Yeah. All right. Matt goes with B. Chris?

D. Obviously D. Obviously D. Chris is right. So that's a point for Chris. Obviously D. Come on. Don't belittle my attempts, Chris. I was very concerned because they read an article about how they might be developing mRNA vaccines for livestock. And then he was really, he was really angry about this, because they

could still sell that meat as organic, which is the meat that he buys. And so now he was saying, now I'm going to have to start cooking my steaks well done. So that, you know, to like, you know, deal with the arms from the mRNA that's going to be in the meat of the cows that are vaccinated. I did, I did appreciate that you folded in Brett's concern with solar flares and radiation. That had me on the hook initially. I was like, oh yeah, he is concerned about that. But then when he got lost... He's concerned about ending the world, but he hasn't messed with his GPS.

Not yet. world. But he hasn't messed with his GPS. Not yet. Not yet. That's what threw me. So that was a good distractor. Well done. I like that. Yeah. Question six. So Brett Weinstein rose to prominence for his insightful commentary throughout the COVID pandemic. Which of the following was not a Brett Weinstein hypothesis regarding COVID?

So A, Omicron variant was developed in a lab by rogue white hat scientists as a natural vaccine to be unleashed upon the world. B, pharmacies are now selling pills labeled as ivermectin, but which actually contain harmful big pharma products like Paxlovid and remdesivir. contain harmful big pharma products like Paxlovid and Remdesivir. C. They are giving people antigen tests that yield false negatives in order to trick people into spreading COVID. Or D. The October 7th attacks on Israel may have been orchestrated in order to cause a rift between Brett and his friends in the COVID dissonant community and prevent them from becoming too powerful. Yeah well we know the last one is definitely Brad. Unbelievably that is fair. More people should know that.

I think I know but this is a good one. This is a good one. Oh shit, I've forgotten. I've forgotten my pick. I did have a pick in mind and now it's gone out of my mind. Your summaries? I think it's one of the first two. I did have a pick in mind and now it's going out of my mind. Your summaries? I think it's one of the first two. Yeah. Quick, quick, quick summaries. A is Omicron is a white hat vaccine that was intentionally leaked from a lab. And B is pharmacies are selling pills labeled as ivermectin, but they're actually big pharma drugs. Yeah. I'm going to pick B.

I think B as well. I think B. All right. You are correct. It is B We know I'm Brett. We know we Money in that for big pharma. We know all his conspiracies. This is the Like whatever there's a new one. It's like he could say that but he hasn't Alright last question and this one is to be a slam dunk for you guys. Which of these people has blocked Brett on Twitter? So A, James Lindsay, because Brett

was a member of the Controlled Opposition who opposed COVID vaccines but refused to recognize that they were products of gnosticism. B, Eric Weinstein, because Brett was going a bit too far off the deep end and it was interfering with Eric's more subtle brand of obfuscation. C. Elon Musk because Brett spammed him with messages insisting he was shadow banned and asking Musk to do something about it. Or D. Peter Hotez after Brett issued a series of no less than 13 tweets impelling him to debate RFK Jr. They all should have blocked them. They all should have blocked them.

But we all know who it was. Elon Musk. Elon Musk. Elon Musk. Because I guess he was complaining about it for like many weeks in a row on his podcast. Every podcast he went on, he would complain about how Elon Musk blocked him and say, if Elon Musk is watching this podcast, could you let him know? Could you tell him to unblock me?

This is why it's so hard to leave Twitter because it's a cesspool of corruption, but it has those happenings, which are just so funny. I remember it making my day. He's continual whinging about being hooked by Matt's account. Dan, you need to summarize, though. I hope you were keeping track. Who won? I kept a careful score. So including the question, which we should strike from the record because Chris is a cheater, the total score

is four points for Matt out of seven and for Chris six points out of seven. So even if we, does that include striking the point? That includes striking question number two. So I think that puts Matt in the category of sophist who trusts in science and that would put Chris in the category of a member of the coalition of the reasonable yeah thank you stop looking so smug Chris I'm that's my fears now we have a return quiz for you Wow yeah yeah I'm gonna transmogrify by the power of science. So, Matt, the Patreon people, when I was talking to them earlier,

canvassing questions and topics, right, they had a nice scenario that I think it sparked my creative juices and it may do it for you too. I don't know if that's a good way to sell that. But they were asking, Matt, if you remember back in the early days of the podcast, we used to talk about which guru we would take to a desert island, like if we needed to survive on an island and we used to like decide whether we would let them in the island or kick them off. Like we give up on that, but it was a reasonable, it was a high concept addition, right? But people were asking if us three were on an island, right?

It's kind of a hunger game scenario. You, me and Matt are there on the island. There's a limited amount of resources, you know, food, shelter, these kind of things. And we've got to stay there for one year. OK, we've got to live on this island. But there's only enough resources to keep one team alive Matt Me or you that's it where one of us is going and to survive

We are allowed to take with us to or if you need you can take a third guru but but to To go so in this Lord of the Gurus scenario, who will you select to join you on? And I was thinking, is it only people that we've covered? But no, it can be people in the gurus, but you cannot, Matt, have the good people, okay? Because I know that you will take like Mick West and and Sean Carroll just to have fun and you're not lied Okay has that you can only take the bad they like in the upper 50th percent. Yeah the gauram ters. Yes. Sorry the premise is We're trying to survive for a year on the island with our team. We're choosing ones that can help us. Yes, correct

Yeah, like who have good survival skills. Yeah, this is possible. But here's the twist. So it's going to be around Robin. When I pick someone, they can't be in your team because you can't, like, you cannot thing, right? So this means by process of innie minnie mo. OK, I go first.

And that was by innie minnie mo. OK. Wow. Well, okay, I go first. And that was by InimaniMo. Okay. That's the niche here. Okay, it's the roulette of InimaniMo. So I had time to think about this because I had the scenario and the obvious pick is like a Rogan, right? Or someone like a Rogan.

But I feel that they would be treacherous and they may like turn on me or force me to do things I don't want to do. So I'm not going to go for Rogan. I'm going to take Lex because Lex is like physically capable, but I think more malleable to my whims. So he will be a good soldier if I can bring him onside. And he can play guitar. At least he will be willing to attempt to hunt things and stuff.

And he's already been to the jungle. So despite the horror of having love poetry endlessly for one year, I think I'm cheating Lex as my first pick and Dan you're next. Okay. Okay. So, I mean, we're picking gurus for their survival skills, which is a very different criteria from how they're normally being evaluated. I just don't normally think of them that way.

A lot of them are sort of on the older side. Generally, I think they'll have better survival skills than me. I might hate myself for it. I'm looking at a list of the gurus from the tier list right now and I think I I I think I'll start um I'm gonna have a white red Weinstein because despite everything I think he knows how to camp that is I think and I think that he probably has like some basic camping skills. I don't even know. I question your premises. Yeah.

I also, I feel like this is cover for you just wanting to have Brett captive for, you know, like, able to quit and learn to listen for one year. I could give him the same Chris. Your choice is your choice. So Brett and Lex are off the table. Who is going in the Brian camp? Well, if she qualifies as being a bad guru and not one of the good ones, Sabine Hostenfelder. I'll take her.

She seems, she knows, she's smart. She knows how to make know how to make fire. I think she'd be able to help construct a shelter and it wouldn't fall down. I have I think she'd be a good pick the best pick of the bunch for survival. Okay. Yeah. Well, I think she can come because even if she isn't in the worst range of it, she's on that trajectory, right?

But I feel like- Yeah, she's a band just being one of them. Yeah. Yeah, but you've got like, you're facing Brett and Lex and you're bringing the Sabine to your Lex and Brett fight. Yeah, I think she'll eat the- Actually, I read her chances. I read the chances. So, okay. Okay. That's a that's a strong idea to begin with. Right now. I need to see that list down because

I have forgotten who is who is there. So just give me a second to lie. Where's that? Matt scores? Matt and Chris chromatologist course, okay, that will do. Okay. I'm not taking the red scare guards. They're not coming Needle of them Kill them but okay. Okay Well, I I've got a bit of I think this is a risky pick. Well, it's a risky pick, but I I've got a bit of a, I think this is a risky pick. It's a risky pick, but I've got logic for it. You know, on this island, there's going to have to be murder, right? There's going to have to be like underhand dealings and all this kind of thing.

And there's only one man that I think I can trust to like do what is necessary. And it's Scott Adams, Scott Adams. He doesn't trust anyone. You think he's not gonna betray you? You think he's not gonna take you down? I gotta be careful. But like me and Lex can probably, you know. You won't be able to sleep.

Just, I don't want anyone else coming him on the team. So Scott is coming in as my number two. Yeah. Oh, god. That's dark. OK. So I like that idea. So you have a combat pick.

I'm inspired by that. So I think my first pick was for survivability. And Brett is going to keep me alive if he chooses to. So I think my combat pick is going to be Eliezer Yudkowski. Because I think he's a strategist. I think he would go absolutely psycho on you guys. He would be like mapping out where you guys are camping. He would take like absolutely brutal, total war approach.

I think you've made a terrible mistake. I think he's going to be like, fashioning 40k characters out of like stone and whittling and like coming up with fantasy. He's strategizing. He knows game theory. He knows that like the only solution to this game is just to wipe you guys out as fast as possible before you can develop superior technology. You're just going to be bogged down with Harry Potter fan fiction.

We have a whole year of time to pass. All the better. Okay. And some erotica if I remember correctly. Yeah. Well, actually you have possibly the best team for like a D and D session. Like that's, that is some. You sound jealous. Yeah. Reconsider your picks now.

That's it. Well, you've got Sabine. Who are you bringing on board? Well, yeah, I've got to round out my team. I'm not going to follow this combat pick thing that you guys are doing, even though your choices were laughably poor for that. But I think to round out my team, Sabine's a small woman and I'm not particularly large either. We need a big buff boy, someone that is gonna, you know, lift heavy objects and drag tree trunks around. It's obvious, Francis Foster. Okay, okay, we get him. Sorry.

Yeah, Francis, I think, okay, we get him. Yeah, Francis, I think, would do what he's told. So in many ways, he'd be a good pick. I think he would fit into our team and just, you know. He's not perhaps the brawn, though. Not the... No, no, he's not the brawn. So I'm gonna have to take Andrew H. Huberman. Oh, wow, you've got like team science. And he knows his way around nature. He'll have us, we'll be setting up camp next to a swiftly flowing body of water. Our negative ions will be super charging him. We'll be super, I'll super super charging with the negative ions and then unleash him on your team. I feel like he's going to get withdrawal from like his testosterone or whatever,

and like beat you to death when you're sleeping. But that's, that's, that's a good, that's a good team. Now, look with this team, this is, this is a freeway. It could go any way. I think we have to add in the third backup person, the final leg of the team, the supporting candidate. I've got another dark horse pick that I think... I am tempted to go for Destiny because I think it will be entertaining. But I'm worried about the combination of Scott Adams and Destiny together. I think that's too much potential dark energy colliding there. So I think. Jimmy Wheal, Jimmy Wheal knows his way around nature.

He's quite a healthy guy and he he is like the, you know, the gel that holds this this ragtag team together, me, Lex, Scott Adams. We're going to be friction, but Jimmy is going to have us doing like bongo sessions and, you know, primal screaming and stuff. So Jamie Wheal, I'm thinking Jamie Wheal. Jordan Hall, no thanks. Too dark energy. But Jamie on the right side.

You're leaving Jordan Hall for me as the peacekeeper. I think if I already have breath for survivability and Eliezer Yudkowski for combat, then I think I also need somebody to like hold the team together to keep the peace, spiritual guidance, that sort of thing. So that only leaves a few choices. Jordan Hall is one of them. He's very spiritual. I don't think I could stand it for a year. I'd have to drown myself.

He's a Christian, right? That's right. I think I'm going to go with Dr. K. Oh, he is a psychopath. He is a dark picture. I don't think I could put up with him like doing his shtick on me or whatever, but he can go ahead and do it to the other my other team members. He would be mental warfare. He'd be like psychoanalyzing the other people and yeah, that's a good one. Okay, like couldn't help but notice the way you would look at me across the campfire.

Yeah. The way you're eating the fish is really making me feel threaded at the moment. He'll use his therapy speak bullshit to keep them in their place. Wow, and he'll kill him. Or they'll kill him. That's a powerhouse. That's a powerhouse team. You'd cause people strategy, grab for evolutionary knowledge and talk their tail for spiritual

warfare. Put it down. That's what it is. Brett probably would know what kind of things are poisonous. Or he would pretend that he knows, or he'd come up with some reason why this thing should or shouldn't be poisonous. Yeah, you guys would eat food that Brett recommended

and you would all die, but nonetheless. Yeah. Nonetheless. It would be a memorable time. But team Science Mart, you've got Hausenfelder and Huberman and Yuri. This is a science-heavy team. The over-educated team for surviving on an island.

Yeah, this is true. You guys have been taking confrontational picks, picks that are going to undermine or somehow win in some sort of confrontation between the teams, right? Which is not how I was thinking of it. But given that you've been going in that direction, I think you're missing the obvious choice. Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I'm picking him. He is going to own you or asses. And also he's going to be the leader of our team

because I don't really want to do it. He's going to be the boss, let's face it. And he'll smash you guys into dust. He's going to be the boss, let's face it. And he'll smash you guys into dust. He's going to call you all idiots for the entire time that you're there. So this is interesting. Now we have the team, the units are there, right? We have Lex, Scott Adams, Jimmy Weal and me. Prep Weinstein, Elie Yauza,udkowsky and Dr. K with Dan. And then Matt, you have Sabin

Hossenfelder, Andrew Huberman and Nassim Taleb. So yeah, now I see we, I will put this to the listeners to vote who wins. So we will find out objectively. But do you have intuitions? Are you confident with your team pick? I'm not worried. You're not worried? Matt has all the science critics. So he has Sina Haas and Peltzer, he has Huberman, he has...

Sorry, who's the last one? Talop. Talop especially. Yeah, he'll, sorry, who's the last one? Talep. Talep especially. Yeah, he'll just be complaining about like, you could claim anything and the three of them would find a reason why you've made some terrible error. You're not taking into account tail risk. You're like over indexing on, yeah. So you're not going to be able to get anything done.

That's true. Well, you guys will be like hunting for food and creating shelters. We'll be preparing for the meteor strike. That seems going to contribute. I have the most chance of being killed probably by my team with Scott Adams and Lex and Jimmy Wheel. I feel it's like a high risk but high reward strategy to bring Scott Adams on island. It definitely is. That was a surprising pick, Chris. Well, we'll see what the people think. As you said, it's a science.

Once the vote is in, for sure. I like the balance of balance, Tim. I have to say it's like spiritual warfare. It takes all kinds. Technological insight and evolutionary knowledge. And Dan. Technological insight and evolutionary knowledge and damn That's that's it they you're you're bringing your your knowledge your information you're able to store like you know I'll bring all the knowledge that I have about them

Yeah, yeah, my team is making me nervous. We were just imagining that. But so congratulations. Good job to both of you. You have succeeded. And here we are, the three of us. You're for now, Dan. Well, thank you, Dan. This has been very good. Thank you so much.

And an excellent Christmas special. I'm going to bid you guys ad due from Pennsylvania, Lancaster County, where I am amongst the Amish. And I am going to check out of my motel, which is due in about 10 minutes. Okay. But Dan, before Matt bids us farewell and dissipates into the mist in the the US where you live as well in a different part. Since you helped us out, since you had such a wonderful quiz and you made a nice team, do you have any questions? We're like genies, but you only have one question that you can ask of Matt or me that has been burning in your soul that you need to know. You need to answer here. Is there

anything that questions for the for the Guru? You are the embodiment of the recording. The Guru's community now is your chance. That's right. I'm the representative of forever. Hold your tongue. No, I think you're I think you're you know, I've been paying attention to your podcast for these last four years or so Don't care for it. Oh That's fine. Well given how about is there anything you'd like to say anything you'd like to promote anything you'd like to shill any Oh, yeah, yeah products. Yeah. Yeah, what, how could people find you? Music, music channels? Yeah. I recommend buying Dark Horse Podcast merch.

And you can follow me on Twitter at the bad stats. And you have a YouTube channel. That's highly secondary. And I look forward to joining you again in four or so years. OK, all right. Well, that's all very good, Dan, but I will promote your YouTube channel because it has nice music on it. So that's it. And I'll be contacting your follower after to read the performance. Let him know how you do.

The real fans will get that reference, the real fans. So, but that's it. Well, let's see. I'll let you know what the listeners feedback about the island. We'll see who emerges. Only one can survive. I thought it was a bit dark, but then I thought, you know, like Hunger Games and stuff, like young teenagers can handle this concept.

So we should be able to. Yeah. I think it's refreshing to think about the gurus from a combat perspective for the first time. like young teenagers can handle this concept, so we should be able to. Yeah, I think it's refreshing to think about the gurus from a combat perspective for the first time. I like that. There should be more of that. Well, thanks so much for your quiz, Dan, because, and what I liked about it is that I didn't score zero.

Helen's quizzes were always far too difficult. She assumes that I know much more than I do. And, um... Her quiz is on everyone, everyone right everyone in the sort of gurus here There's a much broader like knowledge base that you're required to study right five of the questions were about animals This is a very general quiz It was guru related it was just a lot of... You basically have to listen to all of the content and have like a...

Was it idetic? The perfect memory. So you can have most of our quiz so we can try to take it before we listen to the podcast? Oh, that would be a nice idea. I vaguely remember you doing that last year, but maybe I hallucinated that. Did we?

Well, yeah. And yeah, I'll ask Cal to send it. That's a good idea. We can send it before we, yeah, that's a good job, Dan. All right. So you've, I'm an ideas guy. Yeah. That, that counts as your one question.

Will you do that? Yes. One question. I'm saving my one question. I'm not, I'm not like giving it up. Well, that's, you, like, like genies, you wasted it by saying, will you do that? And I said yes. That's it, that's how genies operate.

But thank you very much, thank you, Mark. Good job on waking up, good job to everyone. Thank you, Helen. And so, bye bye everyone, bye bye. Merry Christmas Christmas everybody. You