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Supplementary Material 23: Content Shark Psychology, Rorshach Tweets, and the Art of Radicalisation (Patreon)

Published:
2025-02-15 08:13:54
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Chris and Matt have their models exploded, the maps ripped up, and their minds blown as the Gurusphere expands into exciting new territory.

Supplementary Material 23

02:47 Chris Williamson blows our minds!

08:57 Content Predator psychology and motivational posting

12:28 Balancing the Scales

14:07 Eric Weinstein the master of Rorschach Tweets

20:26 Modern Sages Reunited: Bret Weinstein and Joe Rogan

24:29 Open-Minded Joe Rogan

34:26 Maybe prescriptions are actually bad!

37:38 Andrew Gold expands into Race & IQ

46:47 4 Warning Signs of Radicalism

56:45 Monomaniacal Fixation vs. Pluralism

01:05:26 Rejoinder: What if it is a diagnostic?

01:09:43 Lex wants to join DOGE

01:10:31 Lex's next world leader interview: Modi

01:14:57 Matt's Final Thought: People contain multitudes

01:16:57 Outro

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Comments

Saksaas

Speaking of Chris Williamson. He was roasted by Fin Taylor on his show and the YouTube shorts are hilarious.

jubshit

Thanks for your relentless pace this past week.

Jen

Rogan is so freaking dumb. I heard someone call him a “bewildered toddler”. USAID is less than 1% of the budget. Majority Report did a good segment on this clip.

H H

”he has been wearing his jacket for twenty years” 🤣🤣🤣

Steelyphil

I wanna see Matt’s art so bad

Sam D.

The conversation about medications and vaccines is so terrifying to me as an American citizen. I'm truly frightened that I won't have access to flu or covid vaccines in a year, and will have to return to a life of isolation as the only means to protect my life (I'm an older person and do depend on vaccines to keep me from ending up in the hospital). We are also facing rising threats from bird flu and I doubt we will be told when this breaks out in the human population, much less have any means other than social isolation to protect ourselves. I can't imagine what it would be like to be a parent and wonder if you will have access to measles vaccines, etc in the coming years. They have no compunction against removing access to life saving medications from people whose "lifestyles" they don't approve of. They're doing it to trans people and women and they will be taking away statins and anti-depressants next.

jubshit

Excellent insights on radicalization and plurality. I can't imagine listening to this without weighing its philosophical implications.

Linda Sears

Chris’s list of behaviors that signal growing radicalization was very helpful.

Mark Francis

Rogan is the most vapid and banal person on the planet. Strip away his edgy contrarian ideas about pop culture, he has nothing, he is such a dullard. He disparages book reading as elitist then in the same breathe talk about a study he just read. There is no way he has ever read study in his life…. Southern poverty law had him pegged way back in 2017 about the fact he is like a conduit, introducing his male libertarian listeners to his ‘friends’ who hold far more radical views than Rogan holds…. Most of my male friends get their news from JRE but they never admit that JRE is their sourcing when they start quoting some study they read, that I know they never read and are just echoing something Rogan said on his latest episode. It’s such a circular jerk!

Barbara Wright

Can’t help thinking that a text exchange containing Chris Williamson’s encouraging, motivational messages to Lex would be mildly amusing.

Nina J.

God, this Rogan/Weinstein nightmare blunt rotation was such a good example of how flimsy the populism of right wing media figures really is; they constantly harp on the supposed elitism of the left while having no idea or even interest in what the “everyman” Trump voter is actually like. Red states - especially in the south - are not full of rich people who can (or even necessarily would) eat organic food and work out constantly. Rates of diabetes and obesity are extraordinarily high amongst that population. They’re probably all taking fucking statins for their sky-high fucking blood pressure, Bret - along with a veritable pharmacopeia of other prescription medications that keep them alive while they subsist off the shitty processed food they can afford and GALLONS of Mountain Dew. Fuck, medical necessity aside, there’s a reason the opioid epidemic ravaged poor white all-American Trump-votin’ communities. OxyContin wasn’t colloquially known as “hillbilly heroin” by chance (I can make this insensitive point as a recovering OxyContin and heroin addict, okay)! These people don’t necessarily even want to get off prescription drugs, even if they could. But, Rogan and his sycophants need not worry, of course; they and their audiences will just somehow blame the left when this (along with everything else) goes to shit. And, an anti-pharmaceutical bent will provide good cover when selling the idea of greatly limiting or eradicating access to birth control to non-religious, more libertarian right wing lunatics.

Matt Dear

People think Rogan is thinking critically, when he's nakedly displaying motivated reasoning, and confirmation bias. You don't even need to try and explain it, what he's doing is the textbook definition of both. Most listened to podcast in the world. Depressing!

Matt Dear

Holy Fucking Hell, Bret wtaf are you on about. "People would be better off without their prescription drugs" Jesus wept. I'd be dead.

Mark Francis

I wonder if lex’s silly brain has reflected on what drew the third reich towards Hindu nationalism (and Viking Rus paganism)!?

Steelyphil

Now that I’ve gotten to listen to the whole episode I’m very interested in learning more about the process of radicalization as well as the atrocities in Sri Lanka. They were linked in this conversation but I am also interested in how radicalization of the population lead to the atrocities?

Nick Nightingale

Really excited for Modi’s thoughts on aliens.

James P.

Ok... what's the lime disease tick thing?

Salex

I don’t think Brett is on to a winner with saying that, like, people will be fine or better off without affordable access to their prescription meds. Does he know that people don’t usually like it when things are taken away from them? It’s one thing to be antivax, because that’s something they can opt in to / the negative consequences aren’t immediately noticeable (to them, not the vulnerable who die but I’m preaching to the converted.) There are a lot of people, crunchies and MAHAs included, who do take insulin, asthma meds, epilepsy meds, analgesics, diuretics, chemotherapy, antidepressants and, yes, stimulant treatment for ADHD. People aren’t going to be stoked about loosing a loved one to heart failure or a severe asthma attack if prices have blown out and what was previously available is no longer there.

Cesare

It's not always the converted who cut off non-believing friends and family. There's lots of folks who felt the need to cut off their friends or family because the friend or family member fell down the Trump rabbit hole. Their friends and family might have been perfectly reasonable, but through a steady diet of Fox News, YouTube, and FB have become racists, bullies, misogynists, or conspiracists. The people cutting off contact haven't converted, it's the family member who did. The conversion can happen in a matter of years or a matter of months. And usually the people cutting off the friends and family feel immense sadness for doing so, but they just couldn't bear to listen to the BS anymore.

Salex

The Lex / Modi conversation is genuinely a puzzle to me. Modi is notoriously protective of his carefully constructed persona (more mythology than biography). He doesn’t do interviews very often, especially with the foreign media. And he won’t answer questions he hasn’t already screened. Lex is more likely to be given the questions than prepare them himself. Very curious

Tree

I really enjoy when Chris starts talking about things like Sri Lanka or Hindu nationalism. Especially in the context of things like Lex, I always feel like yes, thanks goodness someone is bringing that up.

Ben Godek

Does anyone else think it was pretty clear that Rogan hadn’t even heard of USAID before Elon Musk told him it was a front for resettling migrants?

SHOUNAK SARKAR

Oh boy, that Modi interview by Lex is going to be a shitshow. Imagine if he asks him about Rogan & Musk lol! With regards to Modi, yep you guys diagnosed his ideology correctly. When he first came on the scene, the moderate wing of BJP was in power, Atal Bihari Vajpayee was PM. Vajpayee actually blamed Modi for BJP’s election loss nationally to Congress party after the Gujarat riots. Now all these years later, just like the USA GOP has become Trumpian, BJP has become Modi-fied. He along with Amit Shah & Yogi Adityanath represent the far-right wing of BJP. Although, Modi’s rhetoric & speeches are far more moderate than you expect, he also does nothing to rein in even more extreme elements in his party. Lex won’t be asking anything hard hitting of course, it will just be access lickspittle journalism! Matt & Chris, please do a review / decoding of that once that happens. You guys should also cover non-Western stuff from time to time!

Ryan Booker

I love that Brett Weinstein talks with such familiarity about people who probably think he’s a numbskull. Also, I wonder if he’s truly deranged or cynical.

Jeremy Stewart

I'm usually good at picking up on their sarcasm but it sounded like they were being serious about the Chris Williamson stuff... isn't the obvious answer that he's making it up about the Trump interview?

Emma

This was a great discussion on radicalisation. I think one of my neighbours has been radicalised on the pro Palestinian front. The thing is I live in the most lefty suburb you can imagine so i think he struggled to find anyone to disagree with his position. So his problem now is that the rest of us don't care enough! And if we truly appreciated what is happening over there we should be on the streets protesting 24/7 or something. Anything else is apparently hypocritical.I have resisted the impulse to try and rebut him because I don't want to get sucked in but i feel the main thing he is missing is that he is retired v early and seems quite well off. While the rest of us are struggling with full time work and a difficult economy and we just can't spend all day caring about palestine. And plus whats would that achieve? But I know he has been feuding w various other neighbours. It's sad though because I feel he is lonely and he is only making himself more isolated and none of this is actually helping the Palestinians.

Emma

And I would also love to see Matt's art! Is there anything Matt can't do?

aneladgam_varelse

Lex’s Modi interview is going to be spiritual version of Hasan’s interview with Houthi pirate

Josh Chang

I hope Lex joins DOGE actually - it would be even more naked what a partisan fool he is. A lot of people who don't pay attention don't perceive how harmful he is.

Monica B.

Joe and Brett are so infuriating. Listening to the two of them be so smug and so self-righteous and so so wrong was crazy making, mostly because they should just be two privileged schlubs talking to themselves in a bar while being laughed at by any unfortunate eavesdroppers, but they have actual power . Argh!

Sam D.

Yes looking forward to a future video of the pod with Matt's paintings in the background!

Mike Nelson

I lost one of my oldest friends, my best man at my wedding, to the far right manopshere pipeline. After being ghosted by him for a year, he called me to tell me about the worldwide cabal of jews poisoning us with vaccines, controlling the banks, the news media, Hollywood, etc and I was too blind to see it. He also told me to accept the love of Christ and prepare for the end times. Everything he said to me sounds exactly like the garbage that Rogan et all spew. I don't know how America is going to deprogram this.

Paul Bowman

Like the segment on Chris' "four flags" re radicalisation. I have a couple of things to add. First, a bit of background. I joined the anarchist movement in Northern England in the mid-80s, at a time when a lot of recruits were coming from a sociological youth subculture called "anarcho-punk", originally stemming from the Crass fans subgroup of punk. One of the ideological commitments of that milieu was the animal rights movement (I was a hunt saboteur before I became an anarchist) circling around the Animal Liberation Front (ALF). Although most of us that went on to become class struggle anarchists later left that milieu behind, the encounter with some of the most excessive elements of peer to peer radicalisation in many ways inoculated us against patterns of spiralling extremism that the left and all other political tendencies are prone to. The first element I want to add to the mix is an extension of the second of the flags - the excessive moral policing of the ideological milieu. We used to refer to the worst of these practicioners as the "Vegan Police" or even "Vegan Gestapo". These fanatics would not only pass judgement on your every piece of clothing or drink or food consumed, they would do what I call "affect policing". E.g. "How can you be laughing and enjoying yourself when THE ANIMALS ARE SUFFERING!". The idea here is that given how serious "the issue" is (whatever the issue) the only acceptable emotion to have at all, all the time, is anger and righteous fury. Anyone detected as being insufficiently angry or, god forbid, actually having fun, needed to be pulled up and scolded. In the end we saw through the interpersonal power plays involved in this sort of behaviour (having other commitments to an ideology like anarchism that is extremely suspicious of authoritarian interpersonal behaviour definitely helped, as well as just having a sense of humour and dislike of bullying). But once you recognise the pattern you see it in many, many other places and contexts. The second one is an extension of the third flag of seeing the world through the manichaen prism of a single issue that is SO IMPORTANT that all other considerations become secondary - to the extent, at the limit, of ceasing to have any remaining ethical salience. For eg there were scandals with the ARM of certain areas hunt sabs having two older members who were members of the NF. The vegan police insisted that so long as they were helping to save foxes, what they did with the rest of the time didn't matter. Naturally most of us did not agree. Ronnie Lee, who was for many years the "star" of the ALF also prevaricated on whether fascists could be part of the movement. For lack of a better word, I'm reaching out to the Catholic theological notion of 'nominalism'. The idea that the exceptional nature of the mission the elect have been given in the cosmological struggle, means that the normal rules of behaviour are suspended. (Marxists have a version of this I call "main contradictionism" - the idea that the primary contradiction, i.e. class struggle, outweighs all other considerations like anti-racism, feminism, etc). Recognising nominalism when its at work is a key skill, because this is a real giant red flag that things are about to get ugly real quick. Many, many such cases (Japanse United Red Army is a favoured horror story from the past), the "Zizzians" being the latest, for those of you who've picked up on that

Shifter

Just when you think Brett couldn't be any worse, he surprises us by supporting Americans losing coverage to prescription medications.

Kyle Dun

Where I disagree with Chris about his hypothesis. I can forgive the lay person, who may not be engaged on topics, or subject to misinformation for being wrong on a topic. Wouldn't write anyone off because of it. Public intellectuals who ostensibly specialize or at the least have a vested interest in being well versed in certain topics get it wrong that is very different. The issue of Ukraine which is as clear cut as it gets currently, is enough for me to write off the opinions of people who seem confused. They are either blinded by ideology or other sinister motives in my view.

Leo

I can't listen to this Joe Rogan gibberish, it hurts my mind.

Olexi Kondrat

I think one important bit that is missing from the discussion about Monomaniacal Fixation vs. Pluralism is that people can be directly affected by the consequences of intellectual positions. For me Robert Wright's motivated application of "cognitive empathy" to Putin, does not simply highlight weakness of some of his opinions, but potentially promotes policies causing harm to my family and friends in Ukraine. And a lot of support of Ukraine is based on people being monomaniacal about supporting Ukraine. We should fundamentally believe in pluralism in the sense that there are many opinions and points of views that are different from ours, and our opinions should be kept in check by views of other people, but decoupled pluralism can be bad and monomaniacal focus can lead to positive results. Unfortunately, there's no clear line between good/healthy and bad/unhealthy, although some approaches are clearly unhealthy.

Tasty3141

I have a genuine question about the nazis and genetics of survivors thing. Can somebody please explain exactly why the following throught it wrong or point me to an article from a geneticist or somebody who can just clearly explain the logic error to me because it never seems to click for me. If intelligence (or strength maybe) is partly genetic and passed down from parents (smart parents are more likely to have a smart kid than average parents even if it regresses to mean over time) then why wouldn't an extreme event in the environment potentially affect the following generations? So in Germany the group of people who got out before 1944 were presumably not a totally random sample? It seems plausible that people with wealth would find it easier to leave or maybe people who were intelligent might see the writing on the wall sooner and leave quicker or manage to persuade the right people to get them out. Like I don't know the exact way it would shake out but wouldn't it be more likely than not that the sample of people who escape would not be random and that it would favour certain traits or personalities or wealth more than others? And if that's the case wouldn't an even a slight difference end up with a significant genetiic difference in following generation if you have an extreme event that takes out a 2/3 of the population I would definitely expect some kind of significant effect. It seemed from the segment that this thought is almost too stupid to explain why it's wrong but from what I know about genetics from selfish gene and my popular understanding (v low level I admit) it would almost be insane if it *didn't* have an effect. Like my intution is the exact opposite from what Chris and MAtt are suggesting.

DJM

Just an add in (pun intended) even adhd medications can be lifesaving. Untreated adhd is a risk factor for crime and substance use issues.

Sean Power

The racist is a philosopher … not again, goddamit

Robbie Laliberte

Do the conspiratorial two-step! There's a song and a dance craze in there somewhere. It's a shame that Tom Lehrer and Warren Zevon are dead.

RobotRouge

Another bad sign is obsession re gurus

Mandy

Just listened. Can’t help thinking someone high up is paying Joe R to say this stuff to his huge audience. Maybe that’s just my cognitive rabbit hole. Whatever, it’s depressing. Great show, Matt & Chris. Depressing, but great show! Thanks.

George

The Rogan Brett bit was painful. It's the hypocrisy of it. Makes me feel like I'm going mad. How do people not see it for what it is? I had a look at factcheck.org and there is full disclosure about their funding sources and processes. Perhaps they are still prone to bias, who knows, but it's the total lack of interest into looking at this stuff that makes it so frustrating. It doesn't fit the narrative so it can be dismissed. Clinically thick oafs.

Steve Edge

Why would Matt and Chris not accept Philosophy? I'm not very bright could anyone explain please. 😁😁

Lori Kiel

Great episode! Thanks. You guys help keep me sane.

Dean

I must admit some guilt in thinking people are idiots when it comes to the issue of climate change and not taking it as seriously as I do. That said, I still love my friends and family. Even the ones who drive their F150s to the office every morning. I do want to strangle them. I love them though. What the fuck is wrong with these people. They're doing there best I suppose. Morons, idiots! I'm a little conflicted!