Decoding the Gurus - Supplementary Material 31: Aquatic Nightmares, Strategic Obliviousness, & Race Realists

Episode Date: June 13, 2025

We venture into the darker corners of the gurusphere and marvel at some very, very brave individuals, their valiant efforts to play devil's advocate, and some world-class discourse surfing skills. Join us, won't you?Supplementary Material 31: Aquatic Nightmares, Strategic Obliviousness, & Race Realists00:00 Introduction & Ol Squeaky Cameo02:57 Matt's Aquarium Trauma & Stress Dreams09:45 RFK Jr's war on science continues11:17 Robert Malone & other 'Covid Contrarians' rewarded under Trump14:35 The LA Protests, Riots, and Anti-Immigrant Narratives20:12 Flint Dibble calls out Joe Rogan25:24 Joe Rogan is a polemical ideologue and anti-vaccine advocate27:34 Cassandra Kavanagh?32:37 If Books Could Kill on Lab Leak35:10 Popular Perceptions of the Covid Pandemic vs Reality38:38 Debating COVID-19 Measures38:59 Clarifying the Role of Sam's Manager42:56 Discussing Trump, Musk, and DOGE's Political Impact47:12 The Meaning Crisis and the Comfort of Religion50:35 The Effects of Social Media53:15 Matt and Chris Friendly Shadowboxing56:19 The horror of directly stating your opinions58:14 Sam Harris' Preparation for Conversations01:05:02 Strategic Obliviousness01:12:26 A little bit of TRT Discourse01:16:17 Lex's Insufferable Tweet:  Celebrating Humanity and Responding to Critics01:18:46 The Bravery of the All In Podcast Besties01:20:33 Elon Musk and Donald Trump: A Complex Relationship01:23:42 Mike from PA and Dunking Safely Online01:26:10 Scientific Racism and Controversial Podcasts01:34:02 Paul Bloom and Subjective Redlines01:41:10 The Neo-Nazi Smoke in the Race Realism World01:48:36 Daniël Lakens on Bryan Johnson on Mortality Salience01:50:16 Matt's Foodie Corner01:52:21 OutroThe full episode is available for Patreon subscribers (1hr 54 mins).Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurusSourcesBBC- RFK Jr appoints new US vaccine advisers after sacking committeeFlint Dibble’s New Video: Joe Rogan's Cult of Fake ArchaeologyLex Fridman’s Insufferable TweetSam Harris EPISODE 419 "More From Sam": Elon vs. Trump, Religion, Jordan Peterson, & Rapid Fire QuestionsThe All In Besties being cowardsThe Guardian: Harvard author Steven Pinker appears on podcast linked to scientific racismSteven Pinker on AporiaHope Not Hate’s investigation into Aporia and related race science networksIf Books Could Kill: The Lab Leak Goes Mainstream

Hello Hello and welcome to Decoding the Guru's Supplementary Material, an offshoot for the main Decoding the Guru's Decoding episodes with me, Cognitive Anthropologist Christopher Cowdell, with him, Psychologist Matthew. Good morning, Matt. You have a new haircut. I see. It's not that new. Do you know what's different? Can you spot what's different about me? Why does my hair look different, maybe better? Why do I look different? You styled it in a particular way?

No, you're missing it. Look, I'm not wearing the big wraparound cans. I want the little up-puts so my hair can look, can be natural and normal. How about that? Well, that's very good. But as you wiggled around there, I noticed old Squeaky and I'm just present. So as is the traditional for the podcast just get right in there alright squeaky

you'll be back soon mates you'll be back soon I'm already this chair is not as comfortable I just wanted to know that I don't feel comfortable that doesn't feel right and it's still squeaks just much. Well, you don't have to you don't have to try and make it creak. It's not a challenge. Like, how do I? I feel like Patrick Stewart, how do I not creak my chair? What I do is I just sit on the chair. I don't move. I have to move. I have to move. I don't know why. Um, I know I'm a fidgety person.

I don't like that about myself, but I, I seem to have nervous energy that needs to I see. So it's the, at the airports. That's it. Now I can just see more of your locks. That's what more hair. That's right. It is unto it is unrestrained.

It is, it is letting my freak flag fly. Dare I say it's McConaughey esque dare. I say that Really really? Oh, well, that's better than better than Weinstein The ones you don't want to go into the hair. She answered as far as like give me the Weinstein I'll take the Weinstein, please. Yeah again another one. Everyone wants the Weinstein. Well, it's usually pinker Pinker esque is how my hair is usually described Oh, yeah, yeah, I think her pinker is gonna come up on this episode Yeah, great foreshadowing foreshadowing

You know, no, you go you go. Well, I I was just gonna complain about my my sleeping That's all right It's supplementary material. I take melatonin now. I take melatonin every night. I think I heard something that is bad for you, just like vaping is bad for you. Everything's bad for you. I don't want to know about it. Nobody bloody comment and say, Matt, you shouldn't be taking melatonin because it, I don't know, raises your cholesterol or something. I don't want to know. I'm taking it. But you can tell me. Yeah, you, yeah, email Chris, tell him, he'll decide whether or not to pass the information along. So it works, right? I do sleep all in all for eight hours, but I wake up during the night with intense dreams. People who take melatonin will know this. And the thing that some people know about me is that I have an aquarium now, but it's

an easy, low maintenance, freshwater aquarium. I used to have a coral reef, saltwater aquarium, and it had the, you know, finding Nemo fish in it. It had a big blue tang. It had a clownfish. It had a whole bunch of corals. And I was successful in this endeavor, right?

Everything prospered. There were no terrible things died. But eventually I had to give it up because just the stress, Chris, like I was freaked out all the time. I was always feeling guilty about not changing the water enough or not testing the water enough and you know, always worrying about it. So I had to give it up. But the stress streams never stopped. So for 10 years, my go-to stress stream is nothing to do with work, nothing to do with

family, nothing to do with finances, nothing to do with gurus, usually, thank fucking God. But it's the fish, Chris. And last night, and I always dream that there's fish out of the aquarium. And as you know, the fish shouldn't be out of the aquarium. And they're often like floating around like in the air. And I'm like, that's not right. They shouldn't be there. They need to be in the aquarium. This time, last night, I dreamt I couldn't find some fish. There were five fish that were meant to be in the aquarium, but they weren't there. I knew that that sort of swam out of the aquarium and just sort of swum through the air and got themselves into some

knuckle cranny. I couldn't find them. Eventually I found them in the aquarium and just sort of swum through the air and got themselves into some knuckle cranny. I couldn't find them. Eventually I found them in the fridge and they were somewhat frozen, but it had a happy ending, Chris. I scooped up the half frozen fish and I put them back in the aquarium and they started swimming happily and it turned out they were fine, but that was stressful and it worked me up. So this is what I have to deal with.

You were sanctically damaged by the tropical fish. I was. That's it. I was. Oh, Chris, I got to tell you the most stressful thing that happened with that aquarium. The most stressful thing that happened is, for a while there, I didn't have a lid on it and it had an open top, right?

Which looks cool, but not good because sometimes nervous fish leap out. And in fact, this incident prompted me to get a top for it. And my Dory fish, the blue tang, which is a big fish and was a healthy size, like the size of my palm, like that big. It leaped out of the aquarium and then went down the back. So between the little nook between the aquarium

and the back of the wall, you know, furniture always has this, these little nooks. And it hit the back wall, fell down the back of the thing. So it was stuck there, like behind this aquarium. You cannot move an aquarium. It's not physically possible. It weighs like a ton. And I went, oh my God, this is the kind of thing that causes the stress

dreams, right? I mean, Oh my God. So I raced around, tried to reach my hand in there. My hand was too big, Chris. I imagine so. The space in the back of the thing. I've got big manly hands and I can't just, you can't just get a broom and like scrape it out.

It's going to hurt the fish. Right. And it was deep in there. And you know, there's a lot of dust and dust bunnies and crap in there and so on. Very bad. So I was freaking out. My little son Jack was maybe six or seven years old then. He was very young. I just grabbed the poor kid. Jack. Like a chimney sweep. That's right. That's right. I said, you need to get the fish.

And look, to his credit, the little champion, he got there, he went, yes, okay. And he very seriously went straight to the thing, knelt down, got his tiny little hand, tiny little thin arm, reached back in there, picked up the fish, took it out, handed it to me, perfectly executed. Was it okay? Was it dead? It was perfectly fine. I put it back in the crib. There was a bit of dust on it, but it sort of came off and it was perfectly fine. So it had a happy ending. But that's the kind of incident what causes the dreams.

That's what created the psychic damage originally, these kinds of wounds that were there. That actually reminds me, there's a channel on YouTube called Ants Canada, where it has these huge, I believe they're called vivariums or vivariums. They're like, you know, big glass tropical ecosystems. And then the format for the videos is like there's a set formula and it works very well, which is very high production, dramatic camera angles, and it's like this guy in the reading over saying, I introduced a green predator into this environment and what happened destroyed my I tried like, you know, it goes on like that, but it's a very popular channel. Six point six million.

I think I've seen it. He makes like mega mega vivariums right there. Pretty impressive. They are. Yes. And he's not in Canada anymore. So my my son was sometimes watching it. So you could have been him. And I bet he has a stressful time, you know. Well, he clearly wants to cause havoc to his ecosystem.

And well, he does as well. That's right. I introduced that exotic predator into this ecosystem. Let's see what happens. I would never do that. I would never introduce an exotic predator into my little aquariums. But you know, other people, Chris, you know, other people have traumatic. Everyone's dealing with trauma.

Everyone's processing trauma. That's right. It's a journey. Some people have traumatic childhoods. Some people have traumatic, everyone's dealing with trauma. Everyone's processing trauma. That's right. It's a journey. Some people have traumatic childhoods. Some people have to deal with wars and deprivation. I know. Abuse.

I had to deal with an aquarium. Fish. And yet my struggle is real. Responsibilities. Yes, that's right. We acknowledge your suffering, Matt. Hopefully you'll recover from it. But yeah, it's good to know that you've sought out pharmacological solutions, which are helping you.

You're just one or two doses away from becoming a Peter Adia Herbroom and optimizer stock bro. So this is just the first step, Matt. That's it. Well, well, Matt, gurus, you know them. Oh, yes. Do we have to talk about them, Chris? Do we have to? Yeah.

Well, they've been doing things, Matt. They never stop. They never just take a week off. They should, but they don't. And one thing that has just happened today, which I noticed about a week ago or a couple of days ago, R.F.K. Junior dismissed the CDC's vaccine panel of experts. That's right.

I forgot for a moment that the gurus are actually running America at the moment. Yeah. Well, speaking of which, Matt, so he dismissed all the people on the panel, right? No, no need. These aren't useful. Goodbye. He has now announced his new panel. Okay. So as you might imagine, Matt, it's just a kind of clown car of cranks and the vaccine people, so on, including Robert Malone. Oh, Robert Malone. Robert Malone. For the immunization practices in the US, so it's an advisory committee for immunization practices. That's what absolutely shameful.

Absolutely. So it's full. Yeah. So they're all the point is they're all rewarded, right? Like Martin Kulldorf is on it as well. Like all of the people that were the COVID contrarian set and were complaining throughout the pandemic that they weren't getting enough attention. various, you know, the conservative celebrities, they're now all being given positions of authority and power rewarded for their service. Cause you, you also have Vinay Prasad, right? He's there. I mean, not on this panel, but he's being hired.

Is Jay Bhattacharya in that administration somewhere? Yeah. Yeah. Jay Bhattacharya is the head of the National Institute of Health, NIH. Like also someone that never had a position like that. You know, no, no experience. Was just an academic lecturer. And now is the head of that organization.

Appeared on Huberman recently to talk about all of his reforms and whatnot. But, you know, the Trump administration is very hostile to science. It forbids people to talk about things like climate change. It's gutting those who would advocate for vaccines and whatnot. So it's a regime that does a lot of things. But one of the things that it does is like attack science and promote pseudo scientists to position of power. Yeah, yeah.

To a degree that has, I think, never happened before. I can't think of a situation in a modern democracy with things that got to that state. I don't know. The thing that it reminds me of was in South Africa, I think in the, it might've been the late 2000s or early 2010s, but there was a health minister who was a HIV AIDS denialist and basically instigated policies that meant they, uh, South Africa wouldn't be supplying or promoting the standard medical treatments for HIV. And this led to a huge death toll. It was eventually resented, and the policies were reversed. But as you said, South know, sci-fi Africa does not have the same

level of like medical infrastructure that the U S as or, or scientific like kind of research infrastructure. So this is quite a significant thing, but I wonder the level of impact that's going to have that basically have a bunch of like, anti-vaccine pseudo-scientists running the research and health agencies. It's not going to be good. It's not going to be good, but how much damage can they do within four years? Um, fingers crossed. Yeah.

Even assuming they don't come back. Yeah. Well, that's depressing. Why did you tell me this? Yeah, it's just not good at the moment. Like I made the mistake of looking at Twitter when I woke up this morning and I saw it was like, it was the for you tab. So it was some right wing propagandist showing clips, supposedly from Los Angeles,

the riots. And of course, they're loving that in a way because Waymo's burning and there was a clip, I don't even know if it's real because so much fake news, but it was purportedly showing people basically chucking rocks at the windscreens of oncoming cars. Could well have been from a completely different time. But so- I like this level of research about, like this level of research. I saw a video, I don't know if it's real,

it could be from a different event. But- Yeah, well, whether or not that particular clip is true or not, I'm sure they are finding more than enough material to justify all of their presumptions that America benefits from coming down hard on these illegals, coming down hard on activists. The liberals just want to destroy America.

They're feeling very confirmed in their make America great again point of view at the moment. Yeah. So you saw that and it sounded like you were going to say and? Well there was another day They had another video there with it, which was like, I don't know where again This came from but it was like fucking Jimmy Matt I'm not commenting on the reality. I'm commenting on the discourse, right? Okay, it doesn't matter Right, it's it's the vibes and they had another video which was like showing this their ideal of this perfect America, right? And it was like a

Whose idea? A right-wing, right-wing, reactionary type, right? So basically, all the women are beautiful. They're all wearing sweaters and stuff and traditional, traditional looking, but wearing sweaters with or shirts with like American flags sort of embroidered into it and stuff. There's a little a bunting and stuff like that. It's like a weird sort of throwback between the 50s in America. I almost believe that it has to be AI generated because I don't know where they found this clip. But it sort of reminded me of like a Starship Troopers, pseudo-fascist kind of vision of the perfect America. And so anyway, the point of this story is just it's a glimpse into into the minds of the zeitgeist in America at the moment, and it immediately depressed me. And then you called me up. And then I became depressed. This is on top

of the fish stream. I see the well, the world is going to hell. And yes, there are terrible things happening in the US and the discourse around it is depressing as well. Legitimate protests against the Trump regime, along with rioting, along with people opportunistically responding to it for whatever variety of politics they want to promote. But yeah, but that's what you're going to get for the next, I mean, foreseeable future, but especially during Trump's administration, this is just going to be a consistent thing.

And I'm not saying therefore people shouldn't respond to it. I just mean like buckle up because this isn't the last time it's gonna happen. No, I mean this kind of unrest, it's kind of writing is not, you know, it happens in America from time to time. It is not unheard of but suddenly you know Trump's policy on just rounding up random people, ICE operating like some sort of Gestapo running around. I mean, it's a pretty good reason to protest, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. And it's going to engender the kind of strong reaction that you see, but it does feel like the discourse is returning to the 2020

mass protests and the different ways they're freeing them and that kind of thing. But in this case, the point that I would want to emphasize as well is like Trump in his first administration, you know, he didn't have that much reticence like threatening to send out the National Guard or remember he cleared the people outside the church when he was holding the Bible upside down and whatnot. But here, he's, you know, sending in the National Guard to stay uninvited. So like he's definitely become emboldened. It's the kind of thing that fascists tend to do. And so people are legitimately noting this as like a very concerning step. And it is, but that's what's going to continue happening like with the Trump administration.

Yeah, it's incredibly divisive. And, you know, just, I guess my little story with that little bit of propaganda that I saw there, which is, I think, representative of how the discourse tends to react, is that the reactionary conservatives see it as a complete validation and justification of everything they already believe. And obviously everyone else sees it driving forward it is. So anyway, I guess I'm just saying this is a violent protest. It is incited by Trump and then lots of things happens in these protests, many of them not good. National Guard comes in, then you have tear gas and rubber bullets.

Australian journalists was shot deliberately by the little clip went viral. But the outcome, the upshot of it all is just increased polarization and radicalization, I think, of everyone concerned. So it's, yeah, thanks. Thank you. I blame Donald Trump. For flooding everything. I do think that's not an legitimate conclusion to take from that kind of thing.

Well, another thing, Matt, you know, the news is a cruise ship. It never reins, but it pours. So Flint DeBall produced a new video where he talked about it when he was interviewed by me a couple of weeks back where he said he's going to drop some information and he released a video called Joe Rogan's Cult of Faith Archaeology. And in it he's calling out with a very detailed breakdown and lots of supporting evidence for the way that Joe Rogan approaches the Graham Hancock archaeology, alternative archaeology debates, and how he isn't like an open-minded seeker. He's a polemical advocate and he's targeted Flint

ever since he appeared on the show, had his detractors on and all those kinds of things. But he explicitly shows how Rogan's rhetoric is constantly presenting himself one way and doing the opposite. And one of the things that he mentions is Rogan has been talking about how Flint is like a weak looking man. He's the kind of, you know, person that makes you like react negatively just to seeing him. The Flint Dibble approach. That guy embodies what you don't like about academia. You see him physically, he embodies it like it's like that's what it is. It's these weak men,

these weird kind of bitchy weak men. weak men, these weird kind of bitchy weak men. And Flint revealed that he is currently undergoing treatment for stage four cancer diagnosis. Hey there, Joe. I just found out yesterday that you ridiculed my appearance in front of millions of people on your podcast. Here I am. I have had for the last, what, six hours in the hospital to consider this while I get treated for my stage four

Cancer with an infusion, you know that I've been fighting cancer for the last four years You've mentioned it to millions of people on your podcast Joe Rogan, you're a coward who calls a cancer fighter weak Look man only a few weeks after finishing up a year on chemo I showed up at your studio for an open debate with Graham Hancock that was broadcast to millions of people. Right. So Rogan talking about how weak he looks and, you know, how feeble and whatnot, like that's

a pretty fucking strong rejoinder to that. And the fact that Rogan is calling that out as the thing to focus on is something that, you know, deserves a response to, but it's, it's especially distasteful whenever somebody is undergoing treatment for cancer. Yeah, it is distasteful. And I remember Joe Rogan probably many times has these little, um, Modulor. Diatribes. Yeah. Diatribes.

Yeah. Where he talks at length on just how, you know, progressives and liberals are, are nasty, you know, that is mean. They make it personal. You know, he's got a whole list of things that are purportedly contrasting, right, with good, honest folk like himself and everyone on his side of things, including Graham Hancock. And it's just hypocrisy is just so strong, but he doesn't seem to notice it. No, this was like the same thing when him and Chris Williamson were complaining about people

bonding over our group hatred. So many people's morality stands on the shoulders of somebody that's fallen behind, right? It's look at how much, look at how bad that person is. Don't you don't need to look at me. And I think that if people start pointing at out groups and they bind their group together over the mutual hatred of an out group, that's usually an indication. I'm like, I should look a little bit closer at you. As they immediately went on to bond over their shared dislike of the mainstream media and liberals and Fauci and all that kind of stuff. So

in this case, you know, Flint undergoing chemotherapy and being targeted as we talked about in the previous weeks by de-dunking the Dan Richards guy, Graham Hancock's orbiters, but also Rogan's consistently bringing him up on his show. We had a debate recently with Graham Hancock and Flint Dibble and Flint Dibble made note of this. That's pretty hard. Flint Dibble? What kind of name is that?

He's an archaeologist. People like Flint just out and out lie. This is another lie that Flint Dibble told. Oh, this is Flint Dibble. He's just, you know... Flint Dibble coin, by the way, going to the moon. Oh, you mean like Flint Dibble? We had this guy Flint Dibble on. Well, the problem was he wasn't being honest. Flint was not being honest.

Through a lot of these appearances like Flint Dibble and Zahi, their credibility erodes publicly in front of everyone's eyes. Right. And he notes right that video that, you know, he reached out to Rogan to ask him to come back on to, you know, defend his position because Joe keeps bringing him up. And of course, he hasn't since then. So it's just more in the vein of, Jorgen is not what he presents himself as being. He is an ideologue. He is polemical. And in the same respect, Ma, he just today or yesterday at the time of recording has had a new podcast with a anti-vaxxer, Mary Talley Bowden, an anti-vaccine advocate has went on and they've talked about hospitals deliberately euthanizing COVID patients, the dangers of vaccines, all the usual stuff. So now Rogan is just a very, very large, very mainstream outlet for anti-vaccine advocacy. That's what he that's what he is.

And not just anti-vax stuff, but that kind of paranoid, anti-institutional conspiracy theories, right? Like, oh, the hospitals are deliberately, you know, killing people. You know, that they don't care about making you better. They'll stick a needle into you and kill you as soon as look at you. Like, like fostering that kind of madness amongst people. It's incredibly dangerous and unhealthy. Yes. Well, I'm just going to quote from some guy, C. Kavna on Twitter, saying in when is this looks to be back in September of 2021. Joe Rogan's an anti-vax reactionary now on top of being a conspiracy theorist. The massive toves of American exceptionalism in this propaganda is also a nice

addition. This guy sucks. Right? So I'm just saying Matt, this isn't, this isn't new. Some people have noticed this and also back from 2021 Chris Kavana First, this guy again, see Kavanaugh. If you can't recognize where Rogan is currently on vaccines and has been for a long time, then you aren't looking properly. Joe has had pro vaccine people on and spent the entire time berating them about how wrong they are. He is an anti-vaccine guy. It is surely clear to people now, but it's been the keyist for multiple years. And before that, he was very open to that line of dialogue anyway. So you're almost like a Cassandra, Chris, you see

things before other people do, they don't listen. But you saw what was coming. You know, you called it, you saw what was coming. That's not the message. The message is, like with Cassandra, the powers of foresight are incredible to behold. They have ways of seeing things that other people can't see. My message is, this is fucking obvious. It's incredibly obvious. It was incredibly obvious, right, Ben?

It doesn't require any powers of insight. That's right, anyone who had taken any powers of insight. That's right. Anyone who had taken the trouble to just look at the content, it was played to see. No, I know. I know. I just listened to it. Just listen. That's the constant thing with people like Rogan is that people will say, he has a lot

of different perspectives and he doesn't adhere to any particular point of view. And the more that you get the conversation with people, the more they say, well, no, I haven't listened to any of his content recently, but you know, I, I did listen a couple of years ago, I heard an episode here and there, and, and yet they're very strongly asserting their interpretation without any effort to look into his content. starting their interpretation, without any effort to look into his content. You'll remember, Matt, that this Scrappy podcast, Decoating the Gurus, did a critical evaluation when he issued an apology, I'm putting air quotes, apology video, right, about promoting COVID misinformation.

We pointed out it wasn't, it was like the tone of an apology, but in that video, we were still promoting all the same narratives, all the same kind of justifications. And he got loads of credit for that video. That's right. He did. And I remember our prediction was that this didn't mean anything and that he would continue doing exactly what he was doing. And yeah, we were right. Yeah like it's, it reminds me of, like I saw an article headline that came out in some magazine about Elon Musk and his latest thing with Trump and the headline was along the lines of he's totally lost it. He's totally, you know, Elon's totally lost it. It's like, like, like this is the incident that is like oh oh my God, what happened to Elon?

He's totally like, no. Like, like the only surprising thing about his issues with Donald Trump is that it didn't happen a year ago, because that is totally in line with his personality. That's exactly what you'd expect. And it was pretty obvious to us when we covered Elon Musk, what was it, a couple of years ago. Yeah. And again, not couple of years ago. Yeah. And again, not through any great powers of insight, we weren't going through any tea leaves.

It was very obvious when you looked at his behavior, what he wrote and what he said. And through his sights. Yeah. Yeah. And I remember just at the time, for a long time, everyone just thought you guys are just haters. You're so cynical. What about SpaceX? It's a really great company. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. Well, speaking about that ability to just do research into topics and to notice patterns. So I do want to give credit. So this video with Flint, it's great. It's great because it's very well researched. It has clips from Graham Hancock from 20 years ago in radio call-ins. It's kind of highlighting his narrative. In the late 90s, he claims some blurry photos were evidence of monuments from an advanced

civilization on Mars that was destroyed in an ancient apocalyptic cosmic impact. And it's a very important point that the face structure, whatever it is, whether it's a hill or whether it's actually some kind of face is set in a context and that context is very large, surrounded by a lot of other structures

being put by a bombardment of asteroids or I believe more likely fragments of a giant comet. And the question that really arises is, is Earth subject to the same fate that Mars has been subject? And this is why the monuments on Mars, in inverted commas of course, the supposed, the alleged monuments on Mars, are so interesting to me. Because taken in context with the cataclysmic history of the planet with again disputed evidence of primitive microbial life on the planet which under any normal evolutionary laws one would expect eventually to have developed into higher life forms. But to me this raises a whole other issue over the story of life on Mars and the story

of what happened to Mars and the story of what happened to Earth. And it's also showing Joe Rogan across appearances and the way that he presents things, the things that he learned from Flint, and then the way that he goes on to demonize him and so on. So that's a very well researched piece and nicely put together. And I encourage people who haven't watched it to look at it and it not just around the framing of him being cruel to Flint, but it just shows the way Rogan operates. In the same respect, now Michael Hobbs, a journalist that we have talked about covering and to in general, I think tends to be a mixed bag in terms of his politics are very central to the way that he approaches topics. I think

he would also acknowledge himself in some ways to be like an activist journalist. But he has a podcast, If Books Could kill, where him and his co-host critically evaluate various pop science books and other political books and whatnot. But they did a bonus episode on the Lab Lake and it's about an hour long, maybe an hour and a half. In any case, it covers basically the entire history of the discourse around the lab from the start of the pandemic to the present. It talks about the evidence and the scientific response and the media response and the conservative media response. It's very well researched. It's the best presentation I've heard of that whole situation.

And it just so happens that it echoes very clearly things that we said on the podcast many times. It's surprising the level of discourse around this when the scientific evidence has continued to firm up in regards like the weight of evidence supports a zoonotic natural origin. And that's what the majority of relevant scientists believe for that reason. And yet the public discourse has largely shifted to, well, we now know that the ladle has been vindicated. This is an example where, you know, journalists feel that there were censorship and this whole thing. And Hobbs and his co-host do a good job of demonstrating how that is mostly

a post-hoc invention of conservative media and also lab-like activists, conspiracy theorists. So I really heartily recommend without reservation that coverage in the If Books Could Kill podcast of that topic. So people should go check that out too. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Post the link.

I'll check it out even. It sounds interesting. Yeah. The public opinion, public discourse on things, it often just diverges from reality. And you understand the causes, you understand why, but it's still annoying. I feel like the public perceptions of the COVID epidemic and the response to it overall has just been retconned into oblivion. Oh yeah. been retconned into oblivion. Oh, yeah.

I just hear. And I don't even, like, I don't think it's just like paranoid conspiracy theorists who have a distorted view of it. I think collectively, most people have a distorted view of it. You're absolutely right. Like, the story of the pandemic is

that scientists developed a novel vaccine with unprecedented speed, it required international cooperation. There was a mass rollout campaign and a global pandemic was largely stopped in its tracks by a successful public health campaign. That is not the message, even that you hear in kind of liberal outlets about what happened with the pandemic, but like that is what the statistics show. Like as the vaccine campaign rolled across countries, the number of deaths and serious illness dramatically reduced as it was rolled out and more members of the population took it. And so it is imperfect, yes, but

a very successful global anti-vaccination campaign that largely defined a global pandemic. That's the truth of what happened. But in the alternative media, in right-wing media, and even in liberal media, the focus is very much that a lot of mistakes were made. The vaccines didn't do what they were promised to do and that the public health measures were just all ill-advised and non-effective. We didn't need to do them. That's the general gist of the kind of takeaway about the pandemic. A lot of focus on mistakes were made and they haven't been acknowledged enough and that the vaccines were oversold in various ways. But the evidence absolutely does not support those narratives. Even in the case where there

are public health measures where things were done that didn't necessarily have the effects that they were desired or were not as efficacious as imagined. Like in the middle of a pandemic, there are steps that are taken that might be overly cautious, but reasonable to do. And there's lots of countries, like notably Japan and Australia, where public health measures were instigated and largely adhere to with little complaint or social fury and things went back to normal. As vaccines and treatments became more readily available, as we understood more things about the virus, whereas like North America, it just seems that was like a social as well as biological crisis.

Yeah. Well, the thing that annoys me is that like countries like Australia and in a different way, but similar Japan as well, had a more, what's the word, hawkish sort of restrictive approach, right? More towards zero COVID than towards letter rip, than the United States, right? For understandable reasons, right? The United States is a different culture, more libertarian, less liking that kind of thing, so fine. All right. But the statistics

show that a lot more people per capita died in the United States. As a result. Yes. As a result. Right. And okay. Well, it's all swings and roundabouts. You could say trade-offs. Fine. But then the takeaway in the US is that, you know what I mean? We should have been more liberal. We should have been more, you know, all the restrictions are all about ideas. Shouldn't have worn masks. Shouldn't have done social distancing. Should never have closed any schools. You know what I mean?

That's your takeaway. Anyway, whatever. I know. Well, so that's been occurring. But in the last supplementary material, you might remember me having a little bit of a go at Sam's manager, Sam Harris's manager, right? You remember he was both sizing the stuff around the Biden cover-up, right? His health and maybe Trump's lies are more right in the open that this is better, right? And I think I titled

the segments of it like Sam Harris's manager sucks. So something like that. But so there's been another AMA with Sam and it speaks to some of the themes we talk about. But the first thing is, his manager wants to clear up for people like me who might've got the wrong end of the stick. So listen to this. Well, just a quick housekeeping before we do, I need to clarify some things. Many of this isn't for you. This is for the audience. Many in the audience have already picked up on this. But again, just to clarify, the goal of this series is more from Sam on current events more often. My job here is to draw more energy out of Sam to surface his ideas in a format that's a little looser than the podcast. So the tone will be more casual.

If the pacing is faster, that's all intentional. I'll sometimes play devil's advocate and even exaggerate positions, whatever it takes to keep things moving. None of this is about me, so don't get caught up on what you think my positions actually are. This is your response to some hate mail?

Oh, well, this is just to clarify. I think a lot of people, most people got it, but some people were confused. And, you know, and one of the things, one of the reasons why we didn't bring on the, another academic or intellectual is that they would show up with their own agenda and that's not what we wanted here. We wanted to really push you around.

And so this will feel different from the polished conversations and essays that the audiences used to. Okay. So, you know, we just got it wrong, Matt, or at least I just got it wrong. It's, you know, he's just asking questions. He's not actually presenting his opinions, right? He's only kind of playing devil's advocate as a standard to get some, the flesh ideas more. So it might have sounded like he was very strongly emotionally reacting to the Biden revelations right then and downplaying the lies of the Trump administration. Steve McLaughlin I said this last time, there's something more off-putting and gross to me about lying and in secrecy than there is out in the open. And I know that's probably more of an irrational,

an emotional thought than a rational. But it's not all out in the open. There's a lot out in the open and there's, and you have to imagine that that's the tip of the iceberg of corruption, right? To grade Trump on a curve so fully that the visibility of his sins are exculpatory, right? It's just pure delusion, right?

You have no idea what you don't know about what he's into. And we already know he lies more than any other person that can be named, right, anywhere in public life. So the idea that he's not covering anything up just doesn't fly. Again, I mean, the Trump lies to me. I don't know why. And, and we'll have to understand this or get some psychologists of some, or

sociologists or someone to explain this, but it just feels like when he's called, it says he's got a building that's 20 stories tall and it's only 10. I just don't really care. Or some of the other lies. They just feel of course it's corrupt to be both the policymaker and the deal maker. He deports someone to a torture room in El Salvador and then laughs about it at the Oval Office and says he can't get him back. Right?

Yeah, I'm not defending that. That's a lie. But that was all to draw more of Sam's opinion. He has no agenda. He has no positions. He's just there as a facilitator. Got that? Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yep. Okay. So that that will help frame, you know, what's going on in some of these other clips. So this is a little bit of talking about Doge and the impact that it had.

And how we get to the point where we all just vomit in unison, I don't know, but I mean, we have to get there. Yeah. Well, I mean, is it possible that we needed a Trump or a Musk type or both of them and Doge to begin to pop the hood? No, to realize how bad Trump and Musk and Doge are? No, no, no, no, no, to realize to start taking the debt seriously. I mean, do you really

think if Kamala Harris was elected, we'd be doing that? Do you think there'd be an abundance movement without Trump? I mean, is there some credit that goes there? I may have to say interesting question, but basically you're saying that any kind of pendulum swing back to sanity can be credited to just how bad things have gotten. There you go, Matt. That's an example of just posing the kind of hypothetical to get, you know, Sam set off. So like he suggested there, like, would there be even talk about reducing the deficit, you know, if it had been Kamala Harris? Come on. Right. So, but of course, Trump is increasing the deficit. Wait. Well, yeah, yeah.

But you know, Matt, the fact that we're even talking about it more. Okay, that would never have happened before. Okay. And the abundance thing, that says recline, right? He coined that with his book. Am I wrong? Yeah, yeah, that says recline. But he's responding, Matt, to the fact that the Democrats, you know, they don't, they're

too obsessed with regulation, environmental protection, stuff, stuff. So that's happening. So Ezra Klein was emboldened by the Trump presidency to, to push this. Okay. Right. The, I think the argument is like, he's trying to present an alternative path, right? Whereas if Kamala Harris had won, the Democrats might not have needed an alternative path forward. But again, you know, look, let's have a kid.

Yep. I got it. Yeah. Yeah. It's not like that's his position. That's not that's not his position. Now, Sam is going to have another conversation with Jordan Peterson. And they're talking about, you know, how do you approach that or this kind of thing? So this is his manager talking about Jordan Peterson and they're talking about, you know, how do you approach that or this kind of thing? So this is his manager talking about Jordan Peterson. I know you're going on Jordan Peterson's podcast soon. So I don't want to talk about him for a moment. He's been credited for bringing so many people back to Christianity 2.0 or

the, I guess, live and let live Christians versus the 1980s or I guess the 1480s for that matter. I think there are a number of reasons why Jordan has been so effective. If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe at Patreon.com slash Decoding the Gurus. Once you do, you'll get access to full length episodes of the Decoding the Gurus podcast, including bonus shows, gurometer episodes,

and Decoding Academia. The Decoding the Gurus podcast is ad free and relies entirely on listener support. Subscribing will save the rainforest, bring about global peace, and save Western civilization. And if you cannot afford $2, you can request a free membership and we will honor zero of those requests. So subscribe now at patreon.com slash Decoding the Gurus.