 All right. Hello, Matt. Thanks for so much for joining me. How are you doing today? Good morning, Chris. I'm pretty good. I've had a couple cups of coffee and I'm raring to go. Beautiful. So I'm late to your podcast, Decoding Guru. So real quick, I think a lot of people for my audience are well aware of who you are. But can you give a little bit of your background, your field of study and all that kind of stuff? And then a brief description of what your podcast is all about. Sure thing. Yeah. Well, me, I'm a professor at Central Queensland University in Australia. I've been doing that for just over 10 years. Before that, I was a research scientist mainly in a variety of places. I'm currently in the psychology department, but I've worked all over the place. I've worked in a robotics lab in Japan, and I've worked in and sort of atmospheric and marine sciences at the CSIRO front of a gas or shaft in Germany. So I've done a bunch of stuff because I'm old. And, and Chris and I that is Chris Kavanaugh. He's an anthropologist with Oxford University is based in Japan. He and I got together on Twitter probably just over a year ago. We'd known each other for a little while, but we found ourselves talking more and more about the same sort of set of characters. And we felt like we'd sort of kept seeing the same kind of features crop up. And we didn't know how to group these people or how to define what it is we were talking about. And we eventually landed on the term secular gurus, right? Because they weren't religious or spiritual necessarily, but they certainly did have like, like this sort of idiosyncratic and, you know, we sometimes say heterodox, but they're not sort of orthodox characters that and they have like a message, you know, a particular view of the world, these particular insights that they're sharing with people, they often have strong views about, you know, how we should be living our lives or changing society, you know, not like your typical academic or, or intellectual type person or a journalist who might have strong views on a particular issue, like, you know, what we should do about policy on Syria or something like that, but sort of is big encompassing kind of kind of views. Sure, they're often engaged in like culture war type political stuff as well. Yeah, so we intended to write some articles, some academic articles on this, because that's what that's what academics do. But to get our thoughts in order, we, because we're still figuring it out, I suppose, we thought, well, look, let's, let's record us talking about this stuff. And we'll do a podcast and we'll sort of, it's kind of a way to procrastinate, I suppose, instead of writing. And then, so this podcast, Decoding the Guru's ended up taking on a bit of a life of its own. Yeah, yeah, no, it's, it's crazy. Like I said, I was, I was late to the Decoding Guru's podcast, but I felt like I started binging it because I have felt like I'm crazy, right? Like you've seen, I know you've read a couple of my sub stack pieces, but I'm like, is anybody else noticing what's going on? Right? Like, just there's these same patterns, they're speaking to the same people, they're playing into the same things. And, you know, something I discussed was there's a certain group of people and a lot of them are people that you guys discussed where you could take just about any topic, and you'll know where they stand on it before, before you've been talking to them. And I think that's a little bit strange. So, you know, why, why do you, from, you know, all the people you guys have covered, why do you think, why do you think it is, I know the word narcissism gets thrown around quite a bit, but it's often like, oh, we're seeing the world differently than everybody else, which is also weird to me, because there's millions of people who listen to them collectively. So clearly, there's a group of people who do agree with you, right? So how different is your opinion and all that? But what do you, what do you think is driving a lot of this? Yes, I guess there's a couple of ways to answer that. I mean, one way to answer it is in terms of what's driving these characters themselves, you know, like, psychologizing them and trying to figure out what their motivations are and what makes them tick. And the other way to think about it is, well, why, what's, what's the market, like, what's the need, you know, what, what, what, what are, what are all of us who's consuming, you know, information on the internet and stuff like that, what, what pulls us towards particular sources rather than others. So maybe starting with the last one, I guess, well, first of all, it's obviously the internet, right? That's a big deal. This is kind of thing, like, there are always kind of self-help gurus, there are always, you know, idiots and critic characters. I mean, we've covered people like Carl Sagan on our podcast, who, who I love, by the way, but I'd still describe him as a bit of a secular guru, right? Just, just not a particularly toxic one. Because as well as talking about black holes and things like that, he also did sort of connect that with a kind of a, like a worldview, one I have quite like, and I think is quite healthy, but still, it's kind of guru-esque. So I think we're all attracted to people providing some sort of meaning and doing that kind of sense-making, that, you know, that's a, that's a phrase that's entered the lexicon now, sense-making. But that is what they kind of do. They, and the other thing too, I guess, is that they do establish that personal rapport, you know, there's this thing called parasociality, which in any one he does podcasts or is involved, you know, is now familiar with, which again is not necessarily a toxic thing or a bad thing, I think. I think it can be, can be quite good. But we do develop a kind of a one-way relationship with characters who are doing, you know, extended podcasts, long videos on YouTube, and we've spent so much time with them. And there is a communication of sort of frankness and honesty and directness. And what you're hearing from this person isn't filtered by some editorial line, and isn't, isn't filtered by the sort of, you know, the 10 minute sound grabs on CNN or something like that. It feels much more authentic. And so I guess we're looking for that as well, authenticity. So yeah, as well, okay, one final thing is there's that, that great leveling, yeah, that great leveling, like it used to be that, you know, to, to get an audience and to write a book or something like that, you'd have to get, you know, you'd have to have a publisher and all their stuff, or, or to have this a platform in order to be broadcasting to hundreds of millions of people, you needed to be, you know, part of a, some sort of, you know, mainstream media. And again, you'd have editors and so on. So there's this great leveling, which means everybody has an opportunity to rocket to some kind of celebrity or reach a really huge audience. So it's kind of, you know, like Richard Dorkin's idea of memes and so on. It's kind of like a Petri dish, right, to create this hyper competitive environment for the most effective memes, right, the most charismatic characters, the most appealing, intuitively appealing and emotionally appealing ideas to get sort of selected for and get set straight to, to the top. So that's where I think the appeal is coming from on the demand side. But I guess the personality and the character of the gurus is probably a separate question. Yeah, yeah, well, let's, let's discuss that a little bit, because I, I am oddly obsessed with just self deception and denial. And maybe it's because I'm a, I'm a recovering drug addict, I got sober in 2012. And there's a lot of denial and self deception like, oh, no, everything's fine. I got this under control, right? And, you know, it's part of human nature. We lie to ourselves all the time, right? I love reading and just trying to understand that. So the big question is, and I, and I do appreciate how you guys are very careful, right? Like you try not to be like, this is a nefarious, terrible person, right? But when it comes to this authenticity that people are drawn to, okay? When these, like I said, you can see these patterns like, for example, I was just like, so Jordan Peterson's top of mind, I was just listening to your guys' episode about Jordan and Brett, her conversation. But like Jordan Peterson, right? He's a, you know, psychology, he kind of blew up for some of his views on trans stuff, but also all his self help type of things. But like, without even knowing anything, I'm like, I think I know where Jordan Peterson is going to stand on vaccines, mandates and all that stuff. And boom, I start seeing him tweet about it, right? So when it comes to that authenticity and this self-awareness or even self-deception, I don't know, how do you guys view this? Like, or how do you view this? Like, do you think they're intentionally like, kind of like, oh, I'm going to say this, I know it's going to get a lot of likes. I know people are going to tune into this episode. I know it's going to draw on an audience. Or do you think that they truly believe what they're saying? It's so difficult. And like, I always try to give them the benefit of the doubt, but it's so hard. Like, I'm like, there's no way they believe that's bullshit, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, it is, it is hard to wrap your head around. Like, the issue that that I struggle with is, is when you see some of these, you know, anti anti vaccine characters who are smart people, you know, I've got a research track record that I've got, they've got relevant degrees and so on. And it's like, you cannot possibly be so ignorant as not to be able to understand these, you know, quite basic statistics, you know, there are some questions that are pretty difficult, you know, scientific empirical questions that are difficult to get your head around. But the question around, do vaccines work at preventing hospitalization of death? That's not a particularly complicated one. So, so what's going on? Look, I think the way to resolve it is that is that, first of all, very, very smart people can dilute themselves very badly. That's, that's one of the main things. And, you know, there's even this phrase called noble, noble laureate disease or double price. Yeah. And, you know, so even a noble laureate, it's also will so often seems to be found saying something like homeopathy will cure cancer or something like that. They've, so people change, people go down rabbit holes, people can have really weird opinions about about issues that are not connected with their main field of study. And, and conspiracy theories and political polarization can affect anyone. So I think, I think, okay, so that's sort of the more general stuff. But on a personal level, I think the, the pool of attention, yeah, and getting thousands and thousands of people, you know, clapping their hands together, praising you for being just just absolutely wonderful. If you're, if you're a person who is susceptible to, to that, and people who are somewhat further along the narcissistic spectrum are extremely sensitive to praise, then that is taken as a confirmation that you are right, that you're on the right track. And you can sort of, you know, drink, get high on your own supply, I think. So, so there's like this, there's one particular character, James Lindsey, who's a good example of this, right? Many people might be aware of him. And it's not particularly controversial to say that he's changed, man. Yeah, like he may have deep down always been like this, but he has, he is someone who has clearly changed his entire sort of presentation. And he has followed the attention, you know, he has followed the praise and as he's done that, he's grown his audience, he's probably lost a lot of people on the more reasonable side of the spectrum and gained a lot of the full on piles and crazy people. But from, from his subjective point of view, he's just, he's getting praised and being told that he's right and he's on the right track and he's saving the world and he's a fantastic person again and again and again. So I think the, it's like the tail wagon, the dog, you know, one of the things that we have talked about with a philosopher, Tai Nguyen, was really interesting, which is like the degree to which he have audience capture and the audience driving it as much as the guru themselves. Yeah. Yeah, no, I think that's where I empathize a little bit too, because in 2019, my YouTube channel was just exploding, like blowing up faster pace than I could imagine. And yeah, I started getting high on my own supply, right? And it's, it was hard to stick to my, you know, the reasons I started making content and everything like that. And like you're saying like the audience can start driving your content, you know what's working, you see what people are talking about. And then you start to craft your content around that rather than what you actually believe. And it took me a while to step back and realize that that was happening to me. And I think that's why I try to like empathize. But yeah, in the instance of James Lindsay, there's so many people who are I'm just like, okay, maybe you don't realize it, but he seems like a very different case where I'm like, no, because he, you know, he gets happy about his own trolling and all these other things. I'm like, all right, I think you're very intentional with what you're doing. But you know, I'm curious with this and you know, looking at this and kind of analyzing it, and you and Chris originally thinking about writing a paper or something on this, like, what would that look like? What, what, you know, now that you guys have some episodes and stuff, it's been over a year, you have all this time under your belts, like, what would a research paper about this guru or IDW phenomenon kind of look like? Yeah. So it would, we've got more than enough material now to write a bevy of papers, and we do, we promise we will, we will, we will. But you know, I could, in terms of the sort of an academic type paper, what we would do, what we need to do is, is basically go through these, these facets or dimensions or aspects of gurus that we think we've identified, and basically run through those and look at how these different features often seem to turn up in varying degrees in the same people. So, you know, I've hinted at some of those already. So you've got this, I'll give you some of the names just to give you a hint about some of these things. They're mommy. They're tongue-in-cheek names. So Galaxy Brainness, that kind of, that kind of, you know, having this polymathic ability across all these different fields. I mean, you know, Bret and Heather Weinstein, for instance, they take their purported expertise in evolutionary biology and take that as the secret, the key that unlocks pretty much every question in life. This, this cultish kind of feature, which you kind of talked about, that kind of interplay, and you see a lot of them do this kind of gatekeeping and management, like they'll, they'll pray, like, you know, if they're, they have disciples or fans who are extremely loyal and, and agree with everything and attack the people who disagree, you know, then they'll get showered with praise and so on. There is, there is some social manipulation at play. But look, some of the really key stuff that is kind of crucial to them is that they're almost all anti-establishment. Yeah, you're not going to find a guru who says, yes, the, you know, the, the CDC and the NIH, NIH sometimes makes mistakes, isn't always correct, but, you know, broadly speaking, they're correct. And this is why, right. And, you know, this is where Carl Sagan, for instance, is not a toxic guru because he would provide an accurate view, say, of the current understanding of astronomy and so on. But the, the current crop of secular gurus really make their mark and really define and niche for themselves by setting themselves in opposition to the establishment sources of knowledge, right? It could be the universities, which apparently are completely corrupted by, by wokeness and all left-wing ideologies, so you can't trust them. It could be the government, which is in the pocket of big business and, you know, is out to get you or whatever. So that's connected with the conspiracy theories, right? Most of them do indulge in one degree or another in, in these conspiracy theories. And, you know, the recent controversy with Joe Rogan and his guests, McCulloch and Malone, like the conspiracy theories outlined there and fully supported by Joe Rogan, it must be said. Ah, that shit crazy, right? Yeah. According, according to those, according to those conspiracy theories, Fauci and Johns Hopkins and other actors, maybe in collaboration with the Chinese, deliberately created and released this virus in order to put the population into a state of fear and suppressed life-saving treatments like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine in order to force everyone to, well, first we'll control them generally, but also force them to take vaccines, which don't work and will also kill you for some nefarious purposes that are unspecified. Now, that's an example of a conspiracy theory. Now, they're not always that extreme, but you'll find in most of the gurus, there are elements of conspiracy theories. So I could go on, but you know, I might stop there and just say, you know, you can see there that there are anecdotal sort of evidence, I suppose, from the various gurus that we need to collect together and just present. And we can also relate this to, you know, the academic, the psychological, the sociological literature because we know a lot about how conspiracy theories work, about how cults work, about how narcissism works. So yeah, yeah, it almost seems like building like a personality profile, right? Like, you know, and like these warning signs and look out for, but you know, this is something that actually just came to me because yesterday I was recording an episode with Michael Bucks, our who wrote a book on innovation, right? Human Frontiers and talks about stagnation and innovation and all that. And I'm curious because they're just kind of, you know, with these gurus, there's this like anti-establishment and, you know, the galaxy brain is like, I'm thinking, I'm looking at things differently. And, you know, one would argue that that's where some of the greatest achievements have come from, right? It's just having these wild and crazy ideas. So where do you think, you know, like your research or two, like where do you think that balance comes in with, you know, having those really out there, like I'm thinking different type ideas and then, you know, just being totally off the rails. Like something that I've noticed that you guys, you guys see as a pattern with a lot of these gurus is, you know, whether it was like Gadsad or like Brett or whoever it is, they're presenting something as though it's like this profound nobody's ever thought of this. And they're just wording it in a weird way, but it's like, no, this is something that we already know of and it's been around for ages. So, so yeah, where's that balance between innovative ideas, you know, so we can move forward with technology, research, whatever, and then like, just being one of these gurus who's just not even aware of, we already, we already have this stuff, you know. Yeah. No, it's actually, it's very much true. Like the one of the best, like we're almost figuring out like it's almost like a guidebook on how to be a guru, but one of the best tricks that you can do is, is take some like relatively well known, like within like some, some insight or some theory from within a discipline that might not be publicly that well known, right, put it into your own words, right. And, and around that, maybe add a bit of flair, right. It could be a bit crazy, sort of reachy type unsupported stuff just to make it a bit sexier and then present it as your own thing that you've discovered, right. People will eat that up with a spoon. It'll be kind of true. Yeah. The part that's true will not be new in the part that isn't true. I'm sorry, that isn't you won't be true, but that's okay. The whole thing will sell fantastically and that gets done a lot. Look, you know, people like the Heather and Brett Weinstein explicitly compare themselves to Galileo, right. So that they do do these, so those comparisons, and they make that argument, right, that this, that they're, that you need these people that are brave enough, adventurous enough, open-minded enough, right, to explore the new horizons. And implicit in this is that the, the conventional people, people who are not gurus are somehow constrained within this very narrow window and are afraid to explore new ideas or debate ideas, right. Now, that is, I feel largely untrue. There is like, for instance, let's take the lab leak hypothesis surrounding COVID. Now, that, that is something that, that is, that's the topic about which that is said, right. Yeah. That is not being considered properly within respectable circles, and you need these outlier people to sort of push that forward. That's really not true. Like, like the heaps of, heaps of articles published by standard research is considering the evidence, like it's, it's debated and been talked about at length within, within normal scientific medical circles. What's not done is treating some sort of random little thing as, as this smoking gun and drawing these unsupported inferences and basically pushing a particular perspective that is not supported by the evidence. So it's a, you could see that it can be a bit of a trick, you know, to present the orthodoxy as being, you know, you know, have this tunnel vision and so on. And so it's a bit of a trick there. Look, and we actually wrote, Chris and I wrote an article called, you're probably not Galileo in response to Brett, because, you know, the thing to remember is that, you know, big advances in a discipline, especially today, but even back in the day, when, you know, you could be a kind of a natural philosopher and be kind of like, like Newton and kind of be a bit of an expert at everything. Because we knew so much less, right? You know, the boundaries of knowledge have expanded so much that those people don't really exist, right? You need to specialise because, yeah. Now, but even, but even then as, as today, like these, you know, big, you know, earthshattering insights and big new strides forward are not made by someone sitting at home in front of their microphone like us, right? They're not, they're not revealed on a podcast, right? They're not done sitting in your armchair, just speculating about stuff, right? They're done by working scientists, right? So, you know, and so 99 times over, well, more than that, it's hard to say how often like, like every physicist gets, you know, crazy stuff sent to them by cranks, who think that they've figured out a theory of everything, right? Like, like Eric Weinstein claims to have with his, you know, whatever it's called, I've forgotten it. You know, most, you know, so anyway, yeah, so I guess that's my, that's my rejoinder to that. I like, you know, as someone who works in, you know, you know, as a researcher on a work to cross a bunch of different fields in the, in the softer sciences as well as the harder sciences. There's heaps of innovation going on. Yeah, there's heaps of debate. There's heaps of heterodoxy. The way that science and academia and various institutions are portrayed in by the gurus and in some of the popular media is just not accurate. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's something I've been thinking about a lot lately, just, you know, completely outside the realm of this topic, kind of. I've been trying to figure out why people love like I'm one, I'm Rand's philosophy and all this individualism. And I've noticed when reading those books, a lot of these like, big, you know, innovations are, it's all attributed to like one person, right? Like, for example, apples, all booms, Steve Jobs, then there's Jeff Bezos, there's Bill Gates. And, you know, I'm like, no, this, this isn't a real story. There's, there's teams of people. There's a lot of people, right? And, you know, what is Isaac Newton's quote? Like, you know, if I see further, it's only by standing on the shoulders of giants, right? But we like that narrative of, oh, this one person. And yeah, like you said, like with, with the realm of knowledge that we have now, someone's not just going to be sitting there and just like, aha, I figured this out with nobody else as when you have just so much, you know, not enough funding, but funding going into research, all these people, you know, towing around with ideas. But something else I've noticed too is there's kind of like closed loop, right? With these gurus where they're all kind of like talking to each other. And I think a great example, you have like Dr. Robert Malone and then Micola, like, they're like, oh, yeah, I was talking to like Malone's like, I was talking to Micola, and he agrees with this. And Micola's like, yeah, I was talking to Malone. And it's like, okay, and then they, they, they have this kind of delusion that these other people are challenging them when it's really just a bunch of yes men. And they're all just kind of feeding off each other. But, you know, I wanted to ask you too, like, how, like, how do you and Chris make sure that you avoid some of these things, especially if you were going to write a paper on this, for example, right? How do you know that you're getting the proper type of feedback and someone's challenging you correctly? You know what I mean? Because this is something that I try to, you know, work on when I'm going through my own like thoughts and everything like that. It's like, I don't want people agreeing with me just because, you know? Yeah. Well, firstly, you're right. You know, like I actually, you know, broadly speaking, I was, you know, positively disposed to the whole sort of heterodox movement. You know, I was almost joined the heterodox thing, you know, local chapter or whatever in Australia, because I generally like the idea, you know, philosophers too, you know, they like the idea of like being a bit like Peter Singer, who is known for these, you know, playing with completely controversial ideas. Like, you can't say that. Yeah, I love that. Yeah. Yeah. You know, like, that's that's thought like it may be, you know, it may be not directly correct, but it it's thought provoking and challenge and challenges you. So in principle, the idea is great. But what we see in practice is that these characters, you know, do align 100%, it seems, on so many on so many issues. And they, they talk so much about being the ones who are willing and able to have those tough conversation and those debates. But then they spend three hours just clapping each other on the back and telling each other how wonderful they are and how they're saving Western civilization with this conversation. Um, so how do we avoid it? Well, I mean, one of the things we do is we, is we, we have a, like a writer reply for anyone we criticize, they are welcome on the podcast and they get to say their piece, right? So this is even true of people we haven't covered, people who want to criticize us. So for instance, we had on a chap called Daniel Harper, who is quite a strong sort of communist, I guess you would say, you know, very much politically from that end. And from, from his point of view, we were kind of our criticism of gurus was too, was too faint. You know what I mean? We weren't calling them out for the, for the, you know, the structural racist, et cetera. We weren't calling them out for political stuff. We're calling them out on sort of intellectual grounds, I guess you would say. So we had a problem with us. So we had him on and he, he spoke at length about, about his issues and we tried to respond. We had Sam Harris took us up on, on, on that invitation. And, you know, if anyone has listened to that, you'll know that, you know, he got, he got his airtime, right? He, he took up most of the time and, and, and pushed back very hard. Um, I think, um, one, one of the ways we're trying to avoid getting sucked into any of those little rabbit holes, because I think it's always possible is to try to avoid the political lens, you know, like you can criticize a lot of these people on political grounds. And Chris and I try to be very upfront about, look, this is where our political sympathies lie. They're not very interesting. We're like, we're left-wing liberals, a lot of people. Um, but they're like, we generally do not, our motivation is genuinely not political, right? And so we, we do, we will have problems with people across the spectrum. Um, and, you know, for what we think is unclear thinking, um, deceptive language and so on. So, but, you know, having, having said all that, you know, I definitely can see the, you know, most of our audiences, you know, doesn't, don't like sort of right-wing reactionary type stuff. So if we cover a right-wing reactionary type person, and we'll get lots of cheers and, you know, collapse and so on. Whereas if we're, you know, we might be covering someone who is intellectually really not good, but if they're kind of politically on, on the left, maybe they wouldn't be so enthusiastic. So look, I don't have a good answer for you. I guess the proof is the pointing. I mean, be skeptical. Like anyone listening to any of us, uh, should be skeptical and not assume that, um, we're always managing to do that because none of us are special. None of us have like a privileged kind of bird's-eye view on everything. We're all vulnerable to it. Um, us as much as anyone, we're a couple of mediocre academics with a podcast. That's it. No, I, I always tell people, because I have a lot of books in rotation. I always try to keep one in rotation, just reminding me of my own, my own biases and thinking errors and stuff like that. Like, uh, because even like Daniel Kahneman, right? He's like, Hey, I'm not invincible to these things either. Like these things happen. But, um, I, I wanted to, you know, branch off of that whole like kind of closed loop and, you know, patting each other on the back because these, uh, these goos, they do present themselves as like, Oh, Hey, like, Hey, let's have a conversation. I just want to have a conversation. And, uh, I think, I think we might have chatted about this a little on Twitter, but, uh, from my experience, there is no conversation. So it's actually been guys you've covered. Like the seem to love, I asked him a question about one of his opinions and he called me like a fucking idiot and he blocked me. Right. Like, uh, God said his recent book, uh, I review all the books I read. I wrote, you know, I wrote what I thought was a fair review. Uh, I even like took out the word grifter in one point. I tried to be as nice as possible. He blocked me. Dave Rubin blocked me. So like, what, what do you think that is? Or do you think that like, are there any gurus that are better than others that like, were they willing to have those conversations? But it seems like for as much as they're out there, because it seems like one of the ideas is like, Oh, Hey, let's, let's share ideas and all these other things. They're really, they're really sensitive. If that's the only thing I can think of is like, it feels like they're very, very sensitive. And I guess I get it because I'm sure they get a bunch of people just harassing them all day. So they might have that quick trigger finger to block, but at a certain point I'm like, wow, that was really like, that was very minor watching you block this person or even a wonderful person like myself. You know what I mean? Yes. If you're clearly not a troll, I can see that. Yeah. No, I mean, look, yeah, it's true. You've got to make allowances for, for, for Twitter and social media. Um, and if someone's a bit famous, then, um, they could, you know, you make some allowances, but I still think what you say is true. They do tend to have thin skins. They do tend to react extraordinarily strongly to criticism. And I don't see them ever compromising. Um, and so, you know, I think that fits with the guru kind of thing. Like you cannot, like in a, in a traditional kind of cult or a religious movement, you cannot criticize the leader, right? It's the, it's his way, all the highway. And, um, that's, that's how they work. Um, you know, if you praise the leader and you do, and you do, and you subscribe to everything 100% and you're an enthusiastic repeater of, of their ideas, then you'll get praised and being described as, you know, super insightful and, and someone who really sees further than most and so on. And if you disagree, then, you know, at first they might make a big deal of being disappointed in you and it's such a shame, you know, and you see, I mean, not all of them are equal, right? I mean, that, you know, we're not, we're not putting people into a, like a, like a flat category in whichever one is the same. So, you know, to his credit, someone, um, like, um, oh, uh, Sam Harris. Yeah. You know, has been good and they seem to live, even though he is something of an obnoxious ass, is to his credit, not, um, not, not someone who participates in that kind of back scratching, back padding thing and, and seems to just, you know, have his, he'll have his own take on whatever. And so, so he's quite willing to criticize other gurus too. And, you know, you see the reactions to that, like, it's not, it's not, they don't react well. So, people, various characters, Claire Lehman, for instance, is a kind of a, an editor of Quillette Magazine in Australia, was associated with some, you know, somewhat right-wing views in some respects, but has become recently increasingly disenchanted around, especially driven by COVID because of, of where a lot of the gurus have gone. She hasn't been shy about her criticism. Her criticisms have been valid on this topic, totally valid and expressed quite well, but they, she was, she's immediately portrayed as someone who was, for mysterious reasons, kind of gone crazy or succumbed. Yeah, that's been interesting to watch. Yeah. So, so much, so much for heterodoxy, right? You know, you need to be on board with it or you'll get excluded pretty quick. And, you know, the same thing happened to Sam Harris when, when he criticized them on those grants as well. Yeah. And, and, you know, speaking of, let's, let's, let's talk Rogan for just a little bit, because this week, the last two weeks, I guess, I've been just absolutely insane with all the controversy around Spotify and everything, but Joe Rogan, he, you know, addressed it. A lot of people are like, I think I replied to Chris, like a lot of people are kind of seeing it as an apology. I just kind of saw it as him, like addressing it, not really like apologizing. He's like, Hey, here are my thoughts on it and all this. But even I think, I think Sam Harris, yeah, Sam Harris even like, Oh, hey, good on Joe for doing this, but something that you guys pointed out that like, I, like, I saw it, but I didn't really recognize it was that people like Joe Rogan who say, Hey, I'm just, I'm in the middle. I just ask questions. But it's always one pointing at one direction. And something that I've noticed, and I wrote about it was just for example, when he had Malone and McCullough on during, I listened to both three hour episodes. So this is like idea that nobody listens to it and they just, but I'm like, no, I spent six hours of my life. Maybe you've noticed this too, since you've had to listen to these, but when he has those guys on who agree with his opinions, that his little assistant JB like doesn't even exist. There's no fact checking, nothing, right? I think maybe in the McCullough one, there was like one fact check, right? But then when he had Josh Zeps on, I counted it and he fact checked Josh like four or five times within the first half hour, right? So when Joe, this is where that idea of self-deception comes in, because when Joe addressed this situation, he's like, Hey, I just bring people on with different opinions and I try to push back and challenge, but it doesn't, it doesn't seem like he realizes like, I think if he quantified how often he fact checked people, like, I wonder if that would like give him an aha moment or he just, he has that bias blind spot. Like, what are your thoughts on that? Cause it's interesting to watch. I have a lot of thoughts about that. Yeah. So look, Joe Rogan's often described as a big dummy. And when it comes to his epistemics, he certainly is, right? He's someone who struggles, he's someone who believed them in landing was a hoax. He's vulnerable to conspiracy theories and he's, he's just not very good at getting his head around scientific reality based things. That being said, he's got great instincts. Yeah. He's got great social intelligence and he, he, and that apology video was extremely well crafted. As you said, it's, it's, it's sorry, not sorry. Right? Yeah. He doesn't, he's not, he doesn't really apologize for anything. It's a defense and a justification. And as you say, it's quite misleading. Yeah. Because, because he presents, I mean, like it comes across really well. It comes across as big hearted as look, I'm just this guy, I'm trying to make his podcast has become really successful. I like talking to people because it's interesting to talk to people. I'm not very prepared a lot of the time. I'm just trying to figure stuff out. I've got an open mind. And you know, if you take him at face value, he's made a few missteps. And people are jumping on him for, for getting it wrong. Right? Yeah. Now, as you say, that's not true. Right. That's not a fair reflection of what he's actually been doing. When he has someone who was presenting like an orthodox view and not crazy conspiracy theories, he's fact checking them at a mile a minute. He's evincing extreme skepticism. And he doesn't come to the party just with, with no background. In fact, after like in the apology video, he mentioned how he enjoyed his talk with and I've forgotten the name. Sanjay Gupta? Sanjay Gupta, thank you. He said, Oh, I enjoyed that. I got a lot out of that talk. He was growing about owning Sanjay Gupta. He disagreed with that. He said, I've, he's got a folder labeled cooties with all of the research, right? And he said, Oh, Sanjay Gupta thought he was going to come and kind of just like explain stuff to me. But I, I, you know, he was surprised because I knew stuff. I had it all figured out. So he, he was not coming. So that was someone representing just a normal worldview, right? And, and Rogan was coming to it. Not as, not as just a guy having a conversation or someone who is, you know, doesn't have any dog in the fight, but as someone, as, as an activist, right? Someone with strong preexisting worldviews. And, and he felt that he had won that debate against Sanjay Gupta. When, when he comes to McCulloch and Malone, as you say, there's no fact-checking. He's, he's, he asked these leading questions, breathless, leading questions, which basically presume that everything that's said is right. You know, he calls them, you're saying that people need to rise up in risk, you know, at this, at the, at the terrible stuff that's going on. He basically is on board, like a hundred percent on board. So he's not a disinterested person on, on certain topics. Look, that being said, like a lot of people defending Joe, sort of remember Joe Rogan from a lot of his other podcasts, you know, when he started podcasts on all kinds of, you know, he'd done all kinds of interviews on all kinds of stuff. And, you know, he could do on topics that are not connected to one of his conspiracy theories or are not connected with one of, like he's, he's very political character as well. Just a separate topic. If it's not connected to political polarization or conspiracy theories, then he's perfectly, he's fine. You know what I mean? He, he is. But on these topics, it's, it's really quite dangerous. And I find it quite frustrating because the question of whether or not, say Spotify should continue its, you know, hundred contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars or whether it should exert any kind of like restrictions on what Joe does is presented as well at that censorship. Right. So you just got to, well, I, there's difficult questions around this, but it's not censorship. Censorship is done by the government, right? Saying that it's illegal, right? To say such a thing. Like it is not sent, not, not censoring doesn't mean that a company or a person is obligated to participating in spreading like very dangerous healthness information, which is basically what you're saying to someone like Spotify. So it's perfectly okay. I would say for Spotify to choose to withdraw from that relationship, because they shouldn't be obligated to help Joe spread ideas, which, you know, have been proven to directly lead to death, basically. Yeah. Yeah. You know, when it, you know, going back to the whole fact checking thing, I think when I first started noticing this and I wanted to like start keeping track, because, you know, I used to listen to Robin a lot more, but as soon as I saw him like kind of going down this path, it was even pre COVID. I was like, I kind of see you're like, slant. But anyways, when he had Malone on and Malone was saying that hospitals are getting paid $3,000 for like every COVID death and they're like covering them up and like saying like a gunshot wound is a COVID death. And Joe Rogan didn't even blink. He didn't say like, wait, really? Like, do you have any proof? He did nothing. I'm like, you're just letting all of this information just wash over you. As though it's fact, no matter how out there, you know, it is. And, and yeah, it's, it's been really interesting. And like you said, we have Sanjay Gupta on and I'm curious, I'm curious too, because this seems like a broader societal problem, right? Because a lot of this has to do with like intellectual humility, right? It's something that I never had until I got sober. When I realized like, Hey, maybe I don't know everything, right? But it's not just these gurus, it's not just the host, but the people listening. I'm sure you get it all the time. You're, you're an academic years of experience. You have Twitter randos just coming to you calling you an idiot, right? Have you noticed this? And what do you, and do you think like it's, it's the internet and the availability of information? Like, what's making people think that they're so damn smart that they're like, just like, Oh, did you see me own that PhD person? Even though I'm just some like guy who like sits at my house, like it's really like, I'm a college dropout. And I recognize that I read, I do what I can. But it's just interesting when I see people think that they just took down someone who's been researching for decades, you know? Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, yes, one nuance to that is there are a bunch of people with PhDs and academics, including me that are by no means brilliant. So, you know, so, you know, it's not like, it's not like, yeah, so I don't want to imply that, you know, unless you've got whatever credentials or something. Yeah, not the elitism and all that. Yeah, that's, that's not right. But, yeah, we're look, look, like in some sense, none of it's new. I mean, like say Joe Rogan talking conspiracy theories with pals, we're talking about how the America's going to hell in a hand basket because of the lefties or whatever, right? Those sorts of conversations happen on people's back porches all the time. And it always happened long before the internet came along. But but the thing that social media and the internet generally has has done is it's done this great leveling, where where there are no there are there is less and less. And, you know, the the inner the inner workings of institutions are more and the details that there's more and more information and there's more information about how the sausage is made. So perhaps a lot of them this stick that might have previously been attached to these institutions has evaporated. But it's like a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. Like, you know, the, you know, like there'll be some email or some document, you know, that serve, you know, you know, and, you know, like he's a dumb stupid stuff happens in government universities, of course it does. And, you know, so but of course, the worst of the worst is what will come out. And so this is there's a decrease in confidence in institutions. But I think that misses the big picture, like if you look at the at the progress that's occurred over the last 300 years, right? It's happened due to these technocratic systems whether it's a national healthcare system or whether it's a research institutes or whatever. I mean, the fact that we, you know, most of us in the first world are living extraordinarily comfortable lives compared to is due to these institutions and they haven't really changed. But our perception of them has changed. So as well as that obviously the internet gives every single person a platform. And we all have an equal opportunity to make our voice heard. Now in that kind of environment, it is not the most qualified, the most expert guy or girl who is their busy researching away, writing their papers for journals, right, working in the lab, collecting data, doing statistics. These people don't have the skills or the time to become a big hit on the internet, right? If you look at the people who become a big hit on the internet, these people who don't do that stuff, these are the people who spend all their time focusing and building skills on becoming a big hit on the internet, which is exactly what these people specialize in. So yeah, it kind of, yeah, if I could just wave a magic wand and see one sort of sort of change and sort of public awareness, it would be that it would be, you know, if we could just get a greater awareness that the people who specialize in sounding convincing in sounding trustworthy in in in saying things that feel intuitively and emotionally appealing. Yeah, just, you know, please raise your skepticism bar for those people and maybe give some time just pay attention to the to the voices that are actually real, like whatever the topic is, let's say it's a scientific topic. Yeah, pay attention to the people with the genuine expertise because they're out there, they're just not the loudest voices and they may not have the glamour and the charisma that these other people have. Yeah, no, that's, that's literally one of the reasons I started this podcast. I just have this natural curiosity. I read these books from academics, I'm like, you know, these publishers that just published those books, but I want the average person to hear about these topics because there's a lot of very important work going on, especially all the people researching polarization misinformation stuff going on, like there's a lot of people researching this stuff. But like you said, it's hard to find that combination of someone who's doing the hard research, and they're also very charismatic and out there and doing these things. It's almost like we need to like pair up researchers with their own like PR person who can go out there and and do this stuff. But you know, so something I want to ask like going back to kind of the Spotify and Joe Rogan conversation since since you guys have a growing podcast that you know, it's gained a lot of traction, especially during COVID with all this stuff going on. But just your thoughts around like responsibility as a host, right? Because Joe Rogan is always like, Hey, don't listen to me. I'm just I'm just a guy with podcasts, you know, I never do it get this big, you know. And I saw this with, you know, when my YouTube channel blew up too, because when you cover something, and I'm sure you guys take this into consideration, which is why I respect that you guys like, don't try to try not to go too hard on people is your fans can just go after someone and harass them, right? So you know, Joe Rogan, like, I like I get it, because there's this invisible line that you cross where when you guys first started your podcast, right? Like how many listeners did you have compared to now? And there's this line that you cross, and nobody knows where that line is, where now you have a big audience. Now you have a certain amount of influence. So how much responsibility do you see like someone having for their audience? Like how much do you and Chris take that into consideration? How much do you see some of these gurus? Like, what responsibility do they have to get out the right information, say the right things, not send their audience to go attack people that they might be covering, you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, well, I think, yeah, look, I think we everyone has that responsibility. I agree with you there. And we hadn't really thought about it either, as you said, because at the big we didn't expect to get big or bigger. We expected to be this super niche type thing continue that way. And it becomes more of an issue when one is covered, one brings up someone who was a smaller figure. Yeah, it doesn't. And like, so if it's someone who's really big, then even if you have a reasonably big audience, then it's like little flea bites, you know what I mean? It's like, it's like saying, you know, Biden's a, you know, senile, you know, he's an idiot, right? I mean, you know, Biden doesn't care, right? There's a million other people saying that. But, you know, like, we struck this when we were covering Gads that actually, and along the way, in his material, he was doing an interview with another, you know, YouTuber, a podcaster called Chris Williamson. Okay, so, so in that podcast, in our view, Chris was being quite credulous and just kind of lapping up everything that God side was saying enthusiastically, even when, in our view, God side was the most stupid, self aggrandizing nonsense, right? So, so we criticize Chris quite strongly using strong language. And, you know, it was kind of tongue in cheek. And we did say stuff like, Oh, no, no, that's too mean or whatever. But we did, you know, it's meant to be a fun, relaxed kind of podcast. And we let ourselves be a little bit snarky there. So Chris, we got in touch with Chris Williamson, got in touch, and eventually came and kind of have a talk with us about the effect that that had on him, because a lot of people that he other, you know, podcasts as other people in the community that he respected a lot, listened to our podcast and listened to us basically laughing and making, you know, and and so he, so he made a very good defense of himself, you know, acknowledged, you know, where at the point, the, you know, many of the underlying points we were making acknowledged the truth in them. And for our part, we, you know, acknowledge that, you know, we sort of went a little bit too far, you know, we didn't, it didn't really cross our mind that yeah, having a bit of fun there would have had an impact on this character, Chris Williamson, who wasn't even the main topic of the show, it was meant to be about Gadsden. So yeah, look, I mean, it's just one, so look, by the way, we're still in touch with Chris Williamson. So the outcome of that was super positive, right? Because he's, he's, you know, I don't, I don't have a very different worldview from Chris, I think, right? But I, you know, he seems to be a nice guy who is, is trying his best, and he's certainly very pleasant and approachable. So, you know, I think that, and I think that there's something positive comes out of us having this continuing dialogue with him, even though we kind of live in completely different worlds, like he's kind of in the influencer type, young men, you know, how to be attractive to women kind of feel. So it's like different worlds, but you know, that's, that's a healthy thing. So look, I look, I don't basically, my answers, I don't know. We're just trying to navigate it like everyone else. Yeah, yeah, no, it's, it's weird too, because, you know, the other thing that the internet does is you never know when something's just going to go viral, right? Like, you could just make something very small or, or say, for example, like, because, you know, like, if you're punching up, right? But all of a sudden, if that episode goes viral, now all of a sudden, you're punching up, turns into punching down, and it's a difficult thing. And I hope people in the audience understand that aspect too, because those of us who create content, you never know what's going to just kind of explode and like, oh crap, I wish I could have gone back and been a little bit more careful, or, you know, or whatever, because I've seen that happen one too many times. But, you know, with, with the whole misinformation thing, too. Like, I've had, you know, a lot of people on here who write about, you know, freedom of speech and all this other stuff, and, you know, drown out bad ideas with good ideas, and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, that I guess that's one of the reasons why I appreciate your guys podcast, because you point out the flaws in each individual argument. And I think that's like, the best thing, right? Like, I would, I would ask everybody who gets infected by one of these gurus to listen to your guys' episode to get a little bit of the antidote, but, you know, you kind of mentioned that, you know, Spotify does, you know, they don't have to promote this, this kind of information. And I'm just, I'm just curious, like, you know, your overall thoughts, right? Because it seems like, I'll give you an example that you can, that you'll, you know, be able to relate to. When, when COVID started, before the social media platforms really purged QAnon, this QAnon YouTuber, he made a video, all these crazy COVID conspiracy theories. This was even before vaccines, right? And I made a video debunking it, right? Pointing out his bad arguments, what's bad science, all these other things. And YouTube wrongfully gave my channel a strike and took the video down, right? I appealed it to a human. The human said, nope, we stand by it. And it took me getting my media contacts to pressure YouTube in order to reverse it. So I guess when I see, you know, this idea of like, you know, platforms controlling what, what misinformation is, I'm like, with these algorithms still like in their infancy, I don't trust that. So that's one of my concerns. But, but yeah, so that's kind of where I stand. And I get curious, because I think there are podcasts like yours, where you make valid points, even though I don't think a lot of Joe Rogan's audience is coming over to see what you guys have to say or whatever. But what are your kind of like overall thoughts? Like, do you think that there's a downside if Spotify were to remove that? Do you think that could affect other, you know, like have some like collateral damage, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. No, look, it's an interesting problem, I think. So yeah, look, first of all, that happens to everyone. Right. Like, like, I like Chris, Chris Kavanaugh was just complaining about like he was saying, he's a very sarcastic person. And he he was saying very sarcastically. Oh, yes. And the Fauci was, you know, you know, conspired to kill people. And, you know, this very sarcastic thing. And he got a, you know, got a, you know, a Twitter thing, you know what I mean? To delete that, you know what I mean? He could have appealed it, but it would have taken weeks. So the algorithms that whatever they try to do, which we know they're going to do in an automated kind of way, because they can't spend the money to have, you know, legions of human beings reviewing every little thing are always going to be imperfect. Right. But so it is just one of those trade offs, you know, where like for every kind of unfair strike that someone like yourself or Chris might get, you know, there might be, you know, a thousand true positives, right? So, you know, so that's, that's really, but that's, that's like a technical question, right? Most people also have a problem with the tech companies being the ones who decide. Yeah, which is, which is a very reasonable concern to have. And one, one that I've voiced myself previously very strongly. Look, but I think the thing to acknowledge is, and you know, look, everyone likes free speech, free speech is a good thing, right? Yeah, it's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. It's like democracy. Democracy is a good thing, right? We all agree on that. But you know, we have democracy, but we don't have direct democracy, but we don't have people voting on every single, like with a plebiscite on every single, on their smartphones, on every single little decision, we have representative democracy, which is actually slightly less democratic than the other one. But it's universally acknowledged to just work better, right? Now, the same goes for free speech, like people, even people that are very strongly in favor of free speech and even free speech absolutists, many of which would not have a problem say we're Spotify not hosting a podcast on Holocaust denialism, for instance, right? Or would not, you know, it's the fire and the crowded theater type idea as well, people do not have a problem with, with actual direct exhortations to commit violence, right? And furthermore, people don't have a problem with, you know, de-platforming or preventing the spread or, you know, the, the, the advertisement or propaganda for stuff, say, promoting health treatments, yes, snake oil stuff, like there's, you know, there are, there are dangerous products that some people, people will try to monetize and sell that are dangerous to people. So, so people, so even people that are really, you know, not really strongly on that line do not have a problem with those things. So there clearly is always a line. And so I think the question always is, does this material cross, cross the red line? And look, in my view, you know, Rogan's recent stuff, Colin Malone, this, it is, it is full ball, paranoid, conspiratorial, anti-vax misinformation that is, it's different from, say, believing that the moon landing was a hoax because it, there is a direct inference about your health decisions, right, running out and buying, buying ivermectin, right, instead of getting vaccinated is killing people in the United States where vaccination rates are quite low. So, so I don't think any of us should just try to, I mean, it's very tempting to go for a sort of an absolutist or kind of rights based position because it's simple and easy. You say, you know, you know, I, you know, just agree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death, you're right to say it, you know, and just to take that thing. But really what that is is avoiding the issue and it's inconsistent because, because there's always, there are always things that will be on the pile. The tough problem that we need to embrace is that is, is we have to figure out where that line is about where, where the boundary of reasonable, fair, even speculation and so on is and what lies beyond it. And I'm not pretending it's an easy question. I'm not pretending there isn't sort of costs and benefits, but I think we need to accept it. Yeah. So I just got a few more questions for you Matt, but let me, let me ask you this. So let's, let's imagine, let's, let's imagine that Joe Rogan was the person he thinks he is, right? He just has people on from both sides of arguments. He preaches them both. Like if, if he like, let's say he had Malone and McCullough on and he challenged them for three hours straight, right? Where's your evidence? Where did that study come from? Hey, did you know that that study was debunked? Hey, that, you know, that, that, that place that did that research, there are some fringe like Christian group that nobody respects, right? Let's say he pushed them like super hard. Then like, do you think that would be acceptable? Right? Like if it was being challenged, because it does, like I see what you're saying when it has like the whole like, Oh, just come here and just say everything that you want and I'll just agree with you. Like that's dangerous. But if he was challenging it, the way that we would hope he would, do you think that that changes that a little bit? You know what I mean? Because now you have the misinformation, but you don't have somebody who's just like, uh-huh, uh-huh. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. I look, I mean, there's different bars. Is that when you say acceptable? Like do I think it's a good idea? Do I think it's a helpful thing? Do I think it's a positive thing? Do I think it should be allowed? You know what I mean? All allowed. So there's a whole different ways to answer that. Right? Look, I think, yeah, depending on the topic, having crazies on to challenge them can be a good idea. Like if their ideas are already spreading, you know, already very prevalent and a lot of people are buying into them, then it may well be helpful to have them on debate. I'm actually, I'm not a big fan of debate culture. Me neither. Because the thing is, is that people that are pushing this information are generally very good at a whole bunch of rhetorical techniques. Yeah. That means that the debate gives doesn't really, like, yeah. Look, what would, what we'd all like to be true is that there's this open marketplace of ideas, right? And the idea and good ideas and bad ideas sort of rub up against each other and come into competition. And the good ideas win out because they're supported by evidence and are more reasonable and coherent. That's what we'd like to be true. Unfortunately, it's just not the case. Propaganda and misinformation is intuitively and emotionally compelling. Yeah. People who are promoting it are often very good at a variety of rhetorical techniques like gishgalopping or using the sciencey sounding language, making up terms like mass formation. So, you know, it's, it's a tough one. Yeah. No, I, I, I, I 1000% agree. And I never have a good way of phrasing this, but I, I, it just feels like a lot, there's a lot of really dumb people where like the bad ideas are going to win out because they're emotionally driven and everything like that. But like, even with the gishgalop, I wrote a sub stack piece where, you know, I think, I think the first episode of yours that I listened to was when you were covering, uh, Rogan, I think it was when he had Jack along before you guys did the follow up with Micola and Malone and stuff. But anyways, uh, I, I, so I personally started like with, with a lot of the current mandates and the way the science has been kind of updated and we know that Omicron's like breaking through the vaccines and everything, you know, and then seeing people still like acting like we're still like pre-vaccine era kind of, you know, I, I had this kind of a little bit of skepticism and that's when the Micola episode came out. And it was just three hours of this guy saying all these sciencey things. He has a computer there with so many studies. And just because like, you know, I know there's like truth default theory, but like, I'm the opposite. I'm skeptical of everyone at first until they prove themselves. So I was like, this guy just said this stuff for three hours and unless I go do some more research, there's no way if I'll know that he's, you know, whether he's saying it's true or not. And, uh, and that's what's difficult is a lot of people aren't, you know, I'm not special. I'm just a really big skeptic, but a lot of people aren't going to listen to a three hour Rogan podcast and go try to disprove like, uh, Donald Trump was great at that technique, right? You'd have to, you'd have to spend hours fact checking everything you said in 90 seconds. Yeah. It's really difficult. Yeah. In a way, the, the sort of, the sort of this heterodox and free speech absolutist kind of point of view is, is caviar emptor. Right. Like if you, you know, these are, this is just a guy telling you his ideas, having this conversation. If you're, if you're dumb enough to believe that, then that's on you, right? You need to take responsibility for your own decisions and your own opinions, right? It's very much a self-responsibility model, right? But as you say, it's not reasonable to expect a casual listener to Joe Rogan to be able to debunk and see what's wrong with, with a lot of that Gishgalop being assertions that are made by someone like Malone or McCullough, who are very practiced at speaking in a sciencey way, have all of these, it is spurious misinformation that they're presenting, but it is superficially extremely compelling and sounds very sciency. Now you, you may be the sort of person who goes out and searches like a debunking done by someone who is, is, is better at that kind of thing, that there is an account called debunk the funk, which I really, is great and, and he does do that. Um, but you know, it's not reasonable in my view to expect all of us to, to be, have to do that all the time. Um, it's the same way. Like if you go to the chemist and you, and you, you're, you're looking for some sort of thing for a headache, right? It shouldn't be on you to go, do I need to check that this doesn't have arsenic in it? Like every time, you know, there are, so, you know, I guess I'm a, look, I'm a milk toast kind of centristy in many, in many ways, but I guess that's where I land on this. Um, yes, you know, speculation's good. It's, it's okay. It's, you know, disagreement. Um, and people who counteract the mainstream, that's fine. That's good. By all means, let a thousand flowers bloom, but, um, please, let's, let's have some, yeah, we can't have no standards whatsoever. Yeah. No, it's, it's why I'm always, I'm always torn on this, this type of thing, because I know it's, it's just, it's ridiculous to expect people to do that kind of research all the time. I think that's a great analogy. Like, you know, am I going to check, double-check my medication every time? Like, you know, we all have wives, we have, you know, we have kids, we have jobs, we have all these things. Most people are listening to this on their way to work or while they're working out, they're not going to go home and like, you know, and it's just like, I'm just naturally like, oh, let's see what they have to say. But anyways, one of the last things I wanted to talk to you about, because, uh, yeah, it's, it's, I've been curious, is Russell Brand, all right. So you guys covered him a long time ago, just my brief history with Russell Brand. I was like a huge fan of his like comedy and like movies and stuff like that. But when I got sober early in my sobriety, I found out he was sober. He released his book. I was like two or three years sober. He released his book Recovery. And I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed the way he covered the 12 steps with a lot of people have misconceptions, all that kind of stuff. But kind of what you guys talked about in your episode about him, which focused on his kind of like spirituality aspect. Uh, yeah, he gets like really out there and like says all these things and like goes round and round. And that's, that's where I'm like, all right, Russell, calm down. But anyways, you guys covered Russell a while ago. And I like, I don't know if you guys have been keeping up, but I have was like YouTube channel in front of me. And since then it seems like he's, he's almost like JP Sears version 2.0, right? Like everything's questioning the establishment, big pharma. Uh, one of his newest videos that has a million views is Defending Joe Rogan and all these other things. And, and like it, it's breaking my heart. It is breaking my heart, Matt, because of the good that I know Russell could do. I used to recommend his book recovery when I was working at a drug and alcohol rehab. I'm like, read this, read this. So to see him, it feels like he's chasing that kind of, you know, like, ooh, ooh, ooh, if I do this kind of content. So, so yeah, I don't know if you've been keeping up with it. Is there a second Russell brand episode coming? What are your, what are your thoughts on the route Russell's been going? Look, I think a second Russell bread episode is definitely warranted. Yeah. I've seen the same kind of thing you have there when Chris has to and yeah, it's wild, isn't it? Um, look, Russell brand, like he always had that aspect to him, right? He's the sort of poet, poetic, spiritual, fast talking kind of free association, crazy wisdom, right? And, you know, sometimes that's, that's cool. You know, like if you're talking, you know, especially, you know, I might be talking about your personal experiences with addiction and stuff like that and sharing that sort of thing. And, you know, people can get, you know, insights from that and it can't work. It can work. You know, I'd say the same of Jordan Peterson, you know, like when Jordan Peterson, you know, back 12 rules for life and he's talking that, that kind of, you know, self responsibility, you know, you know, put yourself up by your bootstraps kind of thing. If you're, if you're a, you know, you could be a person at a certain time of life struggling with certain things and that language can, can speak to you. It doesn't always mean that that modality is going to, you know, it's not a, it can lead, if you start talking about more scientific type things or naturalistic, materialistic things, that, that approach, that poetic kind of approach can lead you up the garden path. Now, but God, Russell Brand is such an interesting character because he, he's, like JPC is, he's, he's, he's sort of part of this sort of weird horseshoe type thing. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, you know, there's another podcast called Conspiratuality, which is a very good one, which, which covers the sort of inter, this sort of intersection between sort of natural wellness and spirituality and alternative health and so on. And this weird kind of paleo conservatism, you know, quite, quite like this new form of conservatism, like I'm not talking about, you know, Ronald Reagan type conservatism, talking about this kind of really weird kind of, you know, you only eat red meat and, you know, you know, men need to do this and women need to do that. And it's, it's, it's a new thing. And so Russell Brand, you know, as you say, sort of, you know, was, you know, was always this kind of free thinker and anti institutional kind of person, very much skeptical of mainstream narratives and that that sort of coming from that sort of this like revolutionary leftish kind of point of view. And what he's quite easily transitioned to that sort of paranoid right. And what it, to my mind, it's really just an example of how the political landscape has shifted. And it is not so much a kind of your sort of left wing, right wing thing anymore. It's actually more that, that there is this very strange kind of new kind of anti institution, anti establishment, hyper skeptical, conspiratorial, don't trust it, you know, any of them type thing. And it is anti scientific as well, even though many of them do pay lip service to a scientific worldview. I mean, Brett, Brett Weinstein is the perfect example of this and Heather Hain too, who, who present themselves as being these exemplars of good scientific thinking. But actually what they have is this, is this naturalistic naturalist best, essentially woo kind of kind of thing. So, so yeah, it concerns me. And it's Russell Brand is just such a fascinating character. And yeah, here's another case where I think that there's an interplay with the kind of person who becomes a guru or is susceptible to these things. I mean, Russell Brand as just the kind of guy he is, I think, you can see how susceptible. Yeah, it's really, it's really weird too, because he's very self, he's like self aware of it, because a lot of us addicts and stuff like we think we're, you know, we think we're, you know, super like great and all these other we think a lot and he'll call himself out on that. But then it seems like he also plays into it. But yeah, you know, just like kind of one of the lessons I want to touch on that I was just thinking of is like, there's this really fine line, like I am like a left leaning liberal progressive, like, I wanted Bernie Sanders to be president, I think big pharma like because my drug was prescription opioids, right? So I'm skeptical of big pharma and, you know, the weight that they put on our government to like, all these other things, right? So I'm so skeptical of them, right? But there's there's a whole group of people like me, where it seems like there's this fine line where they can dip into that kind of conservatism that you're talking about where it quickly became like, nope, don't trust any science, don't trust any institution where like, so it went from like this skepticism to this absolute like, oh, the government's trying to control you. They're trying to make you do this. Don't like you guys talked about this with JP Sears. And I had no idea, by the way, when I heard Chris on Megan Downs podcast, I was like, wait, did you say JP Sears like the guy who made those funny YouTube videos? I had no idea and I was showing my girlfriend and but it's weird. Like, have you noticed that how some liberals have had this kind of horseshoe where they dip and it's weird too with all the polarization that this is kind of the thing that has brought the two sides together? You know, like now you have like conservatives and liberals who are like anti backs or whatever. But yeah, I'm curious what what that is. Oh man, I mean, that's that's like a that's a huge topic in itself, isn't it? Yeah, it's kind of the direction the modern world is going. I mean, look, on no political scientists or anything like that, why you don't feel but I mean, it does seem that there's a big political reorientation going on, you know, like like left the leading parties used to be the parties of you know, the working class or whatever against big companies and corporations and and and so on. And and the right wing used to be like, you know, responsibility, you know, you know, conform to the you know, what what the the system is telling you to do, you know what I mean? And so on. And that that there's that reorientation where the right has become much more populist and and more institutional and the left has become more sort of statist if you like more more kind of like and also the party of, you know, professionals and academics and and people like that who are part of the system, right? So yeah, it's a confusing time to be thinking about politics. I mean, I so yeah, look, look, my sympathies, look, I'm just I think my advice for most people is I think you've been saying the same thing, which is that yes, it's good to be skeptical. Yeah, you know, institutions and the system does get it wrong heaps, you know, the Tuskegee, you know, experiments is a terrible example. The the opioid academic epidemic in the United States, another huge failing, right, of regulation and and, you know, farmer and so on. You know, we could make a great big list of all the ways in which our, you know, the the liberal systems that we and institutions that we've created have failed, right? Even on COVID, right? There's a nice big list of things where they've gotten a bunch of things wrong. But I think perfection, you know, perfection is we shouldn't expect that, you know, you know, like think about the conduct of World War Two, right? It was it was just one huge mistake after the next, you know, because in an unfolding emergency, it's very difficult to get everything right all the time. So it's just about getting that balance right. Yeah, like when it comes to skepticism, yes, be appropriately skeptical, but not conspiratorial and paranoid. Yeah. And about your institutions, yes, you know, hold their feet to the fire when they get stuff wrong and demand, you know, reforms and changes and for them not to make that mistake again, by all means, be an activist in that sense. But I'm not a I think, I think a revolution where we burn it all down dismantle the institutions. And by the way, you know, as you sort of said, you know, this sort of reorientation, like the left and the right do this, yeah, abolish the police, you know, you've got the left saying abolish the police, you've got the right saying we need to abolish the universities, right? The common populist thread is kind of just burn it all down and sort of start again. Look, I suggest that's a bad idea. Yeah, yeah. No, it took a while to get all these things organized. There's a lot of logistics to think of. But yeah, like, yeah, I guess one of my favorite sayings, I forgot where it originally was, like keep an open mind, but not so open that your brain falls out, right? Like, have this kind of skepticism, but know nowhere the line is, right? Like, for example, I'm skeptical of big pharma and you know, here in the States, they can do direct to consumer marketing. But like I got my damn vaccine, like I'm not that skeptical. I'm like, okay, you know, these are these are apples and apples and oranges. And, you know, there's a lot of nuance in these things. But yeah, so Matt, I've kept you here a very long time. I appreciate your time so much. I've been dying to have you on. So yeah, for everybody listening, who is unfamiliar with it, where, where can they find you? Follow the podcast, all that kind of good stuff. Okay, cool. Thanks, man. Yeah, look, it was awesome to be on here. I really enjoyed having this chat. It was great. Yeah, look, so our podcast is decoding the gurus. The Twitter handle is gurus pod, I think. Anyway, so I'm on Twitter under a pseudonym of Arthur C. Dent because Arthur Dent, the character from Hitchhiker's God to the Galaxy is my spirit animal. But I'm not really, I'm not really anonymous. And that'll do. Yeah. That's, let's say you can find our podcast and yeah, beautiful. Well, well, yeah, thanks for coming on. And yeah, we'll do this. We'll do this again sometime after we get Russell brand 2.0 on some other, some other episodes. That's good, Chris. Thanks, man.