Supplementary Material 38: Toxic Mould Symbiosis, Mild Phrenology, and the Best People in the World

Decoding the Gurus

Christopher Kavanagh and Matthew Browne

Science, Leisure, Social Sciences, Society & Culture

4.2 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 14 October 2025

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We end the futile struggle, embrace the toxins, and become one with our mould brethren.

The full episode is available to Patreon subscribers (2 hours, 38 minutes).

Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurus

Supplementary Material 38

00:00 Intro

02:54 Boomer Matt reacts to Twitter videos

07:31 Shellenberger and Tucker discuss the 9/11 Files

12:42 Eric's Google Ngram Investigations

17:08 Vindication on the Elephant Graveyard

22:00 Eric's ARC lecture goes viral

25:24 Andrew Huberman is NOT a phrenologist...

29:06 Eric Weinstein vs. Piers Morgan

33:44 Everyone knows Eric is a serious thinker

46:09 Peterson is taken out of the Gurusphere by Demons and Toxic Mould

52:09 Gurus and Bespoke Alternative Health

57:00 Social Contagion Hypocrisy

01:02:55 Toxic Mould Symbiosis?

01:04:46 Pewdiepie, Diogenes, and the Seeker Mindset

01:16:14 The Wisdom of the Ancients

01:21:01 The Meaning Crisis and Christian Pivots

01:22:29 Konstantin Kisin's surprising Christian pivot

01:25:17 The best person Konstantin ever met (not Francis)

01:30:22 The Fifth Column Agrees with Megyn Kelly 88% of the time

01:33:07 Megyn Kelly explains how the Democrats crossed the line and must pay

01:41:35 Intellectual Clerics for MAGA

01:43:16 Slightly Adversarial libertarians for hire

01:47:00 Drew Pavlou and Fluid Populism

01:50:17 Two Varieties of Online Derangement: Noah Smith's Hot Takes

01:53:57 Need for Attention = Desire for Virality

01:57:23 Status Seeking Networkers vs Paul Bloom

02:01:27 Reflecting on the Al Murray Interview

02:02:22 The struggle of podcasters

02:04:52 Paul Bloom: The best person in the world?

02:06:00 Mike Israetel's Thesis Controversy

02:10:30 What does a PhD mean?

02:16:55 David Deutsch visits Curt Jaimungal

02:22:32 The Dangers of Doubling Down: Pirate Software

02:23:32 Hasan Piker and Shock Collar-gate

02:27:15 Matt's Take on Shock Collars

02:33:51 Dystopia Update: Putin wants Trump to win the Nobel Prize

02:37:11 Outro

Sources

Shellenberger and Tucker discuss the CIA’s role in 9/11
Grok pressing Eric to get specific
The Elephant Graveyard
Viral post about Eric’s ARC speech on science
Huberman’s phrenology endorsement
Jordan Peterson’s Health Update from Mikhaila
Chris Williamson: It’s time to talk about my health.
Chang, C., & Gershwin, M. E. (2019). The myth of mycotoxins and mold injury. Clinical Reviews in Allergy & Immunology, 57(3), 449–455.
Borchers, A. T., Chang, C., & Eric Gershwin, M. (2017). Mold and human health: A reality check. Clinical Reviews in Allergy & Immunology, 52(3), 305–322.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Hello and welcome to Decoding the Guru's supplementary material.
0:34.6	This is a side production of the larger Decoding the Guru's podcast ecosystem with
0:43.4	the venerable psychologist Matthew Brown over there and his plucky young upstart companion,
0:58.2	Christopher Kavanaugh, psychologist slash anthropologist slash raconteur dream weaver we have high hopes for you i'm trying to develop you into a fully
1:07.0	fledged academic podcaster and man.
1:14.3	Well, likewise, Matt, you're my project.
1:19.5	And one of the things that I like to do is, you know, help you with your audio quality.
1:21.6	So I'll just mention at this early stage.
1:24.9	Be careful of getting too close to your microphone.
1:28.1	That's a sensitive piece of equipment there, okay?
1:30.1	Just let you know.
1:37.1	My brand new microphone that I had Express shipped because I left the exact same copy of the other budget microphone that is currently at my brother's house.
1:41.1	But it's good.
1:41.5	I'm going to have microphones in every place that I visit.
1:45.2	We're moving up. But it's good. I'm going to have microphones in every place that I visit. We're moving up. You've got two microphones now. Yeah, quality isn't increasing, but the quantity,
1:53.3	yeah, the quantity is going up. The amount of microphones you're accumulating is impressive.
1:58.3	But, well, not really. After this many years of podcasting, only having two microphones
2:04.0	feels like you're not really trying hard enough. Like, shouldn't you have like different microphones
2:08.9	for different occasions? Like, this is my SMR mic. This is my bass boosted voice. Base bursted.
2:16.4	This is my bass. Bass. Is it
2:20.5	bass? Which making one is it? I think it's bass. I think it's bass. Can you feel the bass?
2:28.0	Yeah. Yeah. Let the bass drop. Yeah, no, I like it. I like it. Switch your marks according to mood. It makes sense. So, Chris, God, I think we've got the mother of all supplementary materials this week, don't we? Quite a lot. That's true. We've got a lot of things on the agenda. A lot of things have happened and we should probably get to it. But you know, Matt. We don't have to hurry. We don't have to hurry. I got to tell you, Chris. I mean, I don't know if other people in the audience are in the same position, and maybe I'm showing my age. But, you know, I live a reasonably wholesome life. Reasonably. Not entirely. But, you know, on a day like today, you know, I'm helping students.
	...

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