The rumours of the Gurometer's demise have been greatly exaggerated. We were simply collecting enough gurus to feed three into the sacred instrument at once. In this special Triple Threat edition, Professor Jiang brings angel-informed psychohistory, Jimmy Carr brings a head full of dubious historical factoids, and Mel Robbins just desperately wants to help you (for a price). Three potential gurus, eleven characteristics, and a brief disagreement over the nature of data. Let the highly rigorous scoring commence!

Also... think you can do better? Rate Jiang, Mel, Jimmy, or any of the other gurus on our online Gurometer and compare your scores with ours. Ideally, do it before listening, lest Matt declare your numbers inadmissible.

https://decoding-the-gurus-gurometer.netlify.app/

Two academic windbags attempt brief discussions of the controversy at Nature, Bret’s newest conspiracy theory, and the latest vibe sessions in Podcastistan. It goes about as well as expected.

The full episode is available to Patreon subscribers (1hr 18mins).

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

Supplementary Material 55

00:00 Introduction: Science by Podcast

04:04 Nature Joins the Arday Discourse Wave

09:28 Activism and Science

14:40 Academic Prestige Bias

19:08 The Business of Academic Publishing

23:43 Sasha Gusev Being Sensible and Culture War Brainrot

29:04 Bret Weinstein and Jimmy Dore Investigate Charlie Kirk’s Death

36:13 Anomaly Hunting

42:27 Science Washing

45:00 Conspiracy Discrimination and Reasoning Ability

53:46 Academic Debate Norms

59:16 Chris Williamson Promotes Professor Jiang

01:01:01 Vibing Out in Podcast Panels: Hunter Biden x Nick Fuentes

01:05:49 Dave Rubin and Andrew Gold Discuss Political Tribalism

01:08:25 Heterodoxy in 2026: Zaid Jilani on Michael Tracey

01:12:52 Hitler Was a Human and Had Motivations

01:16:33 Outro

Links

• Nature: The death of Jason Arday must prompt deep reflection
• Stuart Ritchie’s response to the Nature editorial
• Matthew Yglesias: Academia is cooked
• Sasha Gusev’s response to Matthew Yglesias
• Nature’s research and magazine editorial teams
• DarkHorse: Was Charlie Kirk Killed With a Drone? Viva Frei and Jimmy Dore
• Robson, S. G., Martire, K. A., Pearson, S., Cosgrove, T. J., Jetten, J., Faasse, K., & Hornsey, M. J. (2026). Rejecting conspiracies doesn't necessarily mean that you're smart: The relationship between conspiracy discrimination and reasoning ability. British Journal of Social Psychology, 65(4), e70117.
• Modern Wisdom: WW3 DEBATE: “We’re On the Brink of Global Collapse”
• Mostly Wise #2: Hunter Biden, Matt McCusker & Duncan Trussell
• Channel 5: Nick Fuentes Interview (Ft. Hunter Biden)
• I Think You Should Leave: Hot Dog Car Sketch
• The Rubin Report: If This Isn’t Stopped, UK’s Fall Is Irreversible | Andrew Gold
• Zaid Jilani on Michael Tracey’s contrarianism
• Zaid Jilani’s World War II follow-up
• Adam Tooze: The Wages of Destruction
• Darryl Cooper’s introduction and foreword to Thomas Cyr’s World War II revisionist book
• Next on Decoding Academia: Your Brain Is Not an Onion With a Tiny Reptile Inside

In Part Two of our decoding of Mel Robbins, things take a practical turn. But before we get to preoccupied with all that, why don't you pause, take a breath, and, in the context of your body, write down ten ways to make a bad situation worse. Your focus should then be on doing the exact opposite! For example, if one of your answers is to not listen to the podcast, then start listening, right now!

Next, before hitting play, let's work on building a daily manifestation practice. Write down five things you want, then sit in your body, picture yourself doing all the annoying steps, and flood yourself with the feelings of future success. This needs to happen every day.

One more thing: now imagine someone who is one million per cent behind you and ask them what is the best way for you to consume the podcast. They can be alive, dead, or fictional. Greek messenger Gods are permitted. You can even imagine your mother, if you like, but better. Alternatively, why not meet your future self at the front door and ask how listening to the podcast helped them to become so wise, slim, and successful?

There are other options too. You can manifest a legion of ancestors, reconfigure a difficult afternoon by getting sushi, and even transcend the limits of possibility with an elephant murder themed visualization!

You might think this sounds a bit like (too much) planning, mental rehearsal, and just trying to be a bit more positive. But it's much more than that. These mental activities are actually powered by very hard science. Ignore the tiny samples, one-tailed tests, and suspicious p-values... that all sounds like negative thinking.

And now you are finally prepared so choose your technique, release the brake, and visualise the download button. Your future self is waiting. They have a cool scar and some bad news about your future children.

Links

• The Mel Robbins Podcast: “World Leading Psychologist: How to Manifest Anything & Create the Life You Want” with Dr Cassandra Vieten
• Cassandra Vieten: Imagine That: Transform How You Think, Feel, and Live with the Science of Imagination
• Institute of Noetic Sciences: Origins Story
• Hershfield, H. E., Goldstein, D. G., Sharpe, W. F., Fox, J., Yeykelis, L., Carstensen, L. L., & Bailenson, J. N. (2011). Increasing saving behavior through age-progressed renderings of the future self. Journal of marketing research, 48(SPL), S23-S37. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3949005/
• Robalino, J. D., Fishbane, A., Goldstein, D. G., & Hershfield, H. E. (2023). Saving for retirement: A real-world test of whether seeing photos of one’s future self encourages contributions. Behavioral Science & Policy, 9(1), 1-9. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/23794607231190607

We return from our holidays with an indulgent episode that starts light and ends up very dark as we turn to the unavoidable Jason Arday discourse.

The full episode is available to Patreon subscribers (Full Episode: 1hr 40 mins)

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

Supplementary Material 54

00:00 Pecan Pie Introduction

04:10 Solar Punk Matt

08:17 Ireland Trip Report

15:24 Australian Burger Culture

17:32 Manga Cafe Experiments

24:10 Joe Rogan on AI Remote Viewing

29:14 Parapsychology as a Research Field

34:07 A One Man University Level Course in Bad Thinking

36:58 The Young Info Turks

40:53 More Credulity with Ryan Grim over Fauci

42:14 Richard Ebright, Warning Signs, and Radicalisation Spirals

48:28 Vinay Prasad jumping on the Anti-Fauci wagon for the Free Press

52:31 The Jason Arday Affair

54:28 The Surrounding Context

58:18 Polemical Discourse Waves

01:05:22 The Guru Factor

01:08:25 A Realistic View of Universities as Imperfect Institutions

01:12:17 Elite Prestige Bias

01:21:33 Culture War Distortions

01:25:04 The Ethics of Critical Journalism

01:29:50 Inconsistent Standards

01:38:36 Outro

Links

• The Jack Nicholson Story from the Always Sunny Podcast
• The Manga Cafes in Question
• Deposition of InfoWars Host Owen Shroyer
• Alex Jones And Roger Stone Interrupt The Young Turks Republican National Convention Coverage
• Ken Klippenstein visits the War Room
• Ana Kasparian & Owen Shroyer: The UNEXPECTED Conversation on MAGA, DSA & the Uniparty!
• Bret Weinstein on InfoWars
• Richard Ebright on one of his many Twitter spirals
• Joe Rogan on AI Remote Viewing
• The Free Press: Vinay Prasad- Anthony Fauci’s Vaccine Deceptions
• Ryan Grim being credulous over Fauci and Vaccines
• The Guardian: Playbooks, plagiarism and a pig’s head: new claims surrounding a star Cambridge professor (Lanre Bakare)
• The Atlantic: The Jason Arday Truthers (Helen Lewis)
• Front Left: It sure looks like Jason Arday was horrifically wronged (based on citation data) (Jason Stanley)
• A Digital Lynching (Carol Cadwalladr)
• Tox Report: The Most Unfortunate Thing (Sarah Ditum)
• Byline Times: The Peter Thiel-Linked Race Science Network that Penetrated Cambridge University and Targeted Jason Arday (Nafeez Ahmed)
• The Good Law Project: Stand in Solidarity with Jason Arday
• Amnesty UK supporting “Arday’s Law”
• Simon Baron Cohen on BBC 4 Today talking about Jason Arday
• NYT: A Top Scholar’s Fall Shows That Universities Don’t Get It
• NYT: Professor’s Death Leaves Behind Hard Questions for Cambridge on Race and Hiring
• The Emancipator: The Media Lynched Kason Arday (Ibram X. Kendi)
• Gideon M.K.: The Jason Arday Saga Is Terrible And Everyone Involved Should Be Ashamed Of Themselves
• Ways to Change the World with Krishnan Guru-Murthy: Cambridge’s youngest Black professor Jason Arday on Autism, racism, and learning to read at 18
• Open (supporting) letter on the suspension of Nathan Cofnas at Ghent University
• Board Member of Ghent University (Dries Bostyn) discussing the disciplinary case on Twitter
• Numb at the Lodge: The Carrion-Eaters (Sam Kriss)
• The Chronicle of Higher Education: Jason Arday & Me (Musa al-Gharbi)
• US Ambassador applies pressure to Ghent University
• Nathan Cofnas thanks the US Ambassador for intervening
• Academia is Doing Fine, Actually (Nicholas Decker)
• Eric Turkheimer substack on Nathan Cofnas' views
• Sasha Gusev thread on Nathan Cofnas' views

Are you tired, stuck, or inconveniently constrained by reality? Good news: you may simply be imagining the wrong one.

In Part One of our decoding of Mel Robbins, we explore the world of a self-help mogul who is also just a simple mother of three in Vermont hosting a little ol' podcast with a HUGE global impact. Together with Cassandra Vieten, a psychologist who is (apparently) one of the world's leading researchers on imagination and consciousness, Mel explains how to begin to stop reacting and start imagining, visualising, and manifesting the life you truly deserve. This will lead to self-actualised transcendence through a variety of simple-to-implement techniques. But don't worry, the universe has also put in safeguards: manifestation only works if you use it for good, such as empowering your authentic self. So please manifest enthusiastically without any concern.

In the episode, you will learn about the delicate art of rebranding common sense into complex (proprietary) theories and be shocked to discover that mystical intuitions are a core component of any fully holistic scientific research. Mel's HUGE media business, meanwhile, manifests itself as an intimate personal friendship with each of her millions of listeners.

Expect the usual decorative scholarship, a new Five Second Rule and insights into how to Let Them and Let You, reality tunnels, obstacle courses, a thousand supportive women, lighthouses, tapestries, and the therapeutic potential of fire-breathing dragons. All of it is very hard science, as they repeatedly remind us.

Chris and Matt attempt throughout to give the self-help genre a fair-minded assessment. They even concede that wearing colourful socks and being a bit less miserable are probably harmless, but ultimately their dark reductionist souls are beyond salvation.

Part Two is coming next week. In the meantime, try to visualise it clearly, align your energy, and not to put one foot on the brake as you hit the download button.

Links

• The Mel Robbins Podcast: “World Leading Psychologist: How to Manifest Anything & Create the Life You Want” with Dr Cassandra Vieten
• A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein: “The Mel Robbins Griftpocalypse” with Princess Weekes and Kat Tenbarge
• CBS News: Extended Interview with Mel Robbins
• The Mel Robbins Podcast: “Try It for 1 Week: 6 Small Ways to Bring Back the Happiness, Energy, and Fun”
• The New York Times: “Mel Schneeberger and Chris Robbins” by Lois Smith Brady
• UC San Diego profile: Cassandra Vieten, PhD

Joe Rogan, the Great Khan of podcasting, is once again receiving a travelling jester at court. This time it is Jimmy Carr who arrives bearing gifts: pop evolutionary psychology, dubious history factoids, conservative "common sense", and an apparently bottomless appetite for telling Joe just how important he is.

After listening to their three-hour conversation(!), we conclude there is nothing much of note beyond serving as a nice demonstration of popular "alternative" podcasting in 2026. What you get is a medley of sycophantic praise; regurgitated pop science and historical factoids; right-wing political positions presented as basic common sense; and shocked reactions to pseudo profundity and mundane observations.

Along the way, you will also thrill as you learn Rogan and Carr's takes on motherhood, feminism, work ethic, astrology, religion, taxation, vaccines, human evolution, the Black Death, and stand-up comedy.

As for Jimmy Carr himself, well, according to us: he's a very much your standard middle-aged conservative British person who happens to be a comedian. Rogan's level of crankery makes Jimmy look moderate by comparison, but as we know that's a very low bar.

Links

• Jimmy Carr on The Joe Rogan Experience (2326)
• Jimmy Carr on Modern Wisdom #953
• Schulz, J. F., Bahrami-Rad, D., Beauchamp, J. P., & Henrich, J. (2019). The Church, intensive kinship, and global psychological variation. Science, 366(6466), eaau5141. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aau5141
• Robinson D. The Black Death and Clerical Prospects in England. In: Bothwell J, Hamilton JS, eds. Fourteenth Century England XII. Fourteenth Century England. Boydell & Brewer; 2022:129-150. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781800105904.008
• Xu, X., & Barrett, P. M. (2025). The origin and early evolution of feathers: implications, uncertainties and future prospects. Biology Letters, 21(2), 20240517. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2024.0517

With the Trump administration’s newest political persecution of Anthony Fauci and three years after our first lab-leak special, now seemed like a useful time to return to the topic. Fortunately, you do not have to rely on our knowledge of viruses, as we have somehow managed to convince the same three esteemed virologists, Eddie Holmes, Kristian Andersen and Michael Worobey, to come back for an update.

Mike, Kristian and Eddie return and offer us their read on where the scientific evidence on COVID’s origins stands in 2026. They take us through the main lines of evidence and the often overlooked role of the wildlife trade, explaining why the lab-leak story remains so appealing, and how their own assessments have shifted as more evidence has emerged. We also discuss the standard claim that the media suppressed the lab-leak narrative while noting that coverage across both alternative and mainstream outlets remains heavily skewed towards it (and almost entirely detached from the research literature).

Finally, we end on a characteristically positive note by discussing the Trump administration’s attacks on science and the ongoing campaigns against high-profile scientists and public health figures. Our guests describe their experience of committing the heinous offence of following the scientific evidence and arriving at conclusions that contradict the preferred views of polemical politicians and prominent media pundits.

In short, this episode is our modest attempt to drag the topic back towards the science, while also focusing on the price paid by the people who actually conduct the research and care about the evidence. We are not neutral when it comes to the ongoing attacks on science and scientists and do not pretend to be.

Links

• Our guests: Michael Worobey, Kristian Andersen, and Eddie Holmes
• Our previous interview with Worobey, Andersen and Holmes
• Lab Leak Fever with Philipp Markolin
• Our earlier interview with Stuart Neil on SARS-CoV-2
• Sam Harris, Alina Chan and Matt Ridley: Did SARS-CoV-2 Escape from a Lab?
• Bad Boy of Science: Is the COVID Lab Leak Hypothesis Dead?
• Kristian Andersen on his early emails, released messages and changing assessment
• Kristian Andersen’s congressional testimony and document collection
• Kristian’s thread responding to the use of his Slack messages
• Michael Worobey on why his assessment changed
• WHO SAGO’s 2025 assessment of the origins evidence
• The July 2026 Senate release of the Slack messages
• Kevin Drum’s reading of the earlier Slack archive
• The current White House lab-leak page
• The July 2026 Fauci hearing
• Naomi Oreskes on scientific integrity and “ethical pessimism”
• Nature: Climate scientists report online attacks
• Alwine et al. on the harms to scientists, research and pandemic preparedness

Relevant research papers and reviews

• Andersen, K. G., Rambaut, A., Lipkin, W. I., Holmes, E. C., & Garry, R. F. (2020). The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2. Nature Medicine, 26(4), 450–452.
• Crits-Christoph, A., Levy, J. I., Pekar, J. E., et al. (2024). Genetic tracing of market wildlife and viruses at the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. Cell, 187(19), 5468–5482.
• Holmes, E. C. (2024). The emergence and evolution of SARS-CoV-2. Annual Review of Virology, 11(1), 21–42.
• Liu, W. J., Liu, P., Lei, W., et al. (2023). Surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 at the Huanan Seafood Market. Nature, 631(8020), 402–408.
• Pekar, J. E., Magee, A., Parker, E., et al. (2022). The molecular epidemiology of multiple zoonotic origins of SARS-CoV-2. Science, 377(6609), 960–966.
• Pekar, J. E., Moshiri, N., Lemey, P., et al. (2025). Recently reported SARS-CoV-2 genomes suggested to be intermediate between the two early main lineages are instead likely derived. Virus Evolution, 11(1).
• Pekar, J. E., Lytras, S., Ghafari, M., et al. (2025). The recency and geographical origins of the bat viruses ancestral to SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2. Cell, 188(12), 3167–3183.
• Temmam, S., Vongphayloth, K., Baquero, E., et al. (2022). Bat coronaviruses related to SARS-CoV-2 and infectious for human cells. Nature, 604(7905), 330–336.
• Worobey, M., Levy, J. I., Malpica Serrano, L., et al. (2022). The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was the early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. Science, 377(6609), 951–959.
• Xiao, X., Newman, C., Buesching, C. D., Macdonald, D. W., & Zhou, Z.-M. (2021). Animal sales from Wuhan wet markets immediately prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Scientific Reports, 11(1).
• Zhou, H., Ji, J., Chen, X., et al. (2021). Identification of novel bat coronaviruses sheds light on the evolutionary origins of SARS-CoV-2 and related viruses. Cell, 184(17), 4380–4391.

Broader assessments and context

• Ackerman, G., Behlendorf, B., Baum, S., Peterson, H., Wetzel, A., & Halstead, J. (2024). The origin and implications of the COVID-19 pandemic: An expert survey (Technical Report 24-1). Global Catastrophic Risk Institute.
• Alwine, J., Goodrum, F., Banfield, B., et al. (2024). The harms of promoting the lab leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 origins without evidence. Journal of Virology, 98(9).
• World Health Organization. (2025). Independent assessment of the origins of SARS-CoV-2 from the Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens.
• Venter, M., Manuguerra, J.-C., Watson, J. M., et al. (2026). COVID’s origins: What we do and don’t know. Nature, 650(8103), 829–833.

We endure the ravages of time to deliver you this exhausted Supplementary Material. Bowed but never broken, the decoders persist.

The full episode is available to Patreon subscribers (Full Episode: 2hr 20 mins)

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

Supplementary Material 53

00:23 Introduction: Matthew the Succulent's Post-Holiday Report

02:15 Pickle Ball Injuries & Bouldering Curses

07:40 They Won't Let You Talk about Middle-Aged Sports Injuries

08:37 New AI Models

09:31 Cory Doctorow, Trevor Noah, and Confirmation Bias

23:45 The Glorious Past and the Terrible Present

28:28 The Horror of Tinned Asparagus

30:26 The Collapse of Industries & Stores

36:16 Negativity Bias

37:11 AI Prompting 101

44:30 AI and Research Applications

50:28 Nigel Farage vs Count Binface

59:10 Nigel Farage Knighted on Russia Today

01:02:53 Hasan's Advice for Ukrainians

01:07:51 Russian Apologetics

01:13:32 Vlad Vexler and soft Anti-Vaxx rhetoric

01:19:35 Guru Red Flags

01:23:48 Bret Weinstein in 2020 on Vaccines

01:28:53 Gary vs Piers Morgan

01:30:58 Piers Morgan being a blustering idiot about Elon Musk

01:36:55 Gary's Pitch

01:41:55 Alternative Tax Proposals

01:46:18 Matt and Chris' Economics

01:47:22 Gary's Wealth

01:52:07 Piers the sleazy liar

01:55:25 Gary is the best inequality economist in the UK

01:57:08 Gary's Predictions

02:00:40 Gary is Very Tired

02:07:14 A message from anyone else to finish?

02:14:25 Final Takeaways

02:16:55 Matt attempts to wrangle another holiday

Links

• The Verge: China delivers a one-two punch to America’s AI dominance
• What Now? with Trevor Noah: Why Google, Apple & Big Tech Keep Making Everything Worse — Cory Doctorow and Trevor Noah
• Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Finkenauer, C., & Vohs, K. D. (2001). Bad is stronger than good. Review of general psychology, 5(4), 323-370.
• Count Binface on BBC Morning Live — full interview
• Count Binface on Newsnight
• Hasan offers Ukraine his advice to “give peace a try”
• Report on polling from Ukraine in 2025 that does not show what Hasan claims
• Report on more recent polling that still does not show what Hasan claims
• Vlad Vexler tweets about vaccines
• Bret’s Tweets in 2020 on Vaccines (and here)
• Chris noting Bret’s anti-vaccine rhetoric in 2020 (see the comments under the tweet)
• Kyiv International Institute of Sociology: Ukrainian views on exchanging Donbas for security guarantees
• Decoding Academia 34: Matt and Chris’ Economics
• Piers Morgan Uncensored: “I’m QUITTING!” Gary Stevenson vs Piers Morgan on Wealth, Economic Growth & Elon Musk

Two absolutely shattered academic heroes heroically drag themselves through yet another supplementary episode to bring you the important guru news in between their restorative breaks.

The full episode is available to Patreon subscribers (Full Episode: 1hr 32 mins)

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

00:00 Introduction

02:13 Eliot Paisley's Anatomy of an Optimiser

08:52 Eric Weinstein wants a University Position and a Stipend

16:09 The Failure of the Anti-Woke Quasi Universities

19:19 Gary is Knackered Again

20:45 Gary is the best inequality economist in the world

24:36 How do I make a Documentary?

33:04 The End of the Year Approaches

37:44 Public Accountability

40:13 The Neurodivergent Trump Card

40:59 A clarification on bailiwicks

42:43 Tucker Carlson & Chris Cuomo discuss Russian Apologetics

48:53 Ukraine is selling weapons to Mexican Cartels

54:54 Civility Porn Judo

56:09 When Hasan met Prof. Jiang

01:01:37 Conspiracy Theory Buffet

01:07:24 Looking Good by Comparison

01:11:21 Comparing Epstein Conspiracies

01:24:03 Agreeable Conspiracism

01:27:13 Outro and Piers Morgan Invite

Links

• Eric Weinstein appeals to billionaires on Twitter
• Elliot Paisley: Chris Williamson Is A Slave
• Gary’s Economics: My Documentary is Coming Out THIS WEEK!! – why you should watch it
• The Times: Gary Stevenson: I want a wealth tax on the super-rich — like me
• News Nation: Tucker & Chris Cuomo: The FULL Conversation
• Hasan Debates Professor Jiang On His Wild Predictions | HasanAbi Archive

In this Decoding Academia episode, we venture into comparative psychology, focusing on a fascinating line of work by Fumihiro Kano and colleagues on social intelligence and theory of mind in great apes. By showing apes short videos and tracking where they look, researchers examine whether they expect others to act based on what they have seen, what they know, or what they falsely believe. This approach offers a remarkable window into the evolutionary roots of human social cognition or, alternatively, the most elaborate way yet devised to explore what a chimp thinks of a man in a chimpanzee costume.

We discuss what this kind of research might reveal about social intelligence across species: whether apes understand intentions, knowledge, and false beliefs; how their abilities compare with humans, dogs, and other animals; and why studying minds without language requires ingenuity, caution, and tolerance for participants who may simply decide the whole enterprise is beneath them.

There is also some discussion of the usual complications: small samples, difficult data, flexible analyses, replication, and the gap between a beautifully designed experiment and a result we should treat as settled fact. But the main story is the genuinely intriguing attempt to study Theory of Mind beyond humans.

Along the way, we discuss chimpanzee costumes, zoo life, dogs, and the disturbing possibility that crocodiles may be running more sophisticated cooperative hunting operations than most university committees.

*The full episode is available on Patreon (57 mins)*

00:00 Introduction

03:57 Chimpanzee Theory of Mind & Eye Tracking

13:03 Attention, Grabbing and Orientation

24:03 The Role of Memory in Anticipation

26:10 Revenge of the Researcher

31:21 Statistical Concerns

43:44 Comparative Psychology Thoughts

49:13 Non-climbing Tigers and Cooperative Crocodiles

51:20 Matt's New Friends and Outro

Relevant papers for the episode:

Kano, F., & Hirata, S. (2015). Great apes make anticipatory looks based on long-term memory of single events. Current Biology, 25(19), 2513-2517. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.08.004

Kano, F., & Call, J. (2017). Great ape social attention. In Evolution of the brain, cognition, and emotion in vertebrates (pp. 187-206). Tokyo: Springer Japan.

We return for Part 2 of our coverage of “Professor” Jiang, the internet’s favourite new geopolitical prophet, secondary-school sage, and proud owner of an ever-expanding box of educational props. Having already treated us to multiple maps, chess pieces, and a sealed metal case of predictions, Jiang is back with more predictions, more props, and even higher-level insights.

This time, we get the dramatic unveiling of a fresh batch of forecasts, including the forthcoming U.S. civil war, AI surveillance states, a grand bargain with China, the Greater Israel project, and the coming East Asian conflict. During all of this, we pause to consider Jiang’s status as a Beijing-based geopolitical commentator who manages to be just critical enough of Chinese surveillance to sound daring, but yet is most reliably focused on predictions of imminent Western collapse, American hubris, and the doom of the U.S. empire.

But the real journey begins when Jiang sets the geopolitics aside and invites us into Plato’s Allegorical Cave, updating it for the modern era by linking it to Korean television melodramas. Out come ominous black blocks, stacked into a metaphorical tower of global control: the military-industrial complex, the financiers, the World Bank, the WTO, the media, Hollywood, schools, universities, and culture itself. What started as “predictive history” devolves into an Alex Jones-style conspiratorial rant about international financiers, globalist bankers, controlled media, and brave alternative truth-tellers seeing through the mainstream lies.

The alternative media occupies a Schrödinger-like position in Jiang’s system: corrupted and controlled when it suits his narrative but also brave and rebellious when it is giving a platform to people like Jiang. Stephen Bartlett, meanwhile, fulfils his podcasting duty as a perfectly crafted avatar of the Diary of a CEO audience: curious, credulous and very receptive to the message that the system is rigged, the shadows are fake, and you, dear listener, are one of the brave truth-seekers with the courage to listen and look behind the curtain.

Finally, we also reach Cosmic Jiang. The bankers are at war with the tech bros. Reality is consciousness. Matter is vibration. We are all fragments of God returning to Source. Hermetic philosophy explains Plato. Kabbalah explains the Middle East. Israel is trying to force the hand of God. The world will end; paradise will return. It turns out all of that geopolitical analysis was actually just a sideshow...

So join us for the conclusion of Professor Jiang: a masterclass in massive domino-based reasoning, geopolitical dressing on bog-standard conspiracy theory, and the enduring appeal of intellectual junk food.

Sources

• Diary of a CEO: Professor Jiang: World War 3 Is About To Begin, Let Me Explain!
• Mehdi Hasan vs. “Professor” Jiang
• Professor Jiang talking about the Nephilim and Other Such Stuff: The World Is a Prison – The Secret Meaning of God And Creation | Prof. Jiang Xueqin
• Professor Jiang promoting creationism and denying evolution
• The National Security Strategy of the United States Document