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An exiled Northern Irish anthropologist and a hitchhiking Australian psychologist take a close look at the contemporary crop of 'secular gurus', iconoclasts, and other exiles from the mainstream, offering their own brands of unique takes and special insights. Leveraging two of the most diverse accents in modern podcasting, Chris and Matt dig deep into the claims, peek behind the psychological curtains, and try to figure out once and for all... What's it all About? Join us, as we try to puzzl ...
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Destiny: Debate King and/or Degenerate?
3:16:24
3:16:24
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In this episode, Matt and Chris dive deep into the world of online streamers, focusing on the pioneering and controversial figure Steven Bonell II, better known as Destiny (AKA Mr Borelli). As seasoned explorers of sense-making jungles, Petersonian crystalline structures, and mind-bending labyrinths in Weinstein World, they thought they were prepar…
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Supplementary Material 4: Passive Aggressive Therapists, Shit-posting Monks, and Weaponised Naivety
36:23
36:23
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We ponder whether, due to our naivety, do we actually deserve the gurus and other topics, including: Is Hasan Piker even better than we said? The ethical quandaries of online therapy with Dr. K The False Halos of Status and Success The Rest is History Luther series and parallels with Secular Gurus The Power of Polemicists: Peterson, Trump, and Mart…
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Yuval Noah Harari: Eat Bugs and Live Forever
2:17:27
2:17:27
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Yuval Noah Harari is a historian, a writer, and a popular 'public intellectual'. He rose to fame with Sapiens (2014), his popular science book that sought to outline a 'History of Humankind' and followed this up with a more future-focused sequel, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2016). More recently, he's been converting his insights into a …
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Supplementary Material 3: Sand-worms, Anti-Capitalist Merch, and High Level Idea-Jacking
52:17
52:17
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We test the boundaries of the Supplementary format with a stacked third edition containing: Matt's Review of Dune 2 and the Three-Body Problem Hasan Piker's Anti-Capitalist Merch The Controversy Surrounding Andrew Huberman Differential Charity and Selective Decoupling Grace before meals at Triggernometry and Christian Hipsterism Jordan and Bret's P…
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Mini-Decoding: The Descent of Jordan B. Peterson
1:23:59
1:23:59
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We take a look at a recent conversation between Jordan Peterson and the streamer Steven Bonnell (AKA Destiny) and use the opportunity to reflect on Jordan's journey as a public intellectual and guru. We consider how his stances have changed, whether he is more extreme now than when he emerged or if it is just his presentation style that has shifted…
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Supplementary Material 2: Dissident Dialogues, Bloodbaths, & Genocidal Debates
36:42
36:42
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The adventure in formatting continues with the second Supplementary Material episode, in which we: lament we don't command the same level of loyalty as Sam's fans commend a noted sycophant for warning about idolising heros assess the degree to which the "Dissident Dialogues" conference is anything other than bog-standard right-wing orthodoxy; and r…
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What happens when you try to squeeze a muscle-bound Twitch streamer into a precise measurement instrument like the Gurometer? And can it even function when it encounters this level of left-wing nodulation? It's an empirical question and since the Gurometer recently had all its oil replaced, we decided to give it a go. This is also a reminder that w…
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Hasan Piker: A swashbuckling Bromance
1:55:46
1:55:46
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Avast Ye Harties! Yar! This week be the inaugural episode of a New Streamer/Academic Guru season. Join us as we set sail with a bang and embark on an adventure with the famous and controversial Twitch streamer Hasan Piker. Formerly of the Young Turks, Hasan has carved out a niche as a popular left-wing commentator. He is sometimes described as repr…
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Supplementary Material 1: Cringe Immunity & Supplemental Ethics
29:31
29:31
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An adventure in formatting, welcome to the inaugural Supplementary Material episode. Here we are trying to save you all from the ever-expanding intro segments. On this episode: Announcement of the New Format Who Decodes the Decoders? A Mystery Sense-Making clip Lex Fridman on Navalany Jordan Peterson's fury at the Associated Press Bre Weinstein's s…
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Interview with Kevin Mitchell on Agency and Evolution
2:09:51
2:09:51
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In this episode, Matt and Chris converse with Kevin Mitchell, an Associate Professor of Genetics and Neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin, and author of 'Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will'. We regret to inform you that the discussion does involve in-depth discussions of philosophy-adjacent topics such as free will, determinism, conscio…
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Sean Carroll: The Worst Guru Yet?!?
2:40:18
2:40:18
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Controversial physics firebrand Sean Carroll has cut a swathe through the otherwise meek and mild podcasting industry over the last few years. Known in the biz as the "bad boy" of science communication, he offends as much as he educ.... << Record scratch >> No, we can't back any of that up obviously, those are all actually lies. Let's start again. …
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Sometimes our intrepid Decoders like to focus on a specific rhetorical technique or recurrent pattern that can be observed across the Gurusphere. Here, Matt and Chris take a look at a bite-size portion of the philosopher John Gray's recent appearance on Sam Harris' Making Sense podcast. Gray was invited to outline his critique of New Atheism, and h…
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Sam Harris is an author, podcaster, public intellectual, ex-New Atheist, card-returning IDWer, and someone who likely needs no introduction. This is especially the case if you are a DTG listener as we recently released a full-length decoding episode on Sam. Following that episode, Sam generously agreed to come on to address some of the points we ra…
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The Passion of the Jordan and the Wisdom of the Bret
1:30:48
1:30:48
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Sometimes it's important to check in on old friends, just to make sure they're doing okay. That's the theme for today's episode. We felt it was necessary to pay an unannounced house call to our old pals Bret Weinstein and Jordan Peterson. Rumor had it that Jordan was facing some challenges with his clinical license, while Bret had been brewing up r…
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Mini Decoding: Yuval and the Philosophers
40:39
40:39
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Join us for a mini decoding to get us back into the swing of things as we examine a viral clip that had religious reactionaries, sensemakers, and academic philosophers in a bit of a tizzy. Specifically, we are covering reactions to a clip from a 2014 TEDx talk by Yuval Noah Harari, the well-known author and academic, in which he discussed how human…
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In this episode, our intrepid hosts embrace a rare opportunity for sincere self-reflection, spurred by a face-to-face meeting in an inspiring ryokan in a Japanese mountain setting. The discussion delves into the nature of the podcast, audience capture, underlying motivations, and their thoughts on the journey so far and the path ahead. In an act of…
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Mini-Decoding: Huberman on the Vaccine-Autism Controversy
48:53
48:53
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Andrew Huberman, Stanford academic and host of a science-themed podcast, recently released an episode on Autism with guest Dr. Karen Parker. Considering the prevalence of misinformation about vaccines and autism and this episode being promoted as providing an overview of the topic, we were interested to see how the topic would be covered. In part, …
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Sam Harris is the subject today and a man who needs no introduction. Although he's come up and he's come on, we've never actually (technically) decoded him. There is no Gurometer score! A glaring omission and one that needs correcting. It would have been easy for us to cherry-pick Sam being extremely good on conspiracy theories, or extremely contro…
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DTG Christmas Quiz 2023 with Helen Lewis
1:42:02
1:42:02
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Seasons greetings from Decoding the Gurus! Time to grab a hot chocolate, cosy up to the fire, and wrack your brain to see how much attention you've been paying to all those gurus... that's right it is time for the annual Guru quiz! Luckily for us, the esteemed journalist and author, Helen Lewis, is back as a combined special guest and quiz master. …
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Red Scare: Bohemian Hipsterism x Reactionary Tradcaths
2:39:21
2:39:21
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In today's joyous episode, we saunter into the loft apartment, take a draw on our gauloise, and glance icily into a world of bohemian hipsters living their best postmodern tradcath lives. Welcome to the irony-drenched world of 'Red Scare', a popular podcast hosted (sardonically) by Anna Khachiyan and Dasha Nekrasova. Also joining them in the episod…
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Interview with Daniël Lakens and Smriti Mehta on the state of Psychology
2:42:31
2:42:31
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We are back with more geeky academic discussion than you can shake a stick at. This week we are doing our bit to save civilization by discussing issues in contemporary science, the replication crisis, and open science reforms with fellow psychologists/meta-scientists/podcasters, Daniël Lakens and Smriti Mehta. Both Daniël and Smriti are well known …
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Andrew Huberman and Peter Attia: Self-enhancement, supplements & doughnuts?
3:12:46
3:12:46
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In a kind of meta cross-over with our Decoding Academia series, we're going to decode a journal club discussion between two well-known health optimisers: Dr. Peter Attia and Dr. Andrew Huberman. So you get to listen to two academics talk about two other academics talk about academic papers... we know... We've already been introduced to the bulging …
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Interview with Julia Ebner: Extremist Networks & Radicalisation
2:03:52
2:03:52
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On this week's episode, we have an extended interview with author and researcher, Julia Ebner. Julia is a Senior Resident Research Fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and has written a series of books exploring the social dynamics of extremist networks, including The Rage: the Vicious Circle of Islamist and Far-Right Extremism, Going Dar…
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Triggernometry's Big Moment: Entering the Guru Galaxy
2:30:53
2:30:53
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In modern online ecosystems, attention and download metrics reign supreme. Sadly, the gurus are not immune to these incentives, with even the most successful, *cough* Jordan Peterson *cough*, regularly referencing how many people watched their latest video or how many subscribers they have on their 'brave freethinker' tier. Alongside the attention …
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Interview with the Conspirituality Trio: Navigating the Chakras of Conspiracy
2:40:19
2:40:19
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Back in the early days of the podcast, we tried to take a rest from the wearisome repetition of polemical partisan gurus by covering JP Sears- an alternative-health self-help coach with a sideline in 'comedic parody'. Sadly, we soon discovered he was a red-pilled Roganite 'just asking questions' about all the usual right-wing partisan topics, but w…
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