Decoding the Gurus - Special Episode: Interview with Jesse Singal on Quick Fix Psychology

Episode Date: June 18, 2021

Another week and another extra special interview with journalist, podcaster, and Twitter outrage lightning rod, Jesse Singal.We discuss his new book on Quick Fix psychology, the fallout of the replication crisis, and why we should be skeptical of anyone peddling simple 'one size fits all' solutions to complex social & psychological problems.We have a fun wide ranging discussion covering social media dynamics, the dangers of audience capture, and the goddamn lab leak hypothesis! We also discover the dictionary definition pedantism and abuse Jesse with unending uncomfortable questions about culture war controversies.Jesse provides keen insight and is a good sport when it comes to critical topics, we really enjoyed having him on and hope you guys enjoy the result!LinksJesse's new Book: The Quick FixBlocked and Reported PodcastJesse's Singal-Minded Substack

Hello and welcome to Decoding the Gurus. It's the podcast where an anthropologist and a psychologist listen to the greatest minds the world has to offer, and we try our very best to understand what they're talking about. I'm Professor Matt Brown, and with me is Associate Professor Chris Kavanagh. Who are we? What's our deal? Well, we're like the odd couple if one of the characters was a grumpy, combative Irishman. Welcome, Chris. Oh, I'm impressed with your impromptu intro. I thought you didn't have one ready so impressively off the cuff but uh yeah good good morning mark how's it going it's going pretty

well now as you know sometimes just sometimes we have special guests on who are going to help us figure out what is true, beautiful, and real in this crazy mixed-up world. And today is one of those days. Who have we got with us today, Chris? We have Jesse Singel, author, podcaster, journalist, internet hero, legend. I thought you guys were going to say, sometimes we have special guests, sometimes we have average guests, like today. No, no, no.

All of our guests are very special to us. And also, I think it's fair to say that you're probably our least controversial guest, Jesse. You managed to just avoid any of the road bumps on the internet so that that's refreshing that's what i'm known for so the other thing is that you have a book which is not new right now it's well i guess it's it's close to new it's a couple of months like the quick things which you kindly shared with us and i'm sure matt judithly read everything and has his notes for each chapter ready right matt i i have quite a few notes actually you'll be surprised chris well i think we originally i can't even remember if we invited you before you had your book or not but with the

book it seems there's a lot of overlap with our interest because we're focusing on online gurus and the online dynamics as well. And a lot of what you covered in the book, which was really good, by the way, just there. Thank you. I'll say, I think your book together with Stuart Ritchie's recent book. Yeah, science fictions is great. Yeah. Yeah, it's a really neat encapsulation of maybe I'd even put it as a capstone. Is that the phrase of the replication crisis?

It's a nice accounting of what went on there and where we are now in social sciences and in psychology in particular. So, yeah, there's a lot that naturally overlaps with the kind of things we talk about. Matt, I know that you like the book as well, right? Yeah, I did like the book. Congrats, Jesse. So I guess one good place to start is just to ask you to, can you sum up the thesis in your own words? I could do it for you, but I think you could probably do it better. How would you describe it to someone who hasn't read it? Yeah, I think it's an examination of why psychologists proffer easy-seeming solutions to complicated problems, and maybe

just as importantly, why the media and TED Talks and other scientists disseminate these ideas despite the lack of evidence to support the grand claims underpinning them. Yeah, and you talk about perhaps some of our natural tendencies towards simple and monocausal explanations for things. Yeah. I'd say over and over in the book, there'll be some observation about how the world works or how inequality works that usually stems from a grain of truth. It's just focusing in on this one aspect of the problem at the expense of almost everything else. I think that's a big part of the problem. And, you know, that's why people fall for TED Talkers. They're good storytellers and they're simple storytellers.

So there's a question I had about that, Jesse, because like the conclusion that it's more complicated than that. And there's multiple factors. That's, I mean, that's almost always true. And it's a, it's an evergreen statement for most topics. But so I'm completely on board with that as well. But don't you agree that like, this might just be my corner of the internet or the academic world, but TED Talks, for example, it feels like there has been a backlash to their kind of glib, monocausal accounts or overselling solutions that now TED Talks are almost equally a source of parody as they are something which CEOs turn to for the next nudge. Yeah, I think there's something to that, especially among the sorts of people who follow

like the replication crisis closely. But I think a lot of people still believe in that stuff. And in my book, the different, a lot of the chapters are sort of case studies. And I think they range from stuff that is pretty widely accepted as debunked to, in some cases, ideas that are still percolating along strongly but shouldn't be. So I think there's a range there in terms of how far along these ideas are in their life cycle. I noticed is that, like in broad brushstrokes, a lot of those ideas or schools of work sometimes have some reasonably serious academic foundations, but then you have like a range of poorer quality, but I guess more accessible and appealing papers in the literature. And then that in turn can get picked up by popularizers of various kinds and these people could range from someone like Jordan Peterson to Robin DiAngelo I suppose who then

have a big influence on popular culture and so one thing that struck me is that the sort of thing you were diagnosing like it doesn't really have a political valence. But if you do want to look at it like that, it's happening across the spectrum. Yeah, what's interesting is like I, so I think there's an interesting conversation to be had about psychology is overwhelmingly liberal. And I think that can have some consequences for the quality of research, because like I used to view ideological diversity as sort of a punchline. In looking into these stories of how these bad ideas percolate, I've come to appreciate a little bit more. But I think if there's any bias that props up these

ideas, it's almost, I don't love the term neoliberalism, but these are pretty neoliberal ideas. They're not about restructuring society. They're about optimizing individuals in cost-effective ways that don't require redistribution. So I agree that my book has, most of the ideas don't have much of a political valence, but I think if there is one, it's a little bit more nuanced than just left or right-wing ideas. Yeah, for sure. Actually, I'm glad you said that because I noticed the same thing you pointed out in the book, which is that a lot of these social psychology concepts like giving people little nudges or building up their sense of self-efficacy or positive thinking and so on are kind of a very individualistic, atomic. And yeah, I don't love the term either, but it fits very nicely with the neoliberal consensus, doesn't it? Yeah. And I think that it's a useful example of the limitations of these political labels, because I bet almost everyone, I think the best example of this is

grit. This idea of a scale that can measure people's, particularly students' level of stick-to-itiveness and basically conscientiousness. It might actually be measuring conscientiousness. Read the book for more details on that. But the point is, I bet 90% of the people who developed grit, including Angela Duckworth, are reliable democratic voters. They're liberals in the simple liberal conservative binary. But grit is a very classic American pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps idea. So, you know, it's just more complicated than the idea of like a liberal bias in science, something more nuanced is going on. Similarly, Jesse, when you talked about the power posing literature and Amy Cuddy's framing

of that research, I mean, the issue, if she's claiming that, you know, striking a pose can subjectively make you feel a bit more confident going into an interview there's there's probably less of a concern right because that's a relatively limited claim but the claim that doing that can be demonstrated to have a massive impact on who will be selected for a job and alter your hormone levels and that these kind of interventions are much more tractable than say attempts to change the fundamental structures of institutions or systems so you kind of frame it as those two approaches being in conflict. And do you see that as being a necessity or just like a feature of the people that you focused on?

I'm not sure they're inherently in conflict. I think it's a matter of what you pay attention to and what you focus on. So I situate power posing within this recent tradition in America of lean-in feminism. So Sheryl Sandberg wrote Lean In. And her book and Cuddy's book both say that women should just basically be more assertive and in certain senses, more masculine. So my argument is instead of focusing on telling women to fake it till they make it in terms of their confidence and sense of power, which is literally one of the things they say, there's probably room for organizational level tweaks that will make things a little bit fairer.

So when Sandberg talks about being in business school at, I think it was Sandberg was in business school at Harvard, I believe, professors there would not take notes. Class participation was very important. Professors wouldn't take notes. So this would clearly benefit the sorts of blowhards like the three of us who could just stand up and say something authoritative seeming in class. probably benefits people with male socialization. Why would you not change that system so professors can take notes and you don't have to rely on people who are, you know, that's the kind of thing where it's like, why are we telling women to stand up and speak more confidently when they don't feel confident rather than making it so that the systems don't reward undue confidence, if that makes sense. Yeah. So that's sort of a related topic you get into is the literature on and ideas around self-esteem and positive thinking. So a few rungs down the intellectual ladder is the book called The Secret by Rona Byrne that you talk about. So in that book, it promotes the power of positive

thinking and encourages people to visualize the things they want and then they will come true. So, I mean, for me, this is really interesting because it's similar to what some people are looking at with the conspirituality movement, which is like this weird horseshoe in terms of kind of right wing and libertarian type thinking with the alternative health and wellness. So likewise, it seems that that kind of material that gets promoted by Oprah and stuff like that is like a weird dovetailing of this very capitalist kind of individualist get the things you want, but also with this sort of warm and fluffy stuff around

believe in yourself and it will come true. So what are your thoughts about that, Jesse? I just think in general, a lot of social psychology has ventured and definitely positive psychology have ventured much too closely to self-help and it's often hard to discern the two. So you have the consumers of this stuff are maybe,

I have no data to support this, but I would imagine a little bit higher educated and they like the idea that they're listening to the latest social psychological insights from Harvard or UPenn. But when you actually dig down into these messages, they're just self-help and there's the trappings of science, but very little genuine, robust science underpinning them. genuine robust science underpinning them i think i like the way yeah in that chapter you traced the development of the self-esteem literature linking it to the like some of the names were amazing like phineas parkhurst quimby right yeah clockmaker and mesmerist the way that the new the new thought movement which is an amazing move i i wanted to learn more about it i learned a little for the book but new thought is incredible stuff yeah and that then next the power of positive thinking right norman vincent peel

is there there seems to be a like a i don't know a triple barrel name effect that somebody should study. But I like that because it's often overlooked how much some of the contemporary trends in psychology are linked into fads that you can find echoes in the Victorian era or even earlier than that. And it does feel, including with the culture war stuff, that there's something of a recency bias. I'm not saying that things never change, but more that there's definitely elements that repeat cyclically. And I wonder if you find it helpful to take that kind of perspective, looking back and seeing that we've always had people peddling miracle psychological interventions.

Yeah, I mean, so I guess there's a couple different questions there. One about sort of culture wars, one about social psychology. I think some of the stuff going on with social psychology is maybe less cyclical. I think certain specific elements of how it developed as a profession, some of which were in an earlier draft of my book, but I just had to cut it for flow reasons. got more and more individualistic over the years. And there was this post-war golden age when it was very interdisciplinary. So you'd have anthropologists and sociologists working with social psychologists. Social psychologists sort of fell in love with lab studies and with the endless amount of statistically significant findings you can generate in labs. And I think it could be argued, and some have argued, that that's when the ship started to veer off course a little bit because it's hard to measure, you know, learn about social aspects of human life with lab studies. And I do think that that culminated in certain dead ends that really peaked maybe in the first decade or so of the 21st century. And that coincided with TED Talks, with social media, with

like a million new news outlets that like to cover science, but not in a rigorous way. So I think it was just like a worst case scenario in terms of sort of the deer of all this stuff. The culture war stuff, more broadly, I agree, is very cyclical. Yeah, look, just got to say, so Jesse, you've got a pretty strong background in statistics as well and fortunately most of my work is in the survey domain where we have very large samples and we don't try to do experimental manipulations but i am involved with a lot of laboratory research as well and to be honest my gut feeling is is that if you design and analyze an experimental manipulation well, then you have a very, very low chance of finding the thing that you expect.

However, if you do it badly and cut corners, then you can find a supposed effect there. So, I mean, just on a very personal gut feeling level, I've seen what you're describing there with the weakness of laboratory studies. Yeah. Well, you can also run 20 statistical tests and two or three of them are, are going to hit. And then you can just say, that's what you were looking for the whole time. It's like very, uh, there's a lot of ways it can go wrong. And I just want to like, I'm not, I don't have like a very strong background in statistics. I just know the basics. But just knowing the basics, unfortunately, makes me more qualified than most journalists who write about this stuff.

Yeah. And some psychologists, Jesse. You know, like selling the benefits of interdisciplinary collaborations is music to my ears because like Matt and me are in some sense in a disciplinary collaboration. Collaboration with anthropologists is overrated. No, no, it isn't. It's the future. And the institute I work at at Oxford is very much focused on that kind of collaborating with historians and psychologists and so on. But I will say that something I've noticed within social psychology and cross-cultural psychology disciplines is that anthropology went through

these debates in the 70s up till like the 90s, the kind of first wave of the culture wars or the modern culture wars and a lot of it was focused on academic minutiae but but there were also things about objectivity and taking edict and i make perspectives and representing indigenous perspectives and and so on and the interesting thing for me is that like i came into anthropology at the tail end of that and leaned more towards the you can still do that stuff but you can combine it with empirical approaches so I became involved with psychology and that's where I'm situated now in the hinterlands but I've noticed that psychology is now very much recapitulating the concerns of 90s anthropology like I went to a psychology conference

and there was a guy standing up saying, I don't think he was raising the issues that the psychology discipline is overwhelmed by liberals. And then he was making the point that they don't understand honor cultures and that what they need to do instead of running experimental studies is go and live with people in the deep south or wherever for a

number of years and then write qualitative accounts based on interviews and i was just listening going but that's anthropology it already exists so yeah it just struck me that there's calls for that kind of thing but there's also something to be said for disciplinary specialization. Yeah, yeah, I guess it depends what kind of specialization and like, one of the best sort of younger ish social psychologists working is a woman named Betsy Pollack at Princeton. And she has more of a field research background than a lot of social psychologists. And she's done pretty amazing real world studies that I think are expensive and hard to pull off, but probably tell us much more about the world than the average lab finding.

Yeah, there's a good researcher who's now at LSE who did a multi-year study about ritual dynamics. I think it was in an Indian community. In any case, it was like a five-year study where they networked out all the relationships between the people in this village and were tracing their ritual performances. And it was great. It came out as an empirical paper, but included all this rich data. But the reality of it is that that person had to spend five years working in a rural Indian village to collect that kind of rich data. Whereas in the meantime,

and sure, they actually got a position out of LSE and stuff related to that. So that's a good outcome. But in reality, most people don't have the time or resources to do that. So they are going to run MTurk studies or a lab. Yeah, no, I was going to say that in that time, you could probably publish five to 10 studies on implicit bias using university samples.

Yeah. So, Jesse, again, I'm going to talk a little bit because I just want to let our listeners know that the sort of stuff that you talk about in your book, I think is really important. And I feel like I've seen it in my own career. Back when I was a research student, a couple of things were very popular. One of them was neuro-linguistic programming, NLP. And another one that I actually did my honors thesis in was transformational leadership as opposed to transactional leadership. Now, this is from organizational psychology and transformational leadership is this wonderful thing where the managers inspire and have these genuine,

authentic relationships. You name it, it's great. Now, even at that young age, you could tell that this stuff was telling executives and managers what they wanted to hear and that there were people who were making a lot of money by heading out to corporations and running these transformational leadership courses and so on, and really capitalizing on it. And it was hugely popular. A lot of people made a lot of money out of it. But from studying it, I realized that the foundations were extremely weak. But that's the kind of example I could see where there's this interface between people's incentives and what essentially fits very nicely with the existing system and the way it good example of that because it creates these incredibly useful, lucrative tools for individual companies and schools to seem to be doing something sciencey about racism and discrimination. Now, does it help at all? There's no real evidence to suggest it does, but it certainly helps make it seem like they're doing something. And yeah, I just think, especially because the average company, what they're going to do a longitudinal study, like measuring whether the training module they hired had any effect in the long run. Of course they're not. They're just trying to check an item off a list. So I think there's always going to be a market for half-baked psychology informed corporate and educational

modules, basically. Yeah. So one thing that struck deep for me is that many of the things that we see in our gurus, which is like taking these shortcuts for attention and impact through speculative claims and bad reasoning. Yeah, it was a harsh lesson because your book essentially illustrates that those same motivations are operating on every academic and journalist too, for that matter. So what are your thoughts on that? And is there anything we can do about it? Yeah, I mean, it's tricky. I think a lot of the incentives point toward half-baked ideas getting disseminated. I do think some of the reform efforts underway in

psychology are likely to improve things. It seems like there's a pretty good diagnosis of what went wrong and how to fix it. That doesn't mean psychology is going to be perfect 10 years from now, but I do think it's getting better. Journalism, I have less faith in just because we are continuing to collapse entirely in a structural structural sense. And I think if anything, there's going to be fewer journalists really qualified to write about this kind of research. But, yeah, so I'm torn on the future. I just it might always be the case that that we're a sucker for novel ideas that sound right, but aren't all that true or don't mean all that much. But it's just something that as humans we need to be on guard for yeah i like your the point that one that was very refreshing that you had a chapter on the the efforts to improve things the kind of open science movement and

importance of many labs and all that kind of thing because i think there's always a danger with this stuff that you end up just bemoaning the situation such as it exists and it's not really your requirement that you have solutions but i i still think it's good when people can point to that there is at least signs of hope in reform movements and that kind of thing. Yeah. I don't want people to slide into some sort of nihilism or relativism where science is just sort of another broken human institution. I do think the benefit of it is it contains the tools for self-correction in a way other belief systems don't. So that's why I still have faith in science for lack of a better more intelligent way to put it yeah i mean i'm heartened too because what i've seen is not that um research psychologists have kind of closed ranks and denied that there's a problem and so on but have really

embraced that and um yeah doing some serious self-reflection and hopefully reform. I will say, Matt, that I've noticed as well, and I'm sure, Jesse, you've seen this, that any reform movement and the open science movement is not immune from this. As it goes on, it tends to fracture and form into camps in the same way the atheist movement the new atheist movement did and and pretty much all online groups or movements that i've seen maybe even not just online but the the open science movement feels to me like it it's won some concessions with now pre-registrations are recognized as important

and there's registered reports and whatnot. But they have also broke into these fighting camps that predictably have ended up arguing about how important it is to include a social justice component in the open science movement. And I know that people within the movement, for example, Jesse, have quite different reactions to you, right? But they don't disagree with you on any of the points about like methodological reforms, but they do on social justice issues. Yeah, I mean, I guess I've had trouble historically, and this maybe is just Twitter, understanding. I mean, there's one sort of open science adjacent figure in particular

who's very critical of me, although he's also skeptical of open science in general, because I think he thinks it's sort of like a white dude bro endeavor. I guess I would need more specifics about what their critiques are. I found, again, this could just be the result of Twitter where too much of these conversations take place. But a lot of the time when someone is mad at me and my work, and I'll ask them what it is I've said they're mad about they um they don't always display intimate familiarity with i'm trying to be diplomatic here i've had so many interactions with people where i've just asked like point me to what it is i've written that you really disagree with and um yeah so so some of the open science fracturing stuff i i've been following it a

little bit i'm just not i don't know i feel like with so many of these like internecine culture war fights, there's like a kernel of truth in that, of course, psychology is like, like so many other areas of academia benefits privileged people. And that probably leads to, to disproportionately white people. Um, but that's just like a pretty deep structural thing to have to face. And to me, I'm not sure you can sort of straightforwardly insert concern about that into every aspect of like pre-registration or replication. I mean, what's pre-registration is, I think, good. I think we should promote it. I'm not sure like every step of the way when you're promoting pre-registration, you can tie directly into like, you know, Black Lives Matter or whatever. Sometimes, I don't know. I don't always understand the critiques, I guess is what I'm saying. Either of me or of like what it is

the open science movement should do differently. Yeah, I think it comes down to whether you regard like social justice as a fundamental, that that should be a fundamental focus on power with methodological reform or whether you regard those as orthogonal issues right that it could be that you're completely on board with uh social justice positions or whatever form that you people regard them as taking but that you don't think that that directly ties into like you say why you would need to pre-register studies or that kind of thing and

i i think i probably fall into close to that high decoupling space within like academic stuff. I think Matt and me have the now non-fashionable view that activism and objectivity in research endeavors are kind of pulling in different directions. It doesn't even feel like that should be controversial to say, but yet it is. Yeah. I mean, I guess I'm with you. I think the reason to care about pre-registration is that half of published studies don't replicate. And I think you can have that conversation. It's not always going to tie directly into other ongoing social justice conversations as one of the central theses of your book, which relates to that neoliberal stuff we're talking about before. A lot of the poor quality research that assumes that everything can be boiled down to the individual and that can be manipulated in an experiment, little nudges and so on. Whereas as you point out with your emphasis on multi-causal explanations for things, it's not just at the individual level

it's got to do with social structures and and power and so on so yeah i mean it's a pretty standard like uh pinko big government type of argument for for just i mean obviously it's more complicated you can't always just throw money at a problem and solve it, but it certainly helps. And obviously, the US has a, in many ways, a uniquely dysfunctional welfare state. So yeah, that's sort of underpinning the whole book. Jesse, we'd be remiss if we didn't at least spend some time on the culture wars that, for better or worse, that you swim in and the various online controversies that you attract. But before any of the ones that probably people would expect us to get through, I have a controversy that I want to take up with you personally.

Yeah, this was all like a force just to get to my issues. So you know this thing thing the lab leak hypothesis right have you heard of that yes i've heard of it yeah it's so it's this little topic that keeps popping up recently but i listened to an episode with you recently it might have been ben burgess or i i think you discussed it with Katie as well on Blocked and Reported. And the point that you and many people online are making this currently, like Tybee and Greenwald and so on, is that there was this groupthink within the liberal media sources, right, which presented any discussion of the possibility of a lab leak as a racist conspiracy theory.

And that this was tied into a dislike for Trump and the fact that his agenda immediately went to that. And in so doing that they papered over an area of legitimate scientific debate and controversy. Is that a fair framing or would you add anything? Yeah, yeah, I think that's a fair framing. I have, until I do hundreds of hours more research, I will remain agnostic on how realistic a possibility we should view the lab leak theory as. I just sort of defer to the experts,

some experts who seem to think like we should at least not discount it. So that was my only claim that it shouldn't have been so aggressively discounted and treated as quote unquote debunked more than a year ago. Okay. Yeah. And by the way, I'm not trying to trap you. Katie and I were actually the ones who released the virus. I hope you'll delete this, but we're just going to put it back. This is where I'm getting to, Jesse. The percentage. I want to know the percentage that it's you that's the source. there's no coverage on Vox or Salon or whatever, which essentially presents any raising of

questions about the lab leak as being tied to Trump talking points. But a bit I'd like to push back on, and I think it relates to some of the other culture war stuff, is that when I look back at that coverage and people were sharing all these headlines and basically saying, look, this was verboten to discuss this. And you go in and do what you often say, like read the articles and what they say, not the headlines. You get these accounts and then you'll get like a paragraph where they talk about how the majority of virologists think that it's from a natural cause. And then there's usually a sourced who said it and something like, but no virologists think that it's from a natural cause. And then there's usually a sourced who said it and something like, but no virologists were willing to completely discount

the possibility of a lab leak. And that's what I see also in most of the academic published material. They talked about that for various reasons that we don't need to get into. Their analysis suggests that a natural origin is more likely, but they don't rule out the possibility. But it strikes me that like the narrative on this, especially amongst, you know, kind of alternative media or sub-stacky people, is that you were not allowed to say that. And that it was completely forbidden for people to acknowledge any possibility. And I see it more that people were just, I'm not saying all journalists said this, right, like I've added enough caveats in, but that rather it was them saying, this is the consensus, but people don't rule it out.

And I just don't get the impression that it was forbidden to say to add the caveat like i i just see the caveat in lots of the writing and stuff so i don't know i like it's not much of a question yeah no i i get what you're saying so i did think there were a few articles i'm thinking of one in npr and one in Slate that either straightforwardly refer to the theory as debunked. Usually what would happen is it would either be in the headline or in the journalist's own words, but then you would see that none of the sources they were quoting were saying exactly that. I think this is a point John Shate made. It seemed like this almost like reflective knee-jerk thing, like, no, no, no. we view it as debunked it's bad and then you know slate did a long article basically saying that it tied into this uh history of like anti

chinese racism which is sort of bizarre when you realize that the the orthodox theory has it coming out of a wet market which to me ties way more into anti-chinese racist tropes than um so i get what you're saying i don't i also think in 2021, the question of what's forbidden to say is complicated because you can say whatever you want. There's just a lot of things that maybe mainstream outlets won't say or you could get in trouble for saying. So that's some of the complication of talking about this quote unquote censorship or cancellation. So my critique was really just of like the mainstream outlets that to me should be shooting most down the middle, trying to, to the extent possible,

you know, while we acknowledge that objectivity isn't a real thing, trying to get to the bottom of this in a somewhat objective way. And I think some of them failed in doing that. I actually think that specific issue relates in an interesting way to the takeaway from your book, because it's obviously to essentially encourage a kind of skepticism towards some widely accepted claims that are coming out of academia or institutions. So I guess a good question is, how do we separate the healthy skepticism from a kind of conspiratorial, just anti-institutional worldview? I mean, it's tricky, right? There's just like, there's so much to be skeptical of when it comes to authority. And I've gotten, I think, significantly more skeptical of a lot of mainstream institutions. I think there's a real crisis of institutional authority right now. And

I don't think it's 100% trumped up, no pun intended, by right-wing demagogues and populists. I think a lot of institutions aren't performing their functions well. And part of the backlash is a response to that. And it worries the hell out of me. And I'm not offering a constructive response because I don't know what to do about it. I'm just, I'm a little bit worried about this, to be honest. Jesse, that is related to a question I wanted to ask you

because something that we see in the guru types that we look at is this really, really strong anti-institutional, anti-establishment terranism right it's almost definitional of like what it means to be an online guru right so that's one of the issue things on your garometer right how you read correct the you've studied the science and the garometer is a well-validated scale, as we know. Indeed. It's science, Jesse. It's science. It's science and art combined.

It's a perfect synergy. But so my issue, and, you know, I listened to your interview with Very Bad Wizards, that like small, other podcast by, you know, lesser known academics. Never heard of them. They made the point that we've blocked and reported which is really enjoyable and i as much as anyone i think in enjoy more insane side of the culture war but there is this dynamic that you're well aware of were that from one side of the pool, like the Quillette and critical

obsessed side, not universally, but generally you get a positive reception, right? And from the progressive wing of the liberal side, it's fair to say that you get like a fair share of criticism, light criticism, you know, and that just normal social dynamics will mean that you must get pulled right towards the side that treat you nicer in an interpersonal way. You know, I think this is something that Sam Harris has an issue with as well. And I wonder, do you think that could partly relate to why your skepticism with institutionalism is growing? And does it concern you if so? Yeah, well, I think it's a fair question. I guess I would say, first of all, like, James Lindsay and his fans seem to really dislike me at this point because I thought his analysis of

the election was ridiculous. Dave Rubin and his fans very much don't like me. So when it comes to some of the biggest so-called heterodox, like anti-CRT types, they really, they don't like me. And I still think most of my fans are progressives. Like there's a huge market for just sort of quote unquote reasonable Obama liberals. And I do think that's my average listener. That's the average person I hear from. So I think with people like Lindsay, I think they've gone down like really dark rabbit holes where they just, they think they're at war with like cultural Marxists or whatever. And I just think it's a very myopic worldview. I have critiques of like what I do view as a crisis of authority in some liberal institutions, but I try to make them in a way that,

I don't know, puts them in the proper context. I'm not going to blow up some random college kid who does a dumb college kid thing. There's a definite risk of sort of audience capture or feeling like these people are being nicer to me. I do think that's human nature. For whatever reason, in my case, it hasn't really raised any problems. I think just because I've never, my real life social network is very not offline and is, I think, 100% Democrat voting. So it's just, I mean, I've started hanging out with, like, the biggest social impact of this

is I hang out with more libertarians because they're good drinking buddies. And I have, I have some points of agreement with them on some of the culture war stuff, but yeah, I think it's a fair question. And when I look at people like James Lindsay and Dave Rubin, they've completely, to me, gone over to a pretty reactionary place, but yeah, I just, I try to be cognizant of that just, I try to be cognizant of that. And I try to be cognizant of the fact that frankly, you do make more money writing about culture war stuff and beating that drum over and over and over again. If I wanted to maximize my revenue and audience, that would be all I ever wrote about. And I'm not going to do that. And

my book is not about culture war stuff. So. Yeah. And I got to say, Jesse, I really appreciated your presence in that to be moderated in inverted commas by Brett Weinstein and with want to litigate all the things, individual things that have been said or whatnot. But it's more like, okay, so Sam has famously stated that white supremacy is the fringe of the fringe. Chancellor, he's making a completely valid claim. And one, I think you have covered that there is a tendency to catastrophize about the extent to which extreme views are common. But on the other hand, the president of the United States prior to this one came to political prominence on the back of the Burfer movement. And then you had figures like Stephen Miller in the White House dictating immigration policy for four years. So it feels to me that there's a danger of the, you know, yes, snarling Nazis with swastikas on their head are a fringe, but the far-right political movement, such as it exists, and I would say that Trump falls pretty close to what I way more damage as president, and he would have done more damage if he had just been a one-term president too. I think in terms of Trump's actual agenda, there was something uniquely horrible about

his immigration policy. The fact that Steve Bannon was anywhere close to power was horrifying. Same with Stephen Miller. George W. Bush had John Ashcroft. And Ashcroft is a guy, he gave a glowing interview to basically a segregationist magazine. There is this the there is a lot of white grievance in the Republican Party. There is a lot of very reactionary element. I just I on most policy issues, Donald Trump is just a Republican president. He really is. And that that extends even to like not really fighting the gay marriage fight anymore, not being that anti-LGBT. The one exception is the horrible, horrible attempt to ban trans people from the military, which I think he's just trying to throw red meat to the evangelical base.

I just I think so many of the problems in the U.S. do come down to like Republican economic policy. And when we pretend our fight is against like the Charlottesville crowd, obviously those people worry me. I'm Jewish and like a liberal. You will not replace us. Exactly. I mean, I will replace them. So I just, I don't know. I hate to say it. I know this is unpopular view. I just think it's been a little bit of a distraction. And I also think it, it, it benefits certain people to pretend Trump was like a few notches left of Hitler or, or, you know, even like, um, I don't know. I just, I really just think I'm most, you guys can tell me if I'm wrong. I just think on most policy issues,

he's a Republican president. His rhetoric was what was different. And there's something – there are uniquely threatening aspects of having a president who slings rhetoric like that and who frankly comes across as emotionally unstable and labile. But most of that stuff was held in check. He was a one-term president and I think a lot of – I'm just hopeful that some of the damage is reversible. And I think a lot of I'm just hopeful that some of the damage is reversible. I find his approach to immigration and Stephen Miller's just absolutely grotesque. I don't think it's that far off from, unfortunately, what a lot of conservatives believe in the U.S. and definitely what a lot of people believe in Europe. This is just like, I don't know, anti-immigrant sentiment is just something that bubbles up everywhere. We need to be on the lookout for it. So I don't like the idea of

pretending it's sort of some wave of white nationalism responsible for it. I think it'll always be with us, unfortunately. Yeah, I think some of these questions go to the relative weight of concern one should have in various directions. So, you know, in a way, the way you describe Trump, which I don't necessarily disagree with as not being exceptional, is actually more disturbing, isn't it? Well, but there is this whole interesting thing where the Republican Party thought that it could be this sort of more respectable, like Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, nice guys wearing suits. There's always been a divide between like what the base wants. And the base is frankly a lot more racist. That's not the only thing animating them. And some of them have legitimate economic concerns,

but Trump was, he's, that is who the base wants people like Trump. And that's how Trump has totally captured the party. And I, I think that's a big problem. But I don't think the idea of a Republican base that is very far to the right on these issues is new or we should pretend it's new. Yeah, I guess I think part of the objection that I could see people raise is like, OK, so people could legitimately say, you know, academia is strongly like the vast majority is liberal leaning, and people make this argument about media as well, right, and entertainment and so on. But the people who make those arguments tend not to acknowledge at the same time the really, really severe issues with the gerrymandering of votes, right, Like how disproportionate it is for a liberal or democratic president to be elected with the way that the system is set up or the composition of the Supreme Court and what that means for the US in the next few decades of policy. So like, I often

find myself annoyed when people talk about the media as if the right-wing media is not a really significant force and doesn't really have that much influence. And that strikes me as almost as big a problem as the people on the left in media who oversell the problem, because there is an issue there, right? Well, I mean, right-wing media is a cesspool and has been for a long time and I think probably took a real turn for the worse in like 2015 or so. And I wrote about some of that fake news stuff. My worry, and this could send us down a whole other road, is that I do think in certain ways liberal media is sort of headed down the same path in like a very aggressive, hyper-partisan bent to everything. And that worries me because I just think we need to be able to trust mainstream journalistic institutions to tell the truth and to be as dispassionate as possible. And I do think there's been a turning away from that that worries me. This is based on there's like, you know, two or three issues where I consider

myself pretty informed. And when I see how these issues are covered in mainstream outlets, it worries me a great deal. But I think overall, the right has a much bigger problem with fake news and just like gonzo outlets spreading bile. Part of the reason i focus on what i focus on is because i just think i'm in a better position to critique the left of center yeah like i have to say i agree with you there jesse yeah the fact that fox news like there you might the fact that the fact that fox news is a cesspool doesn't mean that one shouldn't want the New York Times to be better. And talking about the importance of objectivity, I even experienced this in my own very specialized field, which is looking at the public health of addiction and addictive products. And you'll see people at conferences who point the finger at people like me who say we should remain scientists, right?

Yes, the implications of our research does have social impacts, but we're not activists. We should be all about presenting an accurate model of reality, communicating that information to policymakers. And yes, we have our own personal feelings about what should be done and so on. But we try to keep those separate. And you will find people at academic conferences who say, no, we should be activists. All of our research should be geared towards pushing a good line to change society for the better. And I just don't agree. Well, this is the exact same thing going on in journalism, where especially among younger journalists, I don't think most of them could really answer the question of what

differentiates them from activists, other than they, you know, they interview people, which maybe activists don't usually do. But that worries the hell out of me, because I just think the only value we as journalists can add is to be that trustworthy, dispassionate voice. And again, people will try to derail the conversation by saying, oh, so you think it's possible to be that trustworthy, dispassionate voice. And again, people will try to derail the conversation by saying, oh, so you think it's possible to be truly objective, which of course it's not. We all have biases, but you can acknowledge them and you can try to take every incident on its own terms

and try to explain them to people in an honest way. But yeah, I mean, I'm just agreeing with you after you agreed with me. I'm just worried about the trajectory of things. Well, this is what happens when you speak to reasonable people, Jesse. They just agree with you after agreement. Great. Now I'm going to be cancelled too with you, Jesse. What's it like?

It's not that bad, I hope. No, my experiences with cancellation have been very positive, to be honest. I do think that it's possibly harmful for the podcast, as you mentioned. But I was really impressed with you, Jesse, as I'm sure you care about my judgment of it. But whenever Chase Stragno, or I don't know how to pronounce his surname, but when he came out recently, I don't know how to pronounce his surname, but when he came out recently, I think for you and a bunch of other people on the bus, although he later claimed the sentence meant something slightly different. Missing period, yeah.

That was quite a good inventive defense, at least. you know, you said there's no point in responding because if I tweet something like the people who like me are going to share it and then the people that don't like me are going to attack it and he'll respond. And I don't know if it came off the back of the, you know, personal tragic that you've endured recently, but it seemed like that dynamic where you said, look, if you want to talk about it, you know, you can come on the podcast. We'll have a real dialogue. But I'm not going to engage with this. And you laid out why he was wrong and what he said. But that struck me as like, infinitely more productive, right? But less of a contribution to the culture wars. And maybeesse i'm i'm interested in your thoughts if like that's something you're hoping to keep up oh no i mean i i look i i i did respond on twitter which maybe isn't productive but i just sort of did a statement being like the context was chase in an interview

chase strangio um sort of the aclu's main voice on trans issues in an interview with GQ claimed that me and other people had said that we find trans people disgusting and that that was motivating the stuff that I guess Chase disagrees with. I don't know exactly what Chase disagrees with that I've written because he hasn't said, but so I just said, I've never in public or private said anything remotely like that. And Chase responded by claiming that this was a punctuation error. like that and chase responded by claiming that this was a punctuation error and due to a missing period he meant to accuse unnamed people of calling trans people disgusting um chase could come on the podcast anytime i'm just sort of tired of the endless lobbing of bullshit back and forth on twitter and it's uh it doesn't get us anywhere and there is an element of just like it's like a circus reverend to watch and everyone to people got super excited that i was gonna sue chase like i'm gonna sue the aclu like

that's what i'm gonna spend my summer on i don't i don't think that would go well i guess as well you know it's no it's not it's not gonna happen um i just i just i just do think i have a right to defend myself and i also think like there are plenty of good faith criticisms. People can level of my work if they want to, but that in my experience on Twitter or just in the media landscape now, it is mostly not been that it is mostly been things like, Oh, you think trans people are disgusting. You think trans people want to die. And that's a really fucking crazy thing to accuse someone of without evidence.

Yeah. I do have a follow-up related to that on the trans issue specifically. So like this, this isn't an area that I think me or Matt are in any way have any expertise in, and it's definitely not an area that's fun to weed into. But having said that, like, so from what I see, jesse there's two million i mean there's lots of things right there's lots of things that people accuse you of and and a lot of it seems unwarranted that you're you're sliding into their dms and and that kind of thing but the the two criticisms that you could argue have more legitimacy to them are one, that by focusing on the transitioners, that you're potentially presenting it as, you know, if people wrote

an article like back when gay people were fighting for equal rights, if they focused on the fact that some people have a gay fears and they go out of it and they wrote a big profile on it it would be true but it would also potentially be giving fuel to the thing that homosexuality is just a fears and most people go out of it and the second one is that the kenneth, right? This is something that seems to be a perennial point that a lot of people who take different positions from you regarded that he is doing a version of conversion therapy and that you are laundering his reputation by saying that's not fair. And so those two points, do you think there's any legitimacy to them?

And if you could do everything over again, is there anything that you would change or like you stand by everything as it has shaken out? Yeah, so the Zucker story, Kenneth Zucker was fired by, his gender clinic was shut down as a result of allegations against him of misconduct and of basically doing conversion therapy. And in Jesus, when was this now? 2015,

2016, 1940. I don't know. At some point in the last seven years, I wrote, I wrote an investigative piece and I proved that the allegations against him were highly flawed. And when I say proved, I can use that word because there was subsequently a settlement where his hospital acknowledged, we published false information about you. I got in touch with the one specific accuser who claimed that Ken Zucker had called him a, this is a trans man. He claimed that Kenneth Zucker had called him a hairy little vermin after he had taken his shirt off, which is like a very, you know, it's just a horrible thing for a clinician to say to a patient. I talked to that person and put together their story and showed that they had not been a patient of Kenneth Zucker's. They had confused Kenneth

Zucker with an entirely different clinician. So I reported that. I reported on other weaknesses of the investigative procedure. I got in touch with a woman who was quoted at NPR as believing her child had basically been through conversion therapy. I showed why that was, I think, an oversimplification. So I stand by the reporting. I stand by the claim that he was fired unfairly. And I actually don't see how anyone could argue with that unless you'd have to come up with a reason that the hospital paid him a settlement and admitted to having launched false accusations against him. You'd have to say they were lying about how, I don't know how you would even construct that. What I probably could have done if I was under less time pressure and had like a more zoomed out perspective,

I could have had another 2000 words on maybe like the history of conversion therapy and why this stokes such potent fears within the trans community. Because obviously for both gay and trans people, there's a long history of conversion therapy and it's horrible. And it's a real advanced in human decency that it is going extinct. It's a real advance in human decency that it is going extinct. I think it could be the case that in the long run, we view Zucker's approach as too conservative, as too gatekeepy. But because when kids showed up at his clinic and they'd already been socially transitioned, he did not try to like push them back.

That's what he said. And I didn't find any evidence to suggest otherwise. I just thought that these particular accusations against him were unwarranted. And I did find some vindication in the legal settlement. I mean, the hospital paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars as a result of these false accusations. So I just think my reporting was right. Now, the question of how much to focus on detransition, I think the comparison with sort of ex-gay stuff doesn't work because it's very low stakes. Like, who cares? If someone's gay for a while, who cares?

It doesn't matter. What we're talking about here is like a pretty intense fight over what the diagnostic procedure should be before young people go on puberty blockers and hormones. And this is an area where you have at the same time, like a near exponential increase in the number of kids showing up at these clinics with gender dysphoria, mostly natal female, assigned female at birth, whatever you want to call it. That's at the same time that like every national government or healthcare system that looks into the evidence behind puberty blockers and hormones is finding that there basically is none, that the strength of the evidence is like – there's basically almost no evidence for the efficacy of these treatments, which is horrible. Now, how do you thread the needle? How do you make that argument while also arguing, as I have, that these conservative laws seeking to ban these treatments outright are a terrible idea?

It's difficult. But my justification for writing about it in the way I do is the U.S. is very early on in figuring out what our own protocols are going to be. We're far behind the U.K. We're far behind the Netherlands, which is one of the pioneers in this stuff. And we have a crappy crappy patchwork healthcare system. So I think the question of like when kids should go on puberty blockers and hormones is interesting and important. And I've quoted a lot of highly respected clinicians, including the head of the US

Professional Association for Transgender Health, who is herself a trans woman who thinks that there's just a lot of shitty clinicians out there doing bad work. So I think that is one of the stronger arguments against what I've done. Why do you care about detransitioners? I just think in context, it's a reasonable thing to worry about. Yeah. I mean, I think that on the point that you make, which I find a lot of validity to, is that whatever your position that you end up taking on these topics, there is genuine room for discussion and the need for like evidence or discussion of evidence and so on. That doesn't immediately fall into the most hyper online culture war partisanship. It's inevitable, but it's also a shame that that's where it's ended up. And the only thing I would take issue with what you said, Jesse, is when you said, if somebody goes through a gay phase, who cares?

I think quite a few people historically have, have cared. I'm sorry. I, yes, I know. I did not mean that in such a glib way. What I mean is it's a silly thing to focus on because it's, I don't think you should care. People have cared, but they've cared wrongly. I think if a kid goes on hormones because they were misdiagnosed, I care about that much more than I care about whether someone is like a lesbian until graduation or whatever. That was all I was saying. Yeah. I, I, I imagined that, but that was just, I was just, you know, Irish Catholic upbringing was flashing signs in my head. So like, as I say, I, this, this isn't an area I know well. Like I've just followed the culture war discourse on it.

And it just seems extremely toxic and everything is dialed up to 11. And so part of it, Jesse, this is just my perspective, is that you have a personality and even with your book and the various other topics completely unrelated to trans stuff that you you have a personality and even you know with your book and the various other topics completely unrelated to trans stuff that you talk about you have a pedantic personality right like fair fair to say um i think i think it's well i think it's important to be a no i don't i'd like to think i'm not pedantic because like the dictionary definition is you focus on stuff that doesn't matter but i definitely have that like well actually define your terms fallacy blah blah blah annoying jew personality and i think that's yeah i think it to mention the dictionary defense of pedantry and then

i looked up the definition i realized i didn't know exactly what it was and i don't want to self-identify to come out that's okay that's right i i just appreciated that irony but the uh like your personality type whether it's pedantry or detail focused or however to frame it i think it's fair to say that like you care about specific details and and that yeah this inevitably means that you kind of rub up wrong like i mean you have complained to various editors right about articles that activists have written and And if I did that, I know that the activists, and okay, I know that they're often related to you, so there's a relevance there. But I mean, you must know that that's going to be like a red flag to a bull, right?

And I just wonder if, like, for you, the personal cost that comes about this, like the fact that you are fairly frequently, not in the past week or so, but like, you know, trending on Twitter. And I know the issues with the trending bar and how little it takes to get there, but is it worth it, you know, to stay on this topic? Or do you ever consider just like dropping it completely? No, I think if anything, the more unhinged stuff makes me want to stick with it more because I have that kind of personality.

And I also think the feedback I get off of Twitter is overwhelmingly positive. And there are high ranking journalists and editors who will not say a word about this publicly, but who have told me they value my work. And it's also worked out career wise. So there's obviously a subset of people who in my view, wrongly view me as like some kind of reactionary. I just think if you actually read my stuff, that's sort of a ridiculous claim. Yeah, I'd be lying. I'd be lying if I said that I didn't sometimes wish I hadn't gone down that rabbit hole. But I don't think in the long, hopefully long arc of my career, if I don't choke on a slice of pizza tonight,

I don't think it's going to be a huge part of what I've written. Again, like I wrote a whole book about other stuff. And I've got some other stuff in the works, although also an article. about other stuff and I've got some other stuff in the works although also an article about this so I think I'm okay with how things are doing and I view the most unhinged people trying to make my life miserable on Twitter as irrelevant and I try not to worry about them I do get sucked back in but they I'm always open for a conversation with with most of them if they want to get into the pedantic details of why they disagree with me. I'm sorry, Jesse, if it feels like a cross-examination. I would happily go on record to say that the fact that you are presented as a nefarious villain on par with someone like Stephen Miller or that kind of thing online, it strikes me it strikes me as bizarre, because in many respects,

as you've highlighted, you know, you have for maybe 90 or 95% of liberal stances, you're in line with progressives. I'm in line with progressives on this too. They just won't say something. I'm sure I mean, what percent, like in an anonymous survey? What percentage of progressives do you think would respond negatively to before a 12-year-old goes on puberty blockers and then cross-sex hormones, they should be thoroughly assessed for mental health comorbidities? It's just insane to imagine that that's a controversial stance. And that is to the extent I've expressed my own opinion in my work rather than just debunk and highlight experts I agree with, that's the most controversial thing I've written. So that's why I find the whole thing a little bit cartoonish,

especially years after my biggest piece of this. Well, it wouldn't be the first time that Twitter and the online infosphere has been cartoonish, that's for sure. We're getting close to time. So are you guys okay to move towards wrapping it up? Any other of Jesse's personality issues or trade things you want to... No, the only other thing, Jesse, I would say that, you know, Katie, your co-host, I came across her originally.

She did an interview with Brett Weinstein, I think for his podcast. And that wasn't the best introduction to Katie, partly because of, I think, the two of them were in a, you know, heterodox feedback cycle. But I want to say that on the podcast, I really like Blocked and Reported. And in some sense, I think the dynamic that you two have and the fact that you know to her you're i think you're like semi-moderating force for her like more heterodox takes and maybe she pushes you a bit when you're leaning towards being more sympathetic to liberals and like yeah it's a really nice dynamic so just to say that that your podcast made me revise my harsh assessment of kitty i'm sure she cares but yeah so good job i do have to i have to edit out a lot of uh

phrenology and holocaust denial but that's just well that's the same on our podcast matt's like level of anti-gypsy bias is astonishing. It's frankly hours and hours. I was going to say. Just to put it on the cutting room floor. So that was all, Matt. That's the only other thing I wanted to say, and it's more of a comment than a question. Yeah, so Jesse, at the end of your book,

you mentioned a paper that was written by a group of psychologists, and it was titled, Is Social and Behavioral Science Evidence Ready for Application and Dissemination? So in that, they argued that our field shouldn't be arguing for policy people and the public to be paying more attention to us at the moment, but rather just focus on the hard work of evidence-based science and earning that credibility and legitimacy. And I liked that paper and I liked your take on it as well, because I think a lot of that advice could be well taken by many of our gurus as well. So just before we wrap up, is there any final thoughts or comments you'd like to get off your chest?

Is there any final thoughts or comments you'd like to get off your chest? No, I'm just going to burn every remaining bridge. No, I appreciate what you guys do and I appreciate you having me on. Have you, I have not listened to every episode. Have you ever, I think an interesting thing for you guys to look into and correct me if you have, is capital W whiteness as like sort of an explanatory or like mystical force in the world. I just think the evolution of that concept in liberal discourse has been really interesting. And you want to talk about like gurus and self-help, just this idea of whiteness as a force that transcends boundaries and you have to search yourself to undo your whiteness. I find

that stuff fascinating. I would definitely listen to a podcast of you guys talking about it. Yeah. No, look, that's a comparison I've made before, which is that if we're focusing on conspiracies being very abstract and nebulous and difficult to observe directly forces, working surreptitiously behind the scenes and having this ubiquitous effect then i agree some versions especially in the popular interpretations of whiteness could be said to fit some of those properties look our podcast does focus on we we do ad hominem so we focus on people and individuals concepts but I think Robert D'Angelo and some

other people can fit with that I think the closest we've covered is Kendi and his framework anti-racist framework and actually more policy focused yeah he's an interesting guy but I think

you guys, I just think d'angelo is much more a guru uh yeah you know uh i would i i hope you guys cover her at some point i'm i'm fat i'm very skeptical of her but i i remain fascinated by her i think part of the issue for us is like we we i we actually discussed about covering d'angelo, but you know, the way that you and Katie and various other people have covered her content, it feels like an easy punching bag, right? Yeah, that might be true. There's, there's very, there's a very small contingent now, even on the like far left who are willing to say that D'Angelo is good.

So yeah, maybe it's already been done. to say that D'Angelo is good. Yeah, that's true. Maybe it's already been done. We're not above looking at Scott Adams. We're not above taking an easy putt, that's for sure. You know who you guys should talk about is that Hitler guy.

He's terrible. These ideas were awful. It was mainly Web 2.0 that enabled him to rise Hitler guy. Yeah, he's terrible. These ideas were awful. I mean, are you kidding me? It was mainly Web 2.0 that enabled him to rise to power, though. That's the real dynamic. Yeah, there's definitely, we've talked about taking a little jaunt into the left again. the left again and i also want to go into the heterodox sub stack world of like you know tybee and greenwald or or even the the tankies and jimmy dore and stuff but that's a little bit easy because it is the case that you know matt and me are in the that that area that you discussed, Jesse, you know, the Obama liberals, the, the,

the silent, the moderate majority that does exist. And the problem with that group is that there aren't that many, you know, guru types that, because like, they tend to be offering very milquetoast, moderate policies, Like maybe Nate Silver is the closest you get. I'm sure people will correct me about this, but yeah, it feels like it's easy for us to punch people that we don't agree with fundamentally. So we probably should make an effort to target people that are on our side, so to speak.

Yeah, it can be good to do once in a while. But either way, like I said, I appreciate what you guys do. And thank you for having me on. Yeah, thanks so much. It's been great to hear about the book. And yeah, great to talk to you, Jesse. Yeah. Oh, and Matt, shouldn't we normally say, Jesse, don't people usually say in interviews, like, what are you doing next?

I know you're going to write an article on pedantism, but besides that. Oh, do you want to ask me that? I have. That was my incredible journalistic question of, what's next for you, Jesse? Yeah, I have some stuff in the works i haven't quite figured it out i mean the podcast and the newsletter keep me busy um jesse single.substack.com if you want to check out the podcast blocked report it sorry that's the newsletter blocked report is podcast uh yeah i'm hoping to do like more long-form stuff hopefully

not culture war stuff but but we will see. Congratulations on the book and congratulations on an extremely popular podcast, Locked and Reported. Good luck. Thank you guys very much. I think it was the first one as well, right? It was the very first podcast, yeah, definitely. Alright, well

cheers Jesse and thanks for being a good sport. Cheers guys for being a good sport cheers guys Thank you.