Decoding the Gurus - Supplementary Material 26: Flint Dibble Interview, Bonding over Outgroup Hate, and Manly Sycophancy

Episode Date: April 12, 2025

We project our insecurities onto the gurusphere, wallowing in our inadequacy to bond over shared hatred of outgroups, and interview Flint Dibble along the way.Supplementary Material 2600:00 Introduction and Greetings01:53 Ol' Squeaky and Lex's horny poems05:11 Eric Weinstein is still waiting for the call09:26 Interview with Flint Dibble11:05 Introduction and Catching Up12:19 Joe Rogan and Public Perception14:57 Hypocrisy and Slander16:05 Graham Hancock and Neo-Nazi Connections22:08 Upcoming Exposé on Joe Rogan23:03 Pyramids of Giza: New Claims24:45 Debunking the Mega Structures Theory25:20 The Researchers Behind the Claims28:21 Scientific Methods and Evidence31:58 Conclusion on Pyramids and Science35:13 Gurusphere Dynamics37:47 Pseudo-Archaeology and Public Perception46:11 Mr. Beast's Egypt Adventure50:36 The Role of Pseudo-Archaeology in Conspiracy Theories58:50 Post-Interview Discussion59:53 Trump's Tariffs and Economic Impact01:04:30 The Amazing Tariff Formula01:09:45 Geoffrey Miller's 9D Chess Theory of the Tariffs01:13:30 Contrapoints Conspiracy Video01:14:55 Some things Matt will not mention on Tariffs01:17:35 QAnon Anonymous on Graham Hancock01:22:33 Some Other News covers Joe Rogan01:30:13 Ryan Beard's Destiny Content Nuke01:32:33 The Studies Show covers Conspiracies01:33:53 Hasan argues for tariffs01:37:40 Back to Rogan and Chris Williamson01:39:21 Critically Reviewing Cory Clark's Study01:47:58 Incestuous Bro Podcasts and Legacy Media Struggles01:53:00 Bonding over outgroup hatred and Criticism Capture02:02:04 USAid is funding the attacks on Tesla!02:07:56 Trump's Badass Son humilates Biden02:10:28 Tribal Hypocrisy02:11:52 Joe Smashes All Your Paradigms!02:14:59 The villain, Sam Harris criticizes the hero, Lex Fridman02:20:18 Does Lex speak to EVERYONE?02:23:44 Concluding Thoughts from Maladjusted HatersThe full episode is available for Patreon subscribers (2hr 25 mins).Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurusSourcesArchaeology with Flint Dibble- Megastructures under Giza Pyramids⁉️ ARCHAEOLOGY REWRITTEN or viral 💩?Piers Morgan episode with Flint and Milo RossiJoe Rogan Experience #2293 - Chris WilliamsonQAnon Anonymous: Graham Hancock’s Ancient Apocalypse (E318)Contrapoints: ConspiracyThe Studies Show: Conspiracy TheoriesWhat "Happened" To Joe Rogan? - SOME MORE NEWSMen's Health: Joe Rogan Responds to the Controversy Surrounding His 'Endorsement' of Bernie SandersRyan Beard: Content Nuke Destiny

Music Hello and welcome to Decoding the Guru's supplementary materials with the anthropologist slash psychologist Christopher Kavanaugh. That's me. And the pure psychologist opposite me, Matthew Brown. G'day Matt, g'day. Watcha watcha. Hello Chris. Nice to see you again. I've missed you. It's been what? 48 hours? Too long. Too long. Too long. Too long. That's right. Have you been keeping well? Have you been exercising? The listeners want to know, the listeners want the Noma. They need to know.

Are you trying to initiate small talk with me, Chris? I guess. Yeah, I've been good. I've been swimming every single morning, Monday to Friday. I swim my 1.5 kilometers, at least, sometimes more. And I feel a better man for it. I still am fat more fat than I'd like to be. Basically everything south of the equator is, is basically a no-go zone. The shoulders and the pecs as the, as they say, look at okay in between around around my belly button is basically a demilitarized zone where, yeah, that's where to think about it. Well, you say you've been doing well, Matt, and it sounds like, you know, you're working out, you're doing that kind of thing. But I can see there's something very wrong with the situation

currently. I can hear it as well. Scraping at my soul. Isn't that old Squeaky? What's he doing there? I love squeaky. He's so comfortable. You gotta get him. You gotta get him. I rotate that guy.

Bye, Squeaky. Yeah, for the visual, I'll say Matt stood up rippling muscles. You know, your body, it's like a barrel of snakes. Oh, yes, yes, indeed. Yeah. How can you never praise me like your shoulders? I've heard you. I've heard you a little song. Hold on. Let me just get out my hand, Joe. I'll sing you a ditty. Shoulders for miles, curly hair like a weave from Niagara Falls. That's

my pride. Yeah. People find that very cringe worthy, Matt. And well, they might. I don't know. If Joe Rogan can get a song, I don't see why I should have one. Well, you'd have to have me sing it. But the thing that I liked the best was that someone on the Patreon, they were trying to parse the lyrics and they thought I just love this. They thought that Lex is you know, Lex's story was that he met someone in the desert who was telling him about this guy Joe Rogan he should listen to. And he said, you know, Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan, barrel of snakes for a pack.

And they thought that that was him proposing a trade where he would like give a barrel of snakes for Joe Rogan's pack. And they were confused like, well, why would anybody want the barrels? And it's like, no, he's describing the contours of the musculature that he observes on Joe Bergen's facts. So yeah, yeah. Like you say, why don't people write songs like that for me? Now, remind me, Chris, is Lex Friedman, is he the one where they unearthed a bunch of cringeworthy poetry. Oh, yes. Yes. That's him, isn't it?

A lot of horny poems on me. And he posted. So, yeah, and it was they were so bad. They were. I mean, I'm no poetry connoisseur, but even I could tell this was bad. You know, it was a kind of poetry that you might write as a 19, 15 year old, you know, scroll away in your journal. But the timeline made it that Lex had read them like,

I think it was in his 30s when he did it. So, yeah. Yeah. And my recollection is, is that they weren't sexy in a wholesome way. Oh no. Yeah. But serial killer. Oh, no. Yeah. A bit serial killer. That's the vibe you get. Max is just like that though, isn't he? That's generally his his vibe is like, you know, a man of peace. I love you all, but he might be loving you while wearing your skin.

That's the thing. And what does he want? Does he want the skin, Jorgen? It's it's not clear. But now, Matt, we've got like a special supplementary material here. There's a special treat for everyone. But before we get to that, I do have a little snippet. And this is for you, Matt.

This is purely to start you off in the right food, because I know you're going to enjoy this. OK, here's a short clip from a guru of note, touching on the topic that they often do. Let's see how you feel about this. We are fighting this hybrid war, as you say, and we're completely unprepared for the communications for the PR for the comms of this war. And they've also got 30 years ahead of us in this. I mean, when you think about 40? I'm not sure what you're saying.

Why do you decide? They're not that far ahead of you. You're just not... Qatar hasn't been poisoning the minds of academia and press for the last 20 years? You're just not putting your shoulder to the wheel. I agree. You know, my feeling about this is that I know individuals who are having more effect than the state.

And you know, I kept saying, is no one going to call any of us? You have all sorts of people with very large... No, look, you just have to take it. You screwed up. Period. The end is it. That's it. I recognize the voice. It's Eric Weinstein.

He's talking to an Israeli politician or something. Yeah. And maybe not a politician, but like a spokesperson or somebody, you know, they're discussing how Israel has lost the kind of public image war since October 7th. And Eric's advice is like, well, of course, it's not like you didn't have to do that. But the problem is you didn't call anyone with large followings online.

There were phones that were not ringing down. Who could he be suggesting that they needed to call? Yeah, yeah, we have to put this in the special display rack, straight to the pool room, as the Stratas like to say. There's a special display piece of instances where Eric is complaining that the powers that be are not calling him and not sending the helicopters, the black helicopters, land on the lawn, usher him out straight to the White House. He's got his jacket on. He's ready to go to sort out whatever the current thing is. Yeah. For those keeping Tully, he recently said to Dave Rubin, Bobby Kennedy got called. Nobody's calling. Nobody's calling me from the Trump administration. Like, where's my And then, you know, Dave Rubin memorably asked, like, but what can you do?

When Dave Rubin is sceptical of your claims, you're in trouble. You're in big trouble. So there was that. And then there was also before that, you may remember during COVID, and this was the origin of the COVID pandemic, the pandemic was the, before that, you may remember during COVID, and this was the origin of Eric talking about why he's wearing a jacket at all times.

He was talking about how not him, not any of his podcast friends were being called up by the Biden administration or the Trump administration before that. They were not flown out to try and address how to solve the coronavirus, how to address the public health issues. There was no one that called Eric. It's as if they didn't want to resolve the situation. So this is just another in the long lines of governments and officials feeling to make use of the rarest, most precious resource that they have. Eric Weinstein. I miss Eric because, you know, we've recently been looking at Chris Langen.

We've recently been looking at Chris Langan, who is also being filled with grievance, who also has his bespoke custom-made physics theory. But yeah, no, fair do's. Eric is a much more sophisticated version. At least he's somewhat subtle about it compared to Chris Langan. So, you know, I appreciate the art. I appreciate the art. Yeah. No, Matt, that was just an aperitif because now the listeners are going to be provided a rare treat, which is an interview. We don't usually, we haven't had interviews in quite a while, but we don't usually put, you know, interviews in this, but this seems a good place interviews in quite a while, but we don't usually put, you know, interviews in this, but this seems a good place to put it. The supplementary materials are popular. So this is an interview with archaeologist Flint Dibble, but fair warning, it's only conducted with

50% of the Decoding, the gurus, co-hosts and why would that be mad? Is that because I'm an egomaniac who demands that I'm the only one that speak to interview is? No, no, that's, that's not true, Chris. But, you know, you're questioning my commitment to the podcast. And I will say that it is vigorous. And it is sound the I don't like the implication. But it is true that the interview was held at an ungodly hour at night. I don't remember what time, but it was past my bedtime. And I would have liked to speak to Flint Debell.

In fact, I suggested it. That's right. I suggested it. I said, we have to get Flint Debell back on. But you actioned it. This is true. So yeah. That's it.

Well, like Matt, the rest of you are going to be able to hear Flint and he's going to talk about the recent revelations with the pyramid, you know, his experiences since being on Rogan and so on. So join us, won't you, on? All right. Okay. We'll be here when you get back. So I'm here with friend of the podcast, Flint Devil, archaeologist extraordinaire. It's been a little while. And Matt is not here again, Flint, because it's past his bedtime. He's the old guy. He goes to bed.

But, but we are, we are young pups. We were vital and, and rearing to go. So perhaps it's better this way. It's one-on-one. But before we get to the reason, main reason I've asked you to come and talk to us. How have you been? How's things? You haven't appeared on Rogan since, strangely. I noticed

you haven't been invited back since then. Lots of other people have come out to talk about you. Yeah. I mean, you know, like some of that harassment that we covered and you guys just put out a video about that, that is still going on. Joe Rogan even mentioned me yet again on his podcast this last week. With Chris Williamson. Yeah, exactly. With Chris Williamson. And so I'm actually, I've decided I've had enough. I'm working on a video to sort of show the hypocrisy here. And so I'm working on it. It's going to come out in mid-April for the one year

anniversary for when I was on Joe Rogan. So I hope everybody will come check it out on my channel. And the reality is, is that what I've realized is when I met Joe Rogan, I realized he's actually a fairly smart guy. He was able to follow a complex conversation very clearly, able to ask complex, nuanced questions about it. And this is something I've talked to the public a lot that shows that he's a smart dude.

And so he knows what he's doing. And one of the things that he recently had on this one guy who slanders me a lot, Dan Richards. And in that conversation, not only did they talk about me and slandering me, but Rogan brought up how the issue with Kamala Harris appearing on his podcast. And he brought up that there was this new book that came out and it presented a wrong picture

of the conversations between Rogan's team and Kamala's team. And what he said is he said, look, I'm right here. If you wanna get the truth about this, you should come and ask me, because I'm there. And it's like, but he does not have the fucking fortitude or the testicles to go and ask me, who we had a very friendly, congenial conversation. And so I sent an email request to him a couple months ago

asking to go on and clear my name, and I've now seen his reply. And so that's what my video is going to be about, is the response from Joe Rogan to me. And I'm going to cover just exactly how this has gone down and what this has meant for me. And I hope that it shines a spotlight on Joe as a person, because I think he sometimes is not seen in what I would consider the right light by the media. Sometimes he's just seen as a kind of bumbling buffoon. And I don't see him that way. I think he acts in a very calculated manner in what he does.

Stig Brodersen Yeah. Well, a point that I definitely agree with is that there's a lot of calculated presentation and disclaimers and strategic portrayals whenever it's necessary, when there's a certain amount of blowback or this kind of thing. So I don't think Joe's stupid in that regard. I do, I ever think that he's like, what would be the way to say it? I feel that Weller or not, he's smart and able to follow things, he fairly often returns to fairly stupid heuristics. So you might not be a stupid person, but you are behaving stupidly. So I kind of think that he genuinely really wants to believe in Graham Hancock and other people like him, what they present. And that in the time that

they talk to you together, he could see some of the flaws. But as soon as he could get back into the psychological comfort zone of having people tell him what he wanted to hear and that actually you were deceiving him and whatnot, he ran with that. And I will also say on the issue of hypocrisy, that particular interview he did with Chris Williamson, although you were a topic in it of, not for a huge section of it, but we actually have an episode we've already recorded specifically on the issue about hypocrisy. You were the jumping off point in there from a discussion, I'm sure you'll cover this,

but that went from, it's really terrible when you smear your enemies. The way Graham Hancock has been smeared by Flint, there was a white supremacist, blah, blah, blah. That's beyond appeal. In this piece of what two minutes they were on to talking about how academics are all absorbed by the Mokemind virus and being funded by the CCP to undermine Western values. It wasn't seen. And the other thing I will say that's on that

video that we put out, there was video, I think it was the Daily Meal, or I can't remember the newspaper that covered it. Yeah, Daily Express. Yeah. Yeah, Daily Express. So not like a famously left leaning outlet, but they had a neo-Nazi hard, right, whatever the brand of terrible people. And they were openly talking about how useful Graham Hancock's book is, how they find it good for on onboarding people. And so much so that like Graham Hancock had the issue response, right? Saying that, you know, he denounces these to his credit, he did do that. But that is exactly the thing that you were talking

about. So it's, it's, And to be honest, I knew about that video because Stephanie Holmhofer in Canada, she's a PhD candidate studying pseudo-archaeology. She had a book chapter that came out that reviewed that video, a peer-reviewed book chapter, and reviewed another open white supremacist who, again, used Hancock for recruitment materials. I have personally found a third one, a neo-Nazi newspaper, where an anonymous author

has said that using Graham Hancock's ideas are useful for recruitment. And then you know that the former president of the American Nazi Party actually writes books on Atlantis and stuff like this. This is not like an uncommon, isolated thing. And so when we bring this up, I don't want to name any of these people because I don't want to give any attention like an uncommon, isolated thing. And so when we bring this up,

I don't want to name any of these people because I don't want to give any attention to rando neo-Nazis for a wide variety of reasons, right? And so there's no reason to do that. And what I find even more hypocritical is that the people that criticize me of painting Hancock as a white supremacist, Dan Richards in that same episode I talked about earlier

where he was talking about Joe Rogan, he brought up another neo-Nazi who has a decent-sized YouTube channel who also uses these kind of arguments and named him on Rogan. And then for the next few days, these guys attacked that neo-Nazi who was trying to defend himself on Twitter.

So they know that there are these overt white supremacists, some of them are Nazis, some of them are not, but they're white nationalists, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, et cetera, that use this version of false history in order to promote a racist agenda and to recruit people towards racism. And so they're critiquing me for bringing up something that they know.

So that's just outright lying and slandering in order to defame me. And so that's really what they're doing. And it's very disappointing, you know, for someone like Joe or Lex, who invited me on his podcast and then ghosted me, or Danny Jones, who somehow randomly invented the claim when he had Dan Richards and Jimmy Corzetti on that I somehow accused Graham Hancock of being a Nazi? I've never done that. I have always said in print and in oral conversations that it is other, more overt racists who are taking these ideas

and twisting them into real overt racism and that what this is is a stepping path towards that. And you can see that if you go see Jimmy Corsetti's responses, you can see neo-Nazis in the comments trying to recruit from him, from his following. On the last interview we did with you as well, you know, you were exactly clear. And everything I've seen where you've talked about this specific issue, you've always made it like crystal clear what you're saying and what you're not saying. Right. So it's the same thing. If Rogan

is going to apply that standard, then he asked you, are you saying you're trying to paint Graham as a neo-Nazi? And you said, no, I'm not. And I've never said that. And I'm not saying that now. You've said it on when he's not there, on our show, where we're not very sympathetic to Graham Hancock. And neither of us is now saying he is a neo-Nazi. The argument originally and before is that racist and white supremacists make use of that material. And then actually I remember on the Rogan that you presented that as this should be a point that we both agree on. Like that we can both join hands and be like, screw those guys. That's not what we're saying.

That's not what the point is. And yet it ended up being an attack. Because it just struck me that Graham Hacock was kind of saying, this doesn't happen, Flint. This is really, you shouldn't be doing this. Then he needs to go and make a public apology, denouncing it. But Rogan talks about it like, oh, Flint, just smearing Graham, talking about these white supremacists and stuff. Him and Chris Williamson were talking about it. But it's after that article was out where Graham Hancock has made a statement publicly denouncing that use of his work. So yeah, it's frustrating. I mean, it's just so well documented that these ideas actually come out of Nazi Germany as well. Like, you know, this idea of this sort of lost civilization, which shows swastikas and

the Aryans are descended from them. That is still being published in books, like I said, written by the former president of the American Nazi Party, Frank Collins, and he's no longer a Nazi, apparently, but he still writes these ideas. And it's just like, you know, this kind of stuff is fairly popular and an undercurrent of Atlantis things because of the research done by 1930s Nazis archaeologists that tried to promote this idea

to claim land all over the world because saying that the Aryans had the right to rule. And so it's just like, this stuff is so easily documented through history down to today. And yet what they wanna do is they just wanna turn it into some culture wars, I'm being canceled bullshit.

And it's like, you know, that's their goal so that they can then use it to try to smear me and take away credit for what I'm saying, because I'm just trying to paint everybody as racist. And it's like, no, I'm trying to call out the actual racist, but I'm trying to say, hey, you need to realize how your work is being received. If you are being misinterpreted by racists

as writing Third Reich Archaeology as the people in the video you guys showed on your channel showed, well, then that should be a problem. If actual neo-Nazis think that your book is Third Reich Archaeology, you should have an issue with that. You know, like, which he does, thankfully, but he should recognize that those are his enemies, not people like me. Yeah. Yeah. They're the ones that turn that in that way. Well, that's a, you know, a cheerful start. For anyone listening, make sure to look up my channel, Mid-April, April 15th, April 16th. I'm going to have what I hope will be the ultimate expose of this situation here that

really shows, I think, I hope that reveals Joe Rogan more for who he truly is. I think I have a take on him that's a little unique because what's happened to me has been so obvious and disingenuous that it really opens up the floodgates for trying to look at some of his other statements in a different way. If you see what I mean. Yeah. And we actually have a video from back in the pandemic where he did a kind of public mea culpa apology video, which was lauded by people like Sam Harris and whatnot. And we kind of dissected it and showed it was like kind of masterclass and doublespeak and you know, not actually, you know, non-apology apology. So maybe there are similar themes there for anybody interested. But the reason I have you here today, although it was covered in Jorgen, again, where Chris Williams said, but he is not the primary

outlet for this at least yet. I don't think probably an important node, but there was a press release or a research people, or maybe not a research paper, something claiming that the pyramids of Giza underneath them, they have discovered some huge mega structures and that this revolutionizes what we thought like the pyramids are just the tip of the iceberg. There's huge structures all the way down. I've heard many guru types talking about it. And so I wanted to come see you, you know, because this is going to be the discovery of the century.

So we need to hear what an archaeologist is planning to do in response to this. Yeah. So look, I mean, my goal is to get ahead of all this. So what I've already done is I've already submitted a permit to the Ministry of Antiquities in Egypt to do drilling. We're going to set up an actual oil rig and we're gonna actually have to go at an angle under the pyramids in order to discover what's there.

And we're, you know, we are worried that it might damage the pyramids themselves because when you do drill two kilometers down it destroys the landscape, but I think it's worth it. I think it's worth destroying the pyramids to understand what's underneath them. If you see what I mean. I think- Presumably this is funded by big archaeology.

Oh, of course. And crowdfunding, please guys, go type in Flint Dibbles, contribute money on Kofi and Patreon so that we can go buy an oil rig. We're good to go. Zahi Awas has already given me some thumbs up privately. No. The reality is, is that this is the biggest load of horse shit that I've seen in a while. And I've seen some horse shit. This is actually my second time in my life getting to watch a whole new archeological conspiracy theory take off. And this one is like kind of wild in certain ways. It's kind of wild because two of the main researchers on the team are actual scientists, which is in its own right a little wild. Actual archaeologists?

No, no, God no. They're not actual archaeologists. No, no, no, no, no. They're not archaeologists in the least. But they are actual scientists with degrees in peer-reviewed publications. The leader of the team is a guy named Corrado Molanga, and he is a former professor in chemistry at the University of Pisa. He's published a whole wide range of articles

on organic chemistry. But when it comes to archaeology, he has published books such as Alieni o Demoni. So aliens and demons in the past in Egypt. So Kiyop, so Keop is another name for Khufu, the pharaoh buried in the Great Pyramid. And La Fabrizza del Immortalita, so Khufu and the making of immortality. Glee UFO, Nelamenta,

so he is a straight-up ancient aliens dude. He believes in aliens and demons when it comes to archaeology. And he has several books on this topic. He's not saying that aliens, but it is aliens. Well, maybe it's aliens or demons is the title of that one book. So you know, it could be aliens or it could be demons. You know, this is what we're talking about book. So, you know, it could be aliens or it could be demons. You know, this is what we're talking about here.

So, yes, he is a scientist who has published, I suppose, good research. I don't know. I'm not an organic chemist. So, I mean, I do organic chemistry for archaeology, but I do not do that kind of organic chemistry in any way. So, I have no way to assess his actual scientific literature, but he is obviously completely unqualified when it comes to archeology.

The other lead researcher, he actually has an actual background that should make sense here. His name is Dr. Filippo Biondi. He used to teach at Strathclyde University in Scotland. He does no longer, he has a commercial company, and he actually was, is, I'm not sure about the right term here because of this new papers or whatever press conferences.

But he actually has a background in remote sensing. So using satellite imagery in order to investigate landscapes and things like that. But he also has his own set of fringe beliefs. He is of the new age sphere where he believes that acoustics explain everything, bodies and vibrations and things like that. So that actually is what works its way

into this new presentation. And they actually did do a peer-reviewed paper in one of those pay to publish journals published by MVP I which was viewed though. It was hilarious The second reviewer was like I don't know if I agree with the data and the tables your models are interesting Good job. That was like basically the three sentence review for the paper It was an anonymous reviewer And so it tells you how well reviewed it was and the is, is that's where they sort of presented these methods, but they didn't

present them and ever checked them. And so what these people are saying is they have these new methods that they have invented, and they have discovered this absolutely preposterous thing that goes down two kilometers. Okay. What they're ignoring is all the evidence we actually have at Giza for what is underground. Already, there have been dozens of studies that look underground at Giza. There have been drilling to understand hydrology and the water table there. There has been done seismicity to be able to see about vibrations using known seismic

methods, vibrations to be able to map out what's going on underground. There's been ground penetrating radar. There's been electro resistivity tomography. There's been muon scanning. There's been satellite imagery. In fact, I had just did an interview with Dr. Sarah Parkack, who wrote the book on satellite remote sensing in archaeology, the textbook, and she focuses on ancient Egypt and Egyptology. She's a world-class archaeologist. That should come out later this weekend on my channel, where we both discuss these claims and present them in the technical detail

that they deserve and present her new research at Giza using satellite imagery and what it can show and how you can test it and check it. So we have all this evidence for what's going on at Giza underground. And what's interesting is their data that they publish, they don't check it against any of the known evidence, right? So, like, instead, they just present this random,

totally random thing that they've not tested their methods against known caves, voids, fissures, et cetera, at Giza or elsewhere to demonstrate that the technology works. And the real reason why this thing is a big load of bullshit is because A, the entire Giza Plateau is solid bedrock. So how do you build structures of rock into bedrock and why you're building rock into rock. Second of all, the water table is not that deep. It's like, you know,

at deepest 40 meters. And so it's like, you know, you're saying that there's a city. They literally claim that there is a city 2,000 meters underground. That would have been a city that's flooded underwater at all times. It's not possible. To your problems, I see with your reasoning. One, you're assuming that aliens would, you know, aliens might put rocks inside rocks. That might be something they do. And also they could be aquatic organisms where, you know, that's, that's the kind of environment

they like. But so this is, this is something that we come across a lot and it matches exactly what you're talking about that in the gurus that we cover and, and they're kind of friends, they often look for a positive piece of evidence that they can slot into their narrative. And they very, very rarely consider disconfirming evidence. Exactly. Or the logical implications of what it would mean. So that is often a telltale, I think a telltale distinguisher between like good science, because sometimes people do bad science

and also don't look for disconfirming evidence. But that would surely be what you want to do. First establish these works, show that they're working in these cases, that they don't produce false positives that make it unreliable. Rather than, as is infamously the case, people can produce colorful images or brain scans or whatever, and then dramatically overinterpret what those are showing, because that's like the history of science is littered with people making nice diagrams and plots and saying, you know, the fearsome mongers even. Exactly. And so, I mean, that's always my point, you know, like, look, real

science works from the known to the unknown. We take the evidence that we know. Like I mentioned, there's been dozens of studies of what exists below the surface. At Giza, they've confirmed each other. And there's like this new study going on in the Great Pyramid with muon scanning. Now they're using new types of stuff to ground truth it. That's what it's called when you test sort of a remote sensing in archaeology, is you work to ground truth it. And so, you know, that's the issue here, is they're ignoring all the current evidence. And then one of my big replies is like,

well, scientists should be open-minded. And it's like, scientists are open-minded to new hypotheses, but what scientists do is they discard the hypotheses that don't match all the evidence. If there's evidence against it, we discard it. That's how science works. That's what peer review is. That's just how we logically think. We come up with the range of explanations

for the evidence we have, and then we look at which of those explanations match the evidence the best. And any of them that clearly do not match it, we find evidence against it, we then reject. That's how we move forward with science. And so we do have open minds, but we're not having open minds so far that we can't reject theories and hypotheses that don't match the evidence. And this is very clearly one of them,

let alone that it's based on a bunch of unproven bunk, where it all has to do with vibrations. The idea is this satellite, synthetic aperture radar, it's called. It's used widely. It's been used since the 1980s in archeology. It was invented in the 1950s. It's not a new technology. And the radar beams only penetrate up to two meters

below the surface. So that's how deep you can use it to map out archeological features below the surface. And what these guys claim, though, is, well, the rock underneath, it vibrates. And if we scan this multiple times, we're picking up on those vibes that are transmitted from below,

and then we can map it below. And it's like, nobody does that. So you need to prove this method first. Why don't you go fucking map out a mine shaft that we know exists and has already been mapped out and exists two kilometers below the surface and demonstrate your technology works before you start making some fucking bogus claims

about what's under Giza and getting everybody to say, drill baby, drill, drill baby, drill. I was on Piers Morgan. It'll come out tonight. And like, Piers is like, we should be drilling. And it's like, dude, you're drilling down two kilometers at a sensitive archeological site. You're fucking going to be drilled.

If you think there's something below there, you're going to be destroying it. You're an idiot if you think that. That actually raises a point, because I know we were talking just before. And Piers Morgan likes to get on people who he expects to, you know, think that that actually raises a point to think because I know we were talking just before and Piers Morgan likes to get on people who he expects to disagree around issues. And I believe Jimmy Corsetti was on with you. Right. And but from what you mentioned, it sounded like he is also skeptical of this. So I'm wondering, do you know the reception of this amongst Graham Hancock and Co? Are they generally enthusiastic about this, or do even they have reservations?

Ritchie- The reality is, and I'm sure you cover a lot of gurus, there's a lot of divides within the guru sphere. They don't all agree with each other. And part of how they establish authority is they will critique other gurus who they think are even crazier and out there and more wacko than they are. And they'll use their pseudoscientific and sometimes matched with a little bit of scientific data to do that. And they say, no, we're following the evidence. We're well researched. So our ideas are plausible, while this group, they're not plausible. We're well researched. So our ideas are plausible while this group, they're not plausible, they're bunk. And that shows that our stuff is more plausible.

And Graham Hancock in the archeology guru sphere is probably the best at this. Partly due to his posh British accent and his demeanor, but also just due to how he operates, he very clearly is not an ancient aliens dude. He is like, you know, I mean, he used to be in the 90s. He believed in, he wrote a book called The Mars Mystery. But in the last 15 years or so, he's very much clearly distances ideas from these more laughable ideas like ancient aliens. And so part of the authority in the pseudo world, in the guru world of archaeology,

that Hancock and his Appalites have, is by trying to show how other branches of the pseudo-archaeology are more preposterous than their stuff. Therefore, they are very plausible. And so, Jimmy Corsetti, Dan Richards, they're part of the Hancock sphere. And so they're not a huge...

Hancock's not mentioned this once, so I have no idea what he personally believes. Someone who he used to collaborate with, Robert Schock, released a statement of skepticism. Jimmy Corsetti released some tweets bringing up some of the points I brought up in my livestream last week. I wonder if he saw it and stole from it.

I have no idea, but the water table was the one that really convinced him. The fact that they're not detecting the water table with their technology and the fact that it would have been underwater to him was his reasoning for why he does not believe in this. And so it was funny to come face to face with him and actually agree on most of it. In fact, Piers Morgan by the end was saying, you know, I have more fringe beliefs, it seems like than you two, not me, but then Jimmy and Dan. And so I just think that this is just one of the way these different branches of the guru sphere, they claim authority by smacking down on other gurus sometimes, as well as smacking down

on scientists and scholars. That is absolutely the case. Although one thing that has sometimes surprised me is like there can be complete vitriolic dismissal of someone. It can get extremely hated. An example that isn't in the realm of pseudo-archaeology, but it's like Alex Jones went after Joe Rogan at one point, very, very harshly. And basically he was angling towards, he wanted to be invited back on Joe's show. And Joe was distancing himself at the time because of the Sandy Hook statements and all that kind of thing. But the interesting thing is that you

could have these strong denouncements, which people do use in the way that you're talking about to establish, well, those guys are crazy, but we have better standards than that. But it's often the case that you can find that later, especially if the prominence of those people grow, that they're willing to bury the hatchet. And David Icke is now considered a relatively okay figure in like certain places, whereas he was once completely not. Or another example that I can think of is Brett Weinstein a couple of years ago was hiding and didn't publish the interview that he did with RFK Jr. Now, obviously if he did that now, it would be promoted widely on his show. But it's just that thing that it's interesting that it can function both ways, that you have these strong denouncements, but then later it doesn't really matter. So like, you know, you can be an ancient alien guy or a daint or

of ancient aliens or whatever. And it seems like consistency isn't a huge concern. No, no. I mean, look, I mean, one of the things that I've really started to realize, I mean, look, when I first went, I think we talked about this last May, my first time on here, and I was saying,

look, you know, sometimes it's really tough to tell what people believe, right? And I don't like to accuse people of being grifters, let's say. And I don't, some of them, I think, are more outright grifters because you can see very overt lies. People like Jimmy Corzetti who makes up lies about my cancer, for example.

It's just quite clear he is fine lying. He does it all the time. You should know about that. Yeah. Or you shouldn't be speaking about something you don't know about someone else's health, for example. Right? You know, like, because you don't know it all,

and you're completely wrong, and that's damaging. Or Dan Richards, who's done similar kinds of outright lies about me mishandling indigenous bones at a university I've never even been to, you know, and showing a picture of me holding cow bones to justify the argument. It's just cherry picking random shit and making up bullshit. That's outright grifting. But there's other people where, of course, they're either really good at it

or they do believe in the BS that they sell because they lie to themselves, and they're tougher to pin on outright lying. But one thing that I... And really, the really, really top ones are in particular really good at that because they are at the top of their game and they've either convinced themselves in the BS that they sell or they are just so good at what they do you're not going to be able to catch them on very many outright lies. And so they're usually the more prominent, famous, really popular ones among these spheres is how I see it. And so with them, what I'm starting to realize is catching them on lies might be tough, but

what you can catch them on is the fact that they're just sellouts. They sell out to whatever will get them money and fame in the moment in order to boost their fucking stuff. So sometimes that means critiquing a different guru. Other times it means holding hands with that same guru. And so what they're willing to do is just sell the fuck out. And that's what I think I can document

with some of these top people in a few videos I'm working on. Like I said, the one on Joe Rogan, I have another one on Graham Hancock that's going to take a little longer, but it's looking at the prehistory of him going back to the 90s and the 80s. And so you can start to put together the picture. Maybe he's not lying.

Tough to tell, because he's really good at this, but he's clearly a fucking sellout in my mind. And so, you know, and I think I have the goods to demonstrate that. So yeah, that's how I see it. There's the different ways of handling being a guru, I guess. And the really skilled ones, they're really good. I'm wondering, Flint, like with your experience of the pseudo-archaeology world,

so a claim like this, because like when Joe Rogan was talking about it with Chris Williamson, for example, he mentioned, you know, there was a book published and it was saying about like the pyramids or, you know, power plants working for electromagnetic or whatever. And maybe Tesla coils are involved or something. And I was wondering, do these kinds of things, like in your experience, become like flashpoints where this will be talked about now for a couple of weeks, maybe a month, and then it kind of just fades till the next time somebody makes a release or does this noise slot into the kind of mythos and people will reference, Oh, you know, they did find those superstructures in other, you know, like whatever, in Chedilion or, or like talking about a completely different scenario.

Do they, do they feed away or do they like get incorporated into the grand mythos? I think unfortunately with these specific claims, the reason they went so viral so fast is because they started off being promoted by an Infowars author, Greg Reese. And so it was the whole Infowars conspiracy circle that actually boosted this and made it go viral. That should be a warning sign. Yeah. And Alex Jones then had on a different YouTuber who was a pseudo-archaeologist, Jay Anderson

of Project Unity, and it was all info wars. But it went so viral because part of the reason why is some of these scholars, like I said, have PhDs and have published peer-reviewed papers. And so, that lended it a veneer of legitimacy, even though this is completely unpublished, it has not been submitted for publication, and these Italians are playing the same old game of, well, we're already being canceled.

They didn't even try to submit this for peer review. They're just already claiming they're being canceled because the claims are so preposterous. And so, they're just playing that game. And so, but it was so confusing, particularly in in the first week that actual science communicators, big ones on TikTok and Instagram and YouTube made short videos about these claims as if they were legitimate. And so this one went really viral. It's been published in a number of different newspapers, not like your top newspapers like Guardian or BBC

or New York Times or Washington Post, but like, you know, Daily Mail and different things, the Tribune, different sorts of papers like that that are covering this as if it's legitimate. And so in that sense, I think this one's here to stay. I mean, the idea of pyramids being power plants, that's an old idea, which some of the Italian authors on this study, they're part of that branch of pseudo-archaeology,

which I'd label lost advanced high technology, where they think there's this super advanced technology that exists in the past. It usually involves electricity and machines and lasers and shit like that. Sometimes that overlaps with ancient aliens ideas, but sometimes it doesn't. And so this group is,

it incorporates those two branches of pseudo-archaeology. While the Hancock type branch, which likes to portray itself as more plausible, it doesn't believe it too much in aliens, nor too much in super, super advanced technology. It just believes in like, you know, good ships and longitude and farming and shit like that before we have it. And so that's where you get this, it's going to keep continuing trickling for years in

these branches of pseudo-archaeology, the ancient aliens branch and the lost advanced high technology branch. I would not be surprised if we see an episode of ancient aliens next year that covers this specific claims. And I would not be surprised if we see some of the big YouTubers that are in the lost advanced high technology community doing more videos on this, that spreads it further over the next several years.

One can only hope. One can only hope for the great coverage on the ancient Delian series. There's a kind of a tangential question. Maybe it's a bit more lightweight, but I'm just curious. I know you're not an Egyptologist or that kind of area specialist, but recently the biggest YouTuber, right? MrBeast went to Egypt and produced a video and got to spend time in the pyramids and run around them and whatnot.

Notably did not really endorse or play much footsie with the kind of ancient alien or alternative hypothesis. He in fact addressed one of the claims made about secret riches and whatnot. And that there was nothing there when they went and looked in the room that it's supposed to be. And I was just wondering that video, did you see it? Do you think that was a good thing? Oh God, I reviewed it on my YouTube channel. I have a whole video on this. It's actually a really cool video. I recommend everybody check it out.

It's titled Mr. Beast Slams Pseudo-Archaeology. And, cause he does, like, you know, when I got that video and, hey, look, I'm not an Egyptologist is my main specialty, but I have worked in Egypt. I spent several months doing mapping at the Old Kingdom Burial Grounds at Abydos. I've been to the pyramids.

I've had to read and teach a lot about Egypt. So it's not something that I'm not familiar with, I mean, as an archaeologist. And so, no, I thought his video was phenomenal. I definitely, I'll plug my channel one more time. Go check out that video, because it's also a lot of fun and funny. My video, go check out MrBeast as well.

Because I do make fun of him. He doesn't need your help. There's a lot of silliness that goes on in their video, which, you know, that's what a lot of my colleagues were sneering at was, God, he's making light of this shit. But to be honest, he does a really good job of very clearly disproving some of these crazy theories. He really clearly demonstrates how

we know why the ancient Egyptians in the Old Kingdom dynasty built the pyramids. He goes through a range of evidence for it, from the textual hieroglyphics inside the Great Pyramid to the skeletal remains from the worker cemeteries and how they show pathologies on their bodies from doing all the manual labor needed to move these kind of stones and things like that.

As well as he went under the Sphinx to disprove the idea of the Hall of the Records, as you mentioned. And so he actually does, within a really short, fun, funny video, an excellent job of debunking some of the more pervasive conspiracies about the pyramids. And so I was really impressed with him, and I have no way to connect with him, but if I did, I would say, hey, thank you, Mr. Beast. I think that video did some good service by showing a huge number of people, because it was seen by, like, over 100 million people,

just this kind of stuff firsthand. You know, and so I think that's really important. So my video sort of goes into what he did and gives a bunch of extra evidence in a fun way that shows kind of like why, yeah, why we think this stuff is archeologists and why we have all this clear evidence for it. And, yeah, and so he did a good job.

I was pretty pleased. And, in fact, one of the scenes he went, he did is he went down under the Great Pyramid into the Osiris Shaft. So it's a natural fissure that was expanded by the Egyptians and you can go swimming in the water table there. They went there in wetsuits and went swimming

in the water that's part of that water table under Giza, which shows that that's only 10, 20, I don't know how deep the Osiris Shaft is, maybe 20, 30 meters down. Clearly there's not a city underneath this big water table. So even that video disproves this new theory, if you see what I mean. I mean, I think it also proves the reach of big archeology that you can control the biggest YouTuber of the planet to promote the lives. There's that take on that, but we'll link to your channel, obviously, and the

videos that we mentioned, right? And your upcoming video probably out by the time I release this. Yeah, for sure. So I encourage, as I always do, anybody that is interested in archeology and also those who might be inclined to want pseudo-archaeology, though we don't have that many in our audience, I suspect, that channels like yours and Milo Rossi's are very good resources and entertaining too. So yeah, if you aren't aware of Flint's channel, obviously check it out. Thank you so much.

I actually have a question for you and I've been trying to suss this out a little better. So it's clear that this went really big in the guru sphere. It's something I'm really trying to understand better is how pseudo-archaeology or pseudo-history as a whole fits into this larger, more oftentimes more political and right-wing guru sphere that you guys spend a lot of time sort of covering. And I don't know, what's your take on this?

Is this just a complete sideshow that just occasionally gets incorporated? How can I start talking more confidently about how this pseudo-archaeology sphere situates itself within the larger guru conspiracy, alt-right misinformation, disinformation sphere that exists in our world? What's your take on that, now that you've had

a little more time thinking into that? I think there's two distinct threads and there are overlaps between them, but you have the people who respond to this, like your Chris Williamson, for example, where I don't think it's anything to do with the white nationalist aspects or that kind of thing. It is much more in the vein of like bro science. If this was true, would not be crazy. Cause like, I don't know if you saw that episode, but they also go into talking about physics and it's, it's a very similar kind of response. It's just things that they've heard or a theory that somebody has suggested that this and it's very much like bros sitting around going, oh, that would be incredible. And in some respect then, that feels harmless in one way, but then it is immediately tied

in with these kind of dorm room conversations to the bigger narrative that will, and academics won't admit this because they're close-minded and they're all wanting to promote this woke agenda and the universities have been corrupted. And then they'll easily veer into anecdotes about academics they don't like, you might come up, or politicians. It very quickly moves over. So I think that for a lot of them, it is just an illustrious illustration that they can reference of how close-minded the authorities and academia are and they're real scholars out there doing the work. The institutions are lying.

Have you seen this new thing right about Egypt? We don't know anything. You know, that's the kind of that's the use for them or like a Tucker Carlson kind of person, but I think the other aspect then is that the outright or, you know, that kind of white supremacist like Nick Fuentes or whatever, I don't know their reaction to this, but I think some segment of that use it more as like a black pilling kind of example. So it's the same way, but it's more like they're lying to you about this. So what else would they not tell the truth about it, about race, about gender, about, you know, like, so it's like being strategically inserted

into their views. And then, you know, I think you have also wing words, just like they're crackpots and they don't know how to assess evidence. So they see headlines and maybe they want clicks as well. But I think the main connection, even in both of those spheres, and there are overlaps, is that it supports the narrative that the authorities are lying, they're hiding things, and the real information that will blow your mind is out here in the alternative media space in independent researchers and, you know,

renegades who are doing the hard work. So that's what I think it gives them. Because I don't think Chris Williamson is actually ever going to read any of the papers or the like, you know, if I said Flint Devil has a good breakdown of why this paper is like nonsense, right? Like it's not even a paper. It's a press release. Do I think that Chris Williamson or many in his kind of sphere would want to watch a one hour breakdown of the evidence?

Like they'd regard that as, you know, no, that like that's not the, you know, they just want to have the big idea. And at least in some part, the only other thing I'll say is that it did feel particularly with Chris Williamson, but it does feel in general that when people are going on Rogan, they sometimes bring these stories as like tributes. You know, like I've, I find this story of ancient civilizations, Joe, did you hear about that? Then, you know, Joe Rogan is very happy to ref. So it, it feels like, I don't know, like people are Googling stuff that he's interested in so they can bring it up. So that's a couple of the things. In some respect, that sounds quite

pathetic, but I genuinely believe that is going on. I wouldn't be surprised. I'm sure you've seen that meme of Rogan as like a Greek can, right? With people kind of peddling their wares before him. And I actually think that's a pretty accurate analogy and whether the historical thing of that actually happening is true or not just that image that Joe is, you know, the kind of King who gets to have science people come and debate things for him or that kind of thing. And then he'll pass judgment, which one is right. Yeah. So that's, that's a bunch of ideas, but maybe he'll pass judgment which one is right. Yeah. So that's

a bunch of ideas, but maybe some of them are accurate. I think so. I think in particular the point that you brought up about how it starts off as just brolling out dorm room type talk, but then it's so quickly is maneuvered towards larger political conversations about how academia is woke and not to be trusted and things like that. The way they segue to me strikes me as extremely disingenuous, so that the bro thing is almost just a way of introducing this in a way that's palatable for the large scale audience

to then quickly move on to those kind of other more broader ramifications. And I think it really clearly reveals that hypocrisy. And it's something that I'm scripting that video this weekend so it's something I've been thinking on and researching on. Yeah. Well it's been a pleasure, Flint, and I suspect that we will speak again. I'm sure we will. You guys do a great job, as usual, confronting this stuff. I have a huge amount of respect for the way you approach this as sort of public scholars. If I did not have some health issues right now, I was planning on organizing a large Scholars of YouTube Festival,

where we get all of us that have, that are actual scholars that do this kind of public communication We'll put it on the bench for now, but I think we should keep that idea going I think we should really highlight how many of us do a good job of Communicating real science real scholarship real intellectualism in a fun interesting palatable way for the broader public because I think we should celebrate those of us that do a really good job. And you guys are really at the top of that. I mean, there's lots of other good ones too.

I'm not trying to say there aren't, but you guys are definitely at the top of that. You guys do a great job. That's very nice to hear. There are plenty of people that would disagree with that assessment, but regardless, you know, let a thousand flowers bloom. And I agree that academics kind of count during the notion that we are all being paid by the CCP and are purely programmed to promote the woke agenda, whatever that may be. It's important, just to show that you're like, you know, you're just people trying to do work, talk about research and that kind of thing. So, well, in any case, Flint, thanks for all your efforts.

Thanks for making the time. And yeah, looking forward to the next exciting news story that comes out soon. Seriously. Thank you, Chris. It was great to see you. And yeah, I'll see you guys again soon. Yeah. Get back.

Well, here we are. It's us again, Matt. That pretender has left the arena. See, the time flew. It just felt just like moments ago, you're introducing the interview. But that's what... 45 minutes? It's like 45 minutes or so.

So yes, I'm glad that you just sat there in silence and listened to the whole thing now before we talk about it. You were very patient too, I thought. Yeah, you didn't want revisiting that. Look, I know what you guys talked about. As I said, I suggested it. And I feel Debil did a good debunking of it. But I've just been amazed at just the level

of credulity out there. Like, it's no wonder that the gurus make hay when you just look at the social media and just the way that stuff gets so uncritically just accepted as fact and then they move on. It's unbelievable. Well, you know, we are recording this in the ongoing saga of Trump's tariffs, where he's announced all these tariffs that he's introducing or is going to introduce. And the global economic markets have responded accordingly.

Mostly it is fair to say that everywhere has felt the kind of effects of this. But but America in particular is badly, badly hit by it. So the interesting thing when it comes to credulity, Matt, is that, as you pointed out to me off stream, that the MAGA sycophants, they basically have to come up for rationalizations for whatever Trump is doing. It doesn't matter if it is clearly causing harm. They were complaining many times before the election about the cost of eggs or Biden's economy and all this kind of thing. And there is no debate about the fact that Trump is doing genuine harm, potentially destroying people's savings, just in general, making making people worse off. And so the MAGA people have to respond in some way

by saying, this isn't a problem. Actually, it's good. This is what we like. Like when the Biden administration was in power, there was a lot of renting of garments over the price of eggs. You know, anytime the stock market went down, Donald Trump, of course, would blame it on

the Democrats. Now, who cares about money, right? If you're a true red-blooded American, you don't care about money. You care about being a real man, high levels of testosterone. I've even seen this take, right? It's good, right? It's good to be poorer because it'll bring us back. It'll take us back to the time when men were real men and wife was tough and hard.

So yeah, I think that was that guy, Benny Johnson, or somebody was like saying, you know, actually losing money as character, character building. I'm like, what is money anyway? Losing money costs you nothing. This is just the reality of life. You're like, what is money anyway? Losing money costs you nothing. This is just the reality of life. Like were you young and dumb? How much money did you lose? Everyone loses money. Everyone loses money.

It costs you nothing. In fact, it builds quite a bit of character. In fact, you learn a lot of lessons actually by losing money. Losing your character costs you everything. Losing your country costs you everything. There are things you can't get back. The government can print can print more money and it will sadly that's just the reality. This is Fagazis, it's just so there's a there's a there's a boom and a bust every 10 years and it's just been that way since the invention of modern markets in the 1600s. The Dutch crash of

1649. You ever heard of it? It's just the way that it works. It's the way that like monetary policy has always worked. There's going to be ups and downs, especially as things, especially as the table gets reset. If you lose the character of your country, if your town gets hollowed out. It's funny how much the kind of horseshoe overlap can come out in moments like this, because suddenly we're all too materialistic. Anyway, Matt, it's not just about money. Yeah, but of course, it is a little bit, so it's not looking good.

And look, a ton of recording, and he knows it'll be completely different tomorrow, but just to let you know, when we're recording, he backflipped back down on other tariffs after the bond yields spiked which is absolutely crazy like we won't go into this too much because we're not a economics political pundit thing but you know it's interesting right usually when there's panic on the markets money flees to a safe haven just just typically government bonds. So usually when the equities go down, the bond prices go up, right? And bond yields go down. But now it's really weird because it's in the opposite direction. So bonds are selling off as well. And we don't really know why. It doesn seem to have been China that it has dumped its government debt, but somebody has been. And that may well have

been the thing that caused Trump to back down because obviously that affects government, the cost of the huge amount of government debt servicing. So anyway, that's all boring economic stuff, I suppose. But that's where we are now. There's been a bit of a rebound, but the trade war with China is happening. The amazing tariff formula, which I wanna talk about, Chris. Oh yes, yeah.

I don't know what's happened with that because it's kind of old news now. It's been discarded. The amazing tariff formula that's basically went, starting a trade war on everything with the entire world. That's not happening now, maybe. Well, Matt, there was a scientific formula. I saw, you know, a formula with Greek letters and that kind of thing. So, I mean, you can't argue with science, can you?

Actually the formula was so great. And look, other people have already talked about this. But it has to be mentioned because it is a good example of mathsy techniques. And this happens a lot, which is this wonderful trick of using a bit of math to make whatever it is you're doing seem rigorous, seem like it's been carefully thought out. I mean, it's math, right? You can't argue with math, right? Math has this prestige.

So it really counts as a form of pseudo profound bullshit where you basically give the hint of scientific or mathematical credibility. And- Bayesians online like to do this as well. Yeah, they do. That's right. Let me just integrate and recalibrate my prize.

So the Tera formula involved, you know, they had a delta in there, delta, delta, I forget what that symbol is, but delta something is the change in tariff. And then there was some other stuff on the numerator, some other stuff on the denominator, including a couple of Greek symbols, eta and no, epsilon and phi. And they were in there. But then if you actually decompose this formula, it's actually very simple.

All it was doing was basically calculating the trade deficit or a surplus with a country and then dividing it by the total quantity of imports from that country. And it looked more complicated than it was because it had those Greek terms in it, which were meant to symbolize price elasticity of import demand in the case of Epsilon and the pass-through rate of tariffs to import prices,

which is the phi. Now, this is like stuff from some abstract economic theory stuff. And like a lot of theoretical stuff, you have these parameters and it's all theoretical, but it's actually really hard to figure out what the price elasticity is. Economists have these concepts, but if you actually wanted to use a formula like this, in earnest, you would do a huge amount of work to figure out what these parameters are for a particular good, like steel or something. And then you would work from there and then hopefully it would make

sense. But of course, you know, they're not going to, you know, this was like done by some aid overnight when Trump would have said, give me a formula. I want to pronounce the thing tomorrow. So that's impossible, right? So they just nominated four for Epsilon for price elasticity, all and one quarter for phi for the past rate of tariffs just across the board for everything. Now, coincidentally, four times a quarter is Chris, testing maths. One, one. One, it's one. They cancel that. So it's meaningless, right? So it's really just calculating the trade deficit divided by the imports from that country.

And then, of course, setting a baseline of 10% because for no reason. I think Destiny and some other people, but I saw Destiny was one of the earlier people that mentioned that, was saying, when you asked the AIs or chat GPT for like a formula that you might use to establish they all independently came up with this which suggests that somebody at the White House had like not

done their homework and had asked the AIs for an answer. And the AIs are usually pretty reasonable but this would rely on you having those values then. Yeah, that's right. When you ask it for an impossible question, give me a formula to get set tariffs on everyone on every product. In a nutshell, it's going to give you a dumb answer. And the other giveaway was that, and this seems like a minor

point, but I think it's indicative, which is they didn't use the normal symbols for indicating multiplication of these terms. They used the asterisk. The asterisk. Now, you know, people that don't deal with math very much might not think anything of that. But as someone who does, right, yes, use the asterisk when you're using a calculator or when you're writing computer code, right?

That's the code symbol for it. But if you're writing math, no one ever writes the asterisk to denote multiplication. When you're in primary school, you might write the little x thing. When you're an adult, you'll either admit it entirely, just have the terms next to each other, or you might have a little dot in between them

to indicate the multiplication. So it's just these little things, like you said, like the AI vibe of it, the fact that these parameters are just set to random numbers that cancel out, it's just such a giveaway that this thing was just invented overnight as a completely arbitrary thing.

Matt, can I make an alternative suggestion? All right. Something you haven't thought of, maybe. I got this from an evolutionary psychologist of some renown, Jeffrey Miller. That's his name. You might have heard of him. Goes by PrimalPolly on Twitter. Here's his take, okay, an alternative. My wild amateurish speculation is that the whole tariff drama is partly a clever PR media distraction from everything else the Trump team is accomplishing. They know that mainstream media, rich boomers, think tank pundits and lefty libertarian globalists. Libertarian globalists can be relied up to obsess,

I guess relied upon to obsess about the stock market, global trade, China, et cetera, and can't resist giving their economic opinions as noisily as possible, as often as possible. This soaks up a lot of the media attention that would otherwise be spent squawking about deportations, doge, federal spending cuts, DEI cuts, university reforms, etc. The tariff drama creates a huge PR shadow that allows the administration's other priorities to hum along stealthily without much

attention or opposition. Nine dimensional chess map. What about it? You didn't realize it. You fell into the trap. Well, I'll hand it to him that I think, you know, it does, like, including me, so distracted by Trump trying to destroy the world economy that it is easy to get distracted from the fact that he's like getting rid of the commission that investigates Bitcoin scams. Oh, yes. Coffeezilla was talking about this.

Yeah. That he's doing so many criminal things, basically, dismantling a lot of important institutions in the US. And that's just natural. But I do not give credit to Trump for four dimensional or five dimensional chess. He's just doing a lot of terrible things quickly. And the only way to put what Jeffrey Miller is positing is that Trump is attempting to destroy the global economy in order to hide his crime criminal like, like also my, I know it's a minor point, lefty libertarian globalists. Lefty, that makes no sense on any level. It's so stupid, Jeffrey Miller, you're such an idiot.

Lefty people typically aren't libertarians, right? Especially in the US. And then libertarian globalists, it's just whatever. He's an idiot. He cited Legolas' techniques when he was talking about evolutionary psychology and like evidence for some reason. So it seems for example, like, we have this kind of leftover impression from prehistoric warfare, which was largely kind of muscle based, and it had to do with body size, upper body muscles, impact weapons, sort of mixed martial arts basically. But a lot of that is not that relevant because once you get projectile weapons like spears and then bows and arrows, like you can be a highly effective

archer and not have a sort of classical warrior physique. I've always found it interesting like in the Lord of the Rings, Legolas the master archer, the elf, is sort of classical warrior physique. I've always found it interesting to look at Lord of the Rings, Legolas, the Master Archer, the elf, is obviously kind of the most effeminate looking. If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe at patreon.com slash Decoding the Gurus.

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