Decoding the Gurus

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

Two absolutely shattered academic heroes heroically drag themselves through yet another supplementary episode to bring you the important guru news in between their restorative breaks.
The full episode is available to Patreon subscribers (Full Episode: 1hr 32 mins)
Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurus
00:00 Introduction
02:13 Eliot Paisley's Anatomy of an Optimiser
08:52 Eric Weinstein wants a University Position and a Stipend
16:09 The Failure of the Anti-Woke Quasi Universities
19:19 Gary is Knackered Again
20:45 Gary is the best inequality economist in the world
24:36 How do I make a Documentary?
33:04 The End of the Year Approaches
37:44 Public Accountability
40:13 The Neurodivergent Trump Card
40:59 A clarification on bailiwicks
42:43 Tucker Carlson & Chris Cuomo discuss Russian Apologetics
48:53 Ukraine is selling weapons to Mexican Cartels
54:54 Civility Porn Judo
56:09 When Hasan met Prof. Jiang
01:01:37 Conspiracy Theory Buffet
01:07:24 Looking Good by Comparison
01:11:21 Comparing Epstein Conspiracies
01:24:03 Agreeable Conspiracism
01:27:13 Outro and Piers Morgan Invite
Links
Eric Weinstein appeals to billionaires on Twitter
Elliot Paisley: Chris Williamson Is A Slave
Gary’s Economics: My Documentary is Coming Out THIS WEEK!! – why you should watch it
The Times: Gary Stevenson: I want a wealth tax on the super-rich — like me
News Nation: Tucker & Chris Cuomo: The FULL Conversation
Hasan Debates Professor Jiang On His Wild Predictions | HasanAbi Archive

In this Decoding Academia episode, we venture into comparative psychology, focusing on a fascinating line of work by Fumihiro Kano and colleagues on social intelligence and theory of mind in great apes. By showing apes short videos and tracking where they look, researchers examine whether they expect others to act based on what they have seen, what they know, or what they falsely believe. This approach offers a remarkable window into the evolutionary roots of human social cognition or, alternatively, the most elaborate way yet devised to explore what a chimp thinks of a man in a chimpanzee costume.
We discuss what this kind of research might reveal about social intelligence across species: whether apes understand intentions, knowledge, and false beliefs; how their abilities compare with humans, dogs, and other animals; and why studying minds without language requires ingenuity, caution, and tolerance for participants who may simply decide the whole enterprise is beneath them.
There is also some discussion of the usual complications: small samples, difficult data, flexible analyses, replication, and the gap between a beautifully designed experiment and a result we should treat as settled fact. But the main story is the genuinely intriguing attempt to study Theory of Mind beyond humans.
Along the way, we discuss chimpanzee costumes, zoo life, dogs, and the disturbing possibility that crocodiles may be running more sophisticated cooperative hunting operations than most university committees.
*The full episode is available on Patreon (57 mins)*
00:00 Introduction
03:57 Chimpanzee Theory of Mind & Eye Tracking
13:03 Attention, Grabbing and Orientation
24:03 The Role of Memory in Anticipation
26:10 Revenge of the Researcher
31:21 Statistical Concerns
43:44 Comparative Psychology Thoughts
49:13 Non-climbing Tigers and Cooperative Crocodiles
51:20 Matt's New Friends and Outro
Relevant papers for the episode:
Kano, F., & Hirata, S. (2015). Great apes make anticipatory looks based on long-term memory of single events. Current Biology, 25(19), 2513-2517. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.08.004
Kano, F., & Call, J. (2017). Great ape social attention. In Evolution of the brain, cognition, and emotion in vertebrates (pp. 187-206). Tokyo: Springer Japan.

We return for Part 2 of our coverage of “Professor” Jiang, the internet’s favourite new geopolitical prophet, secondary-school sage, and proud owner of an ever-expanding box of educational props. Having already treated us to multiple maps, chess pieces, and a sealed metal case of predictions, Jiang is back with more predictions, more props, and even higher-level insights.
This time, we get the dramatic unveiling of a fresh batch of forecasts, including the forthcoming U.S. civil war, AI surveillance states, a grand bargain with China, the Greater Israel project, and the coming East Asian conflict. During all of this, we pause to consider Jiang’s status as a Beijing-based geopolitical commentator who manages to be just critical enough of Chinese surveillance to sound daring, but yet is most reliably focused on predictions of imminent Western collapse, American hubris, and the doom of the U.S. empire.
But the real journey begins when Jiang sets the geopolitics aside and invites us into Plato’s Allegorical Cave, updating it for the modern era by linking it to Korean television melodramas. Out come ominous black blocks, stacked into a metaphorical tower of global control: the military-industrial complex, the financiers, the World Bank, the WTO, the media, Hollywood, schools, universities, and culture itself. What started as “predictive history” devolves into an Alex Jones-style conspiratorial rant about international financiers, globalist bankers, controlled media, and brave alternative truth-tellers seeing through the mainstream lies.
The alternative media occupies a Schrödinger-like position in Jiang’s system: corrupted and controlled when it suits his narrative but also brave and rebellious when it is giving a platform to people like Jiang. Stephen Bartlett, meanwhile, fulfils his podcasting duty as a perfectly crafted avatar of the Diary of a CEO audience: curious, credulous and very receptive to the message that the system is rigged, the shadows are fake, and you, dear listener, are one of the brave truth-seekers with the courage to listen and look behind the curtain.
Finally, we also reach Cosmic Jiang. The bankers are at war with the tech bros. Reality is consciousness. Matter is vibration. We are all fragments of God returning to Source. Hermetic philosophy explains Plato. Kabbalah explains the Middle East. Israel is trying to force the hand of God. The world will end; paradise will return. It turns out all of that geopolitical analysis was actually just a sideshow...
So join us for the conclusion of Professor Jiang: a masterclass in massive domino-based reasoning, geopolitical dressing on bog-standard conspiracy theory, and the enduring appeal of intellectual junk food.
Sources
Diary of a CEO: Professor Jiang: World War 3 Is About To Begin, Let Me Explain!
Mehdi Hasan vs. “Professor” Jiang
Professor Jiang talking about the Nephilim and Other Such Stuff: The World Is a Prison – The Secret Meaning of God And Creation | Prof. Jiang Xueqin
Professor Jiang promoting creationism and denying evolution
The National Security Strategy of the United States Document