Oprah Winfrey is someone who truly needs no introduction. She's a legend of daytime television, a warm and charismatic juggernaut who steam-rolled her way to the very apex of media success. Now, an extraordinarily wealthy woman, she's busy with philanthropy and helping others manifest their inner light so as to truly Be in this world.Certainly, in a category apart from IDW knuckleheads or bottom-feeding YouTube types, Oprah is nevertheless a self-help and spiritual guru in the truest sense of the word; both in the eyes of her audience and by her own lights. In the interview we cover, she talks frankly about her own philosophy of life and gives advice to others that they might emulate some portion of success. Inevitably not discussed are various controversies around her promotion of pseudoscience, endorsing self-help gurus like James Arthur Ray, anti-vaxxers like Jenny McCarthy and giving a massive leg-up to noted internet doctors, Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz. "The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne, which promotes the Law of Attraction, is not explicitly mentioned, but Chris detects hints of it vibrating throughout the conversation.So join Matt and Chris as they conclusively demonstrate why they remained the perpetual block-sucking kids at the nursery, while Oprah rode her self-actualised rocket past the first grade to become a billionaire media mogul.Also on this week's episode discover whether Oprah earns a place on Guru island, if the intro segments will be tightly edited, how Chris prepares for job interviews, and just how many of Matt's enemies are Nazis!LinksOprah Winfrey: The Secret of My Success. Stanford Graduate School of Business.Kurzgesagt's video on their funding and POV.PBS Space TimeDr Sam Gregson, the Bad Boy of Science
Hello and welcome to Decoding the Gurus, the podcast where an anthropologist and a psychologist listen to the greatest minds the world has to offer and we try to understand what they're talking about.
I'm Matt Brown, with me is Chris Kavanagh, my partner in crime, my better half, the scabbard to my sword.
It's getting weird now.
Yeah, the sheaf to my...
So, yeah, hello, good morning.
How are you?
That's what you humans say, isn't it, in these situations?
Yes, it is.
Thank you for asking, Chris.
I'm well.
I'm well.
I'm rather well today.
That's good.
And, you know, today, Matt, we will be taking on a totemic figure in the cultural discourse, Oprah Winfrey, right?
I know she's not necessarily considered, you know, part of the same set.
Of the secular guru oeuvre.
But she is a major figure and has been on the public scene for decades.
And, yeah, so I think it'll be interesting in some respects to look at, you know, somebody who falls a little bit more in the traditional, like, guru archetype, maybe.
We'll see.
We'll see.
But, Matt, before we get to her...
We're not going to have a lengthy introduction this time.
People were spoiled last time with an entire episode before we got past the introduction.
But this will just be short.
But, you know, last time we did a mini decoding of Matthew Goodwin's appearance with the trigonometry brothers.
And we did receive some feedback.
We received positive feedback, which we do receive.
But there were some people, Matt, that...
You, in particular, Matthew Brown, were a little too quick to jump to the old comparisons with Mr. Hitler and his friends, the Nazis, and the Godwin's Law,
right?
Matt, haven't you discredited your argument by invoking...
That spectre in discourse.
That little meme of, you know, all of my opponents are Nazis.
I like that I've cast this just as you.
So what have you got to say for yourself, Matt?
Well, first of all, I appreciate it that we can apply Godwin's Law.
To Goodwin.
That's the first note of appreciation.
And as you know, Chris, I'm one of these people, I like to call the people who disagree with me Nazis.
It's my go-to.
Never fails.
It's my thing.
And the people that try to defend the people that I call Nazis, they're probably Nazis too.
So that's my first rebuttal to that.
No, no, no.
Of course, that's not what we do.
Look, I think I stand by it.
You know, we're a little bit careful in that, similar to Jordan Peterson, we really did emphasize that we are not saying that they are literally Nazis.
We definitely don't think they would even think of themselves as being not only not fascist, but not even having any proclivities in a slightly fascist direction.
So what I think we are humbly pointing out is that the kinds of things that they like, the kinds of things that they find appealing...
Do share a fair bit of common ground with the tenets of national socialism.
Which, hey, it's an ethos.
Or I think, you know, one way to thread the needle would be to say that, you know, fascism is a broad church, right?
And there are, like, the farther right you go, the more that you lean towards...
Like, fascist kind of things.
This is basic political theory.
It's a spectrum, right?
Right.
But the farther left you go, the more you tend to lean into worrying forms of communism.
So, like, the extremes are extreme for a reason.
And there are certain motifs associated with, like, fascist political approaches.
And you can hear, at very least, echoes.
Of them in a bunch of the things that Goodwin does, right?
And was doing.
Now, is he anti-Semitic, targeting the Jews, saying that we need the living space to expand upon?
No, he's not.
And he would, I think, actively oppose the return or, like, the promotion.
Of overt neo-Nazis in right-wing politics.
Absolutely.
He might be tolerant of people who have been discovered to have such links, but I'm not saying that he would be out on the barricade saying that these people need a place at the table and they have to be there.
So, no, he's not an advocate for modern neo-Nazis.
Yeah.
And look, the problem is that these...
Particular stream of political thinking, because of the events of the 20th century, has achieved this kind of totemic status in the minds of everybody.
To such a degree that I think people can fall into the trap of thinking that unless somebody has big, shiny boots and is goose-stepping around the place, talking about world wars and invading other countries, then it can't possibly be.
Anything like fascism.
But just to remember, looking back through history, the kinds of appeals that those extremely hard right groups made to achieve...
They were making certain kinds of appeals, a return to traditional family values, emphasizing the need for a strong community, a strong national fabric that is united and cohesive,
being strongly against cosmopolitanism and internationalism, reigning in big business, having these motifs.
Talking about these elites betraying the people, which of course was a big trope about the narrative of the Nazis around World War I, seen as a betrayal by the elites, saying that the democratic system is broken and this skepticism about it,
and being anti-immigration.
And of course the kicker, a trope that we saw in Goodwin's thing, was that advances in genetic science will soon prove that there are important group differences that will...
End up supporting all of these views.
So we are merely observing, I think, that there are many tropes in common.
Yeah, and I think what you just detailed is the argument that we would put forward.
Now, Goodwin, I will note, has been on a bit of a rampage on Twitter, highlighting that the people who are criticizing him, look, these people all graduated from Oxford or Cambridge, and he seems to have...
Dug into that well-established vein now that if you rage and you present things in a polemical fashion, that you get a lot of attention.
And he is getting attention much more than when he was before a kind of contrarian academic type.
Now he's becoming, you know, like a firebrand populist advocate.
So that's interesting.
But I just, I find it disheartening that that works so well.
But also the notion that he's saying anything interesting when he is saying that in British politics in particular, there is an over-representation of graduates from Oxford and Cambridge and that the media is predominantly left-leaning.
Like, those two notions, that's not new, Matt.
That's not a new thesis.
That's well-established.
In fact, at my very lefty...
I went to my undergraduate at SOAS.
That's what everybody would diagnose the faults of everything through that lens.
So it's just amazing to me that you can get so much mileage out of presenting this as the thing that nobody wants to talk about, the over-representation of elite education institutions and the ruling classes.
Like, where has he been?
For decades and decades.
This is not a new thing.
It is an established talking point.
And that's part of why he's getting criticism is just the lack of historical context in what he's saying and the clear polemical nature of it.
But he uses that to say, well, of course, these elites would respond like that, right?
So it's, yeah, it's interesting.
It's a very effective polemic strategy.
Yeah, just to rile people up and it worked.
So, there we go.
You know, he was saying on Twitter, he'll be anyone who wants to and we have a right to reply.
So, you know, we could end up talking to him.
But he just seems to me like a polemicist.
So, what's there to discuss except rhetoric?
Yeah, it doesn't sound like it would be much fun.
Anyway, well, that's that.
Our right to reply there.
Always open to everyone.
Boring.
So we do draw the line at neo-Nazis and whatnot.
And so the fact that we would allow him a right to reply would mean that, no, we don't classify him as a neo-Nazi.
So there you go.
See?
It works out, Matt.
Fine, fine, fine.
Now on to Oprah.
I agree with you, Chris.
Some people who might think that we're more sort of focused on IDW type people and that kind of thing.
Might think that.
Yeah.
They might think Oprah is an odd choice, but certainly, like, I remember Oprah from, you know, being all over the TV when I was younger, and I remember just the mega stardom, and I remember the adoring fans and the strong dose of sort of self-help popular philosophy that was in there along with the normal kind of daytime talk show stuff.
So, yeah, I think just in purely non-pejorative...
Guru terms, she is a perfect example.
So definitely worth decoding, I think, to find out what's going on.
I haven't listened to Oprah for years.
My memories of her before looking at this content we're dealing with today were from 20 years ago.
So it's going to be interesting.
Yeah, and the piece of content that we're looking at is an interview.
It's actually a little bit of an older.
One, it's from years ago.
I think that's at least when it was posted.
The Stanford Graduate School of Business did an extended interview about her career and general approach.
But it was actually slightly hard to find content where she is the subject rather than the interviewer, right?
Or in the case where there are interviews with her, they often tend to be like short talk show.
So that's why we're using this.
So it's in the context of talking in front of like an audience of business school students and being hosted by, I think, a young member of that school.
I don't know, a teacher or a lecturer, TA, whatever the case might be, interviewing her.
And so just like a little bit of context to note is that Oprah is, I think, a little bit infamous.
Prior to Gwyneth Paltrow being one of the promoters of spirituality-laced pseudoscience and self-help that verges on, you know...
Magical thinking.
Yeah, so, I mean, her most notable things are that Dr. Phil spun off from her content, so did Dr. Oz, who...
Now, you know, attempting to get elected, but before, a doctor who was infamous for peddling various pseudoscience treatments.
And Jenny McCarthy used to be promoted or featured during her anti-vaccine advocacy.
I'm sure she's still doing that, but less prominently now.
So, yeah.
Yeah, so I guess that kind of fits the thing that you've noticed before, which is that the real mega gurus tend to spin off minor gurus.
Go on to blossom and have their own careers.
What do you think though, Chris?
I mean, I think the fact that you couldn't find a great deal of content where it's sort of her monologuing, telling her theory of the world, her theory of life, that kind of counts against her as a guru, right?
A bit like Joe Rogan.
He's often doing interviews, although he does rant and rave about his own opinions.
But that's the thing.
I think if you listen to Oprah's...
And I have listened to a bit of it now because I subscribed to some of her feeds when I was preparing for this.
And it's the same as like Gwyneth Paltrow.
It comes out in her interviews with other people.
And it's kind of her actions, which are also indicating the kind of beliefs that she holds.
So she doesn't need to do, you know, like a Russell Brand or Jordan Peterson style extended monologues because...
Yeah, well, one, she's been in the scene a lot longer than most of those figures, decades before that.
So I think a little bit has cut out of her system of needing to be the sole person monologuing.
I think over time you come to realize it's nicer to have other people to bounce off, right?
It's less work.
And I think the other thing is she rose to prominence by being a talk show host.
So, in her nature is that interactive dialogue aspect.
So, it's a very long-winded way to say that I think there's plenty in her content which reveals her beliefs, her worldview, and I would say it comes across as guru-ish, but maybe not in a secular guru way.
Yeah, I think in one respect she's a little bit like an...
Early Elon Musk, not the way Elon Musk is now, but the way he used to be a bit in that he is like a genuinely rich and important person in his own right.
So he would often do interviews and there would be these hagiographic kind of fawning interviews where he really didn't need to prove to anyone.
You know, what an amazing person he was.
Or rather, he was doing it, but doing it helped along by the interviewer without having to exert too much effort.
He's since become so much more needy and cringe somehow.
But Oprah is sort of the bona fide version of that, which she has been hugely successful, is immensely wealthy and popular, and does not really need to exert herself to prove anything at this point.
No, and there was talk about a political run, right?
There was talk a couple of years ago about her running as a Democratic nominee or an Independent maybe, but I haven't heard much about that in recent years.
But we have seen various celebrity candidates, notably Donald Trump.
So who knows?
The fact that it hasn't been talked about.
Recently, maybe means that it's not so much, you know, an active thing being pursued.
But yeah, I don't know.
Just to say that, like, she might have more things to do outside of the sphere of, you know, entertainment.
But maybe not.
It's unclear.
So who knows the future for Oprah?
It's wide open, but she seems quite content.
Like working on her network and various philanthropic projects and, you know, podcasts and whatnot.
So, yeah.
Okay, so I'll play first just to highlight the structure of the interview and a little bit of the dynamic that is at play.
This is the interviewer explaining how the thing is going to be structured.
To get things started, I thought we'd frame today's talk.
With framing three sections with quotes of yours that you shared after wrapping up your 25th season and final season of The Oprah Winfrey Show.
And I thought some of these quotes, I mean, you share so much wisdom, but these really spoke to me and thought would be a great way to frame our discussion.
So this first one that I will read for everyone and for you, so you don't have to strain your neck, is, you have to know what sparks the light in you.
So that you, in your own way, can illuminate the world.
So I wanted to take this time to talk about your early career and how you discovered your calling.
Well, before you comment, Chris, I have to remark that I think the interviewer has a very unfortunate accent.
Not her fault.
Not her fault.
Product of her cultural background.
America is a rich and diverse country with many different accents.
That particular...
Which I'm not sure if it's Californian or Valley Girl or something.
I don't know.
But it hurts me.
Oh, this is a spicy tick.
The vocal fry?
Does she have a little bit of vocal fry?
Is that the thing?
But it's not that that bothers me.
It's just...
It's just one of those things.
No judgment.
It's a personal preference.
It's a personal preference.
It's my problem.
It's me.
It's not her.
You know, vive la différence.
Let a thousand flowers bloom.
It's not her fault.
But, yeah, I don't like that answer.
So, I mean, I hear what you said.
It doesn't rankle me as much, but, you know, people in glass houses can't prove stones.
I was going to say, you know what it's like to be disabled in this respect.
Yeah.
So, I instead will just comment on the way the interview is streamed is around these kind of key quotes, right?
Fraction out the sections.
And as she said, there's three of them.
And the first one about you have to know what sparks that light in you so that you in your own way can illuminate the world and so on.
Very reminiscent to me of the stuff that we covered when we looked at Brené Brown, right?
This is just a bit of the patter of self-help chat across the globe, but in particular, like in the US.
So we're going to be...
Dealing with that.
And as we flagged on the Gwyneth Paltrow episode, in the Brené Brown episode, this, you know, it kind of conflicts with our personalities and cultural upbringings and whatnot.
So, you know, just worth mentioning.
Just worth mentioning.
That's the art.
But, yeah, look, okay, so it is that generic self-help type phrasing.
Find the light in you.
So, no.
What is it?
Anyway, you want to let it shine.
A finder line user can illuminate the world.
Yeah, okay.
So, it's the kind of thing you'd find on a Hallmark card.
Like, are we being unfair?
Is there some substance to that, or is it literally just Hallmark card emptiness?
Well, we're going to get into it.
So, I think we'll see how much substance there is to it as we go through some of the other clips.
But the basic dynamic, which...
You can understand is that this is a young woman interviewing the kind of cultural icon that is Oprah.
So there's a little bit questions to the master kind of style.
But actually, I find their interaction, the rapport between them to be pretty good.
I mean, I guess Oprah is very established as a talk show interviewer and subject.
You might imagine that.
But, you know, it's framed at various points.
She's going to give tips to the person interviewing them about how to do it properly and stuff like that.
And, you know, I find it relatively endearing, that interaction.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
No, no.
Play us some more clips.
Play us some more clips.
Okay.
I'll give you an example just of that.
You know, the kind of interview dynamic.
It gets a little bit into some other topics.
But here you go.
Here's an example.
I'm sure you are a minority.
Perhaps is the only woman, the only black person, the only person from a poor family.
Did this affect you on your professional path?
And how did you navigate situations in which you might have felt more alone?
And now, how did that impact how you lead and how you might help people who may be feeling that same thing?
Okay, man, that's a lot of questions.
I'm sorry.
All right, let's...
Man, I'm putting my glasses on.
I figured I had you here.
I was going to ask as much as I could.
Amanda went deep on me there for a minute there.
Back up, sister girl.
Come on, back up.
Yeah, we'll hear a lot more of that kind of thing.
Oprah's really deft and charismatic.
Yeah, it's hard not to like her, basically.
And she says a lot about her.
Personal background.
And it is like a rags to riches story, isn't it?
I mean, you're playing more clips, I'm sure, of her background in Mississippi.
I think she was born in the year where segregation was officially ended, but not really.
So, you know, that's quite a story.
Yeah, and I think those aspects of it were the fact that Oprah has become so successful when she was climbing a media ecosystem.
As a black woman, as you say, in the era, like immediately after, what's it called?
Desegregation?
I think so.
Yeah, or growing up in that period and then entering, you know, a media environment, which was obviously dominated by white male producers and business people.
Like it is impressive, all the things that she's achieved.
And I think that regardless of all the other stuff that she...
Does and that we'll talk about.
That bit is, I think, fairly uncontroversial.
Whatever you generally think, it is impressive what she achieved given the environment that she came up in.
Yeah, when I mentioned to my brother that we were covering Oprah, he immediately mentioned Dolly Parton, which I think is a similar character and someone else who it's really hard not to like.
I might like Dolly a little bit more just because I don't think she does the self-help-y Hallmark stuff so much.
I don't know.
That's my impression too, but I haven't looked into it.
Dolly Parton lore, so she might do.
I don't know much either.
There was an interesting part to me where she does talk about the environment and the various difficulties she faced and stuff.
But she also, to some extent, takes a relatively unpopular position in progressive land these days.
So let me just play it to illustrate what I mean.
So how did you navigate situations in which you might have felt more alone?
Always the only woman in the room.
Still walk in, only woman in the room.
And there's a room full of white men, usually older.
Thrills me.
Just thrills me.
I just love it.
Usually the only black person in the room.
Also, never really concerned me because I don't look at people through color.
I didn't get to be where I am by and who I am by looking at the color of people's skin.
I really, literally took Martin Luther King at his word and understand that the content of a person's character and refuse to let anybody else do that to me.
So I love it.
Just love it.
And there's a wonderful phrase by Maya Angelou from a poem that she wrote called To our grandmothers, that she says, when I come as one, but I stand as 10,000.
So when I walk into a room, and particularly before I have something really challenging to do, or I'm going to be in a circumstance where I feel I'm going to be, you know, up against some difficulties, I will literally sit.
And I will call on that 10,000.
I will call on the ancestors.
I will call on those people who've come before me.
I will call on the women who forged a path that I might be able to sit in the room with all of those white men and love it so much.
I call on that.
I think you do the same thing, don't you, Chris?
You call upon your ancestors.
The flying columns, the bog trotters, the freedom fighters.
Yeah, I think Celtic warriors were famed for going into battle with just a metal necklace, like a kind of...
Not a dog collar.
The ancient Celtic equivalent to that.
Yeah, they just paint themselves blue.
That's all you need to do.
You just need to blue yourself up.
Exactly.
So before job interviews, I strip down, paint myself blue, put on my dog collar, and enter the room growling.
What I imagine to be Celtic tongues.
So, yeah.
Never fails, I imagine.
I imagine it must make quite the impact.
It's how I've reached these lofty heights today.
But, no, the thing that was interesting to me is, like, she simultaneously threads the needle of recognizing the role.
Played by, you know, pioneers, people who pushed for women to have more representation for the rights of African Americans.
And she acknowledges all that quite clearly.
But she's also very clear that she believes in, you know, I don't see color.
The thing which is generally regarded as not kosher and progressive circles.
I'm fine with that.
I understand why people are critical of some folk who immediately reach to.
I don't see any colour thing, but I think as an overall goal and as an approach that we should strive for in the world, colour blindness is what we need.
And progressives sometimes seem a little bit confused at that point.
True, true.
You know, I thought that was all pretty cool.
I thought she squared that circle nicely, just like you.
She talks at length about the various disadvantages or things she had to overcome about being the only black woman in the situation and things that are unfair and all that stuff.
She says, well, I take people as they are, and I don't treat people according to that kind of thing, and I don't want them to treat me like that.
So, yeah, that's pretty wholesome, healthy.
Yeah, agreed.
And, you know, at the start, I think it is...
Good to dwell a little bit on outlining how, you know, her career began and the path that she took.
And there are some elements that are kind of interesting.
So she's talking about, you know, when she was being successful as a reporter.
Or, you know, at least she was on TV and had a profile and she received advice like this.
And when I was, by the time I was making 25, my father goes, well, you just hit the jackpot.
You're not going to make no more money than that.
That's just it.
So I was torn between what the world was saying to me and what I felt to be the truth for myself.
It felt like an unnatural act for me reporting, although I knew that to a lot of people it was glamorous.
And I started to just inside myself think, what do I really want to do?
Yeah, so she talks a lot about her personal journey here, right, Chris?
Yeah.
And, you know, she is obviously the one who went over every hurdle, went on to a bigger and better thing every time.
And I wonder, though, I mean, there would be many people who got to, say, the first rung or the second rung that she hit.
And for many of us, that's where we plateau, right?
So she's looking back in hindsight of how...
She, you know, just blitzed through all of those hurdles.
Yeah, yeah.
And that kind of point will come up in a couple more clips that we'll play.
The sense of, in a way, it's like it's kind of a combination of having the willpower to just, you know, barrel over the hurdles, but also it being like predestined in a way.
You know, I'm always reminded of that Donnie Darko scene where...
There's like the big liquid when he sees, you know, the path that people are following.
Donnie Darko's a science fiction movie and it's kind of metaphysical and esoteric in parts.
The only thing I remember about it is a big rabbit.
It was very disturbing.
There's a big rabbit, but there's a part where he sees the watery paths coming out of people and people bounce along the paths.
Anyway, it reminds me of that notion that when you have insight that you see what your path is and then you know what you're supposed to follow.
Actually, this clip speaks to this a little bit.
So this talks a bit about the environment that she entered and the potential lack of support or at least people being negatively violenced like us and how she overcame that in a way.
Every single person, except my best friend Gail, said you're going to fail.
Every single person when I left.
My bosses, by this time, thought I was terrific and said, you're walking into a landmine.
You're going to fail.
You're going to fail.
Chicago's a racist city.
You're black.
You're not going to make it.
Everything to keep me staying.
They then offered me a car and an apartment and all this stuff.
And I said, no, if I fail, then I will find out what is the next thing for me.
What is the next true thing for me?
It felt right to you, so you went for it.
Because it felt like this is now the move I need to make.
So yeah, she does believe in, I guess, destiny and the power of self-belief and having a vision for where you want to go.
And if you hold true to that, then you will get there.
Yeah, and so there's parts of that which are, I think, admirable about being able to have faith in yourself and, you know, not listen to the naysayers, right?
Like, if you think, go for it, right?
And if you feel, you feel.
And that's better to have...
Loved and lost and never to have loved at all.
But apply that to trying things.
But there are shades of it at times where the implication that Oprah is a very special person and that's why she succeeded come through.
And this is her, I think, talking about her education and the segregation environment as well.
And if it were not for education and...
Being born at the right time, because I was literally born in the year of desegregation, five years before, three years before, two years before, nobody would have even had the hope that my life could have been any different.
So because I was born at that time and literally moved out of Mississippi by the time I was in my first classroom, I was in kindergarten, wrote my kindergarten teacher a letter, Ms. New.
I said, dear Ms. New, I do not belong here.
Because I know a lot of big words.
And then I wrote every big word I knew.
Elephant.
Hippopotamus.
Mississippi.
Nicodemus.
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego from the Bible.
And then Ms. New says, who did this?
I said, I did.
So then they marched me off to the principal's office.
Only time I was ever in there.
Principal's office.
Principal made me sit and write those words again.
And I got myself.
Out of kindergarten, into first grade.
Oh my gosh.
First grade, skip second grade, hello her.
The renaissance began.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So she does, it's an interesting mix though, isn't it?
Because she does talk about some degree of luck and that she was born at the right time and where opportunities might possibly be available.
But she's very clear about the fact that she was pretty special.
She was a gifted kid and...
Just, yeah.
Yeah.
And I do have another clip that makes that emphasis a little bit more clear, the distinction between her and the other children.
You look around and you say, these kids, they are playing with some blocks.
You're like, I don't do that.
And I know Nicodemus.
I do not think I belong in here.
I do not belong in here.
So my point is, my point is, education really opened the door.
Hmm.
Is that the point?
Wasn't the point that you were, like, out-pacing all the other people in the education system?
Did you ever have that feeling in, like, kindergarten and stuff, Chris?
Like, I think I was just one of the kids, like, sucking on the blocks.
Yeah, that's it.
Yeah, with the disapproving gifted children looking over at you.
Yeah, so that's a...
You know, this is a common feature, right?
Where there's like a self-deprecation tendency, but it's often contradicted by the story that people tell where they'll say, you know, I wasn't gifted at education, but the teachers just couldn't appreciate my brilliance,
right?
Like, I had all these alternative ways of seeing things that the teachers couldn't understand.
And in her case, she is saying that it was Yeah, but do you have an issue with that?
Because I don't find it unlikely that she was a gifted kid.
So why not just be honest about that?
Yeah, it's more the logical connections.
Because if you are this special person that is outpacing the development of the other children...
Yes, it's important that you have the ability to flourish by being allowed to access good education, but it's also...
You are saying that, like, the other block-sucking children in this class, you know, what did education do for them?
Yeah, I know.
It's a logical non-secretary that bothers you.
Yes.
Yeah, but in any case, you know, not a huge sin, I think, to have confidence in yourself like that.
No.
So one of the other things that she draws upon is that, You know, this distinction between being a reporter and what she came to do, which is, you know, a talk show host.
And she'll go on to then talk about why people are also misrepresenting her by seeing her just as a talk show host.
But initially, this is the distinction she's drawing between, like, reporting and a more talk show type approach.
And the moment I sat on the talk show interviewing the Carvel ice cream man and his multiple flavors.
I knew that I had found home for myself.
Because when I was a news reporter...
It was so unnatural for me, you know, to cover somebody's tragedies and difficulties and then to not feel anything for it.
And I would go back after a fire and I would take them blankets and then I would get a note from my boss saying, what the hell are you doing?
You're just supposed to report on it.
Can't be that empathetic.
Can't not be that empathetic.
And it felt unnatural for me.
So if I were to put it in business terms or...
Or to leave you with the message that the truth is I have from the very beginning listened to my instinct.
All of my best decisions in life have come because I was attuned to what really felt like the next right move for me.
And so it didn't feel right.
So this might be a little bit unfair, but I just want to play a clip.
From a previous guru that you may remember talking about following your intuition.
And anyway, I think in a time where there's a heavy inundation left, right, and center, where what to think is being spoon-fed to you, maybe you can spit out that hydrogenated thinking.
And let yourself feed off of your own thinking.
Yeah.
Well, some would say that's unfair.
That's J.P. Sears.
For people who don't know, just advising.
There's various other clips I could play.
It's one of his main things is, you know, follow your intuitions.
That's what guides you.
And that's a very common motif in New Age.
Spirituality, also in QAnon, but it's all about intuitions and coming into tune with the universe, right?
Yeah, yeah.
So, Oprah's been criticized for those self-help, emotion-driven, intuition-driven kind of philosophical ideas.
But, you know, that's true of like 90% of self-help type.
Inspirational material, and I think it speaks to the fact that JPCs and basically all of them are drawing upon the same well of bland platitudes.
That's kind of how I read it.
Yeah, I get that.
Just to highlight a point of difference, I will come back to these parallels, Mark, because I think there's more of them than...
Perhaps, you know, the distinction that we're drawing suggests.
But in any case, before that, there is some section where Oprah, essentially, she notes, you know, about the Jerry Springer era of talk TV and, you know, the revelations about who's the follower of this child and all those kind of things,
right?
And her having these moments where she realized She didn't want to be a part of that.
She didn't want to use her platform to do that.
And the insight that she offers here is, I think, something that JPCers will never reach.
So there's one where she talks about an episode where they had KKK members on.
And here's what she says.
I was interviewing Ku Klux Klan.
And I thought, as an African-American, oh, I'm going to get them.
I'm going to show for every Jewish person, for every person who's been.
Discriminated against.
And during the commercial break, I saw the Klan exchanging signals and looks at each other.
And then something inside, that instinct, I thought, I am doing nobody any good.
They are loving this.
They are using me.
I think I'm doing an interview.
They are using me.
I did not know it at the time.
I brought them on, actually, those same guys back.
For my last year.
And they told me that they used that show for their recruitment.
I could feel that happening.
And I made a decision after that show.
I'll never do anything like that again.
I'll never let my platform be used.
And I will not be used.
Yeah.
Seems like a good insight there.
Yeah, the people in the guru's field should consider.
Like, it isn't...
Saying that there's no value that you could extract from dealing with people that are extremists or whatever.
But what she's highlighting is that what you think you're doing is often not what is actually occurring.
Or you have to be aware of other people's agendas and stuff.
And that's a very reasonable, straightforward, and self-reflective point.
And I'm sure you can find lots of clips where it seems that Oprah...
Hasn't considered that in her early content.
But it's true that I don't think she is known now for promoting confrontations with the KKK or Alt-Right or that kind of thing, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, well, she talks a bit about how she looked at what someone like Jerry Springer, that's his name, isn't it, was doing, which is pretty low-rent, confrontation-based.
Cheesy reality TV.
And I only vaguely remember Oprah Winfrey's content, but I do seem to remember what she's saying, checking out, in that she seemed to go a little bit higher than that.
Yeah, so she has this point where she talks about reaching, you know, the decision to not go that route.
Like, they were having content.
I think everybody in that era sort of was, you know, Ricky Leak or Sally Jessie Raphael and stuff.
They all did go into the who's the parent and this person is sleeping with the granddad.
People throwing chairs around on the stage.
Yeah, I think that was mainly Jerry Springer's thing.
It's like the WWE chair attack.
But yeah, she reflects on that era and she again mentions a turning point.
Whether this is a self-generated or embellished memory or not, I think it is likely to have been a poignant turning point for her.
And I literally, really, it still makes my eyes water to think about it.
I looked at her face and I felt her humiliation.
I felt her shame.
I felt it.
And I said, never again.
I will get out of television if I have to do this.
And I went and I had a meeting with the producers because I just had the Klan before and I got the adulterers here.
And some uplifting show, I must say.
And I said to the producers, we are going to change.
We're going to turn this around.
And I'm no longer going to be used by television.
I am going to use television.
What a concept.
I'm going to use television as a force.
I didn't say at the time for good.
I said, you know, let's think about what we want to say to the world.
And how we want to use this as a platform to speak to the world.
How do we want to see the world change?
How do we want to impact the world and then let all of our shows really be focused and centered around that?
Yeah, and look, I wouldn't think that Oprah or anyone in the television industry would sort of...
Totally neglect commercial concerns and totally forget about ratings and just say, oh, we're going to be a force for good and promote good things.
That's what we're going to do.
No, I don't believe that.
But, I mean, I think it's plausible that someone who achieves that degree of popularity is throwing that much weight around, does have a fair bit of autonomy and ability to set the agenda a bit.
And she would have had the freedom to set the tone more.
And I can well imagine her saying, I'm going to use those degrees of freedom that I do have to do the kind of show that I want to, rather than just going all out for ratings and nothing else.
Yeah, I think there's probably the likelihood that if you looked at the timeline, you might find that the...
Level of toleration for this kind of content may have went on much longer than, you know, this anecdote implies.
Yeah, it wasn't like an overnight kind of sea change.
Yeah, I did two episodes and kind of realized, no, this isn't for me, right?
It's probably a couple of years.
I mean, I also should emphasize, I think, that probably Oprah's idea of what is promoting good in the world is kind of different from...
Oh yeah, we'll get to that.
We'll get to that.
But I think it's certainly the case that that is what she believes that she is doing.
And that is, you know, she does see herself as promoting good things for the world and trying to make it a better place, right?
Sure.
Now, so I kind of link here before we get to the stuff that is actually being promoted is this concept about a destiny, right?
It isn't just...
About Oprah's personality, it's kind of like a plan from the universe that she is manifesting.
And so, like I said, dissatisfaction with reporting led to talk shows, which were sort of looked down upon, but then came to be highly regarded in part for what she did.
But there is then this point of like, yes, but it's not really about talk shows, right?
Clips that highlight this.
I know what it looks like to the rest of the world.
Oh, there's a talk show.
But I really know what I'm here to do, which is the number one thing I would say to you.
First, let me answer your question.
So, no, there's nothing.
I'm not scared to try.
I have hit my stride, but I haven't done what I ultimately came to do.
There still is a supreme moment of destiny.
That awaits me.
And I also knew that during the Oprah show.
The supreme moment of destiny, Matt.
Do you think there's a supreme moment of destiny still awaiting your life?
You're much younger than Oprah, so, you know, what do we have to look forward to in the brown pantheon of life events?
That's a good question.
Yeah, well, I guess this is what marks the difference between special people and the people, those of us who aren't.
Maybe I need to.
You've got this podcast, Matt.
Maybe this is it.
This could be it.
I could have peaked.
Look, yeah, I think you've manifested this podcast.
The universe has a plan for you on Decoding the Gurus.
And this is, you know, everything led you to here and talking to me.
So, you know, she does have a good point, I think.
She elaborates a bit more on this, actually at various times, but here's a bit more of an elaboration about, you know, the importance of finding your purpose.
Now, I happen to know for sure that every human being comes, comes called.
And that the calling goes beyond the definition of what your job is.
That there is innate, there is an innate supreme moment of destiny for everybody.
And that's why when I was in Baltimore, I could feel this isn't it.
This isn't it.
And then in Chicago, after 25 years of success on the show, I started to feel this isn't it.
There's something more, something more, something more that's calling me to what is the supreme moment.
And everybody has that.
Fulfill it unless you have a level of self-awareness to be connected to what is the inner voice or the instinct.
I call it your emotional GPS system that allows you to make the best decisions for yourself.
And every decision that has profited me has come from me listening to that inner voice first.
Time I've gotten into a situation where I was in trouble, it's because I didn't listen to it.
I overrode that voice, that instinct, with my own head and my own thinking.
I tried to rationalise it.
Yeah, there's two ways in which one could take that, hey Chris.
Like on one hand, if I put aside the kind of manifest destiny, the prosperity gospel kind of part, and you just take it in terms of You know, try to make those intuitive gut decisions in a way.
Like I was thinking back to myself, like, you know, I worked at CSIRO as a maths guy and it made sense to say that intellectually it made sense, but it just didn't feel like that's where I wanted to be.
You know, I was doing a business thing for a while, which again, it kind of made sense to keep doing that, but I wasn't happy.
So, you know, if you take it and...
And I think I made the right call in making those changes.
So, Oprah's little reflections on her career and how she decided to make changes from one position and job thing to another, you know, I think it's good homespun wisdom in that sense.
But I think...
Yeah, I get wary, obviously, in layering on that magical thinking or making it cosmic and more profound than it is.
Yeah, rather than it just being, you know, like, listen to your emotional response to things and intuitions as well as, like, rational.
Thinking it through.
Yeah, like, trying to do rational everything, like, based on rational cost-benefit analysis, like, your emotions.
And maybe doing other cost-benefit analysis, right?
Like, you know, people have these internal little things that say this situation is dodgy, that person's untrustworthy.
And it's not always right, but it's telling you something, right?
About how you judge the world, usually.
That's right.
Like, there are some questions which are well-suited to a kind of dispassionate intellectual analysis, right?
But some questions are more suited to that intuitive framing.
And I think, you know, choosing to move on from a job or...
You know, go into it, study something or whatever, is more that kind of thing.
Another example of that is like buying a house.
My mum's buying a house at the moment.
She's moving.
And when anyone's buying a house, what they tend to do, because it's such a big decision, you know, a lot of money involved and all that stuff, people tend to kind of retreat to...
Intellectualizing it and looking at it in terms of costs and investments and all these things.
But ultimately, it's like, do you want to live there?
Do you feel excited about living there?
So yeah, that's the aspect of the advice, which is good.
And you don't need to add the...
You know, the deepities, I think.
You Australians with your bourgeois concerns, should I buy this house or that house?
What house should I buy?
Fuck you, I don't even have any house.
The big question is, should you renovate?
The Australian renovations, it's all that matters.
I watch Bluey, I know all about Australian life now.
But there is a distinction there, because Oprah, Clearly, is of the more metaphysical bent when she's talking about that kind of thing.
So again, this is her talking about destiny, and you can hear that there is a kind of cosmic, spiritual aspect to it in her framing.
I'm one of the lucky ones.
I got to be here.
So how do you continue to prepare yourself to live out the highest, fullest, truest expression of yourself as a human being?
And I just want to end with this.
There are no mistakes.
There really aren't any.
Because you have a supreme destiny.
When you're in your little mind, in your little personality mind, where you're not centered, where you really don't know who you are, that you come from something greater and bigger and that we really all are the same.
When you don't know that, you get all flustered.
You get stressed all the time, wanting something to be what it isn't.
There is a supreme moment of destiny calling on your life.
Your job is to feel that, to hear that, to know that.
And sometimes when you're not listening, you get taken off track.
You get in the wrong marriage, the wrong relationship, you take the wrong job, but it's all leading to the same path.
There are no wrong paths.
There are none.
There's no such thing as failure, really, because failure is just that thing trying to move you in another direction.
So you get as much from your losses as you do from your victories.
Because the losses are there to wake you up.
Again, Chris, yeah, it's the same mix, I think, of stuff that is on one level good advice.
You do learn from your mistakes and so on.
But, you know, the way it's framed sort of elevates it to a mystical and really like a religious kind of worldview.
And I don't know, I feel like Americans are a bit vulnerable to this somehow.
Culturally.
It's really common, these sorts of...
It's like a mix between religion and a Hallmark card.
And I just find that a certain kind of American, a very nice person in other respects, tends to be susceptible to it.
So Oprah is by no means unusual in this respect.
No, but I'll raise a point that we raised in the Gwyneth Paltrow episode, and I think it applies here.
So if you take that advice and you're applying it to...
Your life isn't exactly where you want it to be and maybe things are going to get better and thinking that you can turn it around.
All good, right?
But this notion that the universe gives you your losses, your challenges in order to make you better.
That's lovely when you're somebody from a middle-class family who hasn't exactly found the job or the partner that you want in life and give you a positive image.
What about the person?
Who's suffered severe abuse, whose family are drug addicts, who's stuck in a job that they don't like to make ends meet, right?
There's a kind of notion that everyone is destined for something great and beautiful and big, right?
But the reality of the world is that not everyone can be a millionaire media mogul and that not every challenge makes people better.
Damage people.
Put them on the path that they didn't choose, that they don't deserve, and that they can't cope with, right?
And I feel that this notion that the universe is always trying to teach people lessons, it just doesn't account for stuff like a child who's heavily sexually abused by a parent.
And like, what's that the universe trying to teach them?
That the world isn't fair?
Like, no, you know, there's going to be these cases where people get past that trauma.
And have very meaningful lives for it.
But it's the way of talking about that as if not realizing that this was like, you know, the universe trying to make you better means that you haven't really got the picture.
And I think it isn't like that.
It is just the case that we live in a world where things aren't fair.
And some people suffer more than others.
Yeah, look, I might play devil's advocate here a little bit.
I think what you're objecting to is true, which is that this Hallmark card life philosophy is not an accurate one in many respects.
But you could take the view that having those kinds of beliefs is not helpful because it's true, but because it's helpful because it inspires.
I guess, positive actions.
So believing, I mean, let me take a different example, right?
So before she mentioned, oh, the naysayers were saying, don't bother going to Chicago.
They're racist there.
You'll never make it in that thing.
And she said, no, you know, I don't care.
I don't think that's going to be a problem.
Now, maybe they are racist in Chicago.
But the problem with having negative beliefs and negative expectations about the future is that it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
So having this unrealistic optimism.
Yeah, so the objection I have to it is the thing which comes with the kind of corollary to it that if you are successful and actualized,
you deserved it, right?
You took the moment and that is what brought you to there versus the people who failed in life, who became drug addicts or, you know, Didn't achieve their potential, right?
There are plenty of people who die and haven't made this massive mark on society, right?
And I think that there's a notion in it of predestination.
And the implication is everyone is predestined for greatness.
And that's an uplifting message in one way.
But what if you don't achieve that?
Then whose fault is that?
Because everybody...
Was destined for it.
So why did you feel?
Yeah.
No, I totally agree with you there.
And it is a negative corollary to an individualistic worldview.
That if you don't overcome, if you don't succeed, if you don't learn from those difficult experiences, then the fault lies with you.
I guess the only thing I'll say, though, is that, to be fair to Oprah, she doesn't, I think, claim that Everyone has it within them, whether it's luck or personal characteristics or whatever, to have the same level of success as her.
At other points here, she emphasizes that people can flourish and make their mark on a smaller stage or a bigger stage.
Hers happened to be a big stage, but she was making that point as well.
Yes, she did.
She talked about if you want to be the best picker.
That, you know, that it doesn't have to be.
But I think there still is like, there's just this element, Matt, that like when you look at the people that are interviewed on the self-actualized shows, right?
Okay, occasionally you'll get a care worker or whatever if they've, you know, written a book about their experiences.
But who is it most of the time?
It's like celebrities.
Models, CEOs of companies and stuff.
It's a celebration of success and a celebration of influential people.
It's prosperity gospel.
And they're all talking about how it's because they've manifested their spirituality and this has allowed them to flourish.
And I'm in line with one of our philosopher friends, Aaron, to say I'm not saying that everything In the world is beyond your control and people have no impact, but there simply is the fact that people have different opportunities depending on their circumstances and it's not all within your control to shape.
The part where I agree with you 100% is that I think anyone who has had any degree of success almost always falls prey to the attribution era.
Of attributing their call to their own decisions and their particular qualities.
And the fact is that in a counterfactual world where Oprah Winfrey never existed, there would be another woman, probably a black woman, who has filled that niche.
Because in broadcast television, a bit like the internet, it is like a winner-takes-all scenario, just like in...
We're talking about, what's his name?
He's the Twitter guy.
What's his name?
Elon Musk.
Elon Musk, right?
You know, some people are going to be lucky and someone is going to fill that niche and make it to the top and it's going to be some combination of their qualities, their decisions and luck.
But, you know, there is a person out there, almost certainly, who that if Oprah Winfrey hadn't existed would be...
Going on these talk shows and giving her legendary story of the explanations for her rise to greatness.
Yeah, you invoked Elon Musk.
And I want to get to the point about, you know, Elon Musk talks about his real mission being about preserving consciousness across the cosmos, right?
And making humans interplanetary.
And obviously him...
Pandering the cat turd too is just, you know, one step in the way to that great vision.
But before getting to the higher purpose talk, just to finish off the bookend, that point about, you know, intentions and destiny and so on.
Here's a little bit, again, about the emphasis placed on like having the right intentionality to succeed.
For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction.
That is my religion.
I know that what I'm thinking and therefore going to act on is going to come back to me in a circular motion, just like gravity, like what goes up comes down.
And so what also propels the action is the intention.
So I don't do anything without being fully clear about why I intend to do it.
Because the intention is going to determine the...
The reaction, the result, or the consequence.
In every circumstance.
I don't care what it is.
So I said to my producers, come to me with your intention at whatever it is, whatever shows you're proposing, whatever ideas you're proposing.
And then I will decide based upon the intention, do I really want to do that?
Is this how we want to use this platform?
And that really is the secret to why we were number one all those years, is because it was an intention-fueled, intention-based, coming out of purposeful programming.
Yeah, that's what it was.
Great.
I didn't really understand that.
I didn't understand the link to every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
It's kind of like listening to Deepak Chopra at points.
No, I think I can draw the connection for you.
It's a secret, Mark.
Remember, you know, that Oprah promoted the book by Rhonda Byrne about the secret, right?
The kind of manifestation metaphysical book about, you know, what you want to achieve.
The secret is that if you just visualize and believe that you will create it, you will manifest it into reality.
And what social, what she's talking about is, you know, whatever project you're promoting or whatever it is you want to do.
Come with me with the kind of spiritual intention, what you want to materialize in the universe, and I will then decide if that project is good.
The specific details are kind of less important to the manifested intention, what you're going to pull from the universe towards you.
I see.
Yeah.
There's always like two levels on which to read what she's saying.
Because I get what you've just said, but if you ignored all that and took it at a very basic level, she was saying at the end there that when people would come to me with some proposal or some opportunity or whatever, I would say,
okay, and then I would think carefully about whether it was in my best interests and fit with what I wanted to achieve.
And then I would give a yes or a no based on that, which is like, that's fine.
That makes sense.
That is not how I read that comment.
But, you know, in actual practice, that is likely what was occurring.
That's what I think was occurring, yeah.
But, you know, part of it is like dressing up pretty much homespun wisdom with that philosophy.
Like, self-help, philosophical, spiritual stuff, like, from The Secret, right?
Yeah, yeah.
So, you know, I mean, this might be flogging a dead horse at this point, but, like, to emphasize the kind of importance of self-actualization and realizing the person that you were destined to be, she is asked about, you know, what advice she would give women,
and this is framed around Sheryl Sandberg and giving, you know, the kind of lean-in.
And here is what she says.
I'm Sheryl Sandberg.
And last year she published the book Lean In, and it's got an incredible traction.
It had some, you know, criticism as well.
And I was wondering, if you were to write a book on women and careers, what would your title be?
Mine would be, actually, mine wouldn't be Lean In.
It would be Step Up and Into Yourself.
Because this is the truth.
There is no real doing in the world without being first.
For me, being your presence, your connection to yourself, and that which is greater than yourself is far more important than what you do, but also is the thing that fuels what you do.
And I know that one of the things that is so important for what happens here, At the graduate school is that you have leaders who are self-actualized and understand what your contribution to change the world can be.
You can only do that if you know yourself.
You can only do that unless you take, unless you, you cannot do it unless you take the time to actually know who you are and why you are here.
Yeah, so Chris, I mean, I like Oprah best when she's talking in concrete terms and she's just letting her personality shine, frankly.
She's talking about her real life and making jokes and all that stuff because she's incredibly charming and endearing and charismatic.
But when she goes this way and she starts sounding like the sense makers that we've covered or...
Deepak Chopra, like I mentioned, or you mentioned The Secret.
Maybe that stuff means something to some people.
I get the same feeling with the sense makers.
Clearly what they're saying means something to them, but it just doesn't mean anything to me.
You saw that bit that creeped in as well about self-actualized leaders who can change the world, right?
It's a little bit like the kind of Philosopher kings.
Yeah, yeah.
And it's the same vibe.
That's why I thought of the sense makers, I guess, because they do feel that there is this special class of people who are running 70 to 90 paradigms at the same time and have self-actualized that are going to do these amazing things.
And it leaves me a bit cold because that language doesn't lend confidence to me.
Yeah, I see it a bit more like that people who, you know, this is my left-wing perspective, I think, coming out, that, like, people who are wealthy businessmen, you know, greed is good, Gordon Gekko types, they also want to have,
like, spiritual, philosophical sides.
So, like, of course, you know, I also read Nietzsche, and I, you know, I'm a self, like...
Jack Dorsey, techno-monks, right?
Actually, Chris, I mentioned that to you.
I've been watching Succession, and I know you've seen Succession, and that was a point about it that really rang true for me that I appreciated, that you have these ultra-rich people that are super wealthy.
They may well be movers and shakers in the business sphere, but what comes across really well in that show is how, especially the younger ones, they desperately...
Feel that they ought to be able to shine in every context.
You know, they should be the hip, kind of coolest people in town at the cool parties.
They should be all of these things and they fail and they terribly cringe in a very entertaining way when they try to do so.
And I think it's the same kind of thing.
It's kind of not enough for someone like Oprah to be, hey, I've been a tremendously successful.
I'm a talk show host and I've done these great things and that's what I do.
And if you want advice about how to succeed in media, then I'll talk to that.
It sort of needs to be extended to be this all-encompassing spiritual leader.
And the final point I'll make is that there is, again, something a little bit uniquely American in this because...
Someone like Oprah Winfrey, she is on the liberal left side of politics, right?
Sponsoring democratic campaigns, all of that kind of thing.
She would definitely have very liberal progressive opinions in the American context.
But it is a slightly uniquely American thing where, especially the rich and famous people, they managed to combine the right-on social attitudes with that.
Sort of born to rule.
Yeah, yeah.
It is an odd combination.
I actually have a clip that speaks to that.
So it's kind of like conscious capitalism.
Cool.
And I just had a conversation with John Mackey, who runs Whole Foods, and has written this fabulous book, you should get it, called Conscious Capitalism.
And he was talking about...
How the investment in the stakeholders, the people who you are serving, that connection between the people who you're trying to serve and sell to, is equally as important as the people who you're buying from, equally as important as the people who are supporting you financially,
as your stockholders if you are a public company.
So I always understood that there really was no difference between me and the audience.
At times, I might have had better shoes.
But at the core, the core of what really matters, that we are the same.
And you know how I know that?
Because all of us are seeking the same thing.
Conscious capitalism.
Matt, you're on board?
It's about, you know, profiting, but, you know, in a way that helps the world.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, a couple of things.
Firstly, I think where she's coming from there is resolving that cognitive dissonance between the fact that her role as being that very emotive, very personalized talk show host, all about grappling with everyday issues,
really having that parasocial relationship with the audience.
That's at odds, of course, with the fact that she's worse.
Just so much money.
Lives in a mansion.
All that stuff.
Lives a very different life.
Moves in different circles from the average person that would be in her audience.
So I guess she needs to resolve that.
In terms of conscious capitalism, Chris, this is probably an unpopular opinion, but I think just let capitalism be capitalism.
Don't expect anything apart from capitalists except for obeying the rules and regulations that governments set for them and tax the hell out of them.
I don't like the conscious capitalism thing much because it kind of rests on, you know, expecting the rich people to be good.
Yeah, regulate the bastards.
Yeah.
That's what I say.
Force them.
I mean, I'm not against, in any sense, people trying to inject into corporations and whatnot that they do need to.
Have considerations about impacts on environment and this kind of thing.
It doesn't hurt.
I just wouldn't rely on it.
No, exactly.
I'm very suspicious of their ability to self-regulate those things or to do...
I'm not suspicious of their ability to run workshops and have engaging conversations about, you know...
Jimmy Wheeler gives talks at Goldman Sachs, right?
Yeah.
That's right.
I have complete faith in their ability to generate truly exceptional DEI statements and environmental responsibility statements.
I have a lot of faith in that.
But yeah.
So is that her thing, conscious capitalism?
Well, there is a little bit more to be said about that, I think.
But linking to it, Matt, that point that I raised before about, you know, The kind of guest that Oprah has on her Super Soul Sunday show, right?
It typically is your famous celebrities, your singers, your CEOs, your, you know, that kind of people.
And here's her talking a little bit about that.
And I do think there is a connection here.
I do a show on Sundays, which you can stream live, called Super Soul Sunday, where I literally talk to thought leaders from around the world and ask the questions.
Not as good as you.
I'm going to consult with you.
Ask the questions in life that really matter to get people thinking about what really matters in their lives.
And the responses that I get from people just regarding that show, let me know that I'm on the right track.
I'm moving in the right direction.
And so...
I'm not afraid, because I know that all of us have limited time here, but the real question is, who are you and what do you want to do with it?
And how are you going to use who you are?
My favorite line from Seed of the Soul is, when the personality comes to serve the energy of your soul, that is authentic empowerment.
When the personality comes to serve the energy of your soul, that is authentic empowerment.
Right.
Important.
You should get a tattoo of that.
I'm going to embroider that and put it on my wall.
Yeah.
So, again, there's that aspect, Martha.
We're all the same.
We all want the same thing.
I'm just somebody in more expensive shoes than you.
The thought leaders out there, you know, the way I want to spend my time is conversing with them about how they became authentically empowered self-actualizers that are transforming the world through conscious capitalism.
Yeah.
So that's how I linked that.
That's my lefty critique of this sphere.
But is it a lefty critique or is it just a, you know, I don't buy it.
I don't buy it.
Yeah, isn't it just the way of the world, though?
Like, you could grab random people off the street, or you could get people that are professionals at talking, professionals at writing, who are somewhat famous, and, like, one of those makes a show and the other one doesn't.
Sure, sure, but the difference is...
The difference is what you say, what you're doing, right?
And I feel a little bit of it that there's a cake and eating it scenario here where, you know, everybody's the same.
I care just as much about the ordinary man in the street as I do the CEO of Whole Foods Company.
But give me a network where I have complete freedom of choice to interview whoever I want.
And thank you.
5% of the time, I'm sitting down with my fellow millionaires, right?
Like, I just think you have to factor that in.
And maybe, Oprah, I don't know, because I haven't, like, you know, catalogued her content.
It might be the case that her network does make an effort to feature ordinary people who are doing good things in the world.
But at least from what I saw, it's much more, you know...
Tina Turner and Jack Dorsey, rather than this nurse who works in the projects, volunteering, and has a food program.
Yeah, I don't know either, but I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case.
No, Matt, no.
I will say, you know, in the content that we cover, there are sometimes insights given which I think are...
They might not be the most novel, but, you know, I think the people we covered, they can make good points.
Jordan Peterson can.
Sam Harris does.
You know, even J.P. Sears!
He might have said something.
He might have said, like, eat more vegetables or something like that, right?
He probably didn't.
He probably said the opposite.
But you never know.
He might have said something.
Like, it's nice to be hugged by people or something like that, right?
He probably said that.
He probably did.
So, I like this little bit where she, you know, in counter to what I'm saying about this, this being a little bit of a faux pose about, you know, we're all the same except for we wear different shoes.
She talks about what she's learned from interviewing so many people and where there's a kind of connective thread between all of them.
And I think this is sort of insightful, or at least to me it rang true, and this is what she said.
And when I sit down to talk to somebody, whether I'm talking to a murderer, I sat down, I interviewed a guy who'd killed his twin daughters.
I've interviewed...
Child molesters trying to figure out what it is they do and why they do it.
Obviously, lots of people who've been victimized through molestation.
Presidents, politicians, Beyoncé herself.
Beyoncé.
At the end of every interview, the murderer to Beyoncé.
The question everybody asks that you mentioned is, was that okay?
How was that?
Everybody says that.
And now I just wait for it.
Was that okay?
Was that okay?
And when I finish, I'll say to you, was that okay?
So the notion that even the most hardened criminal or depraved individual to the highest person, they want validation, right?
They want to know they did a good job.
I kind of thought that.
That is likely to be the case.
I'm sure there are some exceptions, but like, yeah, you know, people want to be perceived well.
I mean, you know, maybe it breaks down with serial killers and psychopaths.
That's the one I'm not sure they...
But, you know, even now...
I'm pretty sure Charles Manson wouldn't say that after the interview.
He just dance around and act weird.
But no, no, I thought that was...
Good, too.
I think, yeah, you know, she was pointing at just a little observation about that little bit of common humanity with everyone.
And, you know, she mentioned that she speaks to, I guess, normal people to whom exceptional things have happened or who have done terrible or exceptional things there, too, which goes against slightly the idea that she would only be interviewing, you know, celebrities.
No, but that's her.
Yeah, obviously she did.
She had a talk show, you know, for like decades.
She talked to many people, but I'm talking about Nye in her.
Nye that she's self-actualized to a strong degree, right?
And she has the ability to do whatever she wants.
Yeah, I have to admit, I do kind of prefer, like she reminded me a little bit of Louis Thoreau.
I think he threads the needle quite nicely too, actually, which is to, I guess, bring out the humanity and some very despicable or strange people without whitewashing them or making out that they're all fine now.
And she reminded me of him a little bit, but I think he really does get out there with...
Non-famous people.
Like, it would not be tempted to go that route of being, you know, following the Beyonce's and the Jack Dorsey's of the world.
Louis Farouk has Louis Farouk meets where he, like, you know, Michael Jackson, he tried to do it with.
Oh, okay.
So he does have a series where he, but it tends to be, like, eccentric characters.
Chris Eubank, the boxer, and various politicians, and Jimmy Savile.
Famously, before the revelations.
So, just a little...
Interesting.
Little nugget to fit into your Louis Thoreau pipe.
Yeah, I'm not a Louis Thoreau fanboy.
Clearly not!
I'll throw him under the bus.
I don't need any encouragement.
I casually consumed a little bit of his content.
Yeah, well, I mean, you know, it's a good illustration that you can do both things, right?
So I might be being a little unfair to emphasize the kind of celebrity aspect.
But I get a similar vibe that I do to Gwyneth Paltrow's.
I'm not saying they never have ordinary people or whatever.
It's more the kind of delta between the rhetoric and what the actual focus of the content is.
I understand.
There's nothing wrong with just having a show where you just interview celebrities and politicians.
Yeah, because you are a celebrity.
People like celebrities and want to hear from them.
It's perfectly fine, but it's just Yeah, it's just the discrepancy, I know, with what you're saying, the self-presentation of the thing.
But I think part of it, too, is that cultural thing where I think people of her ilk, Americans, that is, tend to be more effervescent and more sort of aspirational in their language.
They tend to really go hard there and will say things.
Like, you know, I love each and every one of you.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
That was awesome.
Yeah, yeah.
You can say that was awesome.
It was fine.
It was just fine.
It was okay.
It was pretty good.
It was okay.
All right.
Yeah.
So we've got to factor in our cultural differences is what I'm saying.
That is true.
That's true.
I mean, it's on display.
Everyone can hear them.
So I think, though, Matt, this diagnosis about people want validation, they want to be told they're good, there's just a very little clip that follows up on that.
And I think...
This applies to a lot of the guru sphere.
All of your arguments are really about the same thing.
It's about, did you hear me?
Did you see me?
And did what I say mean anything to you?
That's what everything's about.
Oh, Eric Jordan, if only you knew that you just want everyone to say, we hear you, we see you.
You're important, you are valid.
Yeah, we've watched you put on your jacket.
We know you're in waiting.
But it's true, right?
I think a lot of it is online in the guru sphere and further field.
A lot of it is, you know...
Could be presented as childish, but I think it's just an aspect of psychology.
People acting out for attention.
Yeah, and validation.
Yeah.
And even if that means pissing off a certain segment in order to get validation from another segment, that's okay, right?
As long as somebody is telling you, you matter.
James Lindsay, you matter.
Well done.
Well done, mate.
You're on the right path.
You got your big boy pants.
You pulled them on.
You're all right now.
Look at you.
A lot of truth in that.
A lot of truth in that.
I think...
Oh, no.
No, I only...
I just have another clip which takes it from gurus to more personal things.
So maybe I'll play that and I'll allow you to continue your thought unmolested.
I also know that that's what every human being is looking for.
They're looking to know, are you fully here with me?
Are you fully here or are you distracted?
That's what your children want to know.
That's what the people you work for want to know.
That's what you want to know.
Did you hear me?
And every argument isn't about whatever it is you think you're arguing about.
It's really about, but can you hear me?
And many people have even said it.
Have you not said it?
You're not hearing me!
You're not hearing me.
So having that understanding.
You're not hearing me.
Are you hearing me?
That's something that Americans say.
It's not something the rest of us say.
I say it.
Do you?
I say it.
I often think it when I'm talking to you offline because I know that you multitask.
I know that you get distracted.
I don't get distracted.
I know that my words do not penetrate sometimes.
What, were you saying something?
No, I do hear you, Matt, but I do have arguments with various people and I feel like, I'm sure they feel the same in reverse that they're not actually...
We're arguing about different things.
Nobody's really listening to each other.
It's like kind of just...
And what people often want is...
This, I think, is well known to many people in many segments that sometimes the argument is not about the argument.
It's just about saying, yes, I understand that that's bad.
Yeah, yeah, I know.
I've got a friend who's actually remarkably good at that, like actually paying attention to people, like really paying full attention.
Wow.
Yeah, I know.
Because most of us don't.
Like you say, we're more interested in what we've got to say than what the other person does.
He's very good at it.
He doesn't always use his powers of empathy for good.
He'll often use what he's learned about them against them.
But it is a skill to do that.
So, you know, I think she's hitting, you know, there's some truth in those tapestry platitudes.
I liked it.
Now, a little bit less of something I liked.
And this, I think, connects to the conscious capitalism kind of stuff.
When she's talking about her mission, right?
So as we said, it's bigger than just being, you know, a talk show host or a celebrity.
There's a bigger purpose that the universe has decreed behind it.
I sit here, you know, profitable, successful, by all the definitions of the world.
But what really, really, really...
What resonates deeply with me is that I live a fantastic life.
My inner life is really intact.
I live from the inside out.
And so everything that I have, I have because I let it be fueled by who I am and what I realize my contributions to the planet could be.
And what my real contribution is, it looks like I was a talk show host.
It looks like I'm in the movies.
It looks like I have a network.
But my real contribution, the reason why I'm here, is to help connect people to themselves and the higher ideas of consciousness.
I'm here to help raise consciousness.
So my television platform was to help raise consciousness.
Yeah.
Well, that rubs me the wrong way, too.
Chris.
What's wrong with raising consciousness, Matt?
Why are you against consciousness being raised?
What's wrong with just dedicating your life to helping people connect with themselves?
I mean, it sort of goes to what we were saying before.
It's a bit like how every massive oil corporation...
Tells you that their mission is to build stronger communities and, you know, foster a better world for our children.
And, you know, just be honest.
Your job, your mission in life is making money for an oil company and that's okay.
But, you know, it's the acting that you're...
Doing something else.
And I think Oprah is a perfectly nice person.
I know she's done charitable work and things like that.
But it would be nice to see just a little bit more acknowledgement of the luck, I suppose, that's involved when someone is rampantly successful.
I mean, if you take someone like Bill Gates.
I've heard Bill Gates speak a few different times.
And he's an example.
Or, I don't know, Warren Buffett.
Or there are other people that are rich.
That I haven't heard them give these sort of self-serving legends of how everything they have, everything that they've accomplished is because they manifested and expressed their true nature and so therefore all the good things came to them and their mission in life is to help other people do the same.
I mean, no, you can go and do charitable things and the Melinda Gates Foundation has done a lot of stuff without having that schmaltzy Self-aggrandizing story?
Yeah, and there's an aspect of it which like creeps into using this as the assessment of a follow.
So listen to this clip.
I've done the was doing and continue to this day to do the consciousness work.
I work at staying awake.
And being awakened is just another word for spirituality, but spirituality throws people off and they think you mean religion.
When I was hiring people for my company, looking for presidents, when people would come in, I'd say, tell me, what is your spiritual practice?
And literally, people would go, well, I'm not religious.
I said, I didn't ask you about your religion.
I asked you, what's your spiritual practice?
What do you do to take care of yourself?
What do you do to keep yourself centered?
What do you do to the...
And, you know, one woman started crying.
You know, that's not the person.
So that's a sign.
That's a sign.
Yeah.
What would you say, Chris, if someone asked you, what's your spiritual practice?
Fuck off.
Because, you know, I know what answer they want.
They want to talk, you know, like we were talking before off-air about ChatGPT's ability to, you know, produce these spiels about any kind of topic, right?
And if I ask ChatGPT, the 4.0, to say, write me a statement about my internal transformation and the spiritual practices that I do, but don't link it to religion, right?
It could give me...
This spiel that I could do.
And I could talk about, you know, how I have these, like, deep working meditative processes and I take mindfulness breaks and work and I'm, you know, I have a passionate devotion to the, like,
revealing truth to the world, like, in creating this critical engagement, getting people to...
Like, no!
You know, you can.
You can dress it all up and stuff.
But I don't like that.
And it's kind of forcing, it's presented as that will get you to the real people, the people who have done the work and reflected on it.
And I think, no, it might get you to those people.
It'll also get you to the cosmic bullshitters, which are a large part of Oprah's network.
And the people that she's ended up promoting, right?
These are not people who are famed for their self-awareness.
It's people who are famed for being able to talk in self-aggrandizing terms and to kind of code it in a thick layer of spiritual blather.
So, yeah.
Yeah.
I have the same feelings.
Yeah.
I think that kind of blather, that kind of facility with words and a willingness to indulge in that flowery language, it's an indication of something.
But, you know, you'll be filtering out a lot of people that just temperamentally don't like to do that kind of thing.
And yeah, anyway.
Yeah, well, they probably wouldn't be a particularly good fit for Oprah.
No, no, that's true.
I'm sure it actually works.
It works as a good filter for her, I'm sure.
Yeah, but so the raising consciousness, and there's always a bit of cringe when you're describing yourself as an awakened person.
Like, you know, fine for other people to say that about you.
You probably should not say it about yourself.
Sam Harris, take note.
I'll let her just, this is reiterating this point, but you can kind of hear a bit about how she sees the mission and the bigger purpose again.
I started talking this consciousness, spiritual talk, you know, two months after I started the show.
And my producers would all be like, oh God, there she goes again.
But I knew that even though masses of people were not tuning in for that.
That the whole purpose of that platform was to try to lift people up.
And now I have a network and I can articulate what it is I'm trying to do.
I'm trying to bring little pieces of light.
I am here to raise the level of consciousness, to connect people to ideas and stories so that they can see themselves and live better lives.
Thank you.
Yeah. Wow.
That's, you know, but that's, isn't that part of like,
All of our guru figures, they do see themselves as having this bigger purpose.
And, you know, I mentioned Elon Musk, as I said, you know, he claims to have these grand aspirations or, you know, I think to some extent he does believe that that's ultimately what's motivating them.
But it's a nice thing to have this image of yourself as a, like, cosmic force, which is transforming the world.
Through being a millionaire and owning companies and producing talk shows, right?
Or owning Twitter and shitposting about whatever right-wing chucklefuck has grabbed your attention that day.
There's this thing where, and we've hammered this point throughout the episode, that when people reach a certain degree of success in whatever industry it is, You know, it's kind of Maslow's hierarchy of needs thing.
There comes this point where they like to see themselves as having some bigger spiritual transformative mission.
And society is often telling them that's the case, right?
Like I see it with Sam Altman, the guy, the CEO of OpenAI.
He's being constantly asked in interviews about, you know, to like...
Generate deep thoughts about the universe and mankind and so on.
It's something that we do when people reach, as Jordan Peterson would say, the top of competence hierarchies or status hierarchies, that we see those people as special, as having insight that could help us achieve something like that.
I think it's just an aspect of being a social premier and having high regard for those that look like they are high regarded by a large amount of people in our society that are successful.
Yeah, I think when you're someone as successful and rich as Oprah Winfrey is, it's difficult to avoid that kind of self-nithologizing in a way.
To defend her a bit, I see that she ranks among the 50 most generous Americans.
By 2012, she'd given away about $400 million to educational causes.
You could list off a whole bunch of other stuff.
And I'm sure it's the case that whatever projects she's working on now, she does have the discretion to go, well, I'm not just going to do stuff that's going to make more money or get better ratings or whatever.
I do well at the box office.
I'm going to do something because...
By my lights, I feel like it's a good thing to do because when you do have that many resources available to you, you have the discretion to do that kind of stuff.
She does that and deserves credit for doing that, but don't we have to put onto the ledger the promotion of anti-vaxxers, the promotion of pseudoscience, especially in the...
Era of a pandemic that we experienced.
A lot of the people in Oprah's extended networks were not figures that were great for, you know, the impact of actual medicine during the pandemic.
And that all counts on the other side of the ledger, I think, for her social impact.
Yeah.
I mean, I agreed there.
I'm speaking to her.
Motivations rather than her critical thinking or ability to necessarily make good decisions by my lights.
I'm sure having Dr. Oz on and stuff like that at the time, maybe even now, she's clearly into spirituality and various kinds of woo.
So, for her, that would seem like a positive thing for the world, right?
Right.
She's wrong.
She's wrong.
Having Dr. Oz on is never a good idea.
You know, making someone like that more influential is a harmful thing.
Jenny McCarthy.
Yeah, I'm speaking to her motivations rather than the outcome.
She's the one that brought up people using your platform to spread their message and you have to consider that though.
So, heed your own words, Oprah.
Don't worry, Oprah.
I'm on your side.
I won't let him say these mean things about you.
If you want to donate a large amount to the Guru's Foundation...
Make it out to me.
I'll take care of it.
Yeah, send it to Matt.
That's fine.
He'll take care of it.
So, yeah.
But, you know, I think she is a mixed mind.
And I do agree.
I think we've covered the general stuff that she does, right?
And I think there always is with people like Oprah, people like Brené Brown.
And Brené Brown, maybe.
Less so than Oprah.
But there's always the interpretation that is maximally focused on the harm that is done and the promotion of pseudoscience and that kind of thing.
And also the self-aggrandizing prosperity gospel nature of the message.
But you can always go the other side of a more charitable interpretation about Self-empowering people who are feeling depressed, focusing on positive stories, giving people the message that their life has meaning no matter what they're doing.
You matter.
The universe cares about you.
And both things are true.
And it is certainly the case that her message resonates with a large amount of people.
So, yeah, it's kind of...
There wasn't that much in this content that surprised me.
About what she does.
And she is charismatic and likable even when peddling this information.
It's an unfortunate thing that those two things can be detached from each other.
But the spiritual stuff and the underlying prosperity gospel doctrine, I really don't like it.
And I think it does do harm.
It gives the message that you're...
Your success is ultimately tied to your spiritual worth, which it need not be.
No, no.
I don't think there's any such thing as spiritual worth anyway.
I think it's a totally imaginary concept.
But yeah, it's kind of hard, Chris, because even when Oprah is being self-aggrandizing, I guess, and talking about the legend of herself, she does it in a very charming and engaging way.
It somehow manages to be self-deprecatory as well.
She's picking herself up.
She's very good and personable.
I have one final clip I didn't play that makes that point.
It's like when she's receiving prayers and she kind of says how much she enjoys it, but it comes across as sort of endearing rather than narcissistic.
So let me just play it and I'll let you continue.
So, Oprah, you are a true Renaissance woman.
You know, you have your own network.
You've had this amazingly successful show for 25 years.
You've been in movies.
You are one of the most important philanthropists of our time.
So, what are the qualities...
I love hanging around you.
I'm just taking it all in.
I love it too.
You know, the part I love the most is Renaissance Woman.
As you said that, I went, what does that really mean?
Yeah, that's a good example.
There's lots of that all the way through it.
So yeah, just on a purely personal level, you get the vibe that Oprah would be a nice person to hang out with, right?
She'd be good company.
As long as you don't annoy her.
I wouldn't.
I'd be respectful.
I'd give her lots of compliments.
I wouldn't be annoying, Chris.
I don't know if I...
With these people, I can't help but think, Matt, there's so many...
She's a veteran of the media.
She knows how to come across as likable.
I wonder if her personal assistants share the assessment of her inner strength of being calm.
Sure, sure, yes.
Our public persona on camera is not necessarily the same one as whatever.
Mine is.
Yours is.
That's right, because you're not famous and nobody cares.
Well, that's true.
Nobody cares and you're not famous.
Thanks, Matt.
Yeah, look, I don't have much to add to what you said, Chris.
I think it's all pretty obvious.
There's no secret decoding necessary here.
Oprah's got a lot of stuff going for her and you could...
I perfectly understand why she achieved such rampant popularity and success.
And, you know, you and I are culturally allergic to the kind of schmaltzy, spiritual, self-aggrandizing stuff that people like that do.
And we can...
Legitimately point to that promotion of pseudoscience and the harmful aspects of that prosperity gospel stuff, which in a way really just legitimizes, makes the people that are on top, that have succeeded,
makes them not just better people in a pragmatic sense or in terms of being physically better off than other people, but also makes the people at the top.
Like, just better than us, spiritually.
And that is a bit on the nose.
But, you know, that's alright.
It's not the worst thing, I suppose.
There's a lot of it about.
Wonderful.
Good endorsement.
It's alright.
It's not the worst thing.
It could be more terrible.
Yeah, yeah, I agree.
So, that's Oprah.
Done.
She's in the bag.
Get in there with Jordan Peterson and JPCS.
There's a crow in the bag.
No, you have to live together.
I'll make a final statement though, Chris.
I reckon just, you know, despite my equivocal statement there, she's definitely a guru.
She's definitely like a leading light self-help guru.
Like the way that the audience responds to her and the way that people interact with her is that they do see her as someone with these special messages.
She presents herself.
As someone who has got, you know, has figured out the meaning of life and the way to be a perfectly, fully actualized person.
And she sees her mission at the moment to try to dispense that kind of wisdom.
And a lot of people are here for it.
So, very much a guru in that self-help, yeah, schmaltzy mode.
Yeah, yeah.
As to whether she's toxic, I mean, you know, and I'll also say that going back to what I was saying, like...
A lot of that stuff is delusional, that stuff about there being this sort of special inner light and all that fluffy stuff, which I just don't think is real.
But I'll go back to what I said, which is that I can understand how a lot of the time having unrealistic beliefs can actually be a positive thing.
Like having a negative view about society and the world and your potential, whatever, is not going to help you.
No, it might be accurate.
It might be accurate, but it's better to pretend it's not like that and just give it a shot.
Because, you know, there might be a lot of luck involved, but definitely it's the people that give it a shot that do well.
Yeah, yeah, I agree.
Now, Matt, one final question.
Is she coming on Guru Island?
You know, we've been...
The side in who's going to come along with us, we were taking Paul Bloom and who was the other one?
Travis View.
Travis View.
Travis View and Paul Bloom are on board.
We've only had kind of interviews since then, but this is our first.
Are we going to take her?
Well, I think we should do this like picking a soccer team, you know, so all the kids have lined up and you and I are the captains and we get to pick one at a time and there's like the top picks, you know, like Travis obviously.
You know, he's my top pick.
I'm going to pick him first.
And then we work our way down.
We need to do that in a special episode then, because there's too many gurus.
So I ask you, Matt, this is purely to set my baseline.
Do you want her on your island?
On your team?
I don't know about her practical skills, like nunchuck skills.
Bare fighting skills.
Yeah, bow knife skills, that kind of stuff.
I don't know about any of that.
I don't think many of the gurus have those skills.
Choco Wellink, maybe.
Yeah, Choco seems like he could handle himself.
Look, she'd definitely rank above a large proportion of our gurus.
But I have doubts about her survival skills.
What a politician you are.
She'd have rented the politics.
I will just straight up say she's coming on the island.
She'll be good for morale.
She'll lead us.
She would be good for morale.
Yeah, she'll be, you know, we'll be wandering.
She'll be giving us pep talks.
She'll be giving us pep talks.
She'll be like, guys, I know it's tough, but we were meant to be here.
Exactly.
Fate put us here on this island.
It's up to us to make the best of things.
Yeah.
It's going to be great.
Yeah, she's coming.
No, you're right.
You're right.
She'll be the morale officer.
Yeah, so there we go.
That's another one added to the island.
So, Matt, we're approaching the end, the denouement of the episode.
Is that a word?
Is that what you say?
Approaching the what, sorry?
Denouement?
Yes, denouement.
French, I believe.
Oh yeah?
Spell it.
I probably can't spell it.
I can't pronounce it though.
So we have coming up on our little ledger some things that people might be interested in.
We have a Christopher Hitchens episode upcoming planned in the works with a special guest, Hitchens expert that you're doing.
Have a return to Weinstein world.
We're going to see what Eric and Brett have been saying about UFOs.
And we also intend to look at an AI guru, perhaps Eliezer Yudkowsky or Stephen Wolfram.
And then we're also going to be looking at people like Chomsky, the Red Scare people, Destiny.
Perhaps?
Streamers?
There's many things for people to look forward to.
These are all on our dockets, Matt.
They're on our little list.
I feel exhausted just hearing about all of this.
Just tell me about the one thing at a time.
It's like Gandalf introducing the dwarves to Bilbo Baggins.
If you tell me everything at once, I'm going to feel overwhelmed.
Tired.
Just tell me the next thing.
Next thing is probably Hitchens, isn't it?
It's probably Hitchens.
We'll see.
Yeah, it's Hitchens next.
And we'll be speaking to a chap, Matthew Sheffield, in the near future as well about Donald Trump, perhaps, and the degree to which he is brewing.
I'm not even talking about the guest, Matt.
There's people I could mention.
I could say Rene DiResta.
You know, are we just throwing out?
Yes, so, agreed.
Anyway, there's exciting things coming up and we will have the Decoding Academia episodes and the additional Grometer breakdown on the Patreon if you can't wait the time till the next release.
So, you know, plenty of content for people to go around.
Now, speaking of content and assessments of content and how people feel about content, reviews, Matt?
We've had a few, but now we face the final handful.
No, so we have received a burst of reviews in response to the requests, the endless requests for them.
So I'll just do a little quick review of reviews this week.
So, time efficient.
Dean Stevens, this is the review.
Time efficient, hey.
Time efficient.
I see.
That's already sounding like it's going to be sarcasm.
You know how I feel about sarcasm.
Well, it says, why spend three hours listening to an internet huckster when these guys can thoroughly debunk their worst ideas in only two hours and 45 minutes?
Why, indeed.
The coding that occurs is the Kurzgesagt of deprogramming internet snake oil salespeople.
That's a very nice compliment.
I like that.
That is a nice compliment.
And it only takes two and a half hours for us to do it.
How long is it?
15 minutes.
How does Kurzgesagt do it in 15 minutes?
They explain quantum mechanics in 15 minutes.
We should be able to do a guru in.
They've been firing on all cylinders recently.
They did an episode responding to criticism about their funding model, and I thought it was pretty good.
Oh, really?
Okay.
Yeah, they broke down where all their money comes from, and it was not what people presented.
So, you know, just go there, have a look.
And they've done an episode recently about aliens and various things.
It's good.
Kurt, it's good.
Go watch it.
Go watch it.
Hey, since we're recommending things, I want to sneak in a recommendation for PBS Space Time, which is a YouTube channel.
You can search for that, you'll find it.
They just make little short videos about physics and space and that kind of thing.
But, you know, there's a lot of crap on YouTube.
This will surprise you, Chris.
I know.
A lot of the content on YouTube is not that great.
And even when it comes to space and physics stuff, a lot of it falls into the kind of mind-blown kind of category.
Wow, space is big.
You know, it's so big.
So, yeah, but this one is smart.
It's at that right level of being, yeah, you know, like accessible to someone like me who doesn't know anything about physics, but that is actually talking about something.
Yeah.
Genuinely interesting.
So, yeah.
PBS Space Time.
It's a good one.
We've got friends who have got physics podcasts as well, Chris.
I think about him a little bit, you know, associated with lab, like,
He does.
He does physics-y stuff more.
So, it's just Labelik is a hobby.
That's right.
LabLeak's a hobby.
His day job is a large hadron collider physicist.
So, yeah, he does.
LabLeak as a hobby sounds like he's just, you know, just leaking viruses.
That's the image that the LabLeakers have, though.
So, a negative review.
I came across this one.
I enjoy it because it's like very detailed negative.
And it may have a point.
So, it says...
It's by Decorno, and it says, I want to love the show, but the lead-ins are way too long.
I understand in the most recent episode, they wanted to provide context to the lab leak issue, but the actual interview content of the show doesn't begin until 30 minutes into the episode.
And even then, they asked the panel to introduce themselves, even when they already provided bios in their half-hour lead-up.
My recommendations, one.
Edit in a 20-second clip at the start of the show to tease the actual good content.
Two, limit intro chit-chat in 90 seconds.
Three, get on with it.
I love the intelligence humor and the premise of the show.
It would be much better if they tightened it up.
He's probably right.
They're probably right.
Well, no, no, no.
It would be better if we tightened it up and we put more effort in and we did more preparation.
We had a script.
Pish, pish.
There's two schools of thought on this.
There's the school that want, you know...
NPR style, high production values.
They want efficient knowledge transfer.
Just give me the goods.
Edit the interview down to 20 seconds.
Put it into my brain.
Inject the information directly into my brain.
Mainline that shit.
Don't tell me anything like, what's that word, extraneous, that I don't need to know about.
But other people prefer some foreplay.
There are!
There are many people who are like, "Give me more!
Please stay on the end of the nine-hour cut!"
And they say, "Don't ever stop!
The banter is all we want!
We want you to cut out the interviews!"
And Luke, we can't make all of you happy.
We can't do it because you want different things.
But we can make ourselves happy.
That's what we can do.
And isn't that what really matters here, if we really think about it?
Look, we have to not forget that there's a large segment of our audience who listens to our podcast to go to sleep.
They have insomnia.
They need a long, meandering introduction to send them off to dreamtime.
And we need to cater for them as well.
And we have to make content that lasts for like two weeks.
We release roughly on a two-week schedule.
So, you know, just think about it like that.
It's not a three-hour episode.
It's three hours to tell you over for the next two weeks.
That's right.
You've got to ration it to last that whole period.
There's people hassling us to put out more episodes.
I mean...
Yeah, what do you want?
Make up your mind.
Shorter intros?
Like for many people, 30 minutes of Chris and Matt.
In a fortnight is not enough.
That's not enough, Chris and Matt.
They want to know, is he still eating nuts?
What's that stuff that the elves...
Oh, Lembas.
Lembas?
Yeah, we're like Lembas bread.
That's how you should treat us.
Just nibble a little bit and then...
Put it back in your pack.
Put it back into your podcast player and you can open it up when you need more.
Intellectual sustenance.
That's it.
Very good.
But that was a good review.
Jokes aside, look...
We know!
We know, okay?
We know you're right.
We know you're right.
We don't want to admit it, but we know.
We're just not going to do anything about it.
Isn't it kind of funny, though, that, like, one, our response to this review...
It's already way too long.
Like, if he's in the intro, this is making too long to get there.
But also, he was responding to the long intro for the Lablick episode, which was a special circumstance, okay?
That was a kind of special episode that needed that introduction.
But he would have got to...
The recent interview with Paul Bloom, where there's almost an entire episode before we get to the interview.
Oh my god.
We're sorry about that.
You would have hated that.
But you know, Chris, we have bookmarks.
We have bookmarks.
Oh yeah!
We put the bookmarks in specifically.
I put the bookmarks in.
You put the bookmarks in.
We, you know, the team.
The team put the bookmarks in.
I wish somebody would use the freaking bookmarks.
That's it.
I'm going to mention it now at the start.
You know that 90-second thing this guy wanted?
I'm going to spend those 90 seconds to tell him there's bookmarks.
Just push the button on your podcast player or use one of the other freely available ones if it follows you that much.
Sorry.
I'm not defensive.
It's perfectly fine.
But I go to the baller, putting the bookmarks in, and then people say, I want to get to the interview.
There's a button.
Just push your button.
No, that was a good review.
He said nice things as well.
Let's focus on the positives.
It's not him that's the problem.
No, no.
Or her.
We know what we are.
We know what this podcast is.
We know.
We know.
We know we're self-actualized.
So that's that.
Now, last thing.
Patreons.
Patreons.
I never know which one to say.
Patreons or Patreons.
We need to thank them.
We do.
The lottery system continues.
And I'm here.
I'm here with love in my heart to shout out a random selection of conspiracy hypothesizers.
That's why I'm going first, Matt.
Yep.
This is the part where we all get to sit here and enjoy the long silences while Chris...
They're all at the doubt, if I have my say about it.
But here we go.
Thank you, Earl Syres, Simon Nelson, Aiden, Bronze Nefflejela, Marvin Kaye, Kurt Foster, Ian Edmondson,
Alex Knight, Noreen Bowden, Jeremy Stewart, Braun Stoll Engelson, Bruce McClure, Phil Richardson, and Sridhar Bhagavatullah.
Thank you very much.
One and all.
Thank you.
One and all.
I feel like there was a conference that none of us were invited to that came to some very strong conclusions, and they've all circulated this list of correct answers.
I wasn't at this conference.
This kind of shit makes me think, man.
It's almost like someone is being paid.
Like when you hear these George Soros stories, he's trying to destroy the country from within.
We are not going to advance conspiracy theories.
We will advance conspiracy hypotheses.
George Soros shit.
There was no conference, Eric.
There was no conference.
That's just your...
You're paranoia.
You're feeling that you're not being recognised.
Oh, well, who knows, Matt?
Who knows?
He knows.
Now, revolutionary thinkers, geniuses, whatever they are, we have those, Matt, and this week we have, watch this, Chris Coker, Alex Healy, Stacey Harrison, Mofona Basa Ikbe,
Daryl, Jerry Gutt, Sean, Brie Corral, Quickformity, Premium Select, Anders Hesekill, Catherine, Ethan Milne, Jeremy, and Patricia Sessian-Scott Rehorn.
Yay!
Yeah.
And who are they?
What grade?
The second tier.
I want to temper my enthusiasm.
Second tier, okay.
They get access to the Coding Academia series.
So, there we go.
We need to make another one of those shortly.
Correct, correct.
We'll do it by showing.
Don't worry.
The revolutionary genius is one and all!
I'm usually learning, I don't know, 70 or 90 distinct paradigms simultaneously all the time.
And the idea is not to try to collapse them down to a single master paradigm.
I'm someone who's a true polymath.
I'm all over the place.
But my main claim to fame, if you'd like, in academia is that I founded the field of evolutionary consumption.
Now, that's just a guess, and it could easily be wrong.
But it also could not be wrong.
The fact that it's even plausible is stunning.
The last one with Brett there always gets me.
I know, it never feels.
It never feels.
Yeah, you know, you don't want to collapse your paradigms down just to one paradigm.
That's a rookie error.
You want to keep those plates spinning in the air, that's for sure.
This is right.
This is right.
So now, Matt, the galaxy brain gurus, the full citizens in the DTG dystopian future, they include Joel Dino, Tim Brosseter,
Joachim, Amundsen.
Chris.
Max Plan.
Yeah, already.
Max again.
Patrick Collins.
And...
Benjamin Ashcraft.
Oh, Benji.
Oh, and Jack Olsey.
Jack Olsey.
Olsey, Olsey, Olsey.
Oh, oh, oh.
And Christian.
Very good.
The patricians in the Guru's Pod community.
I cut above the...
Who would be the middle layer?
Equestrians.
I don't want to call the...
Lower tier plebeians.
But that's the only Roman social.
Salt of the earth.
Good, earthy, honest people.
Yep.
I'm also going to add in Brendan Smith and Alan Malcolm McPherson because I can, Matt.
I can do that.
Just I'm adding them in.
They got in under the wire and now they get this.
You're sitting on one of the great scientific stories that I've ever heard and you're so polite.
And hey, wait a minute.
Am I an expert?
I kind of am.
Yeah.
I don't trust people at all.
How is Scott doing since his little cancellation meltdown moment?
I did see he was up to something, but I can't remember what it was now.
You know, I'm sure he's doing fine.
He's still up being a Scott Adams.
Like, yeah, he's...
He's not doing anything good, Matt.
I'll tell you that.
He's up to nonsense, that Scott Adams.
That sounds right.
So do you have a message for the universe?
Do you want to tell our listeners some parting words of wisdom that will allow them to self-actualize, find their path in the universe?
Yeah, I do have a message.
This is something I thought of like at 3 o 'clock in the morning at a party with friends.
I was dressed in a sheet, wearing it like a toga.
And I told them all that plastic flowers are almost as good as real flowers.
You know, not as good, you have to understand.
But, you know, okay.
Pretty true.
Pretty accurate.
And I'll tell them, keep an eye out for that widely distributed idea suppression complex.
And, you know, if you see it passing the gated institutional narrative, Just keep an eye on it.
That's all.
It'll make your life a bit easier if you keep your eye on those things.
Evergreen, Chris.
Evergreen.
Good advice.
Good advice.
Thank you, Eric.
And thank you, Oprah, for making me a better person and feel a little bit happier about the masters of the universe or our CEO bettors actually having good intentions in their heart.
She's made me think whether really, like, is this where my life has led?
Is this where the universe needs me?
Sitting here talking to you on Decoding the Gurus.
Like, maybe there's another path for me.
Maybe it's time for me.
There might be bigger things.
Bigger things.
Certainly is for me, Matt.
This is just a stepping stone.
Good, good.
We'll have to coordinate our leaping so one of us doesn't feel...
