Decoding the Gurus

We return to some old friends, and almost immediately, we regret the decision. Also, get ready for some heady insights from history, a new conspiracy hypothesis, and Game Theory based insights.The full episode is available to Patreon subscribers (1 hour, 37 minutes).Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurusSupplementary Material 4500:00 Introduction01:15 Mick Drop04:44 Scott Galloway's Favourite Conservative06:37 Konstantin Kisin: Neither Right Nor Left11:51 Insane Ad Reads in Podcastistan17:08 Aella's insights on history20:30 Bret's New Conspiracy Episode22:10 Bret on Epstein, Pizzagate, and Ritual Murder30:58 Heather, the personification of strategic disclaimers31:49 Bret's New Conspiracy: Epstein is Alive36:31 The Real Culprit is Game Theory44:25 Bret is a Force of Nature who is always vindicated46:36 The Grand Unification of Conspiracy Theories48:25 Cenk Uygur promotes 9/11 Conspiracies51:42 Peter Thiel in Ghoulish Pro-Nazi Form55:15 The Descent of the Discourse57:47 Eric visits Triggernometry (Again): Russian Woes01:05:20 The Eric Squid Ink Manoeuvre01:14:49 Eric is pro-Nuclear weapons tests01:19:27 Weinstein drives can take us multiplanetary01:28:28 The Weinstein Function: Justifying Enlightened Centrists Everywhere01:30:37 Drew Pavlou's latest stunt backfiresSourcesIs Epstein Alive? The 313th Evolutionary Lens (Bret Weinstein & Heather Heying podcast episode)DarkHorse clip discussing the Epstein theory (YouTube)Aella’s history insights threadAella’s large thread about homeschoolingInterview where Aella discusses the perceived benefits of homeschoolingBret Weinstein responding to critics saying he has lost his mindBret Weinstein linking Epstein and COVID conspiraciesCenk Uygur promoting 9/11 conspiracy claimsCenk Uygur criticising media responses to his conspiracy theoriesPeter Thiel comments invoking Weimar-era parallelsDrew Pavlou’s stunt backfires

Cult Season rumbles on as Chris and Matt expand their minds in an attempt to absorb the cosmic insights of spiritual influencer and alleged cult leader Teal Swan (born Mary Teal Bosworth, 1984). Our intrepid hosts explore her recent appearance on the Just Tap In podcast with Emilio “starchild” Ortiz — a beanie-wearing vessel of pure credulity, lobbing softball metaphysical questions gently into the astral winds.The topic covered is ostensibly “Major 2026 Predictions” but this is really just an entry point for discussion of the ancient origins of AI, multiversal astral contract negotiations, and, of course, the urgent need to discuss masculinity before we spiritually implode.You will learn insights, such as: how AI will eliminate ageing, guide us to SOURCE, amplify our shadow, and corrupt and deceive us ... all at once. Aliens and other cosmic beings are deeply concerned with and also not really all that bothered with humanity. Also, pop stars are apparently set to receive divine instructions to stabilise the collective psyche in 2026. And how we are all trapped in a planetary pressure cooker that will run at least until 2030. Teal is trying not to scare us, but it doesn’t look great (though it might also be great and lead to utopia).Expect astral board meetings, sensemaking redefinitions of “power” and “love”, warnings about the painful sacrifices required to join Teal’s “conscious community”, and some distinctly uncomfortable talk about opening gates and reframing mother–son dynamics. As ever, Matt and Chris attempt to decode the elevated vagueness, semantic gliding, and cosmic scaling of very earthly anxieties.All hail SOURCE!Decoding ContentJust Tap In Podcast #260: "Teal Swan – Why 2026 Is a Psychological & Relational Tipping Point for Humanity"LinksThe Gateway (Gizmodo Podcast, 2018) - Six-part investigative series by Jennings BrownThe Deep End (Freeform/Hulu, 2022) - Four-part docuseries by Jon KasbeMormon Stories #1607: Growing Up with Teal Swan - Diana Hansen Ribera - Interview with Teal's childhood best friendMormon Stories #1328-1331: Leaving Mormonism to Join Teal Swan's Cult - Jared DobsonBBC- Teal Swan: The woman encouraging her followers to visualise deathScam Goddess: The Culty Con of Teal Swan w/ Sarah MarshallConspirituality 111: Who's Afraid of Teal Swan (pt 2) (w/Jennings Brown)Prosody's Gurudex Website

In this interview episode, we are joined by physicists Sam Gregson (Bad Boy of Science YouTube channel) and Tim Henke to examine the rise of science populism: a style of science communication that borrows the tactics of political populism, including grievance narratives, institutional distrust, and conspiratorial framing, while presenting its advocates as lone truth-tellers battling a corrupt academic elite.We discuss how DTG favourites like Sabine Hossenfelder and Eric Weinstein, as well as fresh new faces Brian Keating and Avi Loeb, deploy selective truths about physics to fuel self-aggrandising, anti-expert narratives.Along the way, we also cover stuff like why “physics hasn’t progressed in 50 years”, cranks are useful props for populist arguments, and the strange obsession with Nobel Prizes.If you are interested in guru dynamics, science communication, and physics crankery, this might be an episode for you.LinksBad Boy of Science (Sam Gregson)Tim's Profile WebsiteBad Boy of Science – The Rise of Physics PopulisersTheories of Everything (Kurt Jaimungal)Losing the Nobel Prize – Brian KeatingInto the Impossible (Brian Keating)Sabine Hossenfelder’s YouTube ChannelThe Portal (Eric Weinstein)The Galileo Project (Avi Loeb)Sean Carroll – Mindscape / Preposterous UniverseNot Even Wrong (Peter Woit)

In a rare departure from our usual diet of online weirdos, this episode features an academic who is very much not a guru. We’re joined by Julia Rohrer, a psychologist at Leipzig University whose work straddles the disciplinary boundaries of open science, research transparency, and causal inference. Julia is also an editor at Psychological Science and has spent much of the last decade politely pointing out that psychologists often don’t quite know what they’re estimating, why, or under which assumptions.We talk about the state of psychology after the replication crisis, whether open science reforms have genuinely improved research practice (or just added new boxes to tick), and why causal thinking is unavoidable even when researchers insist they are “only describing associations.” Julia explains why the standard dance of imply causality → deny causality → add boilerplate disclaimer is unhelpful, and argues instead for being explicit about the causal questions researchers actually care about and the assumptions required to answer them.Along the way we discuss images of scientists in the public and amongst the gurus, how post-treatment bias sneaks into even well-intentioned experimental designs, why specifying the estimand matters more than running ever-fancier models, and how psychology’s current norms can potentially punish honesty about uncertainty. We also touch on her work on birth-order effects and offer some possible reasons for optimism.With all the guru talk, people sometimes ask us to recommend things that we like, and Julia's work is one such example!LinksJulia Rohrer’s websiteThe 100% CI blogRohrer, J. M. (2024). Causal inference for psychologists who think that causal inference is not for them. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 18(3), e12948.Rohrer, J. M., Tierney, W., Uhlmann, E. L., DeBruine, L. M., Heyman, T., Jones, B., ... & Yarkoni, T. (2021). Putting the self in self-correction: Findings from the loss-of-confidence project. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 16(6), 1255-1269.Rohrer, J. M., Egloff, B., & Schmukle, S. C. (2015). Examining the effects of birth order on personality. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(46), 14224-14229.BEMC MAY 2024 - Julia Rohrer - "Causal confusions correlate with casual conclusions"Dr. Tobias Dienlin - Less casual causal inference for experiments and longitudinal data: Research talk by Julia Rohrer

We return for Part 2 of our Scott Galloway deep dive, where the vibes remain strong, the confidence unwavering, and the relationship with empirical evidence increasingly… decorative.Returning to our Modern Wisdom safari, we continue navigating the forbidden terrain of men, masculinity, and male suffering: a topic so dangerous that it requires constant ritual disclaimers, whispered caveats, and the occasional nervous glance around the bar to make sure we can take out the other men if necessary.We cover Scott's outline of his masculine Third Way: rejecting both the Right’s “Bring Back the Fifties” masculinity and the Left’s “Men Are the Problem” framework, in favour of a solution that might be described as Stern Dad Who’s Also Nice About It. Prepare to thrill at proposals of mandatory national service, kindness as a masculine superpower, and the radical idea that young people might benefit from not being economically crushed.Things get spicier when we’re told what women really want and learn about the adaptive skill check of the female orgasm. Chris Williamson unveils a prepared essay on What Men Want which proves to be a moving piece of therapeutic slam poetry that somehow manages to combine manosphere grievance mongering with woke therapy talk. We learn how what men really just want to be told is “you are enough" and should be kind for kindness sake, but also should optimise their friend group such that they can properly signal their high mate quality and train hard enough to take out all other males in the bar.Finally, we hit peak Decoding Mode as Scott’s statistics begin to escalate: boys are ten times more likely to kill themselves, father absence turns sons into inmates, daughters into promiscuous approval-seekers, and nearly every claim is delivered with total confidence and minimal concern for effect sizes, confounds, or whether the study actually exists. Decorative scholarship is in full bloom.We do our best as two hyper-masculine men to separate reasonable concerns about boys, mentorship, and social policy from hyperbolic factoids, pop-psych inflation, and the familiar habit of smuggling moral arguments in under the banner of “what the science says.”Bring your hunting knife and stoic daily diary. Take your testosterone injection. And get ready for some man talk!LinksModern Wisdom: The War On Men Isn’t Helping Anyone - Scott GallowayThe Diary of a CEO: Scott Galloway: We’re Raising The Most Unhappy Generation In History! Hard Work Doesn't Build WealthAcademic papers/Sources ReferencedCulpin, I., Heuvelman, H., Rai, D., Pearson, R. M., Joinson, C., Heron, J., … Kwong, A. S. F. (2022). Father absence and trajectories of offspring mental health across adolescence and young adulthood: Findings from a UK-birth cohort. Journal of Affective Disorders, 314, 150–159.Dekker, M. C., Ferdinand, R. F., van Lang, N. D. J., Bongers, I. L., van der Ende, J., & Verhulst, F. C. (2007). Developmental trajectories of depressive symptoms from early childhood to late adolescence: Gender differences and adult outcome. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 48(7), 657–666.Angelakis, I., Austin, J. L., & Gooding, P. (2020). Association of childhood maltreatment with suicide behaviors among young people: a systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA network open, 3(8), e2012563-e2012563.Zhang, L., Wang, P., Liu, L., Wu, X., & Wang, W. (2026). Different roles of child abuse and neglect on emerging adult's nonsuicidal self-injury and suicidal ideation: sex difference through emotion regulation. Current Psychology, 45(1), 56.Callanan, V. J., & Davis, M. S. (2012). Gender differences in suicide methods. Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology, 47(6), 857-869.Raposa, E. B., Rhodes, J., Stams, G. J. J. M., Card, N., Burton, S., Schwartz, S., … Hussain, S. (2019). The effects of youth mentoring programs: A meta-analysis of outcome studies. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 48(3), 423–443. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-019-00982-8Lloyd, E. A. (2005). The case of the female orgasm: Bias in the science of evolution. Harvard University Press.King, R. (2024). Naturally Selective: Evolution, Orgasm, and Female Choice. CRC Press. (The researcher Chris Williamson is relying on)The Scottish Sun. (2025, February 17). Nearly six pubs closed each week last year with 4,500 jobs lost amid rising costs [News article]. The Scottish Sun. Retrieved from https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/money/14352624/uk-pubs-closed-last-year/Greater London Authority. (2025, February). London’s Night-Time Economy: Economy, Culture and Skills Committee report. Greater London Authority. 

We return to the podcast circuit in 2026 to examine Scott Galloway: NYU professor, prolific podcaster, and, more recently, part-time life coach for struggling young men.Joining him on an episode of Modern Wisdom with Chris Williamson, we are invited into one of the few remaining forbidden conversational spaces: men, masculinity, and men’s problems. You may have been misled by the relentless popularity of Joe Rogan, Modern Wisdom, The Tucker Carlson Show, Triggernometry, The Diary of a CEO, Huberman Lab, and several dozen adjacent properties into thinking these topics are already discussed at length on a near-weekly basis. Alas, this turns out to be a dangerous illusion.In reality, even mentioning men’s issues requires an extended ritual acknowledgement of women, failure to perform which risks immediate cancellation. Braving these cultural headwinds, we wade into manly dialogue about masculinity, sex differences, and male malaise. Along the way, we ponder the intricacies of culture war evolutionary psychology, anthropological wars over Man the Hunter, optimised dosages for manly whingeing, and whether making boys learn French verb conjugations qualifies as a human rights abuse.So get your notebooks ready for some important notes from two of the most masculine men in the modern male podcasting space. Men...LinksModern Wisdom: The War On Men Isn’t Helping Anyone - Scott GallowayThe Diary of a CEO: Scott Galloway: We’re Raising The Most Unhappy Generation In History! Hard Work Doesn't Build WealthAcademic papers ReferencedChanges in gender-based hiring bias (large meta-analysis): Schaerer, M., Du Plessis, C., Nguyen, M. H. B., Van Aert, R. C., Tiokhin, L., Lakens, D., … Gender Audits Forecasting Collaboration. (2023). On the trajectory of discrimination: A meta-analysis and forecasting survey capturing 44 years of field experiments on gender and hiring decisions. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 179, 104280.Epidemiology of alcohol use disorder by marital status (US, NESARC-III): Grant, B. F., Goldstein, R. B., Saha, T. D., et al. (2015). Epidemiology of DSM-5 Alcohol Use Disorder: Results from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions III. JAMA Psychiatry, 72(8), 757–766.Protective effects of marriage on life expectancy (US Medicare sample): Jia, H., & Lubetkin, E. I. (2020). Life expectancy and active life expectancy by marital status among older US adults: Results from the US Medicare Health Outcome Survey (HOS). SSM – Population Health, 12, 100642.Widowhood and well-being (contrary to claims of increased happiness): Adena, M., Hamermesh, D., Myck, M., & Oczkowska, M. (2023). Home alone: Widows’ well-being and time. Journal of Happiness Studies, 24(2), 813–838.Meta-analysis of the widowhood effect on mortality (men and women): Shor, E., Roelfs, D. J., Curreli, M., Clemow, L., Burg, M. M., & Schwartz, J. E. (2012). Widowhood and mortality: A meta-analysis and meta-regression. Demography, 49(2), 575–606.Marriage and life satisfaction across the life course (multi-country): Mikucka, M. (2016). The life satisfaction advantage of being married and gender specialization. Journal of Marriage and Family, 78(3), 759–779.Marriage, children, and happiness (Note “very happy” vs “pretty happy”): Institute for Family Studies. Who is happiest? Married mothers and fathers, per the latest General Social Survey.Anthropology: “Man the Hunter” debateOriginal paper cited by Chris Williamson challenging the “Man the Hunter” narrative: Anderson, A., Chilczuk, S., Nelson, K., Ruther, R., & Wall-Scheffler, C. (2023). The Myth of Man the Hunter: Women’s contribution to the hunt across ethnographic contexts. PLoS ONE, 18(6), e0287101.Critical commentary on Anderson et al. (2023): Venkataraman, V. V., Hoffman, J., Farquharson, K., Davis, H. E., Hagen, E. H., Hames, R. B., … Stibbard-Hawkes, D. N. (2024). Female foragers sometimes hunt, yet gendered divisions of labor are real. Evolution and Human Behavior, 45(4), 106586.Another influential burial-based paper about female hunters in the early Americas: Haas, R., Jr., Watson, J., Buonasera, T., Southon, J., Chen, J. C., Noe, S., … Parker, G. (2020). Female hunters of the early Americas. Science Advances, 6(45), eabd0310.Critical commentary on over-interpretation of evidence cited for the depiction of gender parity in hunting: Martin, M., de la Mora, A. N., Valeggia, C., & Veile, A. (2024). Can women hunt? Yes. Did women contribute much to human evolution through endurance hunting? Probably not. American Anthropologist, 126(2), 365–369.Fertility & demographyShaw, S. J. (Director). (2022). Birthgap – Childless World.Critical fact-checking project responding to Birthgap claims: Birthgap Facts: Unplanned childlessness.Politics & fact-checkingPolitiFact on claims about abortion and vasectomies at party conventions: Ask PolitiFact: Are Democrats offering “free abortions and vasectomies” at their Chicago convention?Australian Labor Party policy platform: Our Plan.UK Labour Party policy platform: Plan for Change.

In this special Christmas episode, Helen’s annual Guru Quiz returns, lightly dusted with Trump, podcast tours, and the unsettling realisation that the Guru-sphere and the MAGA-sphere have quietly fused into a single, monetised, vibes-based organism. That's right, the regular decoding team are joined by renowned journalist, author, podcaster... and occasional DTG quiz master, Helen Lewis, who once again brings her festive cheer, an uncanny ability to identify exactly who will be unbearable next year, and a quiz designed to torture Matt.Points are awarded, dignity is lost, and Matt briefly considers revising for the quiz before remembering that preparation has never helped him before.The episode also covers MAGA and UK political manoeuvres, the movers and shakers of the Gurusphere in 2025, and a lament for the collapse of the ancient boundary between editorial content and hawking pants.So join us for a festive episode about gurus, geniuses, authoritarian comedy festivals, and the slow erosion of shame. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night... and that includes you, Bubbles!LinksHelen Lewis on SubstackHelen's Article on the Riyadh Comedy FestivalHelen's Article on Olivia Nuzzi's BookThe Genius MythThat Dave Chappelle picture