Decoding the Gurus

We watch in awe as the guru-sphere grapples with a host of 'alternative' theories:

• Bret promotes pseudoscience on Polio and alternative theories on evolution
• The Gurusphere collides with Tucker's takes on evolution
• Rogan and Tucker praise Alex Jones' prophetic abilities
• Tucker's views on spiritual UFOs
• Hasan endorses Lex Fridman as the most genuine centrist
• Contrasting Destiny and Hasan's transparency
• World War 3 Warnings
• The Great Archaeology Debate: Dibble vs. Hancock
• Graham Hancock- A Grievance Mongering Masterclass
• Intentional Misrepresentation
• White Supremacy angers Great Joe
• The Cass Review Controversy: A lesson in misinformation

Links

• The Untold Story of Polio – Forrest Maready on DarkHorse
• Jerry Coyne's old takedown of Bret's confused theories about evolution
• Bret's tweets defending Tucker
• Joe Rogan Experience #2138 - Tucker Carlson
• Joe Rogan Experience #2136 - Graham Hancock & Flint Dibble
• The Iced Coffee Hour- Confronting Hasan Piker on Socialist Grift, Hypocrisy, and How “The Top 1%” Keeps You Poor!
• The Iced Coffee Hour- Destiny on Debating Ben Shapiro, Toxic Wokeism and Getting Divorced
• A comparison of the reactions to Iran's missile launches
• More or Less (BBC)- 98%: Is misinformation being spread about a review of trans youth medicine?
• The Cass Report
• Systematic Reviews from the Cass Report

The full episode is available for Patreon subscribers (1 hr 51 mins).

Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurus

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 prepared for anything. However, the drama-infused degeneracy of the streamer swamps proves to offer some new challenges.

Having previously dipped their toes in these waters by riding with Hasan on his joyous Houthi pirate ship (ignoring the screams of the imprisoned crew below decks), Matt and Chris now strip down to their decoding essentials and plunge head-first into streamer drama-infested waters as they search for the fabled true Destiny.

Destiny is a popular live streamer and well-known debater with a long and colourful online history. He is also known for regularly generating controversy. With a literal mountain of content to sift through, there was no way to cover it all. Instead, Matt and Chris apply their usual decoding methods to sample a selection of Destiny's content, seeking to identify any underlying connective tissue and determine if he fits the secular guru mould.

In so doing, they cover a wide range of topics, including:

• Destiny's background and rise to prominence in the streaming world
• How much of his brain precisely is devoted to wrangling conservatives?
• What's it like to live with almost no private/public boundaries?
• What are the ethics of debating neo-Nazis?
• The nature of the Destiny's online community
• Whether murder is a justified response to DDOS attacks?

Whether they succeed or fail in their decoding will be for the listeners to judge, but one thing is certain: if this is your first exposure to the streaming world, you are in for a bit of a ride.

Links

• The Institute of Art and Ideas: Destiny and the new world of Internet politics | Steven Bonnell full interview
• End of the Leftist Arc? - Destiny Addresses the Recent Drama
• Iced Coffee Hour: Destiny on Debating Ben Shapiro, Toxic Wokeism and Getting Divorced
• Helpful Reddit thread with a bunch of relevant videos and summaries
• Documentary on Destiny Lore by Dingo: The Steven "Destiny" Bonnell II Iceberg
• Destiny's Positions page on his dedicated Wiki
• Destiny's Manifestos
• MrGirl's anti-Destiny 'Report'

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 Martin Luther?
• Secular vs. Religious Gurus
• Shit-posting Missives
• Orthodoxic Atheism and Orthopraxic Religion
• Lex Fridman's Reflections on Intellectual Humility
• Some important Messages from the hosts

Links

• Game Rant Article about Hasan Piker's donation to Strike Funds
• Uncovering the Higher Truth about Jay Shetty by John McDermott
• Coffeezilla Interview with John McDermott
• Dr. K and Doctor Mike: Debating The Value Of Eastern Medicine (Ayurveda)
• That stream with Dr. K and his wife
• The Rest is History: Series on Martin Luther
• Article by Chris in Aeon about Orthopraxic Religion
• Lex's extremely humble tweet about his intellectual humility

The full episode is available for Patreon subscribers (1hr 19mins).

Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurus

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 format targeted at younger people with Unstoppable Us: How Humans Took Over the World (2022). In general, Harari is a go-to public intellectual for people looking for big ideas, thoughts on global events, and how we might avoid catastrophe. He has been a consistent figure on the interview and public lecture circuit and, with his secular message, seems an ideal candidate for Gurometeratical analysis.

Harari also has some alter egos. He is a high-ranking villain in the globalist pantheon for InfoWars-style conspiracy theorists, with plans that involve us all eating bugs and uploading our consciousness to the Matrix. Alternatively, for (some) historians and philosophers, he is a shallow pretender, peddling inaccurate summaries of complex histories and tricky philosophical insights. For others, he is a neoliberal avatar offering apologetics for exploitative capitalist and multinational bodies.

So, who is right? Is he a bug-obsessed villain plotting to steal our precious human souls or a mild-mannered academic promoting the values of meditation, historical research, and moderation?

Join Matt and Chris in this episode to find out and learn other important things, such as what vampires should spend their time doing, whether money is 'real', and how to respond respectfully to critical feedback.

Links

• The Diary of a CEO: Yuval Noah Harari: An Urgent Warning They Hope You Ignore. More War Is Coming!
• Our previous episode on Yuval and the Angry Philosophers
• Current Affairs: The Dangerous Populist Science of Yuval Noah Harari (a little overly dramatic)

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 Pseudoacademic-ese
• High-Level Idea Jacking
• Dream Instructions

Links

• Hasan Piker's Ideologie Store
• New York Magazine: Andrew Huberman's Mechanisms of Control
• Slate: So, Should You Trust Andrew Huberman?
• The Darien Gap & Postmodernism | Bret Weinstein & Jordan Peterson | EP 434
• Triggernometry: Can We Live Without Religion? - Alex O'Connor
• Immune: A Journey into the Mysterious System that Keeps You Alive

The full episode is available for Patreon subscribers (1hr 33mins).

Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurus

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. Along the way, we look at his demon-infested understanding of the COVID-19 vaccines, his climate change denialism, and address the unresolved question of the ages: Were the Nazis actually right-wing?

Links

• Jordan Peterson Podcast: Streaming, Politics, & Philosophy | @destiny | EP 433
• Video of Jordan Peterson on climate change and climate policy at the Cambridge Union
• Historian specialising on the Nazis article in Haaretz: Exposing Jordan Peterson’s Barrage of Revisionist Falsehoods About Hitler, the Holocaust and Nazism
• The Nazis were not right-wing meme
• Snopes article on whether the Nazis were socialists
• Reuters: Fact Check: No evidence to link UK excess deaths to COVID-19 vaccines
• Jordan Peterson is Back! - Bret Weinstein's DarkHorse Podcast
• The Guardian: Jordan Peterson’s ‘zombie’ climate contrarianism follows a well-worn path

The adventure in formatting continues with the second Supplementary Material episode.

On this episode:

• Sam Harris Devotees
• Dissident Dialogues
• Lex's important message about idolism
• Trumpian Bloodbath & Media Criticism
• Lex Fridman's Israel-Palestine Debate
• Finkelstein vs. Destiny
• Genocidal Debates

The full episode is available for Patreon subscribers (1hr 14mins).

Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurus

Links

• Lex Fridman Podcast: Finkelstein, Destiny, M. Rabbani & Benny Morris
• Dissident Dialogues – A PLACE FOR DANGEROUS IDEAS
• Guardian News clips from the 'Bloodbath" speech
• Joe Rogan & Jonathan Haidt Disagree About Donald Trump BLOODBATH Comment
• Lex's anti-Idol Tweet
• Guardian Article (2015): Israel exonerates itself over Gaza beach killings of four children last year
• UN investigation (2015) that covered the beach bombings and reached more critical conclusions
• The Globe and Mail (2015): Account from a reporter

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 we do Gurometer episodes for ALL the Gurus we cover and you can find the back catalogue over on the Patreon, if so inclined.

The full episode is available for Patreon subscribers (44 mins).

Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurus

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 representing a new wave of political communicators who leverage social media and live streaming to reach new audiences, particularly disengaged younger viewers.

But how does he fare in these Decoding waters?

We take a look at his recent interview with Rashed Al-Haddad, a dashing Yemeni teenager (nicknamed Tim Houthi Chalamet), who recently found himself streaming video on an international transport ship hijacked by Houthi militants. But fear not! Hasan addresses this sensitive topic and the complex geopolitical issues involved with due diligence and care. Moreover, Rashed reports that all of the kidnapped crew are having a grand old time in Yemen! They are simply vibing with their captors, chewing khat, and have fully embraced the honourable Houthi perspective.

The Houthis' official slogan, "God is the Greatest, Death to America, Death to Israel, A Curse Upon the Jews, Victory to Islam", and reports of severe human rights abuses in their territory, might still give one pause... but as Hasan explains—drawing on his deep political and psychological insights—the Houthis are just like the heroic Straw Hat pirates in the popular anime One Piece!

So with that settled, we can focus on the more important questions like what videogames Rashed likes, if he has ever heard of Mr. Beast, whether he's eaten 'Western' food, what cartoons he watched growing up, and if there are KFCs in Yemen? Truly, this is a conversation for the ages, and Hasan is just the man for the job.

So join us for this week's episode as we ponder whether combining influencer culture with political analysis was a wise move and if there are any possible contradictions or minor ideological skews in Hasan's content.

Links

- Hasan Interviews Viral 'Hot Yemeni TikTok Pirate' | Hasanabi Reacts

- Atlantic article about the Houthis and the situation in Yemen

- AP article on the crew of the hijacked 'Galaxy Leader' ship and their ability to contact their families

- Amnesty article on Houthi sentencing of stoning and crucifixion for crimes of homosexuality

- Human Rights Watch article on Houthi recruitment of child soldiers

- Human Rights Watch article on the al-Ahli Hospital Explosion

- Willy Mac 'drama' YouTuber collated episodes on Hasan (part 1 and part 2)

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 superpower: Cringe Immunity
• Anti-Capitalists for AG1 and the ethics of sponsorship

The full episode is available for Patreon subscribers (54 mins).

Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurus

Links

• Post-Apocalyptic Theology Decodes Us
• John Vervaeke & Jordan Hall discuss Christian Virtues in a Diverse World
• 2lazy2try: Bret Weinstein Has Completely Lost It
• Some More News 'promoting' AG1
• Jordan Peterson's unhinged tweet attacking the Associated Press