Decoding the Gurus - Interview with Dan Friesen from Knowledge Fight on Alex Jones, the Sandy Hook Trial, and conspiracy ecosystems

Episode Date: August 27, 2022

A special crossover episode (long anticipated- at least by us) with one-half of the Knowledge Fight podcast. Specifically, we have Dan Friesen on to enlighten us about all things Alex Jones, the recent trial with the Sandy Hook parents, and to compare notes regarding gurus and conspiracy theorists. Not to mention to give Chris the chance to demonstrate his inner fanboy!Dan is a guy with an encyclopaedic knowledge of Alex Jones and some very astute insights into conspiracy psychology. In fact, Matt and Chris think he might be most accurately considered as something of a rogue anthropologist doing deep ethnographic observation of the InfoWars ecosystem. Dan, meanwhile, maintains he's just a guy! Either way, Dan and the Knowledge Fight podcast are definitely our kind of bag. We hope you too enjoy the conversation and there is plenty of Knowledge Fight episodes (700+) if this leaves you wanting more.Also, in this episode, we discuss Sam Harris' recent online travails, Jordan Peterson's appearance on Lex, and at the end of the episode, Matt finally learns what the podcast is really about! LinksKnowledge Fight podcastJordan's live-tweeting of the trialAlex Jone's trial highlightKnowledge Fight's post-trial review episode (712) with the Sandy Hook parents' trial lawyersArticle on Knowledge Fight in the New York TimesDan & Jordan on CNNArticle on that Paul Joseph Watson audio recordingJordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning | Lex Fridman Podcast #313Sam Harris' appearance on Triggernometry

Hello and welcome to Decoding the Gurus, the podcast where an anthropologist and a psychologist listen to the greatest minds the world has to offer. We try to understand what they're talking about. I'm Professor Matt Brown. With me is Associate Professor Chris Kavanagh. He's the anthropologist. I'm the psychologist. And we are here. We are not queer, but we're not going anywhere. We're going to be talking about guru stuff hey chris that's that's right you can't get rid of us can't take us down that easily you tried you tried to counsel us uncancellable uncancellable yeah that's always a good thing to throw away at people just to dare people yeah they never respond to that um no no we're fine

we're fine we're above fine. We're above board. We are not problematic in any way, shape or form. Well, how are things in your neck of the woods, Chris? What's been going on in the guru's fear from your vantage point? Sam Harris had a kerfuffle because he said it was fine if people didn't give a crap about the Hunter Biden thing. And he also, he worded some things badly because he said like if there was a conspiracy to hide damaging information that

that would be fine as long as trump didn't get elected so he said various things and he said it on trigonometry and they have a mega inclined audience audience. So the kind of MAGA leaning side of the heterodox fear got very upset. And they kind of took it in a weird way as a vindication, like Sam Harris is revealing that the left admits they, you know, they... They suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story. Yeah, it's like somehow he doesn't know he doesn't he doesn't know he actually prefaced it by saying i don't i haven't done much research into the topic i don't really know it's that's so like that's right they they should

believe him about that because yes they should so you one, it's his opinion, but two, he doesn't actually know anything about what occurred there. So, like, who cares? You know, the one thing about it, Matt, as we've talked about offline, is that with the Hunter Biden laptop story, there's such an obvious double standard because all of these folks that get so righteously indignant about it, they would never expect the right wing media to cover like on the front pages, some story about Trump Jr. In the week to the election. Right. If the Democrats were pushing hard some story about Trump's second son or whatever, they wouldn't care if it wasn't covered in right-wing media. And it would never be covered in right-wing media as a mean story. So it's just like such a glaring double standard. It's an irritating thing, isn't it? The differential standards. And, you know, the left is guilty of this too. If you want to see differences of standards of academic rigor being applied, for instance, just try writing a

paper with some sort of right-wing messages to it, and it'll get subjected to some pretty rigorous methodological critiques. But yeah, I just don't get it. It's like the Hillary Clinton emails, like the amount of gnashing of teeth and hand-wringing that will go on in these fears and then they just turn a blind eye to the blatant lying that continues in the magosphere i mean trump was just his place was investigated right because of having confidential information or whatever top secret information apparently and the whole thing about the clinton emails was supposed to be not properly handling information handling yeah but but now that's completely you see chris that's i mean that raid on mario lago was just an example of the deep state overreach

surely i mean yeah isn't that your take on it that's a heterodox for your take on that but hey i gotta say i respect his willingness and ability to routinely piss people off across the spectrum i have to hand it to him um at least when we compare him to um people like eric weinstein who helpfully injects himself into these discourses with talk that is empty blather but designed to ingratiate himself with his perceived audience um you know to his credit i'll hand it to him sam harris and also nassim taleb they've got strong idaf energy so yeah i don't mind that yeah to a certain extent the caveat i would add there is like like, I think part of the reason Sam goes hard at Trump, but he also goes at pains to point out that it's not a partisan stance,

that he just thinks Trump is uniquely harmful. And he actually indicated that he agreed probably with more than half of Trump's policies. And I couldn't help but think that was, you know, trying to signal to the trigonometry audience that, you know, I'm not just this by the books lefty, I'm heterodox too. But I, you know, over 50% of Trump's policy agenda would find himself on board with the mind boggles. Yeah,'t actually think that's true but i think it's got a lot to do with sam's self-concept he definitely would like to think of himself as a pure beam of rational energy as you've described him as um and is way way above having specific political yeah yeah yeah he does he starts the interview by talking about that time

when the hosts are doing the idw thing of you know saying sam we admire your work so much you're so fantastic how is it that you're able to stake out these positions that are so controversial and you're willing to do that and sam says well it's because his core value is intellectual honesty. Me too. Me too. No, not you two. Not you or any of his critics. And then moves on to the, he has no attachment to not just tribalism, but also his identity.

I got heaps of that. Yeah, no, I fall down on that school yeah um so those those things matter but um so that's you know there's been that sam harris has i think been enjoying the fruits of his labor from that appearance and then on the other hand jordan peterson went on with lex friedman for three and a half hour conversation and as happens when he tends to do these things there's been a lot of clips of him saying various silly things we might cover some of that conversation on a special mini episode but suffice to say it's just more of what you would expect from him and yeah yeah interesting note is that he now basically says that his addiction

was all due to allergic reactions and immunological issues that were the deep down that was the core thing you know that i didn't do a really good job of explaining that while i was ill because it it appeared in some sense that the reason i was ill was because I was taking benzodiazepines. But that isn't why. I was ill, and then I took them, and very low dose, and I took that for a long time, and it helped, whatever was wrong with me. And it looks like it was an allergy, or maybe multiple allergies. And then that stopped working, and so I took a little bit more for about a month, and that made it way worse and so then i cut back a lot and then then things really got out of hand and so so there was a

deeper thing oh yeah definitely oh yeah what can you put words to well i had a lot of immune my well my daughter as everyone knows has a very reactive immune system. And Tammy has three immunological conditions, each of them quite serious. And I had psoriasis and peripheral uveitis, which is an autoimmune condition, and alopecia areata and chronic gum disease, all of which appeared to be allergy related. And so Michaela seems to have got all of that.

And so that, and that I think was at the bottom of because I also had this proclivity to depression that was part of my family history but I think that was all immunological as far as I can tell and so the treatment for it is you know the all-meat diet that's what's got them back on an even keel that's an immunological response allergic response yeah so anyways that was what seemed now this i don't like to talk about this much because it's so bloody radical and you know i don't like to propagate it but this diet seems to have stopped all of that i don't have psoriasis all of the patches have gone yeah my gum disease which is incurable i had multiple surgeries to deal with

it is completely gone took three years my right eye which was quite with it. It's completely gone. It took three years. My right eye, which was quite cloudy, it's cleared up completely. What else has changed? Well, I lost 50 pounds, like instantly. And interestingly, it turns out he also reports in that interview his wife can only eat lamb. Tammy seems to only be able to eat lamb, although she might be able to eat non-aged

beef and that makes traveling complicated too. You know, Michaela is off the ruminant meat back on the beef. So, you know, it's interesting because that's not even genetic, right? You could say, oh, well, his daughter, you know you know they they've got inherited immune system so there might be genetic conditions so wife doesn't have a biological connection but yet also curing things with a single meat product diet so that's that's lucky well that's just because the only diet is so it's such a miracle cure it, it's good for what ails you. They've stumbled upon it, this family. That's why we're seeing this connection. You can trust Jordan to report

his medical symptoms accurately as well. I mean, like he took a sip of cider, he was awake for longer than the Guinness World Record of sleep deprivation. So he never exaggerates and and always reports these kind of things accurately yeah that's true that's true okay so this week matt we have a interview with dan threason from the knowledge for a podcast a podcast which is focused on critically dissecting alex jones co-hosted with jordan holmes who is not joining us because he is on holiday in ireland at the time of recording so dan hosts a podcast of which i think we are both big fans and which has now around about 700 episodes so there's a huge back catalog if anybody wants to dig into. But it's especially

relevant because, you know, recently there has been the trial of Alex Jones, the first of many with the Sandy Hook parents. And I think it's good to have a discussion with Dan, a kind of retrospective glance at the trial and what Alexlex is up to but also to compare notes about how the kind of gurus that we look at interact with or parallel the more obvious conspiratorial gurus that you find in the interwars orbit it's timely because the trial has attracted a lot of discourse on Twitter, as you'd expect. A surprising number of figures have gone into bat for Alex Jones, I think, on sort of free speech grounds and general kind of speaking truth to power. We need to hear these kinds of out of left field ideas. Sure, he's wrong about a lot of stuff, but sometimes he's really got his finger on the

pulse. uh yeah so we'll talk to him about how valid those points of view might be but i'll say this to you chris and to our audience before he comes on which is that you are a massive fanboy like we both respect we both respect knowledge fight but you love it you love that podcast you listen to it i do all the time i do always talking about it yeah yeah i told you yeah you hated it you love that podcast you listen to it i do all the time i do always talking to me about it yeah yeah i told yeah you hated it i didn't think that that's true and i because i i've told dan on more than one occasion that like i think he's doing academic level research into alex jones and you know if it was, he's done multiple years of immersion in a topic

and he knows it inside out. And Jordan as well, although, you know, he doesn't do the same level of research that Dan does, but he also knows Alex Jones inside out now. So their show is a great illustration of how having this ability to critically delve into something can be much more rewarding and useful for the world, even when the people that you cover are terrible and, you know, harmful and just conspiracy idiots. Like, I think it's kind of self-serving that I think that, but I think, you know, Dan is a great illustration of the benefits of looking critically at people. Yeah, totally agree. In fact, you just made me think how it is actually a great example of like citizen research happening outside of academia that work on knowledge fight in any just world that the honorary PhD is being granted from multiple institutions in anthropology.

Right. Because as you say it is super super well researched and well documented and he knows it inside out um so it's funny it's actually an interesting example of of what the heterodox twitterati often talk about which is this alternative you know media ecosystem like dealing with niche topics and doing a proper deep dive on them. It is what they do. That's what the heterodox, Matt Teavey, Glenn

Greenwald and stuff, claim nobody has done with Alex Jones. And we get into that with Dan in the interview. And one other thing I will note is that I always listen to Knowledge Fight and everything I listen to at times two speed so you know usually when we interview someone i'm i have this part where i'm kind of like they're

speaking too slowly have i you know are we boring them or that kind of thing because i always hear them at double speed but i didn't i didn't have it with dan so that's an interesting thing just seemed made him seem like he was more considered he was drinking you know pondering everything at 50 percent his normal speed so yeah all right we'll add that little bit of information to our our dossier on your um psychology very good so let's get into it let's go let's do it so with us today matt we have a guest we sometimes have guests we have one today and you know i rarely am starstruck by the people we're interviewing even when i like them and i know that the guys at knowledge fight dan and jordan don't take well the praise

about as well as we do but i will say dan up front that we we have dan threason from knowledge fight a podcast focused on dissecting critically alex jones content and other conspiracy theories from time to time and uh yeah, Dan, you are the closest from the guests we've had of a personal hero of sorts for me. Because like for somebody neurotic who focuses on gurus and digging into their content,

you are a guru-like figure, I'm sorry to say so. Oh no, I have to go. Thanks for having me, but I have to leave. This was all a ploy just to make you as uncomfortable as possible. That's a great way to start things off. It's definitely... I appreciate that, I think.

I don't want to be a guru, but I appreciate the praise, I guess, or the compliment. Yeah. Well, we actually have even stole small bits from your segments, like the way that we shout out our patrons was modeled on the policy one thing. So there's lots of things that we have stolen that you don't know about. We are revolutionaries in the shout-out game. Yeah, that's it. You've set the fire.

Signed facts. It all just happened accidentally because Alex said he was a policy wonk on an episode, and I thought it was so dumb. I thought it was like, you are the least policy wonky person ever. And it was around the time that everybody was using that term. You saw it in the media a lot. A lot of people saying about Pete Buttigieg, he's a policy wonk. He's really into the minutia and the details.

And I just thought it was so funny. And I guess it just stuck. And I'm glad that it's getting mileage elsewhere. That's cool. Oh, I hear from a lot of people, too. Like, I got a message not too long ago from, like, a teacher who, like, uses the bright spots that we do at the beginning of our episodes with her class. And it's, like, this thing that's really, like, it's a total side thing from the conspiracy stuff. But, like, that kind of stuff is really exciting to me.

These things that people take and bring into their lives, you know, like expressing and focusing on something that's positive at the beginning of a day or whatever. And, you know, shouting people out with a funny sound effect, whatever it is, I'm thrilled that it's having an effect somewhere. Yeah, there is. There's an interesting dynamic that, interesting dynamic that the content that you and Jordan cover each week is pretty vile, usually. Even when you took the divergences into UFO figures and that kind of thing, often anti-Semitic conspiracies seem to just waft in the view. But it is interesting that in covering that, there's been the creation of a community that was very visible during Alex Jones's trial,

which is created around opposition to a hardcore right-wing conspiracy theorist, but they are pushing a much more positive message so that's it's an odd dynamic that's occurred yeah yeah i i think um uh sort of as the podcast grew and more people started listening i think i became a little bit aware of how bad it would be if the only thing that we did was be anti someone you know like i felt like the toxicity that would be possible from that would be like well how do i be a better part of this community i've got to be more against this person or more aggressively anti alex jones or something and so whether intentionally or not or or, you know, whatever pieces were intentional and weren't, I always tried to bake in little things that were like, not just about hating him.

Like obviously the debunking and deconstructing what he think the bright spot thing is accidentally a very positive part of, of that. And I, I, I honestly am not entirely sure how, uh, like the community that's formed around it is as positive as it is. But I can only take credit for part of it. Some of it is just like we've lucked out that a number of people have been really positive influences within the community and the community building itself. So I'm thrilled because if our listeners were just a bunch of assholes who wanted to attack Alex, like, I don't know what, I don't think I could do this. I don't think I could be, I don't think I could keep going. It wouldn't be motivating. Yeah, I feel, I get the same vibe. I mean, I know what you're talking about.

Like with the gurus that we cover, most of them have their coterie of dedicated haters, right? And, you know, often they have good reasons to hate them, but there is a, you know, perhaps a personality type that is attracted to that pure negativity that isn't really what we want to be about. So yeah, it's a tough line to tread. Yeah. Yeah think i i think that a lot of folks who create aren't necessarily that interested in thinking about those kinds of issues of what kind of um you know what kind of thing you uh create or or sort of condone within a community in an audience and i think that i don't know maybe i wrong, but I think that there's a certain amount of responsibility that a creator has among their like people who enjoy what they create. Yeah. And Dan, illustrating our lack of professional interviewer skills,

I probably should have asked you this at the start but for anybody who is unfamiliar with knowledge fight and we've recommended it several times so if they are they just don't take recommendations properly but um so if you were describing what you you do from your point of view how do you kind of nutshell cover what knowledge fight is about and what you do um well primarily i think it's about like tracking down curiosity that i have about alex jones at least like that's the beginning of it where everything is sort of spiraled from where the ball is rolled downhill um and in function how that works is i end up you know in the past, I used to listen to every day of his show. I had a nine to five and I would be listening to his show live and then old episodes

once his show ended and really taking notes. I was very much super consistent about it. very much like super consistent about it um and now as you know it's become far more repetitive and like i can kind of you know the show is not as much of a mystery to me well now i you know i listen to the show and i'll find the information that he's putting out and trying to try to track down what he's talking about where the information comes from and then i will present it to my friend jordan who's my co-host and he has no idea um well he understands alex jones a lot now by this point but he he's done none of the preparation or anything so he'll have more of a visceral reaction to alex's words and the uh horrible things that he says and then we'll have a conversation about uh you know where does this come from what's he actually talking about and especially like in the last couple years or so

it's become far more overt that what he's talking about is just made up like he'll have a headline and it'll be something that sounds weird but then if you actually read the story, it's kind of a clickbaity headline on CNN or on some other less even less reputable website. And he'll just make up what the story is. And so, like, it's become it's become much less work intensive, for sure, in terms of the like, what is he talking about? Oh, like in the past, I would have to read books and stuff to understand what he was talking about. Now it's just like, oh, he's lying about a headline. This is kind of deflating. But yeah, that's what the show is, basically.

I do that preparation and then Jordan yells about it. It is interesting when you, because you, you know, typically you stay in the modern era, but you do jump back in time for like you did investigations into the original coverage of the Sandy Hook and recently the 9-11 coverage, which was very interesting. That was fun. Joe Rogan called in and also a kind of surprising interaction with Joe because he seems to have actually been more skeptical in the past which yeah yeah it's unexpected he had not uh hosted the man show yet at that point i think that's what uh broke him yeah i don't know that's my theory so i there was a couple of thoughts i had from the things that you mentioned there. And one was that, so Alex's habit, which I think you've documented really clearly of just going off headlines of just kind of reacting without reading things. And this was documented quite nicely in the trial depositions

that you covered when they talked about the inner workings of Infowars and how they present stories. But I wonder, I think I know the reaction, so I just said you have to talk about it. But you know, when you see figures like Joe Rogan or Glenn Greenwald present Alex as somebody who, you know, gets things wrong, makes mistakes, but he's often prescient, right? He was talking about Jeffrey Epstein long before anyone else. And he, you know, he was skeptical about the weapons of mass destruction and so on. So that narrative, when you see that being presented commonly as a talking point on kind of the right all the time and in certain segments of the left. I'm wondering how you respond to that.

Is there any way to get the message through why that isn't accurate? Or was he talking about those things long in advance? Well, I think that the way to get through to people is to push for specifics because those people will never be able to provide those specifics. There's a feeling that Alex Jones was right about a bunch of stuff, and that's a fun feeling, because it's kind of roguish and it's anti-establishment kind of feeling. But I think it's more an illusion than anything else.

Sure, he was skeptical about weapons of mass destruction in iraq that's fine but like i was part of a hippie uh sort of community not real i mean my parents volunteered at like a hippie bookstore when i was younger and like in 2002 2003 you know we were protesting the iraq war and no one in these communities believed that there was weapons of mass destruction either. So it's not like Alex was the sole arbiter and only voice saying this thing. It's great that he was right on that note, possibly. But what does it mean? Does it mean anything? Maybe.

Maybe not that much. I'm not going to consider my dad a prophet because he didn't believe that there were weapons of mass destruction, you know, like great. And then in terms of the Jeffrey Epstein thing, I think that you should push back on people and say, demonstrate that he was talking about Jeffrey Epstein at this period of time, because I've gone back and tried to find evidence that he was. of time because i've gone back and tried to find evidence that he was and all i can find is that in the past he believed that the satanic panic of the uh you know the mcmartin school period was real and you know he had that guy ted gunderson uh that he would do interviews with and you know

he was yelling about satanic ritual abuse uh during that period when it was a really hot topic in America. And everyone was freaked out about that. And then it calmed down because everyone realized a lot of this was hoax shit. But Alex did not believe that was hoax stuff. And so you had him yelling about that stuff in the past. Then later, Epstein becomes a hot topic and everyone's talking about epstein and my sense of it is that everyone believes that alex was talking about epstein back then because he was talking about ritualistic child abuse and sex trafficking of children and

and these things and he's applied it the epstein label to the past stuff that he was talking about and i don't really believe that people when pushed on it could provide uh evidence that he was talking about epstein by name as he claimed under oath back at a period when other people weren't talking about him and so i think i think that's a way maybe to get through to people is to be like, yes, I know that you have this perception that he was talking about these things, but can you show me where he was? And I don't think most people would be able to – I don't think people would respond well to that. And then I don't think past that they would be able to give you that information. So I'm open to having my mind changed, but I haven't seen any proof that that is the case.

So, I mean, I bet it wouldn't help, though. I bet people would still just be like, he talked about it somewhere else. I just can't find the video, you know, or whatever. Yeah, that's probably true, depending on how bored they are. But I did my own amateur search, you know, looking for Info wars and and kind of restricting the time frame and i found just tons of mainstream media coverage about jeffrey epstein

because like he had court cases and whatnot about the events and nothing about info wars until after that which makes sense yep because they're not doing investigative like reports about real things so why would they know and it it struck me as similar to like when at the trial recently he talked about how in the past he was discussing the great reset and uh yeah klaus schwab yeah it was like a figure that nobody nobody mentioned until like a couple of years ago. Yeah, if you do a search on Infowars.com of all their past articles, Klaus Schwab's name doesn't appear until the last few years.

Granted, I will admit that he would talk about the World Economic Forum as a boogeyman kind of thing, but Klaus Schwab wasn't a character, wasn't a name that came up ever. Yeah, same with Epstein it's it's just yeah it's weird i don't know i think people give him a lot of mileage because they want this mysterious thing to be like true they want they want this person who's shouting nonsense to actually be on to something because it's more interesting than than uh than than reality yeah

definitely dan what are the things that that struck me when i was listening to to the knowledge fight coverage of the court case was just how um he kept lying obviously and uh kept operating in his alternative reality in a way that was just clearly detrimental to his case and to him personally. And it sort of goes back to one of these perennial questions, which is, you know, are these characters, like, pretending? Like, are they bad or are they crazy, right? Is it all a scam? Is it all a grift? And they're very consciously, in a Machiavellian way,

being deceptive, or are they absolutely nuts and living in their alternative reality? And I know there's a hell of a lot of evidence for the former, but one of the things that struck me at the trial is just how his level of lying was just almost reflexive, and he couldn't help himself, even when it continued like to damage him in a very material way so just wondering if you could square that circle at all well i have two

thoughts i guess one is that i think that like the way his brain works i am not sure that he would be able to understand that his actions could materially hurt him you know like i still i think that he probably in some level uh is able to talk himself into being like well we'll appeal this no this will never stand up to whatever or this bankruptcy thing will work and i'll be able to you know coast or whatever you know like i i feel like he probably would be of the mind if he if he had a rational thought about this would think that acting like a normal person on the stand would materially hurt him more with the people who believe the alternative reality that he lives in so that's possible and then the second thought that i had

is like you know um with pro wrestlers back in the day there's a famous story that the wrestler cody rhodes talks about about his dad dusty rhodes and he had had a fake injury uh he had like broken his leg or or something in the wrestling storyline and in order to like keep the kayfabe going he would walk around the house in a cast like he pretended with his family that he was actually injured. And there was like a great respect for the business that people had, that they didn't want to give up the illusion of it. And there's a part of me that thinks that maybe Alex is just like deeply committed to that, that kayfabe of the alternative reality that he lives in,

that it would all be destroyed if he were to get on the stand and recognize like, yeah, all right, here's what happened. here's what I did. And there's a part of me that thinks maybe that's more important to him. Yeah, interesting. When I heard him explaining, you know, discussing with his lawyer or ex-lawyer,

occasional co-host Barnes, about the way the trial was being controlled by the lawyer or the judge, and that they were turning on and off the stream. And these things which are demonstrably false, right? Like you said, you could just go and look at the stream and see that that is not accurate. But the interesting thing for me when he was saying all of that is like, and I know it is very hard to parse this as to how much is genuine versus not,

but it sounds like he really believes, you know, like, well or not, he knows that the reality matches that. But like, he says things, and then afterwards, is so convinced that like, what he said is right, that he can just kind of say it with complete conviction. And it felt like that at the trial as well, when he tried to defend his actions a couple of times, like Mark would catch him up on contradictions or whatever, and he looks uncomfortable and unhappy at those moments. But at the parts where he just gets the monologue about what he's doing and stuff,

it feels like he gets into a groove of rationalizing everything and um it i don't know i might be giving him too much credit but it feels like he is embodying the alternative reality that he's telling everyone is there sure sure i think as someone who's watched as much of him as i have i think those moments when he's on the stand he's kind of you know in that zone that you're describing that to me just feels more like autopilot that to me almost is like that's muscle memory i don't even know if he knows what he's saying when he's in that that kind of a role but then like to your point about the like the stream like saying this thing that's demonstrably false like to me that's no different than you know him

and i think so many other figures like him they'll say things that are clearly not true but then say like you can look it up yeah you know do your own research you know because there's a there's a gambit there that is like i know most people will not look this up i know that most people will not look for the stream and see that it was like fully there and they weren't turning it off for the, for the Alex's lawyers, because I don't know. It's part of it.

I think is like people who have bought in and the audience, it's a dangerous proposition to do your own research. Like subconsciously there may be a block that is like well if i do this and alex's lawyer is talking freely and the judge is not turning this stuff off what then what do we do then like i think that alex knows that and i think there's a part of him that is willing to exploit that unwillingness to open the mystery box or whatever you want to call it. There was a thing whenever, you know, like Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi were promoting the documentary Alex's War recently.

And the framing of that was so much presented around that, especially leftists and progressives are afraid to look at the real Alex Jones. Like they, they just want to deal with a caricature villain and they, they will never put in the effort to try and understand them as a human. And the thing that was so creative about that was that, you know, it's not hard to find your podcast.

There's 700 episodes and you guys, we've been to the New York times times we were on cnn last week like i know that we started in my bedroom and we're still recording and basically in my bedroom but we're not like we had 10 listeners originally it's not the same now yeah yeah it's it's offensive to me these this premise they're like no one looks at it. And even more so is like, you know, you and Jordan, I think you, maybe you more so than Jordan, like there's no subterfuge about your politics, right?

You're both progressive guys. And yeah, but so the notion that progressives particularly would be afraid to look at Alex Jones, it's so easily contradicted. But it's kind of what you say that in that case, some people think I'm being naive if I think that Greenwald and Taibbi are unaware that you guys exist. But I genuinely think they don't do any effort. I think based on Jordan's tweeting after the fact, they definitely do. I think based on Jordan's tweeting after the fact, they definitely do. Yeah.

He was tweeting at them a little too much. Yeah. And mysteriously, they didn't block him, which they seem to block everybody who say mean things. And so a bunch of people who were responding to Jordan's tweet got blocked. And then he didn't block. I don't know. Yeah. I think it's not naive to think that they don't know who we were like

going in necessarily. I think the lack of preparation is probably pretty strong. So I think, I think you might be our, but yeah, after the fact, there's really no excuse. Yeah.

Yeah. And so, I mean, I think a lot of, most of the people in our audience will be aware that there was the recent court case with Alex Jones against two of the Sandy Hook parents and that there was a default judgment against them. So the televised stuff was really to establish the amount of damages that he would be held

accountable for. And you guys were at the court case and have been covering the deposition. And I wanted to ask you, Dan, about that. Like you were before this, like from my point of view, you were kind of an anthropologist, not in name of the Alex Jones ecosystem and world. But, you know, you took pains on the podcast to discourage your listeners to like call into the show or directly interfere with InfoWars.

And I think with good instincts on that. But with this court case, like your expertise was useful for the defense. Is that the plaintiffs? The prosecutors. The plaintiffs, the opposite. I called it prosecutors one time and I got scolded. So I don't want you to fall into that. Thank you. I'm glad Mark is not here. So you're like, your research was, was useful. You were there and it became clear, you know, in some of the discussions you've had afterwards that

at least Alex lawyers were aware of who you were. And I wondered about, like, for you and Jordan becoming, you know, intentionally or not, and I know that you took pains to try and focus your output on the parents and their bravery and also just, you know, the very real suffering they had and them having their chance to, like, have their moment in court. I don't want to diminish that at all but i do want to ask how it is for you like coming into that part of the story and you know being covered in media and and getting like the attention reflected back on your bit given that you guys are quite like private type guys so yeah it's a little bit weird for sure um but not that hasn't been that bad or anything i think

we've been pretty controlled about it like we got a request for like i said cnn uh i would have turned that down if it wasn't brian stelter because he's alex's arch enemy in the media and so i thought like well this is going to be funny let's do this oh and and it's it's kind of been strange to have like interview requests from places and um but i think that it's a kind of a blessing of a position to be in because i'm able to say what i think uh my sort of learned experience about alex and my, and be able to focus a lot of these things on what the real story is, which is the parents. And so like being in that position, I feel like not behaving in the way that I have and accepting these things would be

a little bit irresponsible. And that kind of brings me back to like, you're sort of what the point you're bringing up about like the sort of pseudo-anthropologist transitioning into whatever this is now um um i think that my like hands-off approach to alex uh and with like encouraging the listeners to behave that way was partially based in that like i think if people get in their minds that it's a good idea to prank call alex this will lead to negative sort of vibes in the audience again the community the toxicity of that could be a like a really bad thing for people and i don't want to be a part of that and then second i felt like it would really change the content that i was covering like i felt like people would call in hopefully trying to get onto our podcast by having a prank call on alex and i

thought that that circularness would be really diminishing of what i was trying to do and so that i thought it was really important to keep very clear um but now i think there's less of that like i think there's less to learn from watching his actual show like the roots of his ideology and his philosophy and his politics you're not going to learn about that now he's going to be yelling about the devil and riffing off headlines that he didn't read and so i still don't want people to harass him and all that but that hands-offness i think i have a little bit of a softer approach to now. And I think the breaking point is the court case. And that is because I was approached by the plaintiff's lawyers.

And they had a proposal of helping with their case and being an expert consultant. with their case and you know being an expert consultant and i really did wrestle with it for a good while because of that long-standing we're just observing we're not getting involved kind of thing and i i felt like that was something very important to our show and the character of it um but i couldn't escape the two ideas one being that i have all this information and if i'm not using it why do i have it like it's a waste if i just have this and don't put it to some positive use and then the second thing i think this is something either my therapist or jordan or both said and that was they're not the same person it's it's different um but there was that if i didn't do it it would be an act of withholding something from the plaintiffs it is an expertise that i have and not doing it is a choice in and of itself. And I found that to be a really difficult thought to counter at all.

And so it just, I think it was a sort of an abandonment of that strict line and then like the need to like, okay, we'll be now, um, we're not going to clout chase off this or anything, but we will exist in this place because the alternative is something I'm not

comfortable with. So I don't know, but it hasn't been like, it's weird. I really thought there would be a lot more harassment or like info wars fans, but so far it's been pretty mild or non-existent even like it's very very minimal i see fights that you have on twitter chris and i think that like people are much meaner to you than to us i agree

well dan you know i'll just say by the way that your your approach there is completely consistent with the sort of um academic approach you know to be a standoff ish non-activist observer an anthropologist a sociologist psychologist whatever but but still appear as an expert witness in relevant legal actions and i've done that myself in in in the field of gambling regulation gambling studies uh so so yeah so totally totally um on board nobody's asked for my expertise not not yet chris not yet your day will come i wonder if some of that comes from just like you know my dad's a professor and i grew up around a lot of like academia so i wonder if that just like subconsciously rubbed off or something yeah i, I'm sure. Hey, I'm curious, how do you see the future playing

out for Alex? Because I have fond hopes when Chris tells me about the numerous legal actions and how Alex Jones just keeps digging himself deeper with his behavior, perhaps spawning new ones. And I would love to see a future in which he is admired in inexpensive, time-consuming legal battles for the rest of his life. Is that wishful thinking on my part or how do you see it? Well, it's interesting. I think actually the answer to that question is, I mean, it's a little bit up in the air, obviously. I think that these cases are going to be really tough for him to thread the needle on. And so I think, I mean, the Connecticut case is moving forward. There's the Marcel Fontaine case and the Posner-De La Rosa case that's still in Texas.

And so those are still like, and they're coming up. Alex has declared bankruptcy on free speech systems his main company and i'm not sure exactly what the impact that will have on those cases but they're not going to like disappear through the bankruptcy you know there's still going to be implications and so we'll see but interestingly i think that his future success kind of dovetails with some of the stuff that you you guys look at you know i think some of these greenwald taibbi types are the sort of lifelines that alex has to staying relevant and finding some way to have an audience or some kind of a a renaissance for himself through this stretch and i know that some of these folks you know like the jordan peterson

e-types are you know fairly in a self-help vein um and i could see alex trying to tap into some of that as a next chapter. But it relies a lot on folks like Greenwald and Taibbi, as they have with this documentary, kind of being gullible enough to play along with it. Gullible or, I guess, craven. Because I guess you could look at it uh look at it negatively yeah and lazy that they don't seem to pay attention yeah no i mean i think he could be right um chris and i have observed um like a doubling and tripling down on that you know free speech forever type attitude amongst these types and an increased willingness to,

to endorse pretty, pretty extreme examples of that to own the libs or whatever it is. And it seems so unawares too. Like it seems like they just are not, they don't know what they're talking about. Like it would be one thing if you actually studied Alex Jones, you knew what he was about you knew the kind of things he did and then we're still like he has the right to say it and

this is free speech stuff because then you could actually engage with you can actually talk about like why do you think that this is protected by free speech but as it is it's just a knee-jerk kind of defensiveness and it's i find it kind of disappointing yeah yeah i get i get frustrated i heard exactly the same arguments in support of say joe rogan as we've heard in favor of alex jones which is this whole big thing about how it's terrible you know they shouldn't be silenced and they're totally fine and it's people getting their knickers in a twist about nothing and and then they'll say oh but i, but I don't actually listen to it. I don't know anything about it.

So these characters are kind of acting as like cardboard two-dimensional stand-ins, right? In a broader argument. Yeah, Alex Jones in the content that we look at tends to serve as like a totemic figure that is just referenced as he's the you know the first step in the creeping authoritarianism of the social media companies and it is exactly like you say dan that the people never see like they never actually grapple with

what he's done it's just like a vague they've got a vague cloyd idea they might reference something about the sandy hook kids but they typically have no idea that like his content is like christian aggressively fundamentalist yeah not violently christian violent the christian nationalist and like you know it is not non-partisan conspiracism it's john bircher right wing militia conspiracism and that's that's the thing that is often yeah it's very hard to get the grips with because there's the same thing that happens like i'm always amazed by uh how joe rogan talks about alex jones fairly frequently but he never... He's a fun guy! Yeah, I think my analysis with Joe is because of the type of person he is,

he likes to say that he's friends with somebody who's so out there. That's what Alex is as a valuable guy. It's like somebody that you can invite when you're in Austin, Texas to go get a drink with. And what a cookie experience but like he doesn't want to actually grapple with what alex's content is day in and day out like i think even though rogan is a like right-wing partisan i think if he was forced to watch info wars he wouldn't like it yeah i fully agree i think you'd be like what is this alex you're calling everyone the devil and like everyone you don't like is a pedophile now like what is this is aggressive this is dangerous alex maybe you'd hope that would be his response yeah yeah there's there's like a kind of like outsider cred that like it's so false, but I guess some people buy into it that like is like I'm friends with Alex Jones.

You know, I think, you know, you have you have the Rogans, you have the Red Scare folks. A lot of a lot of folks maybe have not bought into it. But yeah, I guess there's also like the uh a lot of rogan's friends like eddie bravo but eddie bravo might actually just believe the same stuff alex yeah um that flagrant two podcast they uh andrew schultz he'll have alex on but there's like this like it's almost like you give yourself a pat on the back for being cool enough to hang out with him or something and it's just you guys i don't know yeah have fun i'm not impressed uh there's a we have noticed as well and i know dan you've looked or considered doing some episodes on russell brand and you looked at stephan molyneux before so we did one on him one on molynelly yeah it was the poland one i think we just did an episode

about him going i was gonna do a series on molyneux but i think we ended up just doing the uh the poland documentary maybe i'm completing one of the alex jones documentaries you did i thought it was a multi-part episode on steph molyneux but oh no i don't think so i think we each of alex's documentaries were five parters those were way. But yeah, I think Molyneux we covered in one because he just said, I'm a white nationalist. And we're like, hello. Yeah, I have a question about that. But I know that Matt has a meeting he will at least temporarily disappear for. So before you descend into the academic puff of smoke my one task he's threatened by this conversation about molyneux yeah yeah oh no don't expose my girl yeah yeah yeah i had this meeting it's i i normally shift my meetings around to accommodate chris's um meetings but this one's with the department head and i just i can't but this is a this is an easy one i want to i want

to sneak in before i go and hopefully I'll come back. Sure. Yeah. So Dan, I just want to ask you what your personality diagnosis of Alex Jones would be. We've seen with the gurus that we look at, there seems to be this underlying thread of grandiose narcissism, which feels like the key to the puzzle. It explains why they can operate in this alternative reality and why they can so confidently and consistently keep lying and also why they kind of can't help themselves and also why, in a similar vein to Donald Trump, how it's kind of like a superpower. It has a lot

of advantages. It allows them to operate in a way that normal people can't. But at times like this court case, it also shows there are some vulnerabilities too. I want to check with you. What's your diagnosis though? I've only been in a room with him a couple times and not actually talked to him. So caveat. But I think it's impossible to look at his body of work and not come away with that's basically exactly what you're saying grandiose narcissism to a t um but i also think this is a little bit irresponsible on my part so take this with a grain of salt but i also think

that there's a strain of victimhood that he has like he thinks that everyone is against him and like i don't know if that's a sincere full feature of his narcissism but it becomes so uh present in so many of the things that he the way he acts and i think i think that's part of the way that you know him and a lot of other folks in his milieu can experience everything that they do as self-defense like even when it's a completely hostile act towards other people that underlying feeling of being aggrieved at all points and everything is an attack on some part of yourself so i think a mixture of that and narcissism uh is is mostly what under underwrites him and I think he just doesn't read well. You know, like, I think that there's a comprehension problem that he has

that goes through a lot of his... I don't know if that's a character trait as much as it is, like, just a... A cognitive deficiency. Yeah. Something that makes him a bad guru. Not liking to read. It's kind of satisfying to me and chris that you hit upon a couple of

dimensions of our garometer framework there oh so that's very satisfying um i'll leave you guys to it temporarily hopefully i'll hopefully see you soon yeah awesome go tell that department head whose boss matt that's right yeah so i actually was curious to ask you a question a little bit if you don't not like that i'm forbidden this is a one way yeah go ahead i was i was curious about like your take on alex in terms of the sort of character of guru that you uh that you focus on and you cover like how does alex fit into them i know you're saying that he's totemic for folks that you look at but him as a person um does he qualify for what you think of as a guru yeah so we we obviously um had lots of people suggest we cover alex jones as a guru

right because like he's the he's an obvious case study. But two things that prevented us were, one, that you guys do a better job of it. And it's not blowing smoke. It's just like, what are we going to say? You're doing multiple hours per week on him, breaking down his content. So us taking one selected piece of content it felt like

it'd be kind of regurgitating what you're saying but setting aside that logistic issue the other reason we were a little bit hesitant is our initial uh scope for the podcast was we want to look at this new crop of kind of online guru figures who don't fall into the traditional like alternative spirituality guru or the the kind of outright conspiracy talk radio guru type conspiracy guru and that makes sense and those kind of fit into other molds yeah like they're they're kind of documented and you know there are even there are direct connections with alex and and cult figures right like the branch the dravidians davidians yeah davidians yeah yeah yeah he rebuilt their church yeah so they you know that that was one of the things is, it feels like a lot of the academic literature

and psychology literature looking at cult and guru figures, it does cover those people pretty well. But Alex Jones is actually, I think, kind of paradigmatic example of a modern guru because of his, like the way that he operates with the kind of audience that he's built. And I used to think that when I made parallels to Alex Jones and some of the figures that we can't covered, I got lots of pushback. I had people block me on Twitter and say, how rude, you compared Brett Weinstein to Alex Jones.

You're just trying, you're discrediting. But as it's gone on, I have to say that there's so many direct parallels. And it kind of goes such that as the gurus that we cover become more and more conspiratorial and more partisan, they become more like Alex. And actually we see guests like, you know, Brett Weinstein and Robert Malone and Peter McCulloch. Like Brett Weinstein hasn't appeared on Infowars.

I don't believe yet. He's been discussed on it. He's been mentioned. Yeah. Yeah. But not against. Robert Malone and Peter McCulloch have. And I don't know about Pierre Corey, but these kind of overlaps tend to be happening. And one of the things Matt and I noticed with like Brett is it's very parallel to what you're

saying with Alex, that like Brett Weinstein basically doesn't seem to read studies very well he sometimes reads abstracts but often not even that correctly and he unlike Alex one of the things that he sometimes does is issue corrections but it actually it's not even now i'm saying that it's not even really light unlike alex because the correction is usually we got the small detail wrong but the fundamental point was completely correct and people are focused on this small detail which you know is completely irrelevant i'm sorry that i was actually more right than i said like yeah that's what they often do so i i'm you know we have been

threatening to do this episode for quite a while where we want to take clips from info wars and juxtapose them with brett weinstein's dark horse i think it'd be pretty simple to do i think they're from i haven't watched as much of that dark horse but but I've seen a bit. And, you know, it's a less entertaining version for sure. Like there's not yelling and stuff. But yeah, there's a lot of thematic overlap. There's a lot. And there was even the case that like Brett was, you know, the anti-mandate march, the anti-vax march that was, know framed as an anti-mandate one so i'd listened to your show about a week before and alex was waffling on about you know and that they're going to stage

false flags to discredit us and and like cover in case there's a violence at a rally and and brett was talking with heller and basically saying he couldn't go to this anti-mandate march because they the movement needs someone outside who's not present oh shit designated survivor yeah when they launch in case they launch the kind of discrediting attack and and try to make it look like the group and it was to me like, whoa, that's not just, you know, like, oh, there's a thematic parallel. It's like the exact same stuff. And yeah, so I probably got lost

in the dark horse Weinstein weeds there, but. It happens. I see a lot of like, and I don't know, I don't think it's intentional borrowing. I think it's just that if you're doing what they do, that's the kind of stuff that works. So I don't think they're making notes on Infowars or whatever. It's just that they have a parallel evolution

of the same rhetorical techniques. I could see that. I could see getting positive reinforcement in some way from using some sort of a trick or whatever and then it just sort of you know cascading um actually it's interesting me and jordan have in the past talked about how that kind of idea of preemptive framing of things as like possible false flags is kind of like a line of demarcation like to us that kind of feels like when you've lost it entirely when it's one thing to talk about how agent provocateurs do exist and have existed

in the past and you know that's fine but the way that alex preemptively declares everything that could possibly happen as a false flag is completely detached from any reckoning with reality. And the idea that Weinstein is engaging in that same kind of trick is really disappointing because it's so addictive. it's so addictive when you frame things that are potentially negative for you and the people you want to look good as false flags all you're doing is preemptively justifying other people doing negative things so like if some anti-vaxxer had done something let's say at that march all you're doing is creating a pretext wherein you don't have to take responsibility for that kind of action. And that is really, really potent. I think it's really, it's useful to people who engage in, you know, what you might call stochastic terrorism. It's really helpful when you whip up kind of an extremist crowd. And I think that it's a choice to engage in rhetoric like that and um i find i find that to be

really sad uh you hope that that kind of thing would stay cloistered in like a really disreputable bubble like alex and not to say that weinstein's reputable or anything but he appears to be to a wider audience i'm wary of like justin telling you about gurus but i i do want to point out one other parallel that i observed particularly with weinstein which was that he got a negative review of his book the the hunter gallerist guide to the 21st century and it was in the guardian it's got got to be an SGW or something. Well, oh, look, you free-empted it. No. On the podcast, him and his wife basically said exactly that. They said, this is a postmodern person who doesn't understand science. They've got it all wrong. And the author of the review is this guy called Stuart Ritchie. He's an academic who has written books criticizing modern science practices, you know, predatory

publishing and all of the things that led to the replication crisis. And Stuart Ritchie is also like a heterodox figure. He's published at Quillette. He's published for Unheard. So him critiquing them is absolutely not a social justice postmodern figure. And yet it would be easy for their audience to find that out by just Googling his name. I was amazed that they had the brazenness to present him as someone who doesn't understand science, who doesn't do experiments.

And he's the exact opposite of that. So, you know, when you were talking about Alex saying, you know, check the feed or whatever, who doesn't understand science, who doesn't do experiments. And he's the exact opposite of that. So, you know, when you were talking about Alex saying, you know, check the feed or whatever, that's kind of what they did to their audience as well. And I was like, but how can they do that? Because just one Google and it will be evident that they're lying. Well, think about it this way.

You can bring this up on Twitter. I did. And it doesn't erode his fan base you know like clearly this being pointed out that like this is wrong what are you talking about it's not a negative or if it is like what maybe one or two percent of the audience will care if you have a 98 retention rate by dismissing criticism ah seems like most most people who are you know maybe not the sincerest actors might take that option that seems like a good way that to not have to like i don't know wrestle with like i was wrong yeah for our listeners who don't have visual feedback matt has re-emerged from the academic puff of smoke. It was the most efficient meeting in history.

I was very impressed. Yeah, that's very efficient. That's why he's a full professor. You just got on that other meeting. No. Yeah, that was basically it. I said later. And they said, okay.

Matt, there's a question Dan asked that I think is good and I'd like to get your answer to about how we would perceive Alex as a guru and what he does one of the things that I thought as we're talking about it there there's lots of things that we see that Alex is you know narcissistic persecution complex presenting himself as galaxy bra brain about a whole range of subjects but but one thing that strikes me that he's good at and that a lot of our gurus are good at is when he gets on a roll like kind of citing events historical events and documents and so on and it it's you know kind of gish galloping but it's also the the way that he delivers it is rhetorically powerful and i think it's the kind of thing that people underestimate that they think you know it would be quite easy to have a debate with alex jones and make him look

stupid by just pointing out but in in that kind of steamroller like power of oratory he he strikes me as like a good guru and you as you cover on your show when you have the other info wars characters they're not as good at that like they try to ape it but they they can't deliver it so that's a skill they don't have the years like one of the things they don't have the philosophical background that alex had from his childhood of the john birch shit and stuff and i think that gives him a conviction that someone like owen troyer doesn't have and then also just like years and years of repeating things like operation north woods uh and and stuff like that they don't have that that like i said muscle memory of just like boom boom boom a b c d. Now you have to respond to all of it. You know, like, and that's, yeah, it tricks people.

But yeah, it would be hard to debate for sure. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, his style is obviously very different from someone like Jordan Peterson in the presentation. But I've been watching Jordan Peterson's recent barrage of videos. It's getting closer. It's getting closer. It's getting closer. That's right. And there's just a lot of similarities

in the strong emotional projection. That's something they have in common. And, you know, as you're saying, the gish galop of one point after the next, things don't need to cohere in an analytical sense. It can be a scattergun, elusive sense. And that's the definition of effective rhetoric. The grievance that you mentioned, Dan, as being just underlying to him, I mean, that's one of our big dings on the ground because they all have that to one degree or

another. And the other thing that Dan mentioned at the beginning of the interview, which was that this appeal, even amongst relatively normal types who are just a bit heterodox or a bit whatever, government skeptical, is that anti-establishment feeling and the sense that everything is going to hell in a handbasket super damn quick unless we act now and so that call to action and the act that we do will be restorative and sort of in response there's a there's a nobility or a righteousness to the response that we we give absolutely yes so so the audience is in being a fan you're becoming part of something that is bigger than you that is super important and and has this this holy crusade to embark on so so you know i think it's easy to get distracted by the tone i mean we've we've avoided alex and people of his ilk because they're so extreme and we sort of

focus more on them on the moderate in it and and also not least for the fact that a certain podcast has already covered pretty damn well. Now I think about it, it's getting harder and harder for me to make a qualitative difference in kind between them. I think we were talking to Becca Lewis recently. She did the network influence map and a couple of those. And I was thinking about that after our interview. in a couple of those. I was thinking about that after our interview and I think that probably in the

last few years, and unfortunately it appears to be moving more and more that direction, the connections between Alex and some of the figures that you cover and have talked about, I think are probably growing. I think it's something where the connections are coming much closer

and I worry about what that portends. At least there's something I wanted to ask you about, Dan, because in our neck of the woods, appearing on InfoWars is kind of a watershed about your credibility. I think it still has stigma attached, hopefully more so after this trial. But I remember back in 2019, when James Lindsay first retweeted

whatever her name is, Starbright. Millie Weaver? Millie Weaver, yeah. Rainbow Snatch. Yeah. That's her alias ex Infowars employee and I remember being like oh wow look at that that's the world's overlapping I'm being surprised that I'm right obviously as anybody online will know James Lindsay retweeting something from that sphere became a much less notable factor and that was like represented as

him kind of spiraling into the the more conspiratorial you know he he started talking a lot about karl schwab wanting you to eat bugs and so on and and he actually had we've we've looked uh into his content and he has a christ Christian nationalist mentor who's involved with his content. And there's like, yeah, nice parallels where you can actually hear them talking. And James starts ranting about how it's actually the Globus. And he's like, yes, James, that's right. It's just imagining like some Star Wars-y and uh sith kind of stuff here yeah it's hard not to see those parallels but the the thing that was kind of striking for me is that that whole eco system the bircher society and so on and talk radio on the right that like conspiracism on the right

has always been a thing and there's also the the left-wing kind of crunchy anti-vax, anti-GMO side, which has existed for a long time. And those movements, like when I was interested in them in the 90s and early 2000s, you know, they were relatively fringe. They did have influence. They came up in political campaigns and stuff but they they weren't mainstream and and now after trump and a lot of the figures in trump land it feels like alex and figures like him and including our guru figures jordan peterson and stuff that they're they're not so marginal anymore and i i wondered how you feel about that but it sucks yeah because there are people in alex orbit but they who seem like you know they can't be becoming mainstream like the guy who claimed that he did 9-11 oh leo

zagami yeah leo leo zagami and also the other one who was saying he was in Korea, but was not in... Oh, Steve Pachanik? Yeah, like those figures, it does feel like they can't become mainstream. But I'm wondering, you know, how do you perceive it? Do you think those worlds are like the far right side is becoming more influential? Or is there still like this division where alex jones is you know kind of tied to trump world but he's he's still a relatively marginal figure or yeah just like from your perception what direction is it going i would have said for sure uh a while

back that there's no way leo or pachanic could ever be like i don't know on tucker uh i don't know if i believe that necessarily anymore but i think it's unlikely um i i yeah there is an erosion of sort of standards i think uh that people have uh that has happened and i think that it's easy to say that it's since trump and stuff but i think it probably predates a little bit you know you could look at a hundred different uh influences of that there's people who are putting out bullshit becoming slicker about it there's the internet making everything so easy to put out and disseminate and there's the media itself hurting itself by uh you know certain high profile failures things

that alex brings up even the iraq war coverage and the new york times certainly is a something that's easy to point to as like well how much better are you than this idiot who has a webcam or whatever you know who's putting out uh nonsense um and so yeah i think i think a lot of those influences do combine and it's coming to a head a little bit and i think the one thing about trump that is like a um a large factor in it i heard somebody i think it was on like some pbs documentary was saying that like every president has probably had the ability to use conspiracy as a weapon and as a tool and that they just didn't. And Trump did. And that's the way that we need to get back to normal is have leaders who are not willing to use this bullshit that's always there and always is a tool. It's a very powerful tool, but it's unhealthy.

is a tool and it's a very powerful tool um but it's unhealthy and i think because trump did it kind of eroded a little bit of those standards that people have that they use to judge the information that they're taking in it's like well the president is saying this uh i don't know anything goes at the same time the proof of like tucker's success is something that obviously probably would be a motivating factor for a lot of people to give more credibility to stuff tucker platforms all kinds of nonsense you know he's stepped to the bat for alex and in his patriot purge documentary he had ali alexander in it and Elijah Schaefer, I believe, right? Is that right? Or the guy from Revolver.

You know, a lot of folks that are not necessarily folks that you would expect to be like, oh, this is something that's on Fox News. This is, you know, somewhat mainstream. So, yeah, I'm worried that Leo Z zagami will show up on tucker i'm i think it'll crack 9-11 wide open which is the good news but i i think about that too like with uh like rogan having alex on and being like this guy is so interesting and like he's right about a lot of stuff and then like why won't you have steve pachenik on that why won't you have these other complete weirdos who everyone knows are off the deep end why obviously it's because

you know alex is famous and close enough to respectable whereas all those other people are are you know way off to the side i don't know it's a bummer of a question, but yeah, I hope there's a limit. Hope and pray. theories from 50 years or whatever ago it's it's not consoling but it's kind of like oh things were always bad the internet has definitely done the number but like the the partisan and hard right conspiracism is is not like something invented in the past 20 years but the worrying thing is kind of like the john bircher society was at one point seen as disqualifying and now yeah it was so it was like if you were into that stuff you were a joke you know like and that has eroded i think because people are taking the ideas and not accepting the label you know not accepting the label, you know, not accepting the label of I'm a John Bircher or something. And they just believe all the same stuff. Uh, they're like, you know,

communists secretly have been engineering everything behind the scenes of the, uh, you know, like all this stuff is, is, you know, okay for people to bandy about and not think like oh i'm just uh this uh generations gary allen or whatever yeah and i i think dan there was related to that and and the trial coverage about you know coverage of alex jones in the mainstream media including us, because there are times whenever some compilation of Alex doing something stupid goes viral. And I know I've heard you and Jordan kind of lament those clips being shared. And so I wanted to ask in regards to the trial or broader, when it comes to dealing with Alex, do you have any advice about what not to do? And on the positive side,

what is a good way to dig into his world if you do want to cover his stuff? That's a hard, hard question. I mean, I think the only thing that I can say is that I only have an answer to this because of five years of doing this. Like, I don't think I could have had any perspective earlier on. And I think I would probably have advice that I would give myself four years ago that I didn't do the things that I would have done necessarily. would have done necessarily but one big thing is there's that uh twitter account that ron flipkowski guy who like posts videos of of stuff you know and a lot of a lot of the alex stuff that ends

up going viral ends up being like from his account and one of the things that i would caution people about is to assume that everyone has the same mentality they do. And so like, if you're posting a video of like Alex or Marjorie Taylor green, or, you know, somebody saying something patently absurd and offensive, like you are posting it and you're assuming that everybody else is going to see it and be shocked and horrified by it. When the reality is that there's a lot of people who will just see it and be like yeah all right and essentially what you're doing is promoting them you are doing a service of of uh platform and platforming is such a a dirty word now but you're basically giving a wider audience to this this thing with the

assumption that everyone's going to respond to it with shock and horror. And really, no, that's not the case. Alex loves it when people do that stuff. Because, again, it's like, okay, 98% of the people that see that, maybe. I'm sure that number is way too high. I'm sure it's closer to like 60 or 70%. See this and they're like, fuck this stuff. You know, like, oh, this is awful. And then maybe 4 or 5% are like, I've got to learn learn more about this guy and then end up getting into his revenue stream end up buying products or just um you know viewing his content and maybe becoming info warriors there is a pickup artisty vibe you know

like you know you you want to hit on a hundred women because then maybe one will have sex with you you know that kind of mentality of the content that goes out for someone like Alex. Like there's 99 no's, but there's going to be one yes. And that one yes is worth the 99 no's because those 99 people were never going to like him in the first place. Alex, I think it's important to be aware of that dynamic and not put out stuff that feeds into the possibility of that four or five percent walking away, he's so scary. Then you run the risk of being like, well, why is he so scary? Maybe I should. Maybe that's what they want me to think is that he's so bad. So there's a middle ground of covering him.

And yeah, as far as the actual media goes, I don't know. I don't think they should. I don't know. I mean, with should like i just i don't know i mean like with cases like the sandy hook case i know it's impossible not to yeah but generally i don't know i think most people should just stay away from it like it's it's everyone just walks into traps and he ends up like doing these things for attention and then people give him the attention and then i i don't know he's someone who's hard to dunk on necessarily and i think people want to yeah i could see that i mean there was the similar dilemmas that the press had in dealing with trump in the early days

you remember definitely it was just all publicity is good publicity. Like even when the flagrant content arouses justifiable backlash from other people, from other sources, sometimes the backlash is overblown, overheated or expressed in a way that generates more sympathy for the person involved. And there's one case that pops into my mind of, I believe it was after George Floyd. And there were some protests. And if I recall correctly, the circumstance was that InfoWars cameras captured an unhoused person, their bed was on fire. Someone had to set fire to their mattress. And a lot of the coverage that people had of it ended up being that info wars reporters set this person's mattress on fire and that was such an unforced error that people made because then alex got to be like we did not do that this is the media lying about us like they always do and it reinforces this uh notion that everyone lies about alex and you can't trust the

media and and the things that you see online because everyone's out to get him and it's just a spiral um that people are often they often end up falling into if they don't know the sort of content they're covering i think that's that's a that's a challenge yeah now i'm seeing seeing resonances of that with a lot of our other gurus too they inspire strong emotions right they inspire reactivity and it's almost inevitable that some of it will be overblown unfair mistaken in some way shape or form and then that i can think of half a dozen examples off the top of my head. So yeah, it's a general problem, isn't it? Yeah. It's, it sucks because I don't know if there's a,

um, like an underlying problem necessarily that gets solved and people like Alex go away or whatever, you know, like this, this problem is solved, but because it's metastasized to the state that it's in, I think that dealing with and covering the actual individuals requires like really special attention and like unique awareness and i just don't think a lot of folks

have it and um i'm not i'm not saying that is like everyone shut up leave this to me because i think there are a lot of other folks who have, whether it's intuitive or researched opinions that are pretty, pretty solid and an approach that works really well and treats the content like it deserves to be treated. But most of what I see is unfortunately maybe well-intentioned mistakes. Yeah. be well-intentioned mistakes. Yeah. I think the, you know, the emphasis that both you and Jordan put on the trial that as far as possible centering coverage, not just on Alex, but like on what he's actually done and what the parents are talking about and how they're responding to it, that that was, that was good. And I did see see some coverage that that took that form and i it felt like it will be much harder for people as more of these cases continue to roll down to ignore

that it wasn't just a mistake it wasn't like alex actually bentley said in one or two shows that maybe it was a false flag but that rather it was giving support to figures who were doing direct harassment of of family members um so yeah that that at least is possibly a positive sure and i but i think i think that if the coverage is centered on alex so much then it's much easier for him to deflect too like centering things on the reality of the circumstances and like what this is actually about makes it more difficult for him to wiggle out of because he can't really wholesale a hand wave reality i think He can sidestep some things, and especially when they're about himself,

it's pretty easy to control the narrative and change things. But when reality is just like a train barreling down on him, it's just, there's nothing to do. And I think that that's something to be aware of. With the trials that are forthcoming as well, like, I guess they're going to crop up over the next couple of years. I think within the next year. Well, it depends on

the bankruptcy thing. But yeah, I think they're, they're more impending than than the few years. So there's, there's two questions I have for you. They are one is, are you and Jordan going to, you know, like, because it's obviously very draining, like attending those events. Are you planning to cover the trials like you did this one? And secondly, my kind of broader question is, I'm sure you've thought about this, Dan. If InfoWars did stop functioning or if Alex Jones, you know know left and other hosts took over i can't see that happening but just that kind of thing never i yeah that's not yeah these these losers can't cut it but i'm i'm wondering in your case like you and jordan have made really in-depth analysis

of alex jones and you your shows where you look at all the figures indicate quite clearly that you can branch out and a lot of the same rhetorical techniques are cropping up. But I guess I'm wondering, I'm terrible at long-term planning, so I'm sorry to do this to you, but what do you see the knowledge Fights future? Like continue to cover Alex Jones indefinitely or at some point move on from him? Well, to that point, there's a lot of the past left to explore. You know, I have all of his episodes going back to like 2003. So they're on a hard drive. And even if his website goes down, it's fine.

so they're on a hard drive and even if his website goes down it's fine you know like so there is plenty of other content we can explore there um but yeah i i do think about like the possibility of other folks but it's kind of hard because alex is very unique in the the bombasticness the fact that he doesn't have a boss that no one can stop him from just like being drunk on air and like saying complete nonsense and crying about the devil and like i don't know if anybody else has that high of a profile and that much freedom and that's something very special um but yeah we'd find somebody else i'm sure like i'm not worried about the notion of him going away and i honestly don't think like even if he goes broke he's necessarily going to go away he's such a flagrant narcissist that like i could see him getting like negotiating some maze major

contract at like the blaze or something like i think that would be really humiliating for him on some level but like i could see him ending up on oan or i don't know like or or just doing his own podcast like that's god damn it the rock bottom yeah yeah come join us in the podcast game um so i could see that i'm not worried about that in terms of long-term stuff and like if he ends up going away and it ends up hurting our bottom line or whatever with with donors or audience i don't care at all that's yeah i am not i'm not interested in him for the sake of preserving any kind of job that i have found to your other question, not a chance,

not going to another one of these trials. That was, it was an emotional and psychological and physical drain that like, I don't want to engage in again. Like it was, it's so hard to be away from home for like a couple of weeks and going to the trial day in and day out. And,

um, yeah, it's, it was a lot. And then also the other consideration too, is that like I've, uh, assisted with the,

uh, the Texas plaintiff's attorneys, but not with the Connecticut, uh, folk. So the, the lawyers on that end, I don't really, I don't think I would be invited to the Connecticut case. So the lawyers on that end,

I don't really, I don't think I would be invited to the Connecticut case necessarily. And then the other ones that are going to go on in Texas, they're in the same courthouse, so they should be live streamed just as well as the other ones. So I think that one of the things

that I learned from this experience was there are a few things that you learned from this experience was there are a few things that you get from being in the courthouse in terms of the the vibe and you know seeing alex kind of be depressing you know like in breaks and stuff but it you can see most of it on the stream you know it it um it really does provide a great amount of access and transparency to what is actually happening there. And I think that I would rather just do that for the other cases. It'd certainly be cheaper. There was something you said there, Dan, that just reminded me I wanted to ask you this.

earlier episodes of knowledge fight at the beginning you're much more you're much more like trying to be overly charitable to alex than you are now and for good reason like i entirely understand that but you've mentioned a couple of times that you know the uh previously you were interested in conspiracy theories and that kind of thing. And I, I was kind of curious about that. Like how much of that was, you know, just your kind of, you know, UFOs are kind of interesting or,

or I'll totally be like Eddie Bravo style, you know, like lecturing people in bars. Depends on how long I've been at that bar. No, I don't, it's hard. It's hard to say i was very fascinated by a lot of stuff i may i you know i it's a little embarrassing to look back on a little

but i i certainly dabbled around with uh 9-11 conspiracy theories for sure like i don't know if i was ever convinced of anything but i certainly entertained them more than i would today uh when i was younger uh and i think part of that was just because you know i was 18 17 when it happened and you know it's deeply traumatic and processing it uh in the context of where my life was at 17 was not it didn't didn't necessarily go all that smoothly um but yeah i had i had more like the atlantis-y kind of vibe of conspiracy that's the healthier it's it's aspirational you know like there's a there's a fun world where everyone's equal and we have magic technology and you know that kind of stuff is uh uh was more fun for me but now doing this and seeing some of these folks who are in the like maybe

atlantis is real camp you start to realize that behind that is unfortunately maybe some neo-nazi ideas yeah you know it dovetails into like hollow earth stuff and like oh nothing's fun anymore yeah it is unfortunate how often that there seems to be anti-semitic or neo-nazi connections the things like you know people joke about it on the internet about people over documenting it but it does come off up an awful lot when you dig into things and uh yeah i i saw a clip where joe rogan's partner for on it aubrey marcus had some weird guy on who was talking about this and then began singing a song in Atlantean that he remembered from a past life. And awesome.

Yeah. And I was watching it going, okay, like this is the bit that I wish we could keep. There are people, you know, singing in the Atlantean language of their past lives. That's fun. Yeah. But the unfortunate thing is, like you say, Aubrey Marcus the previous week had Brett Weinstein on talking about COVID. And you're just like, why? And I think you guys face this problem when, know you know why atlantis was so healthy

ivermectin yeah natural deworming but uh yeah when you guys like go into the ufo stuff that that was that's similar right that like there's lots of crazy stuff and people talking about raptor aliens and spider aliens yeah and then there's the like did the holocaust happen we don't know it's an open question like oh no yeah we we cover this thing project camelot and the host of it it was just so much fun and like wide-eyed wonder at these aliens that exist out there and like secrets that are being kept from us and you know the vietnam war was really about fighting giant beetles in vietnam and like oh this is fanciful and weird and then yeah it becomes out of nowhere like jews are aliens possibly and maybe the holocaust didn't

have it's so disappointing yeah there's just not there's just not the fun of that pure i don't know childlike wonder like what could be out there in the universe and and i think one of the problems with it is especially with the alien stuff is once you start getting too granular with it you have to start giving characterizations to all the different races of aliens because you can't think of them as individual alien people you know you have to be like these ones are mean and these ones are, you know, and I think that that kind of thinking ends up being applied to people a little bit too easily. That's something that I've noticed among the UFO folks that I've looked at is like, oh, you look at alien races as just like human races of people. And that's unhealthy.

There's obviously so much literature on the sort of psychological components of the appeal of this kind of fantastical conspiracism. There's so many moving parts, but one of them is just that they're fun and they're interesting and they're complex and they're rich. And this is a similar appeal to complementary and alternative medicine compared to your typical hospital medicine. There's a backstory, you know, there's colors, there's diagrams, you can get into it, it's Baroque. And that's just cognitively appealing. I've always loved speculative fiction, science fiction and fantastical stuff. And also like crazy art, you know, really abstract expressionism and so on. But then part of my life i'm i'm liking science and research and evidence and objectivity and so on it's just my very personal opinion is that it's

just these are all great things but these worlds need to be kept apart or at least know where the distinction is you know like you can enjoy both in the same day it's just uh not the same thing not the same thing and don't conflate them yeah yeah that's a big part of alex that i think is is also really central to his um personality along with the narcissism and persecution complex is like inability to recognize that science fiction isn't reality like he constantly thinks that like books like childhood's end or like this is this is predictive this is this is telling you what the globalists are going to do and like but but that's that's another interesting connection with the um jordan peterson and this this sense maker sphere i don't know if you've heard of the sense you would love

it you would love it but I'm gonna write this down like less obviously toxic than Alex Jones but there's this dimension of it which is being totally enamored of allegory and archetypes and the power of of things in literature that actually reflect reality in a in a truer way than the stuff you can actually observe. We've listened to so many hours of it. And it is mental masturbation to my mind. It can be fun. No, it's just like masturbation.

I can see the appeal. You theoretically grasp that concept. But yeah, that confusing of, or rather seeing a way to understand the material world, like actual historical events, actual politics, actually things that are happening in society today and now, and seeing that the stuff that you're reading in legends, or even in popular culture, Jordan Peterson loves his pop his pop culture yeah just conflating it with with stuff that's actually happening and happened it's a fun way to connect everything narratively you know it's uh it's it's it makes it it's a it's a cleaner cleaner story than maybe looking at things as sort of disconnected pieces yeah and then the that like you know in the same

way it often seems like the engagement with the material is so superficial that like they've they've actually got motifs wrong or they've taken the opposite message and so it's more like you know the way orwell or 1984 is cited in the popular consciousness is I'm I'm very doubtful how many of those people have actually you know read Orwell recently or or like you know spent ever yeah and and this is you know Jordan Peterson this comes up with because he he reels against communism and and the horrors of it and so on and and there you know there are horrors but it's also clear that he actually has only read like the gulag archipelago the solzhenitsyn yeah okay and and maybe two or three other books that he constantly references and and like even

when he's going to be on stage debating a marxist philosopher zz he doesn't bother to read any of these experts or or even you know just the communist manifesto so it's it's it's hubris yeah but i also i also think it's partially hubris and partially a recognition that you have to keep moving. Like, I think for people like him and like Alex, I made this analogy before. It's like a Jesus lizard. You know, like the momentum is what's keeping it above the water. If it stops running, it's going to sink. I think that there is a part of being in the sphere of, of guruing or whatever that is like constant motion is necessary or else people will start to realize that a lot of this is bullshit and you have to,

and, and that lends itself to a superficial understanding of a lot of these things. Cause that's the surface. That's the surface that you got to keep running on is if you take the time to dig deeper into anything, it'll be like, wait, you don't know what you're talking about this is i shouldn't listen to you and i think i think that dynamic is pretty widespread yeah there's a there was a great

example recently when jordan peterson talked about like he he had been talking for years referencing these presentations of coiled snakes and how yeah dna yeah but he always added in okay this is speculative and you know i can't really i don't have time to get into it's very complex the things that i think about this it's not straightforward it's very complex and and then richard dawkins to his credit like you pushed him on them was like you know what what did you mean when you said that? And like, when he explained it, it wasn't complicated and it was incredibly stupid. But it sounded better when he didn't explain it. Exactly.

And I think with Alex, it's the same thing. Like, you know, when he appeared on Joe Rogan, and this must have been like nails on the chalkboard for your soul. Like Joe Rogan said, you know, I i'm gonna fact check everything alex says and and that basically amounted to jimmy google the document doesn't exist oh there is a document what the what the hell alex is is is right we have proven that the surface exists and we can keep moving and if you listen to any of the times he's on rogan that's the tactic that he's using is constantly jumping around constantly implying that there's another truth that he's on rogan that's the tactic that he's using is constantly jumping around constantly

implying that there's another truth that he's going to get to in a minute hold on you know like it's it's sleight of hand tricks with words basically and like it's sad that's why when on your show you know you did that thing which which i literally think no one else on the earth possibly does like when alex makes an offhand reference, you dig down what is the source that he is possibly referencing or that he has taken this from. And it's always so superficial and so, you know, unreliable, but it's that, that thing of like stopping and saying, well, what, where did he get this idea or what is he talking about? And it's, it's so empty. And it's exactly what you said that like, it's not just Alex, it's, it's a lot in the guru sphere that when they're just

pinging off and kind of in the rhythm, it looks impressive. And it can seem like, wow, they, they know a lot of stuff. They've got a lot of information about documents and historical events and myth and legend but they they don't they're just like really good at at talking that's the skill well well i also think that like it's generous almost to say that it's empty because the reality is that that surface like you think that there's water underneath there you're being tricked into thinking there's water i might be going too far with this metaphor but in reality it's like lava or something you know in reality what they're skimming on the top of is actually a dangerous ideology and a dangerous worldview so there there is the appearance of knowledge that is obscuring like the sources aren't empty often the sources end up going back to things that are like you take this too seriously and you're going to end up advocating

the end of the voting rights act you know like this is the kind of stuff that he's actually obscuring with the dance on the top of the water and i think that's worse yeah i wish they were empty you recently matt was saying jordan peterson was accidentally reinventing fascism yeah yeah yeah like similar kinds of things it was it was like you were saying it was just alluding to it in many ways you know capturing the the feeling of it the vibe of it the the style, but without going any deeper than that. And I don't even think Jordan Peterson himself is explicitly aware that the things that he was finding appealing, which is, for instance, like a young man finding a high authority,

an organisation, and devote and subvert yourself in it completely, but also be a hero fighting for the thing. And there was a whole bunch of things. For land and country. Yeah. And the swans. Yeah. That's great.

It's a small jump. Yeah. Like, I don't think he was aware that all of the things that he clearly found appealing, found rhetorically powerful and emotionally satisfying in this was was actually all pointing in the same direction yeah well i i think there was a uh i think it was around uh 2015 maybe early 2016 um there was a guy who used to be on info wars all the time named webster tarpley and uh he i'm not i'm not a, but he did write a very interesting essay about how he'd seen people like Alex end up going to supporting Trump.

And he wrote this piece about how it was wrong to hero worship Ron Paul. And that the obsession with Ron Paul was essentially the doorway through which all of these people were going to be led to fascism. And I was like, well, you had a pretty good point there too late but uh good point it was a weird level of awareness and i haven't read it in years but my my recollection of that essay was like this feels feels like uh you have a good point. Just that we have experienced people within the wider guru sphere who can be quite perceptively critical about particular gurus, often people that have disappointed them. Yeah. But then their solution is like, but this guy over here is like a slightly different flavor.

Bitterness brings clarity. a slightly different flavor bitterness brings clarity who who has like all of the same heart marks but just is not yet you know where jordan peterson is like but these guys they don't have any of those flaws you're like we haven't seen them yet yeah these look these look very similar but uh well that dynamic exists i'm sure all over the place like alex will be like he'll hate somebody until they pay him attention or like him you know like tucker was a shill for the mainstream and a globalist until he started getting racist enough for alex and then he liked him glenn beck was someone who was just stealing alex's act and selling it to the globalists. And now Glenn Beck likes Alex. And he's like,

well, Glenn Beck was pretty great all along. One of the best. Michael Savage was a beat Nick from San Francisco and a arch globalist until he started to like Alex. And then like, he was a Patriot all along. One of the best,

one of the pioneers of our movement. Like just all this is transactional to to an extent i'm sure but yeah but very but very very congruent with the narcissism right that's that's that's that's how they operate but you know a lot of it too of course is that alex is so good at at and well rather he devotes himself so wholeheartedly to trying to get attention and trying to attach himself to to any thing or person that that can get any more attention obviously most notably with joe rogan again another parallel i mean we it's kind of embarrassing it's cringe the way some of our gurus like like eric or brett

weinstein for instance just continually try to bring themselves to the attention of people that are slightly more famous than they are. And it's mostly Rogan. Yeah. Because I think that they realize that his standards are low enough for them. And they see the boost that he has given all of their careers. And like, so he's like a central hub for all of them to suck up to basically.

And there was, you know, before when Alex managed to get the reinvitation after he'd been off for a while he he did that exact thing of like you said you know he made one of the compilation videos about joe rogan being racist which which went on to trouble he threatened to reveal secrets about rogan's children on air like he was going at him hard yeah and then the funny thing is with them when he appears on rogan you know it's very much they they don't really trust like that level of vitriol but they said he was gonna gut him like a pig it's not you yeah and you would imagine

you know joe would have the self-respect, because I would imagine he saw those clips, but yeah, he probably just saw it as, you know, well, that's Alex being Alex. Yeah, you can make up stories that justify a lot of behaviors when you want to be like, ah, this guy. He's just, it's all for show or whatever, i wouldn't i wouldn't put up with that jordan started threatening that kind of stuff would be like before we talk publicly again we're going to publicly discuss the fact that you want to gut me like a pig that's bullshit let's let's clear the air but what what did you mean it was just metaphor just a metaphor but um there was something

i i know we've kept you long and i don't want to steal your whole Dan, there was something I know we've kept you long, and I don't want to steal your whole evening, but there was something that I thought your expertise in particular would have some insight on, and I didn't really know how to interpret. So Paul Joseph Watson, a second-in-command figure, at least for quite a while in Infowars, who's now receded into the background a bit on his own.

So in the trial, he comes across as like more, at least better at self-preservation than Alex, right? About warning, this looks bad. We should be careful here. And seems to, from this reveal reveal about emails to have continued to occasionally ring some warning bells and you guys you don't give him a whole heap of credit like you you highlight that he's you know he is a racist piece of crap but but he's relatively more strategic and and yeah that clip came out of him about half a year maybe a year ago now of him

being cartoonishly racist anti-semitic like he managed to fit into a two-minute clip almost an impressive level of bigotry and racism and i wondered like i i initially thought that clip was too on the nose to be real. Yeah, me too. Because the recording quality wasn't good. And it just seemed like, really, would he have done that? Would he have said all that stuff? But he subsequently has never mentioned it. And I imagine he would have tried to sue people if it hadn't been real.

So it left me with this thing where I thought that Paul Joseph Watson would be more, even in company that is sympathetic to his worldview, would be more cautious about saying those things out. just how racist those people are or how bigoted they are and like what alex and company say behind closed doors i'm almost certain you have i would i would i would almost guarantee that with that clip in particular i kind of have a similar feeling of like it seemed too explicit to be real um and and yeah like you said cartoonish in its bigotry um but i also believe it could be real and almost for the same reason that you're saying it's like this would be actionable if this was you know somebody making a fake that's defamatory and if it's a fake thing then it's actual malice for sure because the person putting it out knows that you know even though paul's a public figure that would be I mean he's calling for like the

extermination of Jewish people in that clip like that's pretty defamatory but I don't know if it's true or not I don't know if it's real but I do think it's something that he would say in private company from taking in enough of his content

I don't think that seems too shocking that those would be held beliefs that he has the, yeah, he's, he's slick. And I think that the distinction is that that was probably a clandestinely recorded thing. If it's real,

whereas emails and texts are obviously things that, you know, are records and there are things that, you know, that are things that, and it's a business decision in some ways for Paul, you know are records and they're things that you know that are things that and it's a business decision in some ways for paul you know like this sandy hook stuff is going to hurt our business don't do this and it's you know i think it would be wrong to ascribe a level of humanity to what he's saying you know like hey those poor families who you're gonna end up getting

hurt that's not the thrust of his point it's like this makes us look crazy this is gonna hurt us in terms of being able to bring in bigger guests these are logistical concerns as opposed to it being like this is wrong to do and so he does have a better head on his shoulders in terms of being able to suss out like what could have consequences um but yeah i think he's probably as big a pile of shit as alex if not maybe worse i mean it's possible that he's even worse i know his content is harder for me to watch because of all the like quick cuts and everything it's just it's disorienting the way he can't even get a sentence out making his point it's like three words andorienting the way he can't even get a sentence out making his point it's like three words and then a cut to another word and then word and then he looks

like he's crying and is he still on info wars he will host the fourth hour periodically i know i've seen him come up but he he has that summit.news uh website and then alex uses that as a source a lot uh and so there's kind of a symbiotic relationship. I wouldn't be surprised if he's still like in some fashion, like a contractor or whatever for InfoWars. But yeah, he appears to have diminished in his stature from like when he was editor-in-chief. Yeah, when he was heir apparent at one point.

Yeah. But then that article came out and Alex got mad that said he was gonna take over and uh maybe that was what did it i don't know narcissism that's another thing okay real quick covering him if someone must i think it's a good idea to poke at his narcissism if you're going to cover him do something that will inflame his narcissism because because that's fun i don't know i like that i like that as a as a note but uh yeah dan like i i just want to say i'm not going to do the thing that will upset you and please don't jordan because that

upsets us at the end of podcasts as well, whenever people are praising. But I think it should be clear that both Matt and I have extremely high regard for the content you put out. And it was really nice to see the families and also yourself and the people at Pushback and Alex get a win recently. And also yourself and the people at Pushback Analytics get a win recently. So, yeah, everyone that listens will already know. But where can people find you if they want to?

Well, knowledgefight.com is the website that people can find us at. And, you know, I appreciate it. I don't look at this as a win per se. I think it's a positive sign. And hopefully like there'll be some kind of consequence that'll come because, you know, his behavior merits a consequence. But from everything I can tell, the families look at what happened with the trial as a win in terms of setting the message that they wanted to send and uh for me that's that's plenty you know that's that's what's important is that they came away satisfied with the uh the conclusion so hooray for that yeah and i'll continue laughing at his dumb ass uh and uh pointing out how he doesn't know anything about the subjects he's covering. Well, like you said, if they're grandiose narcissists and you want to poke them and do something to upset them,

then the best thing to do is to laugh at them. I would also say the fact that he doesn't mention you guys is an indication that what you're doing is something he doesn't like. I think so. I don't want to put too much stock into that, but I think we cut out there.

We got him almost all the way to the end and just the last little bit. Yeah. Cheers, Dan. Thanks from me too, Dan. Be good having you on. Keep doing what you're doing. And let's hope that Alex Jones spends the rest of his life in court. Thanks for having me.

I think we completely cut out it's done we're finished and we should mention that at the end the very end of the podcast we had some technical difficulties where we we all got disconnected so we recorded and, you know, we've kind of pieced it together. But that's why the ending is kind of abrupt because we were going to have, you know, the usual probably waffly outro, but instead the internet crapped out.

And so it's just... Clean break. Yeah, we're done. We're done. Yeah, clean break. He dropped his microphone, walked away. It was a baller move yeah in the in the internet sense so that was that was very enjoyable thanks to dan for coming on

and sharing his his wisdom as it were so hopefully we we have more reason to interact with the knowledge fight guys again maybe if we cover alex jones specifically on an episode we we obviously would reach out to them but they might not want to do that but you know the offer is there anyway absolutely absolutely so what's coming up next i forget is it review of reviews it is and we have just a couple short ones this week. So I've got two negative ones. The first one is a one star from Norway. That's rare.

People in Norway usually love us. But the username is called Decoding the Decoders, which suggests that they've registered their account purely to write this review so i don't know never a good sign never a good no and the title of the review is unwell one out of five stars but it's pretty it's pretty short review just says activists not truth speakers stay clear folks so yeah okay not much to be done you know not much to be done with that there's lots of opinions on the internet some are wrong and some are not and this is a wrong i'm seldom accused of being an activist i have to say no me me neither so from there matt will

go to a more substantial negative review. This is by Marcus517. Too many style criticisms. Two out of five. Not one. We still got something valuable. Okay, it's a left-leaning podcast, but this one's not the worst. What bugs me is how lightweight it is. You don't like Jordan Peterson orrené brown or probably any other

media person who leans right just just the insert here pretty sure brené brown doesn't lean right but any case any case so then tell me there so tell me there that are wrong that's what they wrote tell me they're there tell me they're that are wrong. Okay. By the way, both these people irritate me, but you gave me nothing other than style criticisms. I agree that Brené comes across as a self-help guru. I too find that irritating.

But what has she said that's wrong? Somewhat better with Jordan, but too many cheap shots. Same with the episode on friedman and height you are researchers do your homework i've only listened to four or five episodes so we'll give it another chance there you go matt okay that's us told but in our defense we we are all about criticizing style that's that's the point about... No, you always say this and I always pull you on it because I think that's wrong. You're just... It's false.

It's inaccurate. One, don't agree with this guy. But I'll tell you why you're wrong, Matt, because that implies that we don't address the arguments that people make in their content. arguments that people make in their content. And I know from recording 50 plus episodes of this podcast that we often get into the actual arguments. And in particular, the Lex and Hyde episode. Yes, the criticisms of Lex were mainly about his kind of,

you know, his presentation style and stuff. But that's because that's mostly what lex is about he's mostly an interviewer and so you only get kind of snippets of his worldview but we did do criticisms about you know his approach to world geopolitics through personal relationships and his kind of naivety towards you know the history of world war ii and that kind of thing yes yes and with height yes almost all of it was about the content of his arguments that's true that's true so yeah matt okay no no look we don't disagree look with with the people that are actually saying something a bit more substantial like height then we do tend to um engage with the content more right but when someone is saying

something that is really quite stupid but it's all dressed up in all kinds of fancy language then we strip away all of the style we do talk about the style as well but then when you pull it down when you get down to what they're actually saying which in the example you just gave is a good one just oh we can solve the problems of the world by you know having a good personal relationship and remembering that we're both just human beings um you know there's not much you know it's pretty stupid there's not much to well but that's the so look there matt there what you just talked about that is looking at the rhetorical and stylistic features that surround the argument,

but then highlighting what the actual argument being presented is. Like with Jordan Peterson, just to give that guy an example, we talked about him talking about how, you know, religious art makes people feel something and they travel far and wide to visit the museums that have religious art in this. And this shows that religious art houses some deep truth, some profundity, which people are attracted to. Now, he doesn't apply that logic to modern art, like the lobster telephone, right? Or, you know, secular art is also in museums, also traveled to see. But Jordan doesn't focus on that.

So that's highlighting, you know, contradictions in his argument. But you can also highlight that the way he dresses that up is with this massive, long, five or six minute story about people visiting museums. So there's like a stylistic criticism, but you're also disagreeing with the content of his argument so yeah i'm just telling you what you're doing just telling you what you do i know i know you're right i'm this bloke we don't just criticize style and that review was wrong and you should have given us five stars we're on the same page that's why you and marcus are wrong so man. I was wrong, but now I've seen the light. You've turned me around. It was useful.

This was useful. And so the last thing, I'll end on a positive note, a five-star review from Bang Bang Bart. Say better username. And the title is Typical. Typical. And then it says, five out of five, just a regular to postmodernist neo-Marxist

rebelling against God for the crime of being. Two thumbs up. Nice. Nice. Yeah. It's accurate. That's accurate. You know, we're only activists

if your worldview is, you know, particularly partisan. Like, that's the only way if you think that, you know particularly partisan like that's the only way if you think that you know us critiquing brett weinstein and jordan peterson stuff like that's all that's all really based on partisanship like no it's it isn't it it really is not and when we do our season of left-wing gurus, it'll be even clearer for people. But there we go. Yeah. I'm a partisan against a world that has demons in it.

Yeah. And, you know, now listen. Listen for the people that are listening. Listen better. Because this is not saying we don't have any political views we don't have any biases or that kind of thing we're just too lazy to act on them that's yeah we have biases but we're not activists and like yeah i i don't i've never been mistaken for an activist so anyway there we go look uh you ride me up with your negative reviews

well now now now now i mean come on let's throw on the bone i mean i can understand how it would feel if you've got right wing sympathies and you listen to us and we're knocking all of these people who espouse you know right leaning at at least yeah things then that's the way it's going to feel right it's going to feel like that yeah that's yeah i get that i get that but they're still wrong you know it's a sorry facts don't care about your feelings if we are left-wing activists for you your bar is three you should you should get on twitter you should see what what they're up to yeah they're different so matt the last thing to do turn to is to say thanks to our lovely patrons and i've got a bevy

of them to shout out this week a veritable bevy a veritable bevy. A veritable bevy. So for conspiracy hypothesizers, we have Matt Johnson, Wendy Hylett, Sheila Underwood, Stephanie Caron, Dee Ann Gregory, Rob Andrews, you can't do that on Robert Olsen, and Joseph Reilly. Great. What a gaggle of conspiracy hypotheses. They're good. Yeah. Thank you all. Thank you all.

Every great idea starts with a minority of one. We are not going to advance conspiracy theories. We will advance conspiracy hypotheses. Next up, Matt, then we have our

revolutionary geniuses, a higher class altogether of patron donators. And there we have our revolutionary geniuses, a higher class altogether of patron donators. And there we have Diane Morrison, Simon Cooper, Kerry-Anne Edgehill, John Hand, somebody who makes various memes on Twitter that are good,

Neil Hornsby, Chris from the Rewired Soul podcast, and Chris Barber. Hey, I was just talking to Chris. Hell yeah, very good. Thank you, guys. A lot of good Chris's. A lot of good Chris's out there.

Thanks, everyone. Maybe you can spit out that hydrogenated thinking and let yourself feed off of your own thinking. What you really are is an unbelievable thinker and researcher, a thinker that the world doesn't know. Okay. And last Matt, but certainly not least, not least at all, the Galaxy Brain Gurus. And here Matt, here we have Derek Varn. We have 4RSEF. We have the real

Eric Weinstein. I didn't know he had signed up so that's, thank you Eric. Jedi Mishap. Another good username there. And BreenyClassen. BreenyClassen. Excellent. Thank you, one and all. Thank you. You're sitting on one of the great scientific stories that I've ever heard. And you're so and hey wait a minute am i an expert i kind of am yeah i don't trust people at all okay matt well it's it's time for us to bid everyone adieu and

get out of here and uh i think given the release schedule probably next up is the sense making extravaganza so there's something for people to look forward to. More sense making to come. We will be integrating sense making about sense making, turning sense making squared into sense making cubed. Little maths reference there for the people that could appreciate that kind of thing. Dimensional cube. Dimensional cube.

Yeah, we'll be getting to that. That's the thing to look forward to. Yeah. Thanks, everyone. Thank you, chris have a productive and happy day indeed note the disc accord the gen be safe out there bye Thank you.