Supplementary Material 48: Grey Beard's Council, Late-Stage Anti-Capitalism, and Demonic Mould Health Updates

More from Decoding the Gurus All episodes →

1. 

   12 Jun 2026 · 40 min

   Gurometer: Iain McGilchrist *Patreon Preview*

   In this Gurometer edition, Matt and Chris feed Iain McGilchrist into the sacred instrument to see where exactly refined country-parish-minister vibes land when combined with galaxy-brained hemispheres, civilisational decline narratives, decorative scholarship, and the other features of guruosity. Iain McGilchrist Gurometer 00:27 Introduction 01:00 Iain McGilchrist Reactions 04:40 Galaxy Brain-ness 06:39 Cultishness 08:28 Anti-Establishmentarianism 11:39 Grievance Mongering 14:30 Self-Aggrandizement and Narcissism 17:21 Cassandra Complex 19:54 Revolutionary Theories 20:48 Pseudo-Profound…

2. 

   10 Jun 2026 · 48 min

   Supplementary Material 50: The String Theory Mafia, Shameless Propagandists, and The Topography of Semantic Space

   We become highly effective at exploiting the gap between salience and relevance as we universalise semiotic capability and listen to more brave renegades talking about how amazing they are. Join us, won't you? Supplementary Material 50 (Full Episode: 2hrs 23 mins) 00:24 Introduction 02:07 British People Struggling with Compliments 04:53 Matt loves SOME episode titles 08:42 Nachos Pronunciation 10:13 Brett Weinstein vs Michael Tracey 29:08 Brett pivots to his Anti-Vaxx Hits 42:32 The Hug Box World of Podcasting 45:55 When Eric met Joe (again) 47:29 Eric and Rogan re-litigate Sean Carroll's…

3. 

   E162 · 31 May 2026 · 2 hr 25 min

   L. Ron Hubbard: Sleeping with Bandits, Hunting with Pygmies And So On

   The Decoders wrap up cult season by dissecting a titan of the cult scene, the founder of Scientology, Lafayette Ronald Hubbard or L. Ron for short. A prolific science fiction author, L. Ron founded an alternative self-help movement and then developed it into his cosmic self-help 'religion' of Scientology. Scientology has now been the subject of multiple documentaries and even a fairly detailed South Park parody episode, so it feels like many are aware of the general 'deal' of Scientology. But how about L. Rob Hubbard as a guru... how many people have actually taken the time to sit down and…

4. 

   12 May 2026 · 45 min

   Supplementary Material 49: Calibrated Podcast Expectations, The Great Consciousness Debate of 2026, and Russell Brand is a Bad Guy

   Matthew Browne, a high-profile advocate for pan-psychism, compels his reluctant co-host to endure a public struggle session on the topic of consciousness, hopefully for the last time. Supplementary Material 49 00:00 Introduction 02:47 Returning to the Emerald Isle 03:44 Irish History Segment: The Titanic & Potato Famines 10:45 McGilchrist Reflections 12:51 Knowledge Fight has ended 26:23 Podcasting Motivations 34:37 Calibrated Expectations 41:03 The Problem with the Patreon Members 42:51 Shermer's Activist Skeptic Research 47:24 Research on Support for Political Violence in the US 54:35 Rob…

5. 

   E161 · 4 May 2026 · 3 hr 10 min

   Iain McGilchrist, Part 2: Hemispheres, Culture, and Cosmic Consciousness

   In this episode, we return to Iain McGilchrist as he spirals upwards from his binary hemispheric model into full cosmic spirituality. The rule is simple: everything McGilchrist likes is due to the subtle, nuanced, and deeply sophisticated right brain, while the left brain (pffft) is responsible for reductionism, modernity, and most of the problems in your life. From this neuroscientific foundation, the theory expands with admirable ambition. Civilisations rise and fall depending on which hemisphere they inhabit. Ancient societies were properly attuned to the right brain, while the modern…

6. 

   E160 · 11 Apr 2026 · 2 hr 4 min

   Iain McGilchrist, Part 1: Right-Brain Thinking

   In this episode, we take a journey into the mind, traversing both the left and right hemispheres, but mostly the left, as we engage with the truly mind-bending insights of British psychiatrist-philosopher-neuroscientist-theologian-author Iain McGilchrist. Best known for his 2009 book "The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World" but also a much lauded academic and sensemaker. We outline McGilchrist’s extremely complicated thesis that the two hemispheres of the brain reflect fundamentally different “ways of being” and that this is reflected in…

7. 

   E159 · 8 Apr 2026 · 1 hr 28 min

   Mentalism and Meta-Deception with Stevie Baskin

   On this episode, we’re joined by Stevie Baskin, a skeptic and YouTuber who released a five-hour detailed critique of the “meta-deception” of Oz Pearlman. He argues that mentalism differs from traditional magic by introducing an additional meta-deception because, unlike magicians, mentalists often leave their audiences with inaccurate beliefs about body language reading, subliminal influence, NLP, and general psychology. In Stevie’s framework, this places mentalists closer to psychics and mediums than to magicians, because the deceptive element is not clearly acknowledged. We examine this…

8. 

   3 Apr 2026 · 44 min

   Supplementary Material 47: The DTG Conspiracy UNMASKED, Quantum Idiots, and Triggernometry Prophecies

   Our cover is blown. Our secret funders unmasked. Code Red: Abort! Abort! This is not a drill. Supplementary Material 47: The DTG Conspiracy UNMASKED, Quantum Idiots, and Triggernometry Prophecies 00:00 Glowing Introduction 03:14 The Secret Conspiracy at the Heart of the Podcast 08:17 The Israel Connection 19:09 Cenk Uygur's Pickleball Conspiracy 23:25 Comment Section Conspiracies 30:20 Pizzagate Conspiracies Revisited 37:55 The Value of debating with ChadBigCum 42:26 AI discourse reflections 43:43 Ben Burgis's hyperbolic reaction to AI use 44:53 The AI revolution and its potential impacts…

9. 

   E158 · 28 Mar 2026 · 1 hr 38 min

   The Moral Dilemmas of AI with Michael Inzlicht

   Mickey is BACK with two new papers he has co-authored, a bunch of opinions, and a very unwelcome idea: maybe the problem with AI isn't that it doesn't work but that it works too well! The first paper, Against Frictionless AI, argues that AI assistance and its ability to take away the effort from thinking, writing, and smooth out social(like) interactions could be robbing those activities of the very thing that makes them worthwhile. The second paper is a more empirical investigation that presents a bunch of studies examining the topic of the (alleged) moralisation of AI. Some findings…

10. 

    E157 · 22 Mar 2026 · 2 hr 39 min

    Ken Wilber: Spiralling Upwards through a Technicolor Cosmos

    Ken Wilber, the grand architect of Integral Theory , enters the Decoding chamber (wearing a striking but slightly unconvincing wig) as we explore a worldview that confidently absorbs every religion, philosophy, and half-remembered psychology paper into one majestic, Borg-like synthesis. Resistance, as it turns out, is not just futile... it is probably “first-tier thinking". This is a world of elaborate, baroque cosmologies. Layers within layers, quadrants within stages, spirals within states, with each offering a map of reality that grows more intricate the closer it gets to its own centre.…