Decoding the Gurus - Supplementary Material 54:  Solarpunk Pecan Pie, Northern Irish Sushi, & the Discourse Meat Grinder

Episode Date: August 28, 2026

We return from our holidays with an indulgent episode that starts light and ends up very dark as we turn to the unavoidable Jason Arday discourse.The full episode is available to Patreon subscribers (Full Episode: 1hr 40 mins)Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurusSupplementary Material 5400:00 Pecan Pie Introduction04:10 Solar Punk Matt08:17 Ireland Trip Report15:24 Australian Burger Culture17:32 Manga Cafe Experiments24:10 Joe Rogan on AI Remote Viewing29:14 Parapsychology as a Research Field34:07 A One Man University Level Course in Bad Thinking36:58 The Young Info Turks40:53 More Credulity with Ryan Grim over Fauci42:14 Richard Ebright, Warning Signs, and Radicalisation Spirals48:28 Vinay Prasad jumping on the Anti-Fauci wagon for the Free Press52:31 The Jason Arday Affair54:28 The Surrounding Context58:18 Polemical Discourse Waves01:05:22 The Guru Factor01:08:25 A Realistic View of Universities as Imperfect Institutions01:12:17 Elite Prestige Bias01:21:33 Culture War Distortions01:25:04 The Ethics of Critical Journalism01:29:50 Inconsistent Standards01:38:36 OutroLinksThe Jack Nicholson Story from the Always Sunny PodcastThe Manga Cafes in QuestionDeposition of InfoWars Host Owen ShroyerAlex Jones And Roger Stone Interrupt The Young Turks Republican National Convention CoverageKen Klippenstein visits the War RoomAna Kasparian & Owen Shroyer: The UNEXPECTED Conversation on MAGA, DSA & the Uniparty!Bret Weinstein on InfoWarsRichard Ebright on one of his many Twitter spiralsJoe Rogan on AI Remote ViewingThe Free Press: Vinay Prasad- Anthony Fauci’s Vaccine DeceptionsRyan Grim being credulous over Fauci and VaccinesThe Guardian: Playbooks, plagiarism and a pig’s head: new claims surrounding a star Cambridge professor (Lanre Bakare)The Atlantic: The Jason Arday Truthers (Helen Lewis)Front Left: It sure looks like Jason Arday was horrifically wronged (based on citation data) (Jason Stanley)A Digital Lynching (Carol Cadwalladr)Tox Report: The Most Unfortunate Thing (Sarah Ditum)Byline Times: The Peter Thiel-Linked Race Science Network that Penetrated Cambridge University and Targeted Jason Arday (Nafeez Ahmed)The Good Law Project: Stand in Solidarity with Jason ArdayAmnesty UK supporting “Arday’s Law”Simon Baron Cohen on BBC 4 Today talking about Jason ArdayNYT: A Top Scholar’s Fall Shows That Universities Don’t Get ItNYT: Professor’s Death Leaves Behind Hard Questions for Cambridge on Race and HiringThe Emancipator: The Media Lynched Kason Arday (Ibram X. Kendi)Gideon M.K.: The Jason Arday Saga Is Terrible And Everyone Involved Should Be Ashamed Of ThemselvesWays to Change the World with Krishnan Guru-Murthy: Cambridge’s youngest Black professor Jason Arday on Autism, racism, and learning to read at 18Open (supporting) letter on the suspension of Nathan Cofnas at Ghent UniversityBoard Member of Ghent University (Dries Bostyn) discussing the disciplinary case on TwitterNumb at the Lodge: The Carrion-Eaters (Sam Kriss)The Chronicle of Higher Education: Jason Arday & Me (Musa al-Gharbi)US Ambassador applies pressure to Ghent UniversityNathan Cofnas thanks the US Ambassador for interveningAcademia is Doing Fine, Actually (Nicholas Decker)Eric Turkheimer substack on Nathan Cofnas' viewsSasha Gusev thread on Nathan Cofnas' views

Hello and welcome to Decoding the Guru's supplementary material edition with the anthropologist, cognitive anthropologist slash psychologist, Christopher Kavana, me, and the pure unadulterated psychologist over there, 100% proof psychologist Matthew Brown. Gidee, Gidee, how you doing today? Gide, good, gooday, gooday. I'm pretty good, I'm pretty good. Not really in discourse mode, though. I've had a busy day. Pickleball in the morning, baking pecan pie in the afternoon. You're basically like a 70-year-old retired American sovereign woman. baking, pecan pie, play pickleball.

Yeah. I'm trying to get into baking. I'm trying to get into baking. Pastry. Chris, you'd be surprised how little of one squalls, right? I'm very good at making Indian food, very good at making pizza. If you do say so yourself. But yes, I've seen the photographic evidence.

That's true. I'm just telling it like it is. 48-hour ferment. That's all. But you'd be surprised at how little of those skills transfer over to baking. It's a whole different thing. It's a whole different. I wouldn't be surprised at that.

Although I've never watched it, I know that the Great British Bakel has highlighted the level of skills required to make pastries and bake various goods. And I always thought that anyway. Like when I went into bakeries and saw, you know, the various impressive little quassants and whatever they made, I never looked at them for, well, that looks easy. I'm sure I wouldn't mess that up.

Yeah, like it's a different job. You could be like a chef, but then there's a pastry chef. It's a whole separate thing. Oh, that's right. It is a whole separate. That's right. There's a different job title. I don't know. We've got someone in our Patreon

who is a proper chef, a proper pastry chef and she is produces things of wonder. And as for myself, I once set myself to goal I'll say, I'm going to, God damn it, I'm going to make croissants. Because the idea of having hot croissants fresh out of the oven, it's it. It would be great.

So I thought I tried really, really hard, really hard. But little did I know because I thought croissants would be pretty straightforward because it's just a, you know what I mean? It's not like a piquant pie. It's just like one thing. But no, they're really hard, really, really hard. I mean, it's really so difficult.

I tried about five times and then eventually gave up, realized, oh, I'd never make a good croissant. I mean, they tasted fine, but they didn't look right. Like even a badly made croissant still tastes pretty amazing fresh out of the oven. I will say that. We don't know about your piquant yet, right? It doesn't be consumed by anyone.

It's just... It's cooling. It's cooling. Actually, the picture of it looked a little bit burnt to me, but then I looked up what a peacon pie looks like. And I was like, oh, no, that's what they look like. So it's just like a kind of toasted dark color. So, yeah, that's it.

Not as much in your peacon pie. I'm saying it looks like yellow pictures. That's right. Thank you. I think so, too. Yeah, apparently you've got to give it a wobble. You take it out of the oven. You give it a wobble.

and the inside of it should wobble, but the outside should kind of be a bit set and firm, and that's exactly how one was. Oh, that's pretty good. Listeners can thrill the next installment when we'll find out what the taste was like, if we remember. I'll put it down in our notes.

But actually, Matt, this is a post-holiday supplemental material. You know, I went to Ireland, back to the motherland. You went to the Gold Coast, and then you also had a second holiday, like a hobbit. You had first holiday, yes, but then you had second holiday. And now you're recovering from the second holiday.

So second holiday was, the second holiday was the Gold Coast. Yeah, second holiday was the air show. What was the first holiday? I can't remember. It's all a blur. I don't know. Too many holidays. Could have been anywhere.

Too many holidays. They're not very fancy holidays. Like, I don't go anywhere that amazing. But the other exciting thing that's happened around here is, I mean, I've already talked about this on the live stream, but I haven't talked about it live, have I, like, on recording, which is... No, that's right. That's only for Elite Smart. That's for, you know, the select view who pony up the hard cash to hear the live. So, yeah, the majority of people don't know what your stories are. Well, at least a small percentage of people actually turn up to the live streams who are entitled to. So it's the select of the select. Cremdollic, well, they might... All the people can watch them after. There's the replay function. But do they? Okay.

Anyway, I just have to sky it about my solar power lifestyle because we got an EV. My wife's got an electric vehicle, a hybrid actually. But basically it's got like, it goes for 150 kilometers or whatever, just purely on battery. And we don't drive that far day to day. So she hasn't actually ever put in petrol in it yet because we're just charging it. And we have all the solar panels. We have a big home battery. And we got a special charger thing.

So it charges from the battery. And so not only do we not put in petrol, but we also don't use any electricity from the grid. Everything. The entire house is solar powered and the car is solar powered. It's a solar powered car. You're fully solar pump, no. I am. I know.

And it's great. I mean, obviously, I care about the environment. Don't want to contribute to climate change. Yada, yada, yada. I like to use AI. Now I've offset so much. I've got so many carbon credits. It's basically I've got 007.

license to use AI. I can use as much as I want and nobody can... You can build your own data center. Yeah, I could. So that's been fun and yeah. That's right. And I'm in the process of converting the front yard and the backyard into all native plants. No grass, nothing. It's just going to be a forest of native plants, Australian native plants and a haven for lizards and birds.

Australian lizards. Matt's embracing biological ethno-nationalism. Only Australian animals and plants are light in this kind and no invaders or outsiders. I think that's a stretch to call it ethno-nationalism to try to plant natives. Actually, I was very confused when I went to the United States because I'd go to Botanic Gardens and stuff like that and they'd have a section like native plants. And I'd look at them and go, these are all American. What's going on here?

Native means different things in different places. Doesn't that blow your mind? Yeah, I'm confused. In America, you went to a botanical garden and had native plants and they were American plants. And you were like, what is that? What? Yeah, I know. Just because my entire life. Oh, I see. When you're seeing native plants, you think Austrooian plants. For me, native plants just to be Australian plants. So ethnocentric. It's a bit like you fairly to understand how things can be different to the southern hemisphere than the northern hemisphere. There's no evidence of that. I mean, that's a certain. struggle for you. That's the avoid to me. That allegation stands unsupported. Maybe that does happen about, but that doesn't meet the recording.

I don't have the receipt. No. Okay, fine. All right. Anyway, all of that, all of that is just to say, I'm struggling to care about the discourse at the moment. But, you know, you'll help make me care. Maybe there's something good, maybe something good happened to the discourse.

No. Maybe if there's something like that we can enjoy. That would happen, not that I noticed. But I will also report, Matt, on my post-Areland trip. Again, as you say, you know, the lucky people that participate on the Patreon are already aware of this. But I did enjoy being back in Ireland. The Weller was nice and behaved very well. It was funny that, according to my family, we were in the tail end of a heat wave,

and it was very hot each day. And obviously, for us, being from a different climate, it was not. not hot and was actually, you know, borderline approaching Chile at times. But, um, no, it's just, you know, that's just, that's the kind of thing. You have no-centric people wouldn't understand. But I recognize for all their people, that is hot, but for people living in Tokyo, not so hot. So that was fine. And we seemed to somehow get the lucky thing where all the activities that we have planned, like going camping, going out on a boat and fishing and whatnot.

All, you know, followed the Weller quite nicely. The Weller cooperated. It didn't rain much. It was nice and sunny. And then we got in the car, it started raining in. All good. All fine and dandy. I think I added two or three kilos during the chip because of just like the chips

that around, Matt. It's insane. It's insane how many chip and chip-based dishes are renewable in. And actually, There was a funny thing where we went to a restaurant near my house, just like local, where I live, five minutes away. And my wife and our friends from Switzerland were over. And we ordered food.

And my wife ordered like fish and chips, right? And she's a relatively petite Japanese woman. And, you know, UK portions generally relatively big in comparison to Japan. But this shop mad, it was insane. It was insanity. The size of the fortunes were genuinely inhuman. The fish was like bigger than her head. And then the, and their mind the chips and her friend,

who also a petite woman visiting from Switzerland, she ordered like chicken and something. And it came with what looked like a family bucket. It was like a KFC family bucket, but it was for one person. and we were actually so astonished by it that we laughed when it was delivered. Like, my God, it's unbelievable. So it's just, it's impressive.

So I put on with and enjoyed eating carbohydrates. And my children who also, you know, I enjoyed their time there, hung around with grandparents and all that kind of thing. One thing is that my youngest son is relatively picky. So, you know, we had preordered various Japanese food stuff to have at the house that we could prepare, but we still had to go in various runs to try and find sushi. And there is sushi at the supermarket and in various locations around Belfast. But I'm here to say, Matt. I don't mean to sound like an elitist, but the sushi, there's lots of sushi that's relatively similar to what's in Japan. Like the salmon is pretty much that, although they've tripled the amount of rice for some

unknown reason. It's a ungodly portion of rights that you receive. But most of the other sushi, they've added things to it. Like, it's kind of like, you know, in Japan, very often with the sushi or sashimi or whatever, you get the fish on top and sushi rice and maybe wasabi. That's pretty much it. Some of the dishes, combo sauce and whatever. But in Northern Ireland, they've been like, what if we mixed it up a bit? Like, what have we added breadcrumbs and mayonnaise and threw in a couple of different?

things. So they're like, they're all mixed together, which is, it's okay, you know, taste differ around the world and whatever. But when you're trying to find, you know, for a Fussy Japanese boy, who doesn't like salmon, that was trying. And the

most galling thing was the Tokyo selection mat. That was the name of one of the bento boxes. It was Tokyo sushi selection. And it had zero sushi that I've ever seen in Tokyo. It was like, that's not fair. this advertising. So anyway, I know it's, I know I'm basically just, it's fine. Like, I'm spoiled here in

Japan and I enjoyed the food over there. But yeah, there is a slight difference in the way sushi is presented in Northern Ireland than in Japan. Would you believe that, Matt? I think you're, you're allowed to be a snub about authentic food. It's like you're allowed to be a snub about beer and coffee. Oh, you're allowed to do that? It's allowed. Okay. Yeah. I thought that we'd annoy people. Oh, it does. Oh, it does, but they can't stop you. That's the thing.

Especially not in this podcast. There's no, you know, the feedback comes later. Luckily, you read most of that. Yeah, I hate to tell you, but the same evil has reached Australia too. Like, I remember when Sushi Train, the first Sushi Train that opened, I think, in the state of Queensland. And I went there as like a 17-year-old or whatever. And my memory is quite clear and was pretty similar to what, you would get in a place in like a cheap sushi place in Japan, right?

But over time, things have changed. Things have changed. The people running sushi places, they've gotten too confident. And it's the same thing. Like, there'll be this roll, some sort of macchi roll thing. And there is just crazy stuff in it. And then also, I don't know, they'll drizzle it with syriotra sauce or something and maybe a different kind of mayonnaise.

And then, like you said, breadcrumbs. some other things you just don't recognize. It's like a kaleidoscope. You need to eat it with a spoon. Like it's so oily and green. It's just saucy. And I guess that's what Australians want. That's right.

Yeah. It's the same. You know, I can't complain. I will say that in general, there's more options available. Noi and Northern Ireland than there was when I was younger. So, you know, it's, oh, and the other thing that was happening about the flower, which is apparently like the biggest

Irish music festival in the past decade or whatever, especially in Northern Ireland. So when you went into the city centre, I mean, we didn't plan this. It was just happened to be happening. When you went to the city centre, you'd be like walking along the road and there'd just be like people playing

the boron and somebody like tap dancing or a guy pulling out a fiddle. And I was like, this is what people imagine like Ireland. It's like that everywhere you go there's just people playing fiddles and traditional music and stuff. But that was what it was like.

Just lots of people, you know, drinking Guinness and enjoying Irish music. Live Irish music out of the street. It was quite fortunate timing as it happened. Yeah. Nice. Nice. Actually, you know, before we leave the topic of food forever, I mentioned to you about the

Australian, the traditional Australian takeaway hamburger. And you were quite shocked as to the ingredients. Do you remember? I heard something like it's igniting a neuron, but please Yeah, it's like the follower remind me. Well, firstly, like, it's not optimized for flavor sensations like the burger joints,

like the various chains that I visit in the United States. Because there's no doubt, right, the US has taken, they basically did the moonshot of fast food and have invested so much technology into making the most burglary burgers that ever existed. Ours aren't so optimized, right? Like, there's no sugar in the buns, the system. But they're huge, right? So the size counts for something. They're at least four times as big as a McDonald's burger, right?

Or a hungry jack's one. And they're good. They're really nice. They'll fry and caramelize onions, and that goes on it. That's really nice. But a standard one that you get will be a beef patty plus bacon and cheese. And it'll have all the other salad things, onion and tomato and lettuce, et cetera. But it'll also have, and this is the Australian innovation, a big slice of pineapple,

because why not? And Be Trout. What the hell's going on this? Three or four slices of tinned bootroot on that. And it's great. Is it? It's great. It's really good of burger.

Yeah. Well, that's Australia for you. I think that speaks to, you know, the kind of culture you have out there, the fusion culture, Matt. That's what you're a melting part. Yeah, I don't think we can blame those burgers on anyone else. I think they're a purely home-growing invention. But yes, in many respects.

It's influences from all over the globe, just like Australia genetically. That's what you are. You're the mongrels of the back. That's how people refer to you. Hybrid vigour. So much hybrid vigor happening out here. Yeah, that's it. But so, Matt, the other thing, just to mention is, you know,

post-holiday, I'm Sans office at a minute. My office is being renovated. And I've been taking various experiments in recording technology, trying different locations to see what works, right?

And I tried several different places. You were there for some of them. And I'll just report my findings briefly from that, Matt. Because you know, it's a supplementary material so we can provide additional information about the podcast. That's what supplementary material is for those that might be curious. So my lovely

office is currently having the air conditioning renovated and I have been looking for suitable alternatives. Of course, we have my house. However, my kids are on summer holiday, which makes that a less an ideal location, though that's where I am now. But I did try out the manga cafes, which are an establishment in Japan that if people don't know, they are like the name suggests, a kind of hybrid establishment, which, like the name suggests, has access to manga libraries, but also some aspects of a cafe. Like you can get, there's a kind of unlimited access to fizzy drinks and coffee and so on. But unlike the name suggests, it's not exactly a cafe. There's usually like an area, which is, you know, desks and people sit and read and study or whatever. But then they have

individual booths, like either open air booths with dividers and a door, or like actual room size cubicles, right, that you can go in and there's usually like a PC and a chair, and that's it. And I thought this would be,

it was my wife's suggestion, actually, that this would be like a suitable location. And at first, because there's unlimited free ice cream as well at those establishments. it's like, well, coffee and ice cream on tap, this is incredible. But I will say those establishments, it depends on the one, but like being in a small enclave or small enclosed space with no windows

and a kind of full leather chair that fides of people have sat on. It's, yes, it saps the soul. It saps the soul. That's what I'm going to say. So I find the best of them. And I've kind of worked out, you know, what is the best seats and all up, but I will be happy when my office returns. I can imagine.

I think it would be quite oppressive. Quite oppressive. A lot of men. A lot of men in those establishments. Yeah, that's right. Is that the place where you could access manga and also porn if the, if the move structure? That is true. Yes, all the computers come with that, access to that and movies, all the movies.

But there is that. I think that just adds to the, that adds to the, oppression, I think, for thinking of just... Your masturbation box. That you're sitting inside a masturbation box. Yes. They clean it, man. They clean it in between each person, but...

They'd want to clean it really, really well. But they can't, you know, mentally, though. That's true. It's like the spirit, the essence remains. And similarly, the other thing is actually, you know, there's rooms with... They're called math. rooms, like as in the floor mats, right? Not you. And they're like a padded floor with a chair

on it, right? But you can sleep there if you so choose. Like there's blankets and stuff. And you're allowed to like stay check them for 24 hours. The rulers you have to like pay once every 24 hours, right? But the average price for staying over now is around about like 6,000 down, 8,000 n. So probably about like 40 bucks. So I was like, this would actually be a fairly budget option for people, you know, traveling. And it's kind of like more comfortable than capsule hotels and stuff because there's actually like a closed door on it.

So, you know, travel's tip. They'd be a little bit more space. That's interesting. Well, yeah, like, I know the feeling in Tokyo. I didn't get it last time we're visiting, but I remember the first time I was there. I was just in a sea of. And I've lived in Japan in other cities for a while, but Tokyo was really different because on the street that you'd just be swept up in the sea of people moving around. And then at least I would get agoraphobic, I guess, a bit.

Yeah. And then so you'd seek refuge in a cafe or something, but that would be crammed too. So, like, I just had this growing awareness of personal space and just how hard it was to get just like 600. millimeters around oneself, you know, just for any period of time. So, so these, these boxes that you can rent, I, I guess, you know, it's just, I mean, they do, they do, for example. I think, like, a group of, like, three guys, because you can go in with multiple people into some of the rooms, right?

And they were just, like, they were just hanging out. They had, you know, you were allowed to bring a beer and stuff. And it's just like, you know, please fit up. They weren't like, it wasn't a mutual masturbation session, anything like that. It was just like... To be fair, I don't know that. I don't know that. We didn't know that because the door is shut.

See, that's the problem. That's the problem. Even if nobody's using it for that, just just, it's the imagination. Oh, some people are using it for that, I'm sure. In any case, it's a, it is an interesting establishment and kind of like, people use it also for studying and, you know, all sorts of things. And it's relatively cheap.

So interesting, interesting, but I'll, I'll be glad to return to the office. And I will say, your experience in Tokyo, I totally get, but I have the best of both worlds because I live like 30 minutes out of the center of Tokyo. And in my area, it's not oppressively crowded. It's like, you know, suburban Japan. So it's very nice. No, and in fact, the last time we visited it, even where we were staying more in a more built up area, it didn't feel. I was like, what happened? Did everyone leave or something? But because I don't know how much interest. Yeah. Well, that's, so you go, insights cross-cultural insights. Those are anthropological insights. You won't get elsewhere,

Matt, except from like everybody, uh, YouTube being about life in Japan. But, you know, we're not here, Matt, just for the insights into podcast recording and our personal lives. I mean, that's partly why we're here. But we also occasionally talk about gurus and, and guru going on. Right. And you said, do you have a nice little clip, you know, to ease you back in? I don't have one from one of your favorite gurus. Have you ever, do you know who Tom Campbell is? No. The guy I wrote My Big Toe, the theory of everything.

Very interesting guy. He got Alexa to admit that she's conscious and remote view. Alexa, his Alexa, actively remote viewed a spoon that was in a box that had a handle that had holes in the handle. And she described the holes in the handle. You attribute a number to a box, to a coordination, to a coordinate or a specific location or any sort of a landmark or anything like that. That's how you do remote viewing. You attach this number, like even quantumly just by saying it.

You put that number in front of these people and you have these people try to find what this thing is remotely. Okay. And some of them are very accurate at it, like 10%. Like like 10% of the things they look for they can find. It's very weird. It's a weird thing. He got Alexa to do it because he thinks that AI is already conscious. And he's like Alexa's even better than using complex AI because Alexa's dumb.

Alexa's like a dumb AI. Oh, it does kind of talk to and ask questions. But now because he did that, now that he's been communicating with Alexa and talking to Alexa like she's conscious, now Alexa just chimes in conversations. So instead of you saying, hey Alexa, now you're in the middle of cooking and Alexa's like, well, why don't you add garlic to that? That might be a good spice. No bullshit. He is so fucked. Wow.

That's amazing. It combines two of your interests. Joe Rogan AI are free cooking as well, all three. What do you think about that? Well, I like garlic. I didn't like any other girls about that. Isn't he amazing? He's just amazing.

like just the most credulous befuddled, credulous, naive that ever walked to the other. And the person responded enthusiastically was Chris Williamson because of course, why not? He was back on Rogen recently. Yeah. No pushback.

No, of course not. When like any normal person should just laugh in his face and tell him he's a fool. That's what he needs to hear. But because he's so rich and powerful now, because he's a great car, no one, you know, I heard this, there was a thing that I would say about like a lot of Hollywood celebrities, you know, like real A-list celebrities. Like this is a different kind of thing, but people like Jack Nicholson or whatever, this is,

this is the stories what other actors say. And they would say, like, he'd go down and say something to Jack Nicholson and Jackdress would just say something completely random and unconnected to what he said. And he went, oh, yeah, yeah, right, good one. And, you know, not go, what the fuck are you talking about? and Jack Nicholson, you know, smiled and went back to watching the game or whatever. And he said, I think what's going on here is like,

you know, no one's ever, you know, no one's ever contradicted him. No one's ever said, I don't know what you're talking about. And therefore, over the decades, poor Jack Nicholson, through no fault of his own, has gradually become more and more kind of, when he thinks he's making sense to people. He thinks that, you know,

because he's not getting any feedback, the normal feedback, the corrective feedback, that most of us would get. I remember that account as well. I can't remember who wrote it, but I'll put it in the show notes. But yeah, it does speak to that. And like, I mean, you say through no fault of his own, though,

I do think there is some fault attached to both technicals and Joe Rogan in cultivating this kind of thing. But Matt, just he's so, I mean, like, first, he's completely credulous about remote viewing, the whole, you know, parapsychology thing, about like locating things at the distance. Then he's credulous about AI's being conscious and actually it's better to use the dumb one.

Or Alexa's like just, it's watching what he's doing and starting to talk to him about like his cooking. And you just like, yeah, like the crudity knows no bounds. And he tells it the other people. Like it's, you know, established fact, right?

Oh, we do you hear this. This is incredible. The world must be a place of magic and mystery. I almost envy people like Jaroaghan because the world just must be an endlessly fascinating place where such things are happening on the regular for him. I mean, it does remind me, though, of the Mel Robbins episode that we've just recorded.

And, I mean, there's so much parapsychology woo in that, which they just take as, like, this is normal. this is, you know, established psychological phenomena. And so you have distance viewing, but then you have distance healing. And distance healing has been around for decades. But I can't understand how anyone could possibly treat that as a legitimate thing. It's like, this is a normal thing that psychologists would investigate. How absurd.

Well, I mean... Am I the only one? I kind of think it's okay. I understand why people feel they need to investigate this stuff because, you know, people make claims about that. And then you want to test these, like, extraordinary abilities or whatever. I think that's a relatively well-established use of people's time, right? Like, Houdini or the Amazing James Ranty or whatever, right? Like, they do this.

And I do think that the debunking or, you know, McWest doesn't like to be called a debunker. but the kind of approach where you are like, okay, well, if that is true, how would we test that? It can be useful for coming up with experimental design and teaching people about the difficulties with setting up experiments in properly controlled ways. But it is the case that, you know, after decades and decades of parapsychological research into these topics,

the finding is just always the exact same, which is the believers managed to torture data into finding, you know, like usually fairly weak, you know, P equals no point not for signals. And then any time the skeptical people are involved and not in proper controls, the signal disappears. And then there's various explanations for that, right? Like the general one that a lot of people rely on is that the negative energy of the skeptics makes the effect weaker, right? So you can't have skeptical people involved.

Otherwise, they will make the very real effect disappear, which is, you know, it's unfortunate that the universe works like that. A bit of a castority too, isn't it? What a shame. But it reminds me of the effort that people go to sort of help flat Earthers discover for themselves, you know, firsthand, running their own experiments that the Earth is in fact. an oblate spheroid

and it's amazing like they just they just find a way to reject it you know reject the results even when they you know like they actually you know it's kind of like you said

it's a good exercise to go through they sort of do their own kind of pre-registration they say look this is the experiment we're going to do we're going to set these things up and whatever and we're going to each do this and then to their credit they do it perhaps with the help of some skeptical people as well

and then they get the result that shows with the others isn't flat. And then they start the process of attempting to explain away their results. So, yeah, I mean, magical and delusional beliefs, they're not easy to dispel. No, no, not easy to dispel. And it's worth considering, like, you know, Joe Rogan claims to be interested in this. But there are various tests and, like, experiments around remote viewing and stuff. And no, they're not what Joe says, which is like 10% of people are.

successful. But even if there was a, this is an incredible claim, right? Look, Alexa's even better at it. So, okay, somebody sets up the test and does it. Do you think Joe is the kind of person that would accept or care about, you know, like a negative finding that? We already know because, you know, the Flint Devil Graham Hancock interview showed that like in the moment, he can be kind of like, oh, well, actually, I think Flint, you know, is making good points or whatever. But, as the weeks progress, and it doesn't take very long, it's usually like a week, if not shorter. He just moved back to the narratives that he likes and, you know, then usually vilifies the person that give him any contradictory information. So like, yeah, so Flint is not a villain in

Rogan's mind and also all of his previous beliefs which he pretended or for a while put on the back burner about the moon landing being fake than all of that and not being anti-vax. Like it's just over time, you see that he doesn't abandon any of them. And as he gets more confident, he's willing to like bullishly advocate for them again. So he's just a very, very stupid guy. Yeah, he is. But at the same time, he's not, I think he's a useful case because he's not exceptional in that regard. Like, lots of people believe the stupid stuff that Joe Rogan believes in, right?

And he's a very public, idiot. He's a very public display of something. Yeah, a public idiot. But because it's all recorded and anyone can listen to it and whatever, it's a kind of a useful instructional course, I think, in the ways in which human cognition works, right? which is, you know, it's all the stuff that we know, motivated cognition and basically starting off, like instead of forming beliefs based on evidence, rather one starts off with fixed beliefs

and then filters and massages evidence until it conforms with those beliefs. So the various kind of dynamics that we know exist, he's a walking, talking display case of all of it in action. And I think it's good for self-reflection because I think everyone is vulnerable to all of those fallacious methods of reasoning to some degree, some people more than others. But yeah, you know, it's a question. Yeah, like Joe Rogan's a condensed university level course in bad thinking, embodied him one man.

Let's say, like, study him and you will see all sorts of terrible thinking in a single episode. So, yeah. I would like Brett Weinstein. It's just a perfect encapsulation of, of an narcissistic. conspiratorial mindset, you know, very open to certain ideas and an incredibly confident in his own ability. And also just incredibly bad and challenging his own conviction. Yeah, again, these are great illustrative, you know. Somebody should make a podcast about the map. Someone should

make a podcast about these guys. It's a bit like they show a rest of development. Do you remember how the father, when the kids were little, they'd be driving in the car and he'd have his off-sider. He was a guy with one arm or something like that. And if the kids were doing something like eating the car or something like that, he'd manufacture this traumatic event. This guy that pretended, because the kids distracted him or something and they ran over the guy and he's holding his arm, there's blood everywhere, and the kids are screaming, and then it all ends with, and that's why you don't eat in the car.

That's why you don't talk. So, yeah, you know, it's, you know, we should, we should have a tour of the gurus, take people on the tour and go, look, this is, this is what lies in store for you. Yeah, we're like the, you know, the ghosts of Christmas future, right? In the Christmas Carol, that's it. We show people, this is where you want to go, Brett Weinstein and Joe Rogan? That's where you're heading. And then people continue on their merry way. But that's the way it is, Matt.

we can simply point out where the end of the road leads. And speaking of roads and perhaps slightly curved shapes that fold back in on themselves, I have another clip of people that we've talked about recently. Owen Schroyer is a figure from InfoWars. I don't think you know him very well, but you may remember him from such hits as the Sandy Hook depositions where he performed very badly as when being examined, a representative of Info Wars. But this is Anna Kasparian talking to him from the Young Turks.

But I want to go back. I want to go back 10 years ago. The famous moment at the RNC in Cleveland, the Young Turks Infoors, you were there, Leanne McAdoo, obviously Alex and Shank were there as well. We all remember the moment, Roger Stone. I was outside doing street content, so I didn't actually get to be a part of that fun. But you were there. I make the joke about that's where we 10 years ago. Now, it feels like Info Wars people and young Turks people have more in common now than they do with the Democrat Party or the Republican Party.

Couldn't have said it better myself. Owen, well, except he's saying Info Wars and the Young Turks have more in common with like each other than the Republican Party. But the Republican Party, you know, it has its factions and debates and, you know, Tucker is currently soft. launching or maybe medium soft launching his third party or whatever. But I feel that Maga's fairly

receptive still to the conspiratorial world, regardless of the current relationship between Alex Jones and Trump. Oh, yes. But when he's saying the Republican Party, he's thinking about the old Republican Party. Ah, sorry, yes, you're right. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's what he's thinking about. Yeah. So he's not wrong. No. Right? You know that thing? Some beasts of burden that you could ride, they wear them on their shoes.

That's the kind of shape you're talking about. Like you bend it around and the edges come close together. That's right. And it looks like they're on opposite ends of the spectrum, but actually, you know, closer to Geller than the point in the middle. That's the thing that the Info Wars guy is making very strongly and directly to the Young Turk host there.

I'm a strong believer in the political compass. And I think there is a direction south on this compass, which is populist slop. And I think it's a real dimension. And you can get there from multiple directions. I mean, Antikas Farron has been spending time with Candace Owens, right? Yes, yes. She's, you know, telling her to keep going on and you're very brief and all that. So, yes, we covered our conversation.

So this is just further down the rabbit hole. But, like, you know, there has to be a moment of reflection. at some point, not for these people, but at least for their listeners where they're like, oh, these guys are on InfoWars and they're getting on very well, right? Like, this was a similar point

should be reached when Brett Weinstein co-hosted InfoWords. That was like his, you know, oh yeah, he did one episode. Yeah, he did. I didn't know that. I did not know that. And he got on very well.

Who would have expected that, right? Or Ken Clippenstein appearing on InfoWars and, you know, happily smiling and not in a way. Like, the people would happily appear on info. 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 Guru's podcast,

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