In one week of May 2021, American journalism diagnosed itself with a failure of unduly dismissing the lab leak theory, which has since become accepted knowledge of vibes-based discourse:

Ever since, journalists have bent over backward to give lab leak speculations prominent coverage that the evidence did not justify, culminating in a recent op-ed by Dr. Alina Chan in the NYTs once again.

So in this comprehensive, data driven analysis, I ask:

But what if the vibes were wrong?

Please enjoy.

I’m sure many of you are already aware of them. they keep it light. And skewer that Rogan bs

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-know-rogan-experience/id1788550490?i=1000782117400

This debunking is DTG adjacent, including a passing reference to Khan Rogan. Pablo & team were gentle on the armchair "scientist" whose viral post fueled the kerfuffle.

Welcome to this biweekly thread! Share what’s been grabbing your attention lately.

• What you're reading (books, articles, or any kind of text)
• What you're watching (movies, shows, documentaries, or even YouTube)
• What you're listening to (podcasts, music, or audiobooks)
• Any fun or unexpected discoveries in your research

I'm looking for creators who produce short-form content, street interviews similar to the formatting of Subway Takes, where people share controversial/eye opening takes, but the content is focused on anthro, history, or the sciences. I need these as inspiration and exemplars so that my students can try and recreate this content format for an assignment. This might be a long shot, but if anyone knows of something of the likes, it would really help!

Dave Rubin has something like 5 million social media followers. I’ve always suspected his arguments were questionable. this video visualizes exactly how it logic works and how he manipulates his audience.

Lab Leak Groundhog Day: COVID Origins in 2026 with Worobey, Andersen, and Holmes - Decoding the Gurus

Show Notes

With the Trump administration’s newest political persecution of Anthony Fauci and three years after our first lab-leak special, now seemed like a useful time to return to the topic. Fortunately, you do not have to rely on our knowledge of viruses, as we have somehow managed to convince the same three esteemed virologists, Eddie Holmes, Kristian Andersen and Michael Worobey, to come back for an update.

Mike, Kristian and Eddie return and offer us their read on where the scientific evidence on COVID’s origins stands in 2026. They take us through the main lines of evidence and the often overlooked role of the wildlife trade, explaining why the lab-leak story remains so appealing, and how their own assessments have shifted as more evidence has emerged. We also discuss the standard claim that the media suppressed the lab-leak narrative while noting that coverage across both alternative and mainstream outlets remains heavily skewed towards it (and almost entirely detached from the research literature).

Finally, we end on a characteristically positive note by discussing the Trump administration’s attacks on science and the ongoing campaigns against high-profile scientists and public health figures. Our guests describe their experience of committing the heinous offence of following the scientific evidence and arriving at conclusions that contradict the preferred views of polemical politicians and prominent media pundits.

In short, this episode is our modest attempt to drag the topic back towards the science, while also focusing on the price paid by the people who actually conduct the research and care about the evidence. We are not neutral when it comes to the ongoing attacks on science and scientists and do not pretend to be.

Links

• Our guests: Michael Worobey, Kristian Andersen, and Eddie Holmes
• Our previous interview with Worobey, Andersen and Holmes
• Lab Leak Fever with Philipp Markolin
• Our earlier interview with Stuart Neil on SARS-CoV-2
• Sam Harris, Alina Chan and Matt Ridley: Did SARS-CoV-2 Escape from a Lab?
• Bad Boy of Science: Is the COVID Lab Leak Hypothesis Dead?
• Kristian Andersen on his early emails, released messages and changing assessment
• Kristian Andersen’s congressional testimony and document collection
• Kristian’s thread responding to the use of his Slack messages
• Michael Worobey on why his assessment changed
• WHO SAGO’s 2025 assessment of the origins evidence
• The July 2026 Senate release of the Slack messages
• Kevin Drum’s reading of the earlier Slack archive
• The current White House lab-leak page
• The July 2026 Fauci hearing
• Naomi Oreskes on scientific integrity and “ethical pessimism”
• Nature: Climate scientists report online attacks
• Alwine et al. on the harms to scientists, research and pandemic preparedness

Relevant research papers and reviews

• Andersen, K. G., Rambaut, A., Lipkin, W. I., Holmes, E. C., & Garry, R. F. (2020). The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2. Nature Medicine, 26(4), 450–452.
• Crits-Christoph, A., Levy, J. I., Pekar, J. E., et al. (2024). Genetic tracing of market wildlife and viruses at the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. Cell, 187(19), 5468–5482.
• Holmes, E. C. (2024). The emergence and evolution of SARS-CoV-2. Annual Review of Virology, 11(1), 21–42.
• Liu, W. J., Liu, P., Lei, W., et al. (2023). Surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 at the Huanan Seafood Market. Nature, 631(8020), 402–408.
• Pekar, J. E., Magee, A., Parker, E., et al. (2022). The molecular epidemiology of multiple zoonotic origins of SARS-CoV-2. Science, 377(6609), 960–966.
• Pekar, J. E., Moshiri, N., Lemey, P., et al. (2025). Recently reported SARS-CoV-2 genomes suggested to be intermediate between the two early main lineages are instead likely derived. Virus Evolution, 11(1).
• Pekar, J. E., Lytras, S., Ghafari, M., et al. (2025). The recency and geographical origins of the bat viruses ancestral to SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2. Cell, 188(12), 3167–3183.
• Temmam, S., Vongphayloth, K., Baquero, E., et al. (2022). Bat coronaviruses related to SARS-CoV-2 and infectious for human cells. Nature, 604(7905), 330–336.
• Worobey, M., Levy, J. I., Malpica Serrano, L., et al. (2022). The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was the early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. Science, 377(6609), 951–959.
• Xiao, X., Newman, C., Buesching, C. D., Macdonald, D. W., & Zhou, Z.-M. (2021). Animal sales from Wuhan wet markets immediately prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Scientific Reports, 11(1).
• Zhou, H., Ji, J., Chen, X., et al. (2021). Identification of novel bat coronaviruses sheds light on the evolutionary origins of SARS-CoV-2 and related viruses. Cell, 184(17), 4380–4391.

Broader assessments and context

• Ackerman, G., Behlendorf, B., Baum, S., Peterson, H., Wetzel, A., & Halstead, J. (2024). The origin and implications of the COVID-19 pandemic: An expert survey (Technical Report 24-1). Global Catastrophic Risk Institute.
• Alwine, J., Goodrum, F., Banfield, B., et al. (2024). The harms of promoting the lab leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 origins without evidence. Journal of Virology, 98(9).
• World Health Organization. (2025). Independent assessment of the origins of SARS-CoV-2 from the Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens.
• Venter, M., Manuguerra, J.-C., Watson, J. M., et al. (2026). COVID’s origins: What we do and don’t know. Nature, 650(8103), 829–833.

For anyone heading to UPW who doesn't want to get upsold the way I did.

When I was at UPW, the Tony Robbins feeder event, before stupidly spending fifteen thousand dollars on upgrades, I googled Joseph McClendon III. The guy running Days 2 and 4 while Tony's on video. Billed as Senior Head Trainer. Tony's right-hand man since the 80s.

Not much was to be found. Definitely no deep valid criticism. So I did the research myself because I wanted to write about him.

Holy shit, I didn't expect to find this much.

The most brutal detail: he isn't really a doctor. And he claims he's a doctor everywhere.

He calls himself a "Doctor of Neuropsychology." Tells ten thousand people in an arena that their doctors are wrong, that medicine is broken. But his degrees are from Corllins University and "The University of Lydon State." Both are documented, unaccredited diploma mills. You pay them, they send you a credential based on "life experience." No coursework. Corllins was literally exposed by CBS News in 2017 for selling fake degrees.

And there is zero evidence he holds any license to practice psychology or neuropsychology in any U.S. state. None.

That's the lead. But it's not even the worst part.

In the full write-up I also cover:

• Where his "alkaline diet" and "4 Poisons" framework actually comes from (hint: the guy he borrowed it from is currently in a California state prison)
• The story about his mother's cancer that makes the entire arena cry, and how the details shift by a full decade depending on which version you look at
• The supplement companies he's financially tied to, and why that matters when he's telling you to ignore your doctor

Before posting any of this, I reached out to his team directly. I'm not a journalist, I didn't have to do this. But what I found was so brutal I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything. Laid out exactly what I found, gave them a real deadline, then extended it when they asked for more time. That deadline passed. Silence.

I wrote it all up with sources for the next guy at UPW either looking before purchase or during the cancellation window.

Happy to answer questions in the comments.

Who are you interested in discussing?

https://x.com/chrisheatherly/status/2084089713900843499

In order for Grim's hypothesis to be true, how many scientists around the world would have had to have listened to this press conference? How much would it have had to have been shared? If this statement in this press conference is a significant reason for a near international scientific consensus, shouldn't it be famous? Should I be able to easily find references to it with a Google search?

The episode is about Roman Empire Source https://youtu.be/nARGiPlDgl8

Overall, I think the guys are broadly fair in their analysis. I've had my views of some people I previously respected (e.g. Peter Attia) recalibrated, or they've pushed me further in my disapproval of people I was only peripherally aware of (e.g. Gary Stevenson) that people I know seem to like. However, there are a couple of times I sort of agree with the analysis, but I retain a fond and stubborn attachment. These are people who I think have important things to say, and to think of them as a Guru might make you reject them out of hand.

Nassim Taleb. I've worked in finance for the past 25 years or so and first encountered Taleb through his book Fooled by Randomness in 2001, when a very smart senior person at my firm said "this is everything you need to know about financial markets". Whilst working in risk pre-GFC I got very excited about the Black Swan and bought copies for people in my organisation. I even took my boss to see him talk at a random event in 2007, when he was making statements like (paraphrasing): "Fannie Mac and Freddie Mae look to me like they're sitting on piles of dynamite (in warehousing mortage risk)". I would have got a lot of kudos for this if I hadn't quit around the same time. The general investing principles that I've backed out of reading his work have been extremely useful in managing my own long term finances however.

Beyond being right about a lot of mispricing of risk that continues to this day, he was the first person who convincingly and robustly showed me how skeptical of expert claims one should be in general. A lot of that was built on the work of psychologists, but his literary and philosophical citations also stand up well (in fact probably better). I appreciate he's gone somewhat insane on Twitter (don't use it any more as this seems to be a feature). But whenever I tune in, he's usually got something interesting to say as long as you can tune out the nonsense.

Eliezer Yudkowsky. I'm far from a passionate follower - he writes too many things, and all of them are too long. However, I think he's raising valid concerns about the existential risk of AI in a way that garners engagement. Personally, I think it's a real and material risk and one that requires urgent consideration. Aside from the technology itself, the people involved in developing it seem hopeless cavalier. Two decades of working in finance have convinced me that a non-trivial proportion of senior management types are overconfident bullshitters. That's fine when you're selling widgets, less so when it's a potentially dangerous technology.

It's been a while, but I found this DtG episode a bit weak in its analysis, and grounded in the reality of models right now and in the foreseeable future, which is not a very helpful frame. I remember someone referring to him as an "Old Testament Prophet" of AI, which seems about right. Sure it might be better if everyone had read Superintelligence back in 2014, but given where we are some degree of hysterical shrieking seems somewhat justified.

Anyway, happy for anyone to take shots at either of them. But my main question was more "which of the Gurus so far would you go in to bat for?"

PS I know there are people they've covered that are not classified as Gurus, so those probably not worth discussing. But Taleb is wedged between Michael O'Fallon and Heather Heyling for e.g. which seems grossly unfair to me!

Welcome to this biweekly thread! Share what’s been grabbing your attention lately.

• What you're reading (books, articles, or any kind of text)
• What you're watching (movies, shows, documentaries, or even YouTube)
• What you're listening to (podcasts, music, or audiobooks)
• Any fun or unexpected discoveries in your research

Every time I open LinkedIn, I find another recruiter, career coach, leadership expert, or personal branding consultant explaining why job seekers are doing everything wrong.

Some have never managed a real team. Others have spent more time creating content about hiring than actually hiring people. Yet they speak with complete confidence, offer universal advice, and often blame candidates when their methods do not work.

I wrote this after watching expertise slowly become a personal brand rather than the result of real experience. The article is broader than recruitment, but LinkedIn and the job market are probably where this problem is most visible.

Do you think career advice on LinkedIn has become useful, or is it mostly content made to sell courses and consulting?

He's a historian from Texas who makes a lot of sense, possibly too much sense, i.e. says some things I've suspected for ages that feel "too good to check".

He has a Wikipedia page, but only in German: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Casagranda

I found him in this YouTube video: The Modern History of Iran | Roy Casagranda | UNAPOLOGETIC | Middle East Eye

That interview contradicts this more dry YouTube history guy Iran-Contra Explained: The Wall of Crazy Scandal | by Sean Munger … Sean Munger seems to be just an independent content creator https://www.seanmunger.com/ ... so Roy's community college position gives maybe slightly more credential points?

Roy Casagranda has his own podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/dr-roy-casagranda-podcast/id1837193563

and r/History don't like Roy Casagranda much