Supplementary Material 27: Joe Rogan vs. Douglas Murray vs. Sam Harris vs. DTG
We immerse ourselves in the dark waves of the discourse to bring you treasures beyond mere mortal ken. Supplementary Material 2700:00 Introduction & Australian Holidays03:53 James Lindsay's New Revelations07:20 Michael O'Fallon's Conspiracy Hipsterism09:41 Trump, Bukele, and Transparent Conspiracies11:53 The Whitehouse declares the Lab Leak is a FACT14:42 The conspiracy leak treadmill: UFOs, RFK assassination, and lableak21:26 The Rise of the Idiots: Grimes on Transformers Cinematography29:17 Lex vs. Flint: The mask slips33:21 The Iron Curtain falls on Lex's Subreddit35:18 Subreddit Moderation Choices41:46 Douglas Murray on Joe Rogan46:36 Darryl Cooper's Nazi Apologetics, the Role of Experts and JAQs57:25 Strategic Disclaimers & Convincing Apologetics01:03:28 The Rogansphere and Media Power01:07:30 Murray on the Lab Leak01:12:19 Murray's Anti-Establishment Hypocrisy01:19:10 Standards in Journalism01:22:42 Alternative Media's Double Standards01:28:33 Douglas Murray joins Sam Harris01:29:26 The Psychology of Religious Extremism01:36:04 Radicalisation and Extremism01:41:24 Murray's 'Criticism' of MAGA01:44:32 What is even the Right Wing?01:55:11 What about Elon Musk?02:05:40 AfD isn't that bad, and Elon has promoted Douglas too!02:16:10 Rogan and the Moon Landing02:17:16 Sam is still a bad judge of character02:19:29 Isn't everyone a hypocrite?02:23:16 Free Speech Debates02:26:58 The role of Moderation02:31:37 OutroThe full episode is available for Patreon subscribers (2hr 32 mins).Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurusSourcesSam Harris Episode 410 Douglas Murray: The Whole CatastropheJoe Rogan Experience #2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas MurrayFlint's post about Lex FridmanGrimes on Transformers' cinematographyJames Lindsay on being used by NazisNathan Barley on YouTubeWhitehouse website on the Lab LeakJoe Rogan Experience #2307 - Tim Dillon
Hello, and welcome to Decoding the Guru's Supplementary Materials.
The anthropologist, Chris Kappner, me.
The psychologist, Matthew Brown, over there.
Him.
G'day, Matt.
G'day.
How's it going?
Good afternoon, Chris.
It's going well.
It's going well.
It's the fourth day of an ultra-long weekend.
Oh.
What is it?
No, it's Easter.
I thought it was the Queen's birthday.
It doesn't matter.
Either way, we get the days off, which is fine, even though I don't really have the day off.
Because what am I doing, Chris?
I'm writing books about gurus and recording with you.
But, you know, I'm not complaining.
I love it.
The battle never ends, Matt.
You're there.
And the Queen's birthday.
So, granted, the Queen and Jesus, you know, both deities in their own respects.
Do you still get to celebrate the Queen's birthday now she's dead?
No, no.
I misspoke.
It's not the Queen's birthday anymore.
It's the King's birthday.
It's the King's.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
So give that up.
Stop celebrating the Queen's birthday.
You need to change the calendar.
When is King Charles' birthday?
You know, the funny thing about that is that...
So, whatever.
This is one of the public holidays.
And Australians love public holidays, right?
We've got a lot of them.
And we cherish them.
But what happens is there are all these random public holidays accruing and no one's going to give any of them up.
But also we don't actually care about the thing that the holiday is for.
So nobody actually cares about the birthdays of monarchs.
So the holiday has long been shifted to a day.
Which is convenient for Australians to have a holiday.
Oh!
Because you get this problem with these random holidays.
They could be at any time of the year and they could all be bunched up or they're on a Tuesday.
You know, not convenient because what you really want is a long weekend.
So all of these holidays have been disconnected from their sources, but we still have them.
This is the important thing.
We still have the holiday and it's now tacked on to any convenient Friday.
On Monday to give us holidays, long weekends, all throughout the year.
That's what Australians want, basically.
How interesting.
So, like, King Charles' birthday probably won't be on his actual birthday.
That's what I think.
I've never checked this.
Like, I've never Googled King Charles' birthday.
Well, you can let us know.
I'm pretty sure it's not today.
King Charles' birthday.
Look at this, Matt.
I'm Jimmy and you right now.
It is November 14th.
Actually, near my birthday.
November 14th, so there you go.
That's a fair distance away from today, isn't it?
No, but today's not his birthday anyway.
That's right.
You've proven nothing.
So just let us know what happens on November 14th.
Alright, I'll report back.
Yeah, that'll cover it.
Now, so there's many things that have been happening.
I've got...
A wide repertoire of things that I could introduce you to.
Some of them slightly amusing.
Or, let's see, some of them slightly more dark.
We do need to cover some details.
Douglas Murray's appearance on Joe Rogan and subsequent appearance on Sam Harris.
But before we get to that, do you remember somebody called James Lindsay?
James.
Yes, I do indeed.
I know about James.
Conceptual James.
Conceptual James.
Yes.
Quite an arc.
So, well, a bunch of people were saying to me that he tweeted out, I have a lot of my work over the past decade to repent of.
The Nazis use me.
And I knew for a long time they were using me, or at least glimpsed it.
It's heavy.
Sadly, it's also real AF.
Okay.
Michael O 'Fallon of Sovereign Nations responds, for those of you just joining the conversation, James is referring to the Claremont crowd and those ministries and organizations that are now jumping on the Nazi-esque unbound executive anti-liberty movement.
And James Lindsay replied, I also mean the real Nazis on the shadowy global stage behind these, you know.
Forces and whatnot.
It's cut off there, so I can't see what exactly he said, but he's clarifying.
Not just them, also real Nazis, but people were like, oh, is this another turning off the wheel for James Lindsay?
Is this his redemption arc?
No, probably not.
James Lindsay is someone who...
Was big in the atheist scene, then was big in the kind of...
I mean, I say big.
I just mean...
He was big into it.
Yeah, he was big into it.
Not that he was actually influential, but yes, he was a neopheist, and then he was an anti-woke person, then he was like a MAGA, sycophant, anti-vaxxer person, and now he's...
Like, still on all of those, but now he's claiming that the kind of, you know, Kurdish Arvin type are themselves like woke right.
That's the, you know, the term that he's been using.
They're identarians, authoritarians.
Actually, he's basically said that they are themselves now communists.
They're right-wing communists.
Like, they're using, you know, communism in the right-wing garb.
Yeah, once again demonstrating the remarkable flexibility with which he uses terms.
I mean, they're bad, but this is his thing.
Anything you don't like is communism.
It's like the flip side of everything you don't like is fascism, right?
Yeah, I'm with you.
It speaks more to James' personality.
I think he would genuinely have recognized for some time now that he is functioning effectively as a tool for The extreme right.
In his heart of hearts, he probably recognises some dissonance there with what he is supposed to be about.
And this is kind of a...
This woke right thing is like a way of squaring the circle, right?
All of these, add him to the list of enemies, fight with more people.
So, you know, I'll hand it to him in an incredibly small way, I suppose.
At least he's...
I don't know.
Recognizing something.
He's feuding, like, infighting with some of the MAGA people, yes.
And I also happened to have a look at what Michael O 'Fallon was doing, because, you know, we were talking, would he be a Trump and MAGA apologist?
And it's interesting, because he is a, you know, Trump guy, right?
But he also has to have, like, his bespoke conspiratorial tics.
So it's kind of like...
You think this is the real issue, but this is actually it, right?
And I saw, like, just for example, when he was talking about the lab leak.
There was no lab leak.
There was a lab in Wuhan, and something measurable was strategically released.
The response was strategic.
The lockdowns crushed the economy in free trade.
The entire event was alchemical.
Fauci was just a role player in a much larger scheme.
That is a hipster.
That is a hipster move, isn't it?
You think you're a critical thinker.
You think you're onto things by saying there's a lab leak.
But actually, there's levels beneath this.
You've got to dig deeper.
Yeah, I saw he was getting very upset about the possibility of introducing official ID at airports like they have in Singapore.
It's all automated a lot more.
But he, of course, sees this as the beginning of global domination of the New World Order and whatnot.
So in this respect, he's actually more consistent than Alex Jones, because Alex Jones, you know, likewise, has portrayed all those things as the end times, the New World Order and whatnot.
But like any of it that is associated with Trump, he's basically apologetic for.
But O 'Fallon...
Seems to value his conspiracy hipsterism more highly than that, which is possibly why he's still such a minor figure with no real influence except for James Lindsay.
So, yeah.
That's it.
Interesting, colourful characters.
Christian dominionist and conspiracy theorist, globalism warrior.
But not specifically a mega guy.
And, you know, it is interesting because, like, you saw recently about this spectacle of Trump with the president of El Salvador in the White House during the press conference and them mocking the idea of returning this person who was deported,
right, to the gang prison over there.
Like, kind of flown out that night with no due process, right?
And then it may...
Have been an error.
They've acknowledged there might have been an error.
But both of them, the president of El Salvador and Trump giggling that, you know, despite a unanimous Supreme Court decision that they have to facilitate the return, that they can't do it because they're both washing their hands.
But this is the president of El Salvador is dressed in all black, right, with like a very neatly manicured beard.
And they're essentially laughing about...
The fact that, you know, they're not going to be engaging in any due process.
And Trump was then, you know, saying that maybe you need to build five more prisons to put some homegrown Americans, right?
The troublemakers that we have.
And if you were, you know, a conspiracy prone person, it does look a bit like...
The villains are right there.
You know, they're behaving like villains.
They're cackling in public, dressed in all black.
One of them looks like Dracula.
And they're laughing about, you know, oh, there'll be no due process.
Don't worry about that.
And yet this doesn't seem to cause that much consternation amongst, you know, the free speech loving bros.
Yeah.
No, no.
I think a lot of that stuff is just skin deep, isn't it?
Yeah.
Like the high-minded ideals or even the conspiracies, like the stuff that they purport to be worried about, like government overreach, for instance.
Oh, yeah.
It's clearly not something that really bothers them as long as it's by the guys they like targeted at the right people.
I think the same is probably true of people with political opinions across the spectrum to some degree, to be honest.
The thing that...
Yeah, it's on the tin isn't really the thing that drives you.
Yeah, because you know what?
They were all very upset about like this overreach from government meddling in science and just unanimously declaring this is the way the science is, you know, follow the science, Matt, all that stuff that got marked on the right.
So just recently, the White House changed.
Like, you know, if you go to anything about COVID-19 or whatever, it used to take you to these websites, giving you information about the virus and, you know, measures to take.
That's all being redirected now to a site that has the header lab leak, the true origins of COVID-19.
There's like a very stylized presentation with Trump walking in the middle of the lab leak.
COVID-19 written in signed font.
And it's a sleek website basically declaring that the true origins of COVID-19 are definitely from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
It was a virus manufactured there, released.
Dr. Fauci covered it up.
All this kind of thing.
So it's...
You know, it's basically a high production value conspiracy website.
And this is just announced by Fiat from the Trump administration that, you know, that's it.
And so you would imagine that these principal defenders who don't want government meddling in science, right?
The lab leak advocates, they are the kind of people that are very worried about this politicizing of issues and whatnot.
They would all come out.
Against this, of course, right?
And say, no, this is not.
We think the scientific evidence supports this, but we do not support this kind of, you know, political overreach.
And no, they didn't, Matt.
None of them did.
They were all just sharing around stuff as per usual.
They seem quite happy that the issue is back getting attention because of this.
So, yeah.
Principles.
Yeah, the heterodox thinking moves very quickly from the position of, look, we just want to have an open discussion about this.
It should be okay for alternative viewpoints to be expressed.
You know, don't try to cancel us and stuff for wanting to suggest this.
We want a real discussion, public discussion of the evidence.
It segues from that to what you just described, incredibly...
Incredibly easily.
Now, not that they did, but imagine if the Biden or Obama administration had done something like that in the other direction.
You know, there would be gnashing of teeth, rending of garments.
So, yeah.
Yeah, that's it.
That's it.
Now, the other thing is, you might wonder who would be swayed by this?
Because, like, you know, I mentioned this before this happened, right?
The White House is full of conspiracy theorists now.
The Trump administration is a conspiracy administration.
So it will obviously come out and basically endorse various conspiracies.
You remember there was that big lead-up to the RFK documents being released, the assassination all being released.
Funny, you didn't hear much about that after all those documents were released.
Like, it's almost as if...
They didn't provide any of the revelations that were supposed to be there.
That's right.
I'd forgotten about that.
I remember the build-up to that kind of thing.
What about the UFO documents too?
Wasn't there meant to be some release of those?
Did that happen?
Yeah.
Well, it doesn't matter because this is the thing.
Invariably, you know, McQuest is correct.
It's simply just...
Hearsay or people saying, I once saw an alien spacecraft and this thing, you know, reports and nothing is ever provided apart from like shaky footage and stuff that Mick West can then debunk.
So it's very much just the discourse around it that matters.
And you might be wondering, Matt, like what kind of lazy fecker would see this White House, you know, website and then take it.
As, like, compelling evidence.
And let me just remind you of one Joe Rogan.
Very passionately.
They're right.
You're wrong.
No one is ever questioning anything.
No.
Why do they question science?
No one goes, wait a minute.
Like, I think it's healthy to every now and then go, maybe I'm wrong.
Yeah, there was just something that got released today that showed, they just released today that showed that COVID-19 definitively came from that lab.
Thousand percent.
100% proof it came from that lab.
I read it, a little bit of it on the way here.
Yeah, it's fucking nuts.
It's nuts, man.
It's nuts.
These fucking people, they just got roped into this group of criminals.
And it was a completely man-made disease.
100%.
And they knew that from the moment it happened.
It leaked.
The moment it happened.
And they just lied.
And Fauci is just out there walking around.
That's an interesting case when someone like that, in that position, repeatedly lied to people.
About the origins of that.
Yeah.
And is allowed to just be free.
And faces zero consequences.
Meanwhile, they were trying to put Trump in jail because he...
Inflated the price of a condo.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, okay.
So this, I mean, obviously Joe Rogan is...
He's not even sure if he landed on the moon.
So, I mean, that is not surprising.
But it does illustrate, like, an incredibly common...
which you'd expect better from people which is this inability to pass the difference between second order or third order comment and opinion or straight up propaganda like this from actual novel primary sources of evidence and so we've seen it again and again with this where someone from some newspaper some journalist takes it into their head to reiterate some things from years ago You know,
reinterpreting an opinion that's been delivered by an intelligence agency or something.
And everyone is like, well, this changes everything.
And of course, it changes nothing.
All it's changed is that a journalist has written an article about stuff that was already out there.
Likewise, this thing by the Trump administration, of course they're going to do this, right?
They're going to pronounce it.
But that's all they're doing.
They're not offering any genuine...
So you've just got to keep a clear distinction in your mind between, you know, something that is new.
And it could be new, not in the sense of primary, someone's gone and gathered more data, but it could be a careful re-analysis or a synthesis or some kind of meta-analysis that's been done by an authoritative independent source or a researcher.
But stuff like a journalist's opinion article or a public press release by...
A government organization which doesn't provide any details or any extra evidence.
That just doesn't count.
That is not new information.
I know.
You would think that goes without saying, but it somehow doesn't.
It hasn't quite...
Penetrated Joe Rogan.
It's not even adding new information in the sense of, oh, well, before we didn't know what Trump thought, and now we do.
You already knew that's what he thought.
All that's happened is that he's gotten some people to create a flashy website to encapsulate what he thinks.
Yeah, it would be like, you know, he's not that concerned with this now, but if the White House put out a website that was like, Obama was actually not an American.
There's a lot of questions around his birth certificate and whatnot, right?
This is now the White House official position.
Yeah, which is, it is the White House's position because that's what Trump argued for many years.
And I'm sure if you asked him, he would say, you know, well, I just had questions.
But like, it wouldn't then mean, oh, this is, have you seen this new thing that's come out that says Obama, it's like, it's proven now, but Joe Rogan.
And like, this is the thing, you know, we've seen this so many times.
Joe Rogan, but his stance on this is entirely dependent on whatever the particular conclusion Rich says.
If it's something he doesn't like, he's like, these sources, who's funding this?
Is this, like, George Soros backed?
Or, like, where is there evidence from?
And we can't trust these guys.
And if it's something he doesn't like, he's just like, oh, I've seen it on Twitter the other day.
There's this thing.
No, it's 100% proven.
So crazy, man.
This stuff is wild.
It's wild.
Yeah.
And it doesn't even matter when it turns out in the minute he's fact-checked and shown, oh, actually, that's incorrect.
He's like, well, yeah, I'm sure there's still, you know, it must have been something else or whatever.
So he is impossible to penetrate whatever conclusion that he particularly wants to reach at a given time.
We know that about Joe Rogan.
We'll hear a little bit more.
About that kind of thing when we see him talk to Douglas Murray.
But Matt, there's one other thing.
This is a little bit looser.
A little bit, you know, less.
I just saw this today.
It's not even that important.
But it just, it struck me.
Yeah, you know, there was this TV series that was popular in the UK called Nathan Barley.
It was kind of like a piss take out of like vice and hipsters.
That was the thing that it was making fun of at that time.
You know, edgy journalism and whatnot.
So it was actually kind of targeting, not...
Not necessarily left-wing, but like, you know, very hip urban culture, this kind of hipster kind of stuff.
And in it, you had a journalist, Dan Ashcroft, who was lamenting the rise of the idiots, right?
But then, somewhat ironically, he became like a figure of admiration amongst those people, right?
It's a good series, only six episodes.
You should watch it if you're interested in that kind of thing.
But I saw a tweet this morning by Grimes.
Elon Musk's ex-partner and also musician, of some note, right?
Now, this is what she said.
Grimes, just watch Transformers.
I was not prepared for this to be the greatest cinematography ever.
Just like, it is absurd, but it's incredibly majestic to behold.
The cuts, the edits, the color is so fantastic.
And then on top of seeing the top of the craft, There is also a Transformer destroying the pyramids, and that is actually really unexpectedly emotionally intense imagery.
I knew Michael Bay was good because I lifted some of this popular shot techniques in past music videos.
But wow, I kept all punctuation intact there.
And she's put clips of her watching the various scenes.
It's from Transformers 3, I believe.
It's not even Chad Forbes, it's one.
Well, now you know how I feel when you're waxing lyrical about Ghostbusters or something.
I guess I do.
Ghostbusters is a good movie.
But no, I know what you mean.
I think we're both genuinely puzzled about what's going on here because there's multiple options, right?
One option is it's a symptom of just the dumbing down of modern culture.
Incredibly.
Where, you know, an idiocracy type scenario.
Get off my lawn, you youngsters!
Yeah, maybe that was Huxley's Brave New World, right?
Where very, you know, very just basic pap is kind of savoured like it's fine wine, you know?
Or it could be that this is like some sort of irony thing.
It's ironic, yeah.
I'm calling this fine art when it's obviously greedy shit.
And it's so ironic that that makes it insightful what I'm saying.
I get this because, you know, sarcasm operates on this font.
But the thing is, Grimes is not...
Somebody that's noted for her, you know, high-level sarcasm or wit.
She's usually not talking at multiple levels.
No, she might think she is.
She might think she is, but not.
And if you look at the comments under it, you know, when people respond and they're like, oh, wow, you know, she is responding enthusiastically.
And like, you know, as you said, Matt, I enjoy like stupid movies, you know, a big...
I liked the first Transformers movie.
I thought, you know, it was okay.
Like, perfectly enjoyable, stupid, you know, Hollywood blockbuster.
But as they went on, it became increasingly bad, right?
Increasingly noted for just pure, you know, green screen spectacle.
Michael Bay, right?
Lead stage Michael Bay.
You might describe it as.
So describing it as like a beautiful, like look at the composition, look at the pyramid as the Iron Transformer rolls over the CG pyramid.
Or just the pure emotional gut punch.
Yeah, that as well.
You know, smashing up a pyramid.
I remember that scene.
Part of that scene is that there's a...
Bunch of Transformers that come together to form Destroyer.
This is a character from the Transformers franchise that is made of lots of smaller Transformers.
And in the movie, he forms up and they're fighting on the pyramids and all this kind of thing.
And then one of them looks up and part of the Transformer machines that have combined together is swinging two large Korean demolition balls in between the legs of the Transformer.
As it's, you know, battling, right?
So it's a joke about it, like testicles.
Right.
Oh, I see.
I see.
Right.
So it's kind of, it's on the same level as idiocracy is, ouch, my balls.
That's kind of...
Like, it's just, it's seen to me.
So this is probably part of the explanation for why Grimes and Elon Musk...
We're able to get on so well for so long.
It does, actually.
Another piece of the puzzle falls into place.
And yet Grimes wrote that one good song.
I don't even know what that is.
But I feel like songwriting competence is entirely independent from intellectual rigor.
That's my take.
Come on.
You're a good kinder example.
That's a good kinder example.
I don't know, Matt.
You would hope that it's irony, drenched trolling, but it doesn't seem to be.
It doesn't seem to be.
And the fact that there will be millions of people, or at least hundreds, thousands, whatever the case might be, that read that and don't think it's...
It's ironic, right?
But I don't think, I genuinely don't think Grimes has that, the B, that meta.
I literally think she just watched Transformers and was like, whoa, wow.
There's a third explanation you haven't covered yet, which is just the influence of drugs.
I mean, that's a fair point.
I would kind of allow that, but that's actually the best possibility.
That's the best explanation, yeah.
Yeah, that's okay.
So if it is that, we'll give her a pass.
But not for all the rest of the stuff she does, like, but, you know, for that specific thing.
I think she's also, you know, Curtis Charvin and whatnot fan.
So, well, whatever.
Whatever, Matt.
I had a bunch of Transformer toys as a child.
My mum kept them.
Oh, did you?
I was super into them.
And I have not seen a single Transformers movie, and I never, ever would.
Did you not see the one from the 80s, the animated one?
That's very good.
Oh, I saw the cartoons, I think.
Yeah, yeah, I saw the cartoons.
Not an adult, Chris, an adult watching.
But you know my opinion about this stuff.
I don't understand why anyone would watch a bloody superhero movie either.
But there's a 19, I don't know, I think it's late 80s cartoon, which has a bunch of people doing voice acting.
I think Leonard Nimoy, Orson Welles.
Orson Welles, he was in the 1986 Transformers movie, so are you going to slack him up?
Well, his career really took a dive after the alcohol took its toll.
That's all.
It's a classic.
It's got emotional scenes in it.
So now I'm Grimes.
But my defense is I was a child when I watched that.
So that's Grimes.
Good job, Grimes.
You're really doing well there.
And now, last thing, Matt, last thing before we get to, you know, Douglas Murray, the main course.
I just want to keep note of this because it's useful to keep track of what Lex is up to, Lex Friedman.
So Lex was extolling how open-minded he is, how incredible he is.
He's willing.
He won't be pigeonholed.
He listens to experts on all sides.
And Flint Dibble.
Got a little bit irate at this because he responded saying, is ghosting an expert you invited on?
And instead having on a pseudoscientist, an effective way to host long-form discourse about topics of public interest.
So this is Flintable calling out Lex that he hosted Graham Hancock after he invited Flint on, you know, to basically shit on Flint.
And just like Rogan also brought Graham back on and brought on Graham's orbiters, all of them to complain.
So you can understand he's a little bit salty, right?
But Lex responded and subsequently deleted this, by the way, and all his other responses on this day where he was on a bit of a rampage.
But I think this is the real Lex.
Crying, laughing emoji.
Wow, that's dishonest.
The world doesn't revolve around you.
I didn't ghost you.
I've been nothing but friendly and accommodating.
I said, let's chat when I'm in London next.
I haven't been to London yet.
I've talked to awesome mainstream archaeologists and will talk to many more.
Recorded a great one recently, actually.
But now you just ensure that you are not one.
There are a lot of great scientists, archaeologists, paleontologists, etc.
out there who are smarter and kinder than you.
I'll talk to them.
Kissing emoji.
We need humanity to regain trust in the scientific community and experts.
People like you.
Are the reason people are losing trust in the first place?
Do better.
Yeah, that is Lex.
That is Lex, I think.
Let's mask off Lex.
That is a truer version of Lex.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Goading about his platform and how big it is, you know, how lucky you are to get on it.
And a little like Snide, you know, Diggs, you know, I'll talk to other people, but you just lost your big...
And then even do better, Matt.
Even do better.
Now, I think he's possibly, you know, using that as whatever.
But the whole message is do better, right?
So, like, it's the kind of thing that would normally cause people like Lex to go into a shit fit.
Now, Flint responded just to highlight here what actually happened.
And he said, haha, in our chat, I reached out asking for an update.
You never replied for over nine months.
In that timeframe, you allowed someone to trash my reputation on your podcast and still didn't reach out to me.
I'd call that ghosting by any standard, but sure, you be you.
Yeah, yeah.
So, yeah.
Lex's version, not entirely honest.
So, Lex, in the meantime, he had Graham Hancock on as well, did he?
Is that right?
Oh, yeah, he had Graham Hancock on shortly after, you know, he appeared on Rogan.
And he invited him.
You know, what do you think about Flint devil?
Lex brought up that topic for Graham to essentially explain what a terrible person Flint is and how wrong he was, how dishonest he is.
So, yeah.
Yeah, so it seems like a fair criticism.
Lex, not promoting responsible understanding of archaeology.
I think that is a fair...
But, you know, Lex is a decider.
He's going to be Joe Rogan one of these days.
People need to come crawling to him.
I know.
Academics will bow to him.
That's right.
He's the cannon waiting.
Good God.
And, you know, it is.
But, you know, the thing about that as well, Matt, that we'll just update people on, Lex ruled his subreddit with an iron fist.
Or, sorry.
A bunch of anonymous mods who purely post Lex's episode and, you know, replicated his grievances with people that had criticized him on Twitter or elsewhere on Reddit.
So, very motivated mods that do nothing except promote Lex's episodes.
Yeah, and police his subreddit with an iron fist, yes.
Yes, that was nothing to do with Lex.
As he described, they're completely independent, right?
They're all independent, unlike most other mods on...
Reddit as well.
They don't actually seem active anywhere else.
But never mind.
Never mind.
I'm sure some of them are.
It's just, you know, they just have a specific interest.
Yeah, they wouldn't be sock puppets.
No, no, no, no, no.
I suspect the real people, but real people that Lex might have some control over, shall we say.
But in any case, Lex's subreddit, which was already a draconian land, where criticism shall not be uttered.
Only Prius Lex allowed.
Only positive.
It has now become even more locked down.
You're not allowed to post.
If you go now and look new threads, they'll be like, you know, all 45 days old because the only ones that are allowed to be posted are his episodes.
So any new thread is deleted unless posted by a moderator.
So Lex is a big fan of, you know, free speech, free expression.
He wants to hear.
Critical feedback.
I'm not on the fucking software there.
Yeah.
Oh, God.
That's so funny.
That's so funny.
I mean, it's a bit like that Mask Off thing.
I mean, it should be obvious that his saccharine, schmaltzy sentiments are not bona fide, right?
No.
It only takes a moment to look behind the curtain a little bit and you see what the real deal is there.
I mean, I've got to say, not to pat ourselves on the back, but just by dint of contrast, Chris, this is one other way you could run a subreddit is, well, not run it, rather, is say, okay, look, there's a Decoding the Guru subreddit.
That's fantastic.
We're not going to have anything to do with it.
We're not going to exert any control with honorary mods on it.
It is a robust place where there is a fair bit of criticism as well as people saying nice things and a whole bunch of random off-topic stuff because that's what Reddit is.
But, you know, it's not normal is what I'm saying for people who have a podcast or do anything to do that kind of thing.
That's what I'm saying.
Oh, I don't know.
So, some nuance there is that there are various subreddits where The people who create the podcast or whatever are involved or in some way or other control the community.
And this is sometimes, I think sometimes useful because it means that they can orientate things towards, you know, whatever way they want their communities to be, which I don't think that the absolute free-for-all model is always the best option.
And it can be the case that you end up with, like, this phenomenon called snark subreddits, which are, like, dedicated hater subreddits to the original thing.
Now, this usually happens organically.
Like, Joe Rogan's one is sort of a hater subreddit, and Sam Harris's one is mixed.
Like, Sam Harris has claimed they absolutely all hate him, but it's a much more mixed one.
Dave Rubin, famously, ended up with, like, a hate subreddit.
And there's one called The Fighter and the Kid, which is, like...
I think 150k subscribers, but they all hate the podcast that that is about.
It's not even that popular for a podcast.
They just predominantly dislike the person involved.
But the other one I'm thinking of is Reply All.
It wasn't run by the people, but it had a fairly stringent policy on what is allowed or not.
Or ask a historian.
They have these...
Which can be more or less tightly enforced.
In the case of ours, the subreddit is moderated by the moderators as they see fit, but they tried to make it, you know, reflect the general, I think, like tenor of the podcast.
You can see whether they do that successfully or not when you go and look at it.
But in any case, so Matt and I are moderators by dint of the person who made the subreddit who's now not active.
Like, making it.
But I do think it's useful to have some say over that.
Because, like, just imagine one of the moderators became, like, a MAGA maniac, right?
Like, a hard-right neo-Nazi.
And then, like, started, you know, promoting content that was like that, but under the podcast name associated with you and me.
We wouldn't like that, right?
So you want...
To have, like, I can understand people that have an interest in how they're...
Oh, yeah.
I hear what you're saying.
I agree.
Look, I agree with all your nuance, of course.
I didn't want to give the impression that, you know, you're not allowed to have any influence or, you know, you can't do moderation or anything like that.
I mean, the good thing about Reddit is that it's kind of let a thousand flowers bloom, right?
There's all kinds of subreddits, each with their own sort of policies.
Some of them are very strict, some of them are very loose, and there are pros and cons to all of them.
You and I, of course, have opted for the hands-off one, maybe partly on principle, but mostly just because we're lazy.
It's laziness.
It's laziness.
It's primarily laziness.
But to clarify my point, Chris, I think the issue with what Lex is doing is not...
Like, if you want to create a subreddit and you want to call it Decoding the Gurus and you want to say, no one else is allowed to post on this.
It's only going to be promotional stuff for the show.
That's the deal.
Then you can.
You probably won't have many people subscribing to it.
That's fine.
But that's the deal.
The issue with Lex is this free speech, love of free speech, always looking for feedback, all that kind of thing, pretending that he's not doing what he's doing.
I've never heard him address the Lex Fridman subreddit thing.
A curtain has been discreetly drawn.
Yes, an iron curtain.
So it has been, yes.
Well, on the subject of disclosures and that kind of thing, Matt, so I will say that, you know, we are mods, so we can see.
I know you never have seen the mod discussions that are in Reddit, and good God that those people, like, suffer, right?
Like, you know, the life of a subreddit moderator is not something.
You would wish on your worst enemy in terms of the shit that they have to deal with.
But in that case, we don't moderate.
I've never banned anyone, never taken any action.
But I have responded to the moderators whenever they've asked, what do you think about this?
Is this okay or whatever?
And I've said, this is my opinion and I'd imagine Matt's opinion.
But, you know, it's up to you guys.
Moderate it as you see fit.
So that is the extent of our influence.
I've given our...
Opinion.
And I've also said in the subreddit when I'm there, obviously we have an interest, an invested interest in the subreddit, but in essence, we are just people with a particular opinion on it, right?
Like we can say this is the way we would want it to be, but that doesn't actually mean that's the way it's going to go, right?
As you can see, why do you go and look at the content that goes up in the subreddit?
So there's like stuff that I'd want to be kind of promoted more, but...
You're not Elon Musk or whatever, right?
People respond to what they're going to respond to.
And if you make a thread about Destiny or Hassan, it's going to get lots more interaction than something about us doing a book review on COD.
That's the nature of the internet.
That's fair.
We can't force people to engage with threads on COD.
This is true.
Much as we'd like to.
We refrain from that.
Yeah, well, there you go.
Public disclosures and all that kind of thing.
Now, Matt, on to the main course, if you will.
So there's been a bit of buzz around the guru sphere, the internet as well, because Douglas Murray appeared with Joe Rogan a little while back, right?
And it was notable because he appeared with a...
Comedian, I'll put that in inverted commas, but comedian Dave Smith, who's a libertarian comedian in the US who rose to prominence from being promoted on Joe Rogan's podcast, like so many other fantastic people in the discourse.
And Dave Smith, in particular, in recent years, has focused on the Israel-Gaza conflict, has no actual relevant expertise or anything, but strong opinions there.
He was contrasted with Douglas Murray, who likewise is extremely prominent in that whole conflict on the Israel side.
He is essentially a propagandist for the Israeli government.
There's hardly anything it can do or say that he won't defend.
So this is the setup for the Joe Rogan thing, right?
Dave Smith is going to be the pro-Palestinian voice, Douglas Murray is going to be the pro-Israeli voice, and they're going to engage in...
Dialogus in front of the Great Khan.
Okay.
Now, the reason it got attention, because that went much as you would expect.
Douglas Murray was arguing kind of everything that you would expect him to argue for Israel.
Focus on October 7th, downplay atrocities being committed, present Netanyahu.
You know, his extent of apologetics is like, even...
Netanyahu is regarded as a great, very principled man who has the full support of everyone in Israel and is doing fantastic.
And all of those protests about taking away the independence of the judiciary before October 7th, that was actually damaging Israel, making it weaker, vulnerable to attacks.
That's part of the justification.
So that's where Douglas Murray is on that issue.
And David Smith, on the other hand, is very much in the Hasan Piker wing of the presentation of Hamas or this kind of thing.
So he would say it's not apologetics, but it's very much, you know, downplaying atrocities or, you know, both are doing their role.
You know what their positions are on that.
And that section goes as you would anticipate.
But the introduction section displayed uncharacteristic confrontation of what Joe Rogan does from Douglas Murray.
So let me play a little bit of clips from this.
So this is from right at the start of that episode.
Since the war in Israel began, and since the war in Ukraine began, you've had quite a lot of people who are very against both in different ways.
Yes.
Do you think you've had enough people on who are supportive of either war?
I don't know that word enough, if that's a good word.
Let's say enough people who are on the side of Israel.
Instead of wild critics.
Well, I've had a few.
I mean, I believe God Sad is on the side of Israel.
For sure.
Jordan is on the side of Israel.
You had Mike Baker, Coleman Hughes.
Yeah.
Coleman did it for 20 minutes.
Why he was here?
No.
I mean, none of them.
None of it was why they're here.
You know?
It's a good question.
Do you think you tilted one way?
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