Decoding the Gurus

We return from our holidays with an indulgent episode that starts light and ends up very dark as we turn to the unavoidable Jason Arday discourse.
The full episode is available to Patreon subscribers (Full Episode: 1hr 40 mins)
Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurus
Supplementary Material 54
00:00 Pecan Pie Introduction
04:10 Solar Punk Matt
08:17 Ireland Trip Report
15:24 Australian Burger Culture
17:32 Manga Cafe Experiments
24:10 Joe Rogan on AI Remote Viewing
29:14 Parapsychology as a Research Field
34:07 A One Man University Level Course in Bad Thinking
36:58 The Young Info Turks
40:53 More Credulity with Ryan Grim over Fauci
42:14 Richard Ebright, Warning Signs, and Radicalisation Spirals
48:28 Vinay Prasad jumping on the Anti-Fauci wagon for the Free Press
52:31 The Jason Arday Affair
54:28 The Surrounding Context
58:18 Polemical Discourse Waves
01:05:22 The Guru Factor
01:08:25 A Realistic View of Universities as Imperfect Institutions
01:12:17 Elite Prestige Bias
01:21:33 Culture War Distortions
01:25:04 The Ethics of Critical Journalism
01:29:50 Inconsistent Standards
01:38:36 Outro
Links
The Jack Nicholson Story from the Always Sunny Podcast
The Manga Cafes in Question
Deposition of InfoWars Host Owen Shroyer
Alex Jones And Roger Stone Interrupt The Young Turks Republican National Convention Coverage
Ken Klippenstein visits the War Room
Ana Kasparian & Owen Shroyer: The UNEXPECTED Conversation on MAGA, DSA & the Uniparty!
Bret Weinstein on InfoWars
Richard Ebright on one of his many Twitter spirals
Joe Rogan on AI Remote Viewing
The Free Press: Vinay Prasad- Anthony Fauci’s Vaccine Deceptions
Ryan Grim being credulous over Fauci and Vaccines
The Guardian: Playbooks, plagiarism and a pig’s head: new claims surrounding a star Cambridge professor (Lanre Bakare)
The Atlantic: The Jason Arday Truthers (Helen Lewis)
Front Left: It sure looks like Jason Arday was horrifically wronged (based on citation data) (Jason Stanley)
A Digital Lynching (Carol Cadwalladr)
Tox Report: The Most Unfortunate Thing (Sarah Ditum)
Byline Times: The Peter Thiel-Linked Race Science Network that Penetrated Cambridge University and Targeted Jason Arday (Nafeez Ahmed)
The Good Law Project: Stand in Solidarity with Jason Arday
Amnesty UK supporting “Arday’s Law”
Simon Baron Cohen on BBC 4 Today talking about Jason Arday
NYT: A Top Scholar’s Fall Shows That Universities Don’t Get It
NYT: Professor’s Death Leaves Behind Hard Questions for Cambridge on Race and Hiring
The Emancipator: The Media Lynched Kason Arday (Ibram X. Kendi)
Gideon M.K.: The Jason Arday Saga Is Terrible And Everyone Involved Should Be Ashamed Of Themselves
Ways to Change the World with Krishnan Guru-Murthy: Cambridge’s youngest Black professor Jason Arday on Autism, racism, and learning to read at 18
Open (supporting) letter on the suspension of Nathan Cofnas at Ghent University
Board Member of Ghent University (Dries Bostyn) discussing the disciplinary case on Twitter
Numb at the Lodge: The Carrion-Eaters (Sam Kriss)
The Chronicle of Higher Education: Jason Arday & Me (Musa al-Gharbi)
US Ambassador applies pressure to Ghent University
Nathan Cofnas thanks the US Ambassador for intervening
Academia is Doing Fine, Actually (Nicholas Decker)
Eric Turkheimer substack on Nathan Cofnas' views
Sasha Gusev thread on Nathan Cofnas' views

Are you tired, stuck, or inconveniently constrained by reality? Good news: you may simply be imagining the wrong one.
In Part One of our decoding of Mel Robbins, we explore the world of a self-help mogul who is also just a simple mother of three in Vermont hosting a little ol' podcast with a HUGE global impact. Together with Cassandra Vieten, a psychologist who is (apparently) one of the world's leading researchers on imagination and consciousness, Mel explains how to begin to stop reacting and start imagining, visualising, and manifesting the life you truly deserve. This will lead to self-actualised transcendence through a variety of simple-to-implement techniques. But don't worry, the universe has also put in safeguards: manifestation only works if you use it for good, such as empowering your authentic self. So please manifest enthusiastically without any concern.
In the episode, you will learn about the delicate art of rebranding common sense into complex (proprietary) theories and be shocked to discover that mystical intuitions are a core component of any fully holistic scientific research. Mel's HUGE media business, meanwhile, manifests itself as an intimate personal friendship with each of her millions of listeners.
Expect the usual decorative scholarship, a new Five Second Rule and insights into how to Let Them and Let You, reality tunnels, obstacle courses, a thousand supportive women, lighthouses, tapestries, and the therapeutic potential of fire-breathing dragons. All of it is very hard science, as they repeatedly remind us.
Chris and Matt attempt throughout to give the self-help genre a fair-minded assessment. They even concede that wearing colourful socks and being a bit less miserable are probably harmless, but ultimately their dark reductionist souls are beyond salvation.
Part Two is coming next week. In the meantime, try to visualise it clearly, align your energy, and not to put one foot on the brake as you hit the download button.
Links
The Mel Robbins Podcast: “World Leading Psychologist: How to Manifest Anything & Create the Life You Want” with Dr Cassandra Vieten
A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein: “The Mel Robbins Griftpocalypse” with Princess Weekes and Kat Tenbarge
CBS News: Extended Interview with Mel Robbins
The Mel Robbins Podcast: “Try It for 1 Week: 6 Small Ways to Bring Back the Happiness, Energy, and Fun”
The New York Times: “Mel Schneeberger and Chris Robbins” by Lois Smith Brady
UC San Diego profile: Cassandra Vieten, PhD

Joe Rogan, the Great Khan of podcasting, is once again receiving a travelling jester at court. This time it is Jimmy Carr who arrives bearing gifts: pop evolutionary psychology, dubious history factoids, conservative "common sense", and an apparently bottomless appetite for telling Joe just how important he is.
After listening to their three-hour conversation(!), we conclude there is nothing much of note beyond serving as a nice demonstration of popular "alternative" podcasting in 2026. What you get is a medley of sycophantic praise; regurgitated pop science and historical factoids; right-wing political positions presented as basic common sense; and shocked reactions to pseudo profundity and mundane observations.
Along the way, you will also thrill as you learn Rogan and Carr's takes on motherhood, feminism, work ethic, astrology, religion, taxation, vaccines, human evolution, the Black Death, and stand-up comedy.
As for Jimmy Carr himself, well, according to us: he's a very much your standard middle-aged conservative British person who happens to be a comedian. Rogan's level of crankery makes Jimmy look moderate by comparison, but as we know that's a very low bar.
Links
Jimmy Carr on The Joe Rogan Experience (2326)
Jimmy Carr on Modern Wisdom #953
Schulz, J. F., Bahrami-Rad, D., Beauchamp, J. P., & Henrich, J. (2019). The Church, intensive kinship, and global psychological variation. Science, 366(6466), eaau5141. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aau5141
Robinson D. The Black Death and Clerical Prospects in England. In: Bothwell J, Hamilton JS, eds. Fourteenth Century England XII. Fourteenth Century England. Boydell & Brewer; 2022:129-150. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781800105904.008
Xu, X., & Barrett, P. M. (2025). The origin and early evolution of feathers: implications, uncertainties and future prospects. Biology Letters, 21(2), 20240517. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2024.0517

With the Trump administration’s newest political persecution of Anthony Fauci and three years after our first lab-leak special, now seemed like a useful time to return to the topic. Fortunately, you do not have to rely on our knowledge of viruses, as we have somehow managed to convince the same three esteemed virologists, Eddie Holmes, Kristian Andersen and Michael Worobey, to come back for an update.
Mike, Kristian and Eddie return and offer us their read on where the scientific evidence on COVID’s origins stands in 2026. They take us through the main lines of evidence and the often overlooked role of the wildlife trade, explaining why the lab-leak story remains so appealing, and how their own assessments have shifted as more evidence has emerged. We also discuss the standard claim that the media suppressed the lab-leak narrative while noting that coverage across both alternative and mainstream outlets remains heavily skewed towards it (and almost entirely detached from the research literature).
Finally, we end on a characteristically positive note by discussing the Trump administration’s attacks on science and the ongoing campaigns against high-profile scientists and public health figures. Our guests describe their experience of committing the heinous offence of following the scientific evidence and arriving at conclusions that contradict the preferred views of polemical politicians and prominent media pundits.
In short, this episode is our modest attempt to drag the topic back towards the science, while also focusing on the price paid by the people who actually conduct the research and care about the evidence. We are not neutral when it comes to the ongoing attacks on science and scientists and do not pretend to be.
Links
Our guests: Michael Worobey, Kristian Andersen, and Eddie Holmes
Our previous interview with Worobey, Andersen and Holmes
Lab Leak Fever with Philipp Markolin
Our earlier interview with Stuart Neil on SARS-CoV-2
Sam Harris, Alina Chan and Matt Ridley: Did SARS-CoV-2 Escape from a Lab?
Bad Boy of Science: Is the COVID Lab Leak Hypothesis Dead?
Kristian Andersen on his early emails, released messages and changing assessment
Kristian Andersen’s congressional testimony and document collection
Kristian’s thread responding to the use of his Slack messages
Michael Worobey on why his assessment changed
WHO SAGO’s 2025 assessment of the origins evidence
The July 2026 Senate release of the Slack messages
Kevin Drum’s reading of the earlier Slack archive
The current White House lab-leak page
The July 2026 Fauci hearing
Naomi Oreskes on scientific integrity and “ethical pessimism”
Nature: Climate scientists report online attacks
Alwine et al. on the harms to scientists, research and pandemic preparedness

Relevant research papers and reviews
Andersen, K. G., Rambaut, A., Lipkin, W. I., Holmes, E. C., & Garry, R. F. (2020). The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2. Nature Medicine, 26(4), 450–452.
Crits-Christoph, A., Levy, J. I., Pekar, J. E., et al. (2024). Genetic tracing of market wildlife and viruses at the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. Cell, 187(19), 5468–5482.
Holmes, E. C. (2024). The emergence and evolution of SARS-CoV-2. Annual Review of Virology, 11(1), 21–42.
Liu, W. J., Liu, P., Lei, W., et al. (2023). Surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 at the Huanan Seafood Market. Nature, 631(8020), 402–408.
Pekar, J. E., Magee, A., Parker, E., et al. (2022). The molecular epidemiology of multiple zoonotic origins of SARS-CoV-2. Science, 377(6609), 960–966.
Pekar, J. E., Moshiri, N., Lemey, P., et al. (2025). Recently reported SARS-CoV-2 genomes suggested to be intermediate between the two early main lineages are instead likely derived. Virus Evolution, 11(1).
Pekar, J. E., Lytras, S., Ghafari, M., et al. (2025). The recency and geographical origins of the bat viruses ancestral to SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2. Cell, 188(12), 3167–3183.
Temmam, S., Vongphayloth, K., Baquero, E., et al. (2022). Bat coronaviruses related to SARS-CoV-2 and infectious for human cells. Nature, 604

We endure the ravages of time to deliver you this exhausted Supplementary Material. Bowed but never broken, the decoders persist.
The full episode is available to Patreon subscribers (Full Episode: 2hr 20 mins)
Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurus
Supplementary Material 53
00:23 Introduction: Matthew the Succulent's Post-Holiday Report
02:15 Pickle Ball Injuries & Bouldering Curses
07:40 They Won't Let You Talk about Middle-Aged Sports Injuries
08:37 New AI Models
09:31 Cory Doctorow, Trevor Noah, and Confirmation Bias
23:45 The Glorious Past and the Terrible Present
28:28 The Horror of Tinned Asparagus
30:26 The Collapse of Industries & Stores
36:16 Negativity Bias
37:11 AI Prompting 101
44:30 AI and Research Applications
50:28 Nigel Farage vs Count Binface
59:10 Nigel Farage Knighted on Russia Today
01:02:53 Hasan's Advice for Ukrainians
01:07:51 Russian Apologetics
01:13:32 Vlad Vexler and soft Anti-Vaxx rhetoric
01:19:35 Guru Red Flags
01:23:48 Bret Weinstein in 2020 on Vaccines
01:28:53 Gary vs Piers Morgan
01:30:58 Piers Morgan being a blustering idiot about Elon Musk
01:36:55 Gary's Pitch
01:41:55 Alternative Tax Proposals
01:46:18 Matt and Chris' Economics
01:47:22 Gary's Wealth
01:52:07 Piers the sleazy liar
01:55:25 Gary is the best inequality economist in the UK
01:57:08 Gary's Predictions
02:00:40 Gary is Very Tired
02:07:14 A message from anyone else to finish?
02:14:25 Final Takeaways
02:16:55 Matt attempts to wrangle another holiday
Links
The Verge: China delivers a one-two punch to America’s AI dominance
What Now? with Trevor Noah: Why Google, Apple & Big Tech Keep Making Everything Worse — Cory Doctorow and Trevor Noah
Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Finkenauer, C., & Vohs, K. D. (2001). Bad is stronger than good. Review of general psychology, 5(4), 323-370.
Count Binface on BBC Morning Live — full interview
Count Binface on Newsnight
Hasan offers Ukraine his advice to “give peace a try”
Report on polling from Ukraine in 2025 that does not show what Hasan claims
Report on more recent polling that still does not show what Hasan claims
Vlad Vexler tweets about vaccines
Bret’s Tweets in 2020 on Vaccines (and here)
Chris noting Bret’s anti-vaccine rhetoric in 2020 (see the comments under the tweet)
Kyiv International Institute of Sociology: Ukrainian views on exchanging Donbas for security guarantees
Decoding Academia 34: Matt and Chris’ Economics
Piers Morgan Uncensored: “I’m QUITTING!” Gary Stevenson vs Piers Morgan on Wealth, Economic Growth & Elon Musk