What Happened to the Intellectual Dark Web?

The Michael Shermer Show

Michael Shermer

Dialogue, Science, Reason, Michaelshermer, Natural Sciences, Skeptic

4.4 • 921 Ratings

🗓️ 1 April 2025

⏱️ 79 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Outside of the academics and activists whose ideology came to dominate the West in the second decade of the twenty-first century, arguably no group influenced public discourse as much as the Intellectual Dark Web.

Challenging the intellectual and cultural orthodoxies that engulfed universities, the media, and big tech, this group—a loose collective of politically diverse intellectuals, commentators, and scholars critical of political correctness, identity politics, and cancel culture—relied on alternative platforms like podcasts, digital magazines, and YouTube to promote free speech, universal rights, and individual liberty.

While the term is most commonly identified with Sam Harris, Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, Bret and Eric Weinstein, and Joe Rogan, the group’s concerns and philosophy extended more broadly to include a wide range of individuals who helped mainstream critiques of “woke” culture and a robust defense of free speech, including Steven Pinker, Michael Shermer, Jonathan Haidt, Dave Rubin, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Stephen Fry.

The Intellectual Dark Web’s coherence began to unravel in the early 2020s due to internal differences (such as over the response to COVID-19 and climate change), and its full legacy and historical impact are yet to be determined.

Jamie Roberts is a lecturer in the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney. His new book is The Intellectual Dark Web: A History (and Possible Future).

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to The Michael Shermer Show.
0:16.5	Today's topic, the intellectual dark web.
0:19.5	Yeah, this is not a solo one, but I'm going to read a little intro here before I bring in my guest who just wrote a book about the intellectual dark web.
0:26.1	In her New York Times magazine cover story on May 8th, 2018, Barry Weiss described the intellectual dark web, the IDW, as an alliance of heretics who are making an end run around the mainstream conversation, close quote.
0:41.4	These heretics, she noted, are iconic, clastic thinkers, academic renegades, and media personalities,
0:46.9	who were purged from institutions that have become increasingly hostile to unorthodox thought, close quote.
0:53.9	In response, there's sweep around what Weiss
0:56.6	described as legacy media include podcasting, blogs, social media, YouTube channels, and public speaking.
1:03.7	Including in this initial cohort were the mathematician Eric Weinstein, who coined the IDW label,
1:09.9	podcaster Joe Rogan, neuroscientist Sam Harris, talk show host
1:13.4	Dave Rubin, the evolutionary biologist Brett Weinstein, and Heather Hayne, the psychologist Jordan Peterson,
1:19.1	the conservative commentators and authors Ben Shapiro and Douglas Murray, the anti-extremist activist
1:24.6	Majid Navaz, the feminist activists and authors Ian Hercie Alley and
1:29.5	Christina Hoff Summers, the Quillet magazine publisher Claire Lehman, the neuroscientist and sex
1:34.4	researcher Deborah So and me. As the conversation continued past Weiss's New York Times
1:40.2	feature other dark web intellectuals were added to the assemblage, including Stephen Pinker, Heather
1:45.1	McDonald, Neil Ferguson, Gadsad, James DeMore, Jonathan Haidt, Greg Lukianoff, and the list goes on and on.
1:51.8	I don't want to leave anybody out, but it's a long list. Whoever's included, however, Weiss asked
1:56.4	rhetorically, should we be listening? Her answer in the affirmative led to a flurry of articles, essays, and opinion editorials about the IDW, and what exactly members of this cohort believe?
2:08.5	A number of commentators suggested that there is some irony in describing as oppressed and silenced individuals like Joe Rogan, who reached like 10, 15 million people every day.
2:18.9	Jordan Peterson, who has millions of followers.
2:21.2	Ben Sherpero has his own media company.
	...

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