Special Episode: Interview with Robert Wright on crackpots, gurus, and modern media ecosystems
Decoding the Gurus
Christopher Kavanagh and Matthew Browne
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 13 August 2021
⏱️ 100 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week we welcome the author, journalist, and podcaster Robert Wright. Robert wrote the popular (and provocative!) book 'Why Buddhism is True' and has hosted many interesting discussions and debates at bloggingheads.tv, which he co-founded.
We had a wide ranging discussion that touched on a vast array of topics including: the Weinsteins & their relative crackpot ratings, alternative & Mainstream media ecosystems and how they feed into guruism, what are gurus anyway (and are they all bad), Sam Harris and cognitive biases, whether Bob is a Buddhist Modernist, the extent to which meditation is a form of cultural conditioning, if wokism is really taking over America, and whether Matt & Chris' actually hate evolutionary psychology or not.
Robert offers a unique perspective, displays a lot of good humour and patience, and indulges our ongoing fetishism of self deprecation culture. So join us for a suitably meandering Irish-Aussie-Americo conversation that involves only the prescribed amount of mutual backpatting!
P.S. We promise the Gad Saad episode is coming soon!
Links
- Bob's Book 'Why Buddhism is True'
- 'Is Eric Weinstein a Crackpot' on Bob's Non-zero Substack
- Bob's Interview with Tim Nguyen for The Wright Show
- Bob's article for Wired on Sam Harris & Tribalism (the one that got him cut off!)
- The Crackpot Index by John Baez
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The So, Hello and welcome to Decoding the Guru's the podcast for an anthropologist and |
| 0:28.8 | a psychologist listen to the greatest minds the world has to offer and we try our best |
| 0:32.1 | to understand what they're |
| 0:33.6 | talking about and sometimes just sometimes we have special guests on who are |
| 0:38.3 | going to help us figure out what is true beautiful and real in this crazy |
| 0:41.4 | mixed-up world and today is one of those days isn't it |
| 0:44.2 | Chris? That's right morning Matt we have Robert Wright and who we mentioned just |
| 0:52.2 | recently when we have Evan Thompson on because of his recent book |
| 0:56.0 | Why Buddhism is true but that's that's just one of the many things that he's done is |
| 1:02.0 | journalist and author and probably got into the like online |
| 1:08.6 | podcasting or video tubing I'm not sure the terminology with blogging Heads TV quite a while back and has |
| 1:15.9 | wrote a number of books, The Moral Animal, Non Zero, The Logic of Human Destiny, The Evolution of God. |
| 1:22.3 | So hello Bob. |
| 1:24.2 | Hello? |
| 1:24.9 | If it's okay to call you Bob. |
| 1:26.3 | It's very common to call me Bob, yes. |
| 1:28.5 | And I should also mention that I have recently become a patron of the parrot room. |
| 1:37.0 | So, God bless you. |
| 1:38.0 | Yeah, this is opposition research. |
| 1:41.0 | You and Mickey Croix, I feel like I'm starting to know personally in the |
| 1:47.0 | power social way that the online space creates. |
| 1:50.0 | Well Mickey and I are opposed to each other so you can't be opposed to both of us. |
... |
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