In a rare departure from our usual diet of online weirdos, this episode features an academic who is very much not a guru. We’re joined by Julia Rohrer, a psychologist at Leipzig University whose work straddles the disciplinary boundaries of open science, research transparency, and causal inference. Julia is also an editor at Psychological Science and has spent much of the last decade politely pointing out that psychologists often don’t quite know what they’re estimating, why, or under which assumptions.

We talk about the state of psychology after the replication crisis, whether open science reforms have genuinely improved research practice (or just added new boxes to tick), and why causal thinking is unavoidable even when researchers insist they are “only describing associations.” Julia explains why the standard dance of imply causality → deny causality → add boilerplate disclaimer is unhelpful, and argues instead for being explicit about the causal questions researchers actually care about and the assumptions required to answer them.

Along the way we discuss images of scientists in the public and amongst the gurus, how post-treatment bias sneaks into even well-intentioned experimental designs, why specifying the estimand matters more than running ever-fancier models, and how psychology’s current norms can potentially punish honesty about uncertainty. We also touch on her work on birth-order effects and offer some possible reasons for optimism.

With all the guru talk, people sometimes ask us to recommend things that we like, and Julia's work is one such example!

Links

• Julia Rohrer’s website
• The 100% CI blog
• Rohrer, J. M. (2024). Causal inference for psychologists who think that causal inference is not for them. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 18(3), e12948.
• Rohrer, J. M., Tierney, W., Uhlmann, E. L., DeBruine, L. M., Heyman, T., Jones, B., ... & Yarkoni, T. (2021). Putting the self in self-correction: Findings from the loss-of-confidence project. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 16(6), 1255-1269.
• Rohrer, J. M., Egloff, B., & Schmukle, S. C. (2015). Examining the effects of birth order on personality. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(46), 14224-14229.
• BEMC MAY 2024 - Julia Rohrer - "Causal confusions correlate with casual conclusions"
• Dr. Tobias Dienlin - Less casual causal inference for experiments and longitudinal data: Research talk by Julia Rohrer

We crawl around the dark crevices of the internet so you don't have to. And what wonders we have to show you...

The full episode is available to Patreon subscribers (1 hour, 34 minutes).

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

Supplementary Material 43

00:00 Introduction and Banter Allotment

01:23 The Hypocrisy of the Defenders of Western Civilisation

10:07 An Optimistic Take?

17:02 Scott Adams' Controversial Legacy

18:43 Scott Alexander's Rationalist Eulogy for Scott Adams

32:31 A Final Tribute to Scott Adams

33:43 Andrew Gold's Interview with a Racist

39:02 Fair Play for being a Racist

41:17 Comparing Follower Counts and Audience Makeup

44:40 Racism and Xenophobia Discussion

49:07 Securing the Future of Our People...

01:00:01 LawTubers and Grifting

01:00:48 Legal Mindset

01:06:02 Antifa Woke Women are Hunting Legal Mindset

01:07:41 A man of Christ

01:09:16 A Red-Blooded American

01:12:35 Woke White Women and Antifa Paranoia

01:13:55 Electro Gym Work and Pygmy Hippo Love

01:18:47 Antifa Paranoia

01:26:36 The True Masculine Renegade YouTuber

01:32:32 Concluding Thoughts and Farewell

Links

• Peter Boghossian complaining about public attention to the Greenland situation
• Mike Cernovich’s tribute: “Scott is loved because he’s devoted his life to service to humanity”
• In full: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at the World Economic Forum (Davos)
• Scott Alexander’s eulogy to Scott Adams
• Coleman Hughes on Scott Adams at The Free Press
• Andrew Gold – Heretics: “I Confront Britain’s Biggest Racist”
• Liam Tufts: “Would You Let Your Kid Date a Black Person?” | Steve Laws sparks a heated debate
• Legal Mindset: “Free Kaya, Punish Hasan” (Fast Facts)
• Rob’s Media: Idiot Influencers – Legal Mindset (Go East channel background)

We return for Part 2 of our Scott Galloway deep dive, where the vibes remain strong, the confidence unwavering, and the relationship with empirical evidence increasingly… decorative.

Returning to our Modern Wisdom safari, we continue navigating the forbidden terrain of men, masculinity, and male suffering: a topic so dangerous that it requires constant ritual disclaimers, whispered caveats, and the occasional nervous glance around the bar to make sure we can take out the other men if necessary.

We cover Scott's outline of his masculine Third Way: rejecting both the Right’s “Bring Back the Fifties” masculinity and the Left’s “Men Are the Problem” framework, in favour of a solution that might be described as Stern Dad Who’s Also Nice About It. Prepare to thrill at proposals of mandatory national service, kindness as a masculine superpower, and the radical idea that young people might benefit from not being economically crushed.

Things get spicier when we’re told what women really want and learn about the adaptive skill check of the female orgasm. Chris Williamson unveils a prepared essay on What Men Want which proves to be a moving piece of therapeutic slam poetry that somehow manages to combine manosphere grievance mongering with woke therapy talk. We learn how what men really just want to be told is “you are enough" and should be kind for kindness sake, but also should optimise their friend group such that they can properly signal their high mate quality and train hard enough to take out all other males in the bar.

Finally, we hit peak Decoding Mode as Scott’s statistics begin to escalate: boys are ten times more likely to kill themselves, father absence turns sons into inmates, daughters into promiscuous approval-seekers, and nearly every claim is delivered with total confidence and minimal concern for effect sizes, confounds, or whether the study actually exists. Decorative scholarship is in full bloom.

We do our best as two hyper-masculine men to separate reasonable concerns about boys, mentorship, and social policy from hyperbolic factoids, pop-psych inflation, and the familiar habit of smuggling moral arguments in under the banner of “what the science says.”

Bring your hunting knife and stoic daily diary. Take your testosterone injection. And get ready for some man talk!

Links

• Modern Wisdom: The War On Men Isn’t Helping Anyone - Scott Galloway
• The Diary of a CEO: Scott Galloway: We’re Raising The Most Unhappy Generation In History! Hard Work Doesn't Build Wealth

• Culpin, I., Heuvelman, H., Rai, D., Pearson, R. M., Joinson, C., Heron, J., … Kwong, A. S. F. (2022). Father absence and trajectories of offspring mental health across adolescence and young adulthood: Findings from a UK-birth cohort. Journal of Affective Disorders, 314, 150–159.
• Dekker, M. C., Ferdinand, R. F., van Lang, N. D. J., Bongers, I. L., van der Ende, J., & Verhulst, F. C. (2007). Developmental trajectories of depressive symptoms from early childhood to late adolescence: Gender differences and adult outcome. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 48(7), 657–666.
• Angelakis, I., Austin, J. L., & Gooding, P. (2020). Association of childhood maltreatment with suicide behaviors among young people: a systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA network open, 3(8), e2012563-e2012563.
• Zhang, L., Wang, P., Liu, L., Wu, X., & Wang, W. (2026). Different roles of child abuse and neglect on emerging adult's nonsuicidal self-injury and suicidal ideation: sex difference through emotion regulation. Current Psychology, 45(1), 56.
• Callanan, V. J., & Davis, M. S. (2012). Gender differences in suicide methods. Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology, 47(6), 857-869.
• Raposa, E. B., Rhodes, J., Stams, G. J. J. M., Card, N., Burton, S., Schwartz, S., … Hussain, S. (2019). The effects of youth mentoring programs: A meta-analysis of outcome studies. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 48(3), 423–443. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-019-00982-8
• Lloyd, E. A. (2005). The case of the female orgasm: Bias in the science of evolution. Harvard University Press.
• King, R. (2024). Naturally Selective: Evolution, Orgasm, and Female Choice. CRC Press. (The researcher Chris Williamson is relying on)
• The Scottish Sun. (2025, February 17). Nearly six pubs closed each week last year with 4,500 jobs lost amid rising costs [News article]. The Scottish Sun. Retrieved from https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/money/14352624/uk-pubs-closed-last-year/
• Greater London Authority. (2025, February). London’s Night-Time Economy: Economy, Culture and Skills Committee report. Greater London Authority. 

We dig deep into the online world to DO OUR OWN RESEARCH and return with horrors never dreamt of by man.

The full episode is available to Patreon subscribers (1 hour, 23 minutes).

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

Supplementary Material 42

00:00 Introduction

11:13 Rogan and Shane Gillis on Nick Fuentes vs Piers Morgan

17:49 Jimmy Carr's Physics Insights

24:00 The comedian shuffle

25:12 Andrew Huberman teams up with Goop!

30:41 Huberman injects his dog with testosterone.

32:09 Bryan Johnson and the secret longevity of the penis

35:41 The Science Behind Huberman's Careful Product Endorsements

39:48 The Statistics of Home Alone

41:22 Bryan Johnson's Love Tweet

46:24 Bryan Johnson's horrible treatment of his ex-fiancée

51:30 Andrea Botez and Influencer Health Research

57:41 Bespoke Treatments with Medical AIs

01:04:28 Self-Research, Stock Picking, and Gambling

01:07:47 Health Systems and their imperfections

01:12:37 Doing Your Own Research...

01:17:38 Matt's Content Recommendations

01:20:45 Outro

Links

• NYT – How Trump Fixed On a Maduro Loyalist as Venezuela’s New Leader
• Triggernometry – “A Revolution is Coming!” – Jimmy Carr
• GQ – How Andrew Huberman, Goop Kitchen Collaborator, Is Staying Healthy in 2026
• Vanity Fair – Why Bryan Johnson, Dave Asprey, and the Other Longevity Bros Are Obsessed With Penises
• Luis Batalha – Tweet on the “Home Alone” paper
• Bryan Johnson – “Love” tweet
• Andrea Botez – Hearing Loss Update (YouTube)
• Substack – The Truth About Bryan Johnson (treatment of ex-fiancée)

We return to the podcast circuit in 2026 to examine Scott Galloway: NYU professor, prolific podcaster, and, more recently, part-time life coach for struggling young men.

Joining him on an episode of Modern Wisdom with Chris Williamson, we are invited into one of the few remaining forbidden conversational spaces: men, masculinity, and men’s problems. You may have been misled by the relentless popularity of Joe Rogan, Modern Wisdom, The Tucker Carlson Show, Triggernometry, The Diary of a CEO, Huberman Lab, and several dozen adjacent properties into thinking these topics are already discussed at length on a near-weekly basis. Alas, this turns out to be a dangerous illusion.

In reality, even mentioning men’s issues requires an extended ritual acknowledgement of women, failure to perform which risks immediate cancellation. Braving these cultural headwinds, we wade into manly dialogue about masculinity, sex differences, and male malaise. Along the way, we ponder the intricacies of culture war evolutionary psychology, anthropological wars over Man the Hunter, optimised dosages for manly whingeing, and whether making boys learn French verb conjugations qualifies as a human rights abuse.

So get your notebooks ready for some important notes from two of the most masculine men in the modern male podcasting space. Men...

Links

• Modern Wisdom: The War On Men Isn’t Helping Anyone - Scott Galloway
• The Diary of a CEO: Scott Galloway: We’re Raising The Most Unhappy Generation In History! Hard Work Doesn't Build Wealth

• Changes in gender-based hiring bias (large meta-analysis): Schaerer, M., Du Plessis, C., Nguyen, M. H. B., Van Aert, R. C., Tiokhin, L., Lakens, D., … Gender Audits Forecasting Collaboration. (2023). On the trajectory of discrimination: A meta-analysis and forecasting survey capturing 44 years of field experiments on gender and hiring decisions. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 179, 104280.
• Epidemiology of alcohol use disorder by marital status (US, NESARC-III): Grant, B. F., Goldstein, R. B., Saha, T. D., et al. (2015). Epidemiology of DSM-5 Alcohol Use Disorder: Results from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions III. JAMA Psychiatry, 72(8), 757–766.
• Protective effects of marriage on life expectancy (US Medicare sample): Jia, H., & Lubetkin, E. I. (2020). Life expectancy and active life expectancy by marital status among older US adults: Results from the US Medicare Health Outcome Survey (HOS). SSM – Population Health, 12, 100642.
• Widowhood and well-being (contrary to claims of increased happiness): Adena, M., Hamermesh, D., Myck, M., & Oczkowska, M. (2023). Home alone: Widows’ well-being and time. Journal of Happiness Studies, 24(2), 813–838.
• Meta-analysis of the widowhood effect on mortality (men and women): Shor, E., Roelfs, D. J., Curreli, M., Clemow, L., Burg, M. M., & Schwartz, J. E. (2012). Widowhood and mortality: A meta-analysis and meta-regression. Demography, 49(2), 575–606.
• Marriage and life satisfaction across the life course (multi-country): Mikucka, M. (2016). The life satisfaction advantage of being married and gender specialization. Journal of Marriage and Family, 78(3), 759–779.
• Marriage, children, and happiness (Note “very happy” vs “pretty happy”): Institute for Family Studies. Who is happiest? Married mothers and fathers, per the latest General Social Survey.

• Original paper cited by Chris Williamson challenging the “Man the Hunter” narrative: Anderson, A., Chilczuk, S., Nelson, K., Ruther, R., & Wall-Scheffler, C. (2023). The Myth of Man the Hunter: Women’s contribution to the hunt across ethnographic contexts. PLoS ONE, 18(6), e0287101.
• Critical commentary on Anderson et al. (2023): Venkataraman, V. V., Hoffman, J., Farquharson, K., Davis, H. E., Hagen, E. H., Hames, R. B., … Stibbard-Hawkes, D. N. (2024). Female foragers sometimes hunt, yet gendered divisions of labor are real. Evolution and Human Behavior, 45(4), 106586.
• Another influential burial-based paper about female hunters in the early Americas: Haas, R., Jr., Watson, J., Buonasera, T., Southon, J., Chen, J. C., Noe, S., … Parker, G. (2020). Female hunters of the early Americas. Science Advances, 6(45), eabd0310.
• Critical commentary on over-interpretation of evidence cited for the depiction of gender parity in hunting: Martin, M., de la Mora, A. N., Valeggia, C., & Veile, A. (2024). Can women hunt? Yes. Did women contribute much to human evolution through endurance hunting? Probably not. American Anthropologist, 126(2), 365–369.

• Shaw, S. J. (Director). (2022). Birthgap – Childless World.
• Critical fact-checking project responding to Birthgap claims: Birthgap Facts: Unplanned childlessness.

• PolitiFact on claims about abortion and vasectomies at party conventions: Ask PolitiFact: Are Democrats offering “free abortions and vasectomies” at their Chicago convention?
• Australian Labor Party policy platform: Our Plan.
• UK Labour Party policy platform: Plan for Change.

In this festive descent into methodological despair, Chris and Matt convene a secret cabal of elite psychology podcasters within the Decoding Cloister, operating under the distant yet reassuring gaze of Arch-Wizard Paul Bloom, whose role is largely ceremonial but nonetheless morally binding.

Joining them are Dave Pizarro (Very Bad Wizards) and Michael Inzlicht (Two Psychologists Four Beers, emeritus), for what can only be described as an end-of-year audit of social psychology’s moral character.

What follows is a mixture of intense hubris, disciplinary self-loathing, and revolutionary insights, delivered via one of the most sadistic Christmas quizzes ever devised. The quiz format allows the episode to do what psychology does best: create the feeling of measurement while hovering dangerously close to intuition.

Alongside the quiz, we engage in some meta-commentary and sensemaking reflections on audience capture and the state of psychology-themed podcasts in 2025. In other words, it’s Christmas, so naturally everyone is discussing perverse incentives, damaged reputations, and the slow moral corrosion of institutions.

So join us, won’t you? For the first International Congress on Psychology-Themed Podcasting and Gurus…

Links

• Mickey's Substack
• Mickey's Work and Play Lab
• Two Psychologists Four Beers
• Very Bad Wizards
• Uhlmann, E. L., Pizarro, D. A., & Diermeier, D. (2015). A person-centered approach to moral judgment. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(1), 72-81.
• Ovsyannikova, D., de Mello, V. O., & Inzlicht, M. (2025). Third-party evaluators perceive AI as more compassionate than expert humans. Communications Psychology, 3(1), 4.

References

• Alter, A. L., Oppenheimer, D. M., Epley, N., & Eyre, R. N. (2007). Overcoming intuition: Metacognitive difficulty activates analytic reasoning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 136(4), 569–576.
• Aarts, H., & Dijksterhuis, A. (2003). The silence of the library: Environment, situational norm, and social behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(1), 18–28.
• Zimbardo, P. G. (1973). On the ethics of intervention in human psychological research: With special reference to the Stanford Prison Experiment. Cognition, 2(2), 243–256.
• Resnick, B. (2018, June 13). The Stanford Prison Experiment was massively influential. We just learned it was a fraud. Vox.
• Festinger, L., Riecken, H. W., & Schachter, S. (1956). When prophecy fails. University of Minnesota Press.
• Bem, D. J. (2011). Feeling the future: Experimental evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100(3), 407–425.
• Schimmack, U. (2018, January 20). My email correspondence with Daryl J. Bem about the data for his “Feeling the Future”. Replicability Index.
• Merton, R. K. (1973). The normative structure of science. In The sociology of science: Theoretical and empirical investigations (pp. 267–278). University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1942).
• Hauser, M. (2012). Evilicious: Why we evolved a taste for being bad. Basic Books.
• Kay, A. C., Wheeler, S. C., Bargh, J. A., & Ross, L. (2004). Material priming: The influence of mundane physical objects on situational construal and competitive behavioral choice. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 95(1), 83–96.
• Macfarlane, B. (2024). The decay of Merton’s scientific norms and the new academic ethos. Oxford Review of Education, 50(4), 468–483.
• Vaidis, D. C., Sleegers, W. W. A., van Leeuwen, F., et al. (2024). A multilab replication of the induced-compliance paradigm of cognitive dissonance. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 7(1).
• Kelly, T. (2026). Debunking “When Prophecy Fails”. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 62(1), e70043.

In this special Christmas episode, Helen’s annual Guru Quiz returns, lightly dusted with Trump, podcast tours, and the unsettling realisation that the Guru-sphere and the MAGA-sphere have quietly fused into a single, monetised, vibes-based organism.

That's right, the regular decoding team are joined by renowned journalist, author, podcaster... and occasional DTG quiz master, Helen Lewis, who once again brings her festive cheer, an uncanny ability to identify exactly who will be unbearable next year, and a quiz designed to torture Matt.

Points are awarded, dignity is lost, and Matt briefly considers revising for the quiz before remembering that preparation has never helped him before.

The episode also covers MAGA and UK political manoeuvres, the movers and shakers of the Gurusphere in 2025, and a lament for the collapse of the ancient boundary between editorial content and hawking pants.

So join us for a festive episode about gurus, geniuses, authoritarian comedy festivals, and the slow erosion of shame. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night... and that includes you, Bubbles!

Links

• Helen Lewis on Substack
• Helen's Article on the Riyadh Comedy Festival
• Helen's Article on Olivia Nuzzi's Book
• The Genius Myth
• That Dave Chappelle picture

In this tragic episode, we pay tribute to a fallen comrade and honour his memory with a discussion of a melange of truly terrible people, some of whom are much worse than others.

The full episode is available to Patreon subscribers (2 hours, 33 minutes).

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

Supplementary Material 41

00:00 Introduction and Swimming Update

02:34 The Tragic Tale of Old Squeaky

09:01 Sam Harris interpersonal bias & Megyn Kelly

26:05 Gary Stevenson vs Rory Stewart

36:26 Master Certificates and Jaffa Cakes

41:59 Dasha's Nick Fuentes Problem

50:08 Nick Fuentes' Racist Remarks

54:29 Piers Morgan vs. Nick Fuentes

59:08 The Two Nick Fuentes Personas

01:02:39 Father Issues

01:20:51 Nick Fuentes the Racist

01:30:36 Piers Lab Leak Ad Break

01:32:52 Antisemitism and Holocaust Denialism

01:45:25 IDW Style Credulity and Holocaust Denialism

01:48:12 Hitler was really f**king cool?

01:58:20 Blustering Boomer Outrage vs. Online Groyperism

02:02:09 Debating Misogyny and Extremism

02:12:54 Piers Take on Fuentes

02:17:11 Overall thoughts on Piers Morgan vs Nick Fuentes

02:20:15 Infighting on the Conspiratorial Right

02:25:13 Bret Weinstein's Powers of Prediction: Trump on Rob Reiner

02:30:29 Outro

Links

1. Sam Harris AMA
2. Megyn Kelly Talking About the Drug Smugglers
3. The Rest Is Politics – Zack Polanski: “I Am a Populist, Farage Is Not”
4. Gary Stevenson’s Public Statement on Rory’s Comments
5. Gary Stevenson’s Master’s Thesis & Chocolate Biscuits
6. Red Scare – “Nuzzi Salute”
7. “What a Crock of S***!” – Piers Morgan vs Nick Fuentes (Full Interview)
8. Jason Calacanis Reacts to Trump’s Message
9. Bret Weinstein Displays His Foresight
10. Trump’s Follow-Up Comments on Rob Reiner

In this unlocked bonus episode, Chris and Matt complete their forensic/esoteric/scientific assessment of the charming Stefan Molyneux, consigning him (sadly) to the eternal archives of the Gurometer.

Cult Season continues, and much like Stefan himself, you may have hoped this would go away after Part 1. Unfortunately, like all persistent internet hauntings, Molyneux has returned. And this time, Chris and Matt venture even deeper into the Moly-Hole, a place where truth is redefined, callers are slowly gaslit into existential confusion, and every philosophical insight is served with the overwhelming scent of narcissism and emotional manipulation.

We return to the joyful world of Stefan’s caller-domination rituals, courtesy of Twitter Spaces, where he continues his life’s work of berating strangers and stroking his own ego while insisting he alone possesses the True Meaning of Truth.

Listeners can thrill to the culmination of the Truth Call™ from Part 1, where the philosophically inclined young father is sucked further into Stefan’s epistemological meat grinder as Stefan tries to uncover the imaginary psychoanalytic roots of the caller’s ongoing defiance. From there, we are introduced to Caller No. 3 for just a sprinkling of the patented victim-blaming and misogyny of the Molyneux Method.

Finally, Chris and Matt offer their overall thoughts on Molyneux’s long and illustrious career as an internet arsehole. They conclude that while Stefan has managed to cycle through platforms, ideologies, and degrees of baldness, he has maintained absolute fidelity to the same psychological tactics—gaslighting, projection, undermining, hypocrisy, and the uncanny ability to make even a throwaway joke feel incredibly creepy.

So that’s it for now… collectively we can escape the Moly-Hole, carefully sealing the tunnel entrance as we leave. And let’s pray this is the last time anyone has to think about good ol’ Stefan.

Aside from that… Cult Season continues. Abandon hope, etc.

Links

• Freedomain Radio 6162: The Most Frightening Fact! (Twitter/X Space)
• Philosophy student reviews Molyneux’s The Art of the Argument
• Michael Shermer’s amazing excuse for endorsing Molyneux
• Former guest discusses Molyneux’s descent into racist pseudoscience (2016)
• Guardian article (2008) on Molyneux’s online cult & “DeFooing”
• Daily Mail article (2015) on a family impacted by Molyneux’s community
• Daily Beast profile on Molyneux during his Trump pivot
• SPLC profile on Stefan Molyneux
• SPLC investigation of Molyneux’s alt-right connections (2018)
• College of Psychologists of Ontario: Professional reprimand of Molyneux’s wife
• Detailed profile of Molyneux’s community (archived anti-cult site)
• Channel 5 documentary featuring a former member of Molyneux’s community
• Stefan’s appearance with Joe Rogan (#538)