DEFCON 2020 Part 2: A Crazy Idea from Bret Weinstein

Welcome to “Future Positive,” a podcast from XPRIZE. We convene the world’s brightest minds, across a kaleidoscope of cultures and points of view, revealing their inspirations, and how and why they will change the world. The views on this podcast are those expressed by guests as their own personal views and their appearance on the podcast does not imply an endorsement of the guests or their views by XPRIZE.”

The gloves are off. The end of the 20th century saw the implosion of communist dictatorships across the globe. In 1989 with the fall of the Berlin wall, we saw democracy greatly expanding. Fast forward to today, where we have Turkey and Venezuela sprinting away from democracy and even the American experiment hangs in the balance with the rise of fake-news, misinformation and lack of leadership. We join political educator, social commentator, and Chief Advancement Officer Shlomy Kattan as he talks with “professor in exile” Bret Weinstein, in a special two-part episode that rips the band-aid off taboo topics like campaign corruption, UNITY 2020 and the conversation du jour - changing the system of government with a courageous, capable, patriotic bi-partisan team. Oh, and we get deep on tools, teams and techniques on election hacking. Fireworks. 

Bret Weinstein is a Theoretical Evolutionary Biologist and Former Professor at Evergreen State College. Weinstein began his undergraduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He eventually transferred to the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he received his undergraduate degree.

Weinstein spent the majority of his academic career as a professor of Biology at Evergreen State College in Washington. In 2002, he published The Reserve-Capacity Hypothesis, which proposed that the telomeric differences between humans and laboratory mice have led scientists to underestimate the risks new drugs pose to humans in the form of heart disease, liver dysfunction and related organ failure. Weinstein took a brief hiatus from Evergreen to earn his PhD in Biology from the University of Michigan with a dissertation on evolutionary trade-off mechanisms.

Weinstein first experienced notoriety when he became the focus of a campus protest at Evergreen State College, where he was teaching biology. His involvement began when he wrote a letter to Evergreen faculty in March of 2017. His letter objected to a change in the College's decades-old tradition of observing a "Day of Absence" during which students and faculty of a minority race would stay home from campus to highlight their contributions to the College. The announced change would flip the traditional event, asking white students and faculty to stay home. Weinstein's letter strongly opposed and criticized the change. In late May 2017, student protests—focusing in large part on the comments made by Weinstein—disrupted the campus and called for a number of changes to the college. The College's president refused to allow law enforcement to quell protesters. Campus police told Weinstein that they could not protect him and encouraged him to stay off campus, which caused Weinstein to hold his biology class in a public park. In September of 2017, a settlement was reached in which Weinstein and his wife, professor Heather Heying, resigned and received a settlement.

Following his resignation from Evergreen, Weinstein has been described as being part of the "Intellectual Dark Web", a term which his brother Eric coined to describe a group of academics and media personalities who publish outside of mainstream media. Weinstein describes himself as a political progressive and "left-libertarian".

Weinstein appeared before the U.S. House Oversight Committee on May 22, 2018, to discuss free speech on college campuses. He is also the host of the Dark Horse podcast, available on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your pods. 

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bret-weinstein-darkhorse-podcast/id1471581521  https://articlesofunity.org/ https://xprize.org/blog

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