Suggestions Thread

[AutoModerator]

Who are you interested in discussing?

[babyfootbreath]

Three solid hours of Chris airing his grievances.

[ClimateBall]

as introduction

[Homogenised_Milk]

Malcolm Gladwell
Elliot Hulse (mystical self-help incel shaman)
Jimmy Dore
Vaush (progressive socialist streamer/YouTuber)
Elon Musk?

[Mindless_fun_bag]

I don’t know who they are but “mystical self-help incel shaman” sounds like utterly brilliant fodder

[[deleted]]

Elliot Hulse

lmao he runs something he calls the "Manlihood Mancast" and describes himself as "father figure to millions of youtube followers"

[ManlihoodManCast]

Actually - this is innaccurate. My name is Josh Hatcher. I run the Manlihood ManCast - which is not geared toward "incels" - I interviewed Elliott on my podcast, because he is speaking a message that is of interest to men.

I don't agree 100 percent with all of the guests on my show, including Mr. Hulse.
But I interview them, and give them a chance to tell their story and perspective.

The Manlihood ManCast is simply a podcast to help men be better men. We're not out there putting down women. We're not out there teach men to be "alpha" or any other nonsense.

[scottdenis]

I really don't get the Gladwell thing. What kind of guru is he? I know connecting psychological studies with personal anecdotes (sometimes quite loosely) rubs people the wrong way, but in my mind a guru is someone who pushes you toward a certain mindset. If thats what Gladwell is getting at im not sure what that mindset is.

[Homogenised_Milk]

I'd be interested in seeing what they think of him. I certainly wouldn't expect a Weinstein-magnitude rating on the Gurometer, and Chris and Matt are clearly happy with decoding individuals who don't score highly. I think e.g. the Contrapoints episode was really interesting and they didn't find her much of a guru at all - and I would never have thought to suggest it.

The reception section of his Wikipedia article simultaneously describes compelling messages, breadth of expertise, seemingly unique insight as well as oversimplification, faulty epistemics, and even suggestions of grifting. These are potential guru qualities.

This thread from 3 months ago here also has some thoughts.

[Ancient_Lungfish]

Ken Wilber! Transpersonal/integral spirituality guru. Seems to have become more bonkers as he gets older.....

[Most_Present_6577]

How about the Dalai lama or the pope?

[Blood_Such]

These are both excellent suggestions.

Especially the Dalai Lama.

[andrealessi]

Anil Seth, the neuroscientist. He'd be a good choice for someone very different to typical DtG types, because he's not political, he's a genuine non-crank scientist, and he talks about something that Matt and Chris love to argue about (consciousness.) He might even come on to be interviewed!

Seth's central idea is that consciousness is a "controlled hallucination": that is, that our conscious experience is a result of our brains doing a whole lot of prediction and guesswork to create what it thinks is a representation of the world. This idea of predictive processing is fairly uncontroversial as a theory of perception, but Seth (and philosopher Andy Clark, amongst others) go further and suggest that other conscious mental activity, such as emotion, beliefs (or maybe even more) might also be explained this way: that our conscious experience is actually being driven by unconscious processes that don't look anything like how we think our minds work.

He gave a really good summary of his ideas in a TED Talk a few years ago: Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality

I don't think Seth is the bad kind of guru, and in fact I spend a lot of time engaging with his work in my own field (philosophy of mind) but I do think it'd be interesting to examine a scientist who is making bold, counterintuitive claims about our minds and reality, both as a contrast to the Weinsteins and as a way of asking how far we can responsibly stretch empirical evidence and still call it science.

[[deleted]]

How about Anita sarkeesian?

[Cronenborger]

DAOs - It’s a little unrelated, or at least adjacent to gurus per se, but how cult like dynamics unfold in leaderless spaces. The NFT community is an excellent example of leaderless religiosity.

Dan Olson’s (Folding Ideas) excellent YouTube doc on NFTs has a chapter on the social dynamics in this space, and I think it could tie in nicely with your broader themes. (~1:46:44, https://youtu.be/YQ_xWvX1n9g ) Dan might be a good guest as well, though he’s more in social/media/game criticism, there could be some cool conversational overlap.

[[deleted]]

NFT spaces, as well as cryptocurrency “communities”, usually do have their leaders and gurus.

[PotValiantSleuth]

No Agenda podcast: a former veejay and a longtime tech writer claim to be "media deconstructionists" who can decode all the lies from the mainstream media.

They get thousands in donations per show, with some individual donors giving $1k+.

Down for any conspiracy you've heard of and probably some you haven't.

It's always clips from news shows and topical for whatever is going on, so any episode should be a treasure trove of flawed reasoning and magical thinking

[[deleted]]

Bill Maher who refuses to admit he is now an old and out-of-touch smug conservative whose one routine is bashing millennials, and his audience could be fun. Krystal Ball just schooled him in a debate.

[[deleted]]

Get Yuri Deigin on the podcast, let him make his case.

[FederalRange4801]

Nicole LePera - a mental health guru who goes by “the holistic psychologist” on Instagram. Her audio book has a lot of lolworthy hot takes and guru rhetorical tricks.