Interview with Helen Lewis on culture wars and religion, that Jordan Peterson interview, and gurus generally
Decoding the Gurus
Christopher Kavanagh and Matthew Browne
4.2 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 3 September 2022
⏱️ 137 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today Chris and Matt are visited by Helen Lewis, a journalist, editor, and writer with what could very fairly be described as a rather distinguished career in those fields.
Helen has previously worked at the New Statesman and is currently with The Atlantic. She has also served as a Women in the Humanities Honorary Writing Fellow at Oxford University and also on the steering committee for the Reuters Institute for Journalism at Oxford University. Her books include Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights. Helen's work covers a broad array of topics including politics, feminist issues, and contemporary/online culture. She is also known for a particular long-form interview which became a 'viral moment' when she sat down for a challenging discussion with one, Jordan B. Peterson.
Most recently Helen has produced "The Church of Social Justice" for BBC4, which asks whether political movements might be taking the place of traditional religions in Britain. A question which never generates any controversy whatsoever. She is also working on an upcoming project that looks at internet gurus and the ecosystems they spawn. So, we were glad to take the opportunity to catch up and talk about the intersections with our rather idiosyncratic collection of interests.
Join us as we try to decipher whether everything is a religion, if social justice requires a pope, and how exactly can we resolve ALL of those thorny culture war debates. We might not ultimately reach any satisfying answers but Helen does offer her one rule for life at the end of the interview!
Also featured on this episode: our most defensive response to a review to date, and a segment on the dangers of JAQing off!
Links
- The Church of Social Justice (BBC4)
- How Social Justice became a New Religion (The Atlantic)
- Helen's Book: Difficult Women- A History of Feminism in 11 Fights
- Helen's interview with Jordan Peterson for British CQ
- Joe Rogan's Recent Vote Republican Clip
- Chris' appearance on Embrace The Void discussing definitions of religion
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | You're going to be. Hello and |
| 0:25.0 | welcome to Dakota the Gurus, a podcast where an anthropologist and a psychologist |
| 0:28.0 | listen to the greatest minds the world has to offer |
| 0:31.0 | and we try to understand what they're talking about. Yes that's right, |
| 0:34.8 | sense making is the game and decoding the gurus is the name. But your name, |
| 0:40.0 | Chris, is Chris. My name is Match. I may have lost the thread there a little bit, but it was a good idea anyway. |
| 0:50.0 | For when a metaphor, for a metaphor and they'll rask you. |
| 0:56.2 | We are deep in the sense making muck. |
| 0:59.4 | We're excavating tunnels, we're digging through metaphorical soil to reach the famed favelge eggs that lie. |
| 1:11.5 | The deep ore of scents, a deep seam of sense is there. Yeah. Just imagine us like two hairy dwarfs with our gleaming peck axes chapping through the sand speaking |
| 1:25.5 | metaphors to try and get at the nuggets of wisdom that lie very deep, deep, |
| 1:30.7 | darn several metaphorical levers. deep time several |
| 1:32.6 | several metaphorical levers deep that's what we're doing we've been doing it for a while and we'll continue to do so |
| 1:40.1 | Mm-hmm that's right just have to be careful we don't dig too deep because you know what happened to the |
| 1:45.0 | dwarves and Lord of the Rings. That's right. There's monsters down there. Yeah, in the sense-making minds. |
| 1:52.1 | Think of the implications of this metaphor if we map it out if we follow |
| 1:55.6 | it all the ways early. Yeah, but what about the elves map? What about the elves? |
| 1:59.7 | What about the elves? That's our other day. But we are not here today to talk about the sense makers because we have yet to finish our work. It's hard work. |
| 2:11.3 | But it's honest work and by God we'll get there so while you're waiting there on the edge of the mine for the lift to come up with the rocks of sense. |
| 2:31.0 | And we thought we would toss you some scraps. |
| 2:35.0 | By my. |
| 2:37.0 | That's a terrible. |
... |
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