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- [00:00]
Carvana Customer
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- [00:20]
Friend
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Carvana Customer
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- [00:35]
Matthew Remsky
Yeah.
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- [01:09]
Derek Barris
Hey everyone. Welcome to Conspirituality, where we investigate the intersections of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience and authoritarian extremism. I'm Derek Barris.
- [01:21]
Matthew Remsky
I'm Matthew Remsky.
- [01:22]
Julian Walker
I'm Julian Walker.
- [01:23]
Derek Barris
You can find us on Instagram and threads Conspiritualitypod as well as individually over on Blue Sky. And you can access all of our episodes ad free, plus our Monday bonus episodes on patreon on patreon.com conspirituality if you listen to this on Apple Podcasts, you can access our Monday bonus episodes via Apple subscriptions as well as independent media creators. We really appreciate your support.
- [01:56]
Matthew Remsky
Episode 265 Guru Rehab. So today we're diving back into the ongoing saga of Aubrey Markus, who is so successful at the guru attention economy game that we've done eight fucking episodes on him. But it's worth it, we feel, because one, as a stupidly wealthy New Ager who preaches about spiritual evolution and against vaccines while campaigning for RFK Jr and then Trump by default, he's kind of a polestar for the conspirituality moment and its political manias. And secondly, he is a ceaseless innovator of guru narrative tech, with his latest trick being the attempt to turn his own implosion into top tier content by enlisting an ex fiance to prove he really is dedicated to human evolution and then a famous psychotherapist to help him with his fee fees on YouTube. So. So as we look at his rehab shtick in the context of the great guru death spirals of the past. We'll learn that he has some of the old 1970s vibe going on, but the digital age brings new humiliations and opportunities. But first, Julian talks about Joe Rogan's first post Maga redemption arc Baby steps. And Derek will be checking in on Maha's very own Zoolander man, Mickey Willis.
- [03:27]
Julian Walker
This week in Spirituality as advertised. I'm going to check in on someone we've covered a lot who's actually connected to both of the main segments we'll do today about charismatic collapse. And that person, of course, is Joe Rogan. Listeners, stay tuned for the through line in these different stories. Rogan has had his own kind of charismatic arc. He's gone from that one guy who does those long, goofy conspiracy YouTube conversations and commentates on the UFC to the multi millionaire with the biggest podcast platform in the world. Along the way, he's become a supplement tycoon with business partner Aubrey Marcus. Would you look at that? Then he got red pilled during COVID and his guest list became dominated by anti vaxxers, Covid contrarians and anti woke magas until he eventually left LA for Austin like a lot of people did at that time, and flipped from being a Bernie Bro to a Trump supporter, as some other people did at that time as well, even glazing Donald Trump himself as a guest on the podcast right before the election last year after decades of risque comedy and psychedelics and flotation tanks. He's also reportedly going to a local Christian church in Texas these days. But the story, which will be familiar to a lot of our listeners, doesn't end there, even as the legacy media has asked in anguish what happened to Joe Rogan? And we've got a few episodes that might explain that. And how do we create a Joe Rogan on the left? I'm not sure that's going to be possible. The mega influencer has steadily been criticizing the ominous reality of this new administration. Here's an example.
- [05:03]
Joe Rogan
Problem with things that are going in a radical direction. And then there's an overcorrection. So the overcorrection is lack of due process. The overcorrection is like round them all up, ship them to jail. Like that's like some things that you say when you're not thinking things through. Like what do you do about all the criminals?
- [05:19]
Derek Barris
Take them all.
- [05:20]
Joe Rogan
Fucking send them to El Salvador.
- [05:22]
Matthew Remsky
Yeah.
- [05:23]
Joe Rogan
What about due process? No, fuck that. Well, here's the problem with fuck that. What if you are an enemy of, let's not say any current president. Let's pretend we got a new president, totally new guy in 2028. And this is a common practice now of just rounding up gang members with no due process and shipping them to El Salvador. You're a gang member. No, I'm not. Prove it. What? I gotta go to court. No. No due process. But if that dude is not doing anything wrong and he's got some stupid tattoos and they decide that this guy's a gang member and now, now you're in a prison in El Salvador and you're not even from El Salvador. And now you know you were just a hairdresser or you were a tattoo artist, family man.
- [06:05]
Matthew Remsky
Yeah.
- [06:05]
Joe Rogan
You came over here and maybe you got a green card and maybe you don't. Maybe you were just given asylum because a lot of people from Venezuela were given asylum in America. And then you get shipped to El Salvador where you're not even from El Salv. So that the fact that that exists scares the shit out of me.
- [06:22]
Julian Walker
So that clip of Joe Rogan engaging in Poli Sci 101 Thought Experiments is from an episode released on March 29th. And we hear that he's still brought in on the propaganda that America was somehow going in a radical direction and needed the MAGA remedy of Big Daddy Trump. But now he sees ICE and unconstitutional imprisonment and deportation to other countries as an over correction to that problem. Nonetheless, he's clearly naming the this particular red line that's been crossed. And we can hammer him for the influence his disinformation and platforming of right wing BS has on his 11 million per episode listenership, which we've done and will continue to do. But it's also kind of good when something like this can still shine through for them to hear.
- [07:09]
Derek Barris
Let's take him at his word for a moment and let's consider it an overcorrection. It just goes to show where he consumes his media. Because for anyone not caught in a right wing media ecosystem, for years we have seen this coming. We knew what was going to happen with immigration. I think it probably for a lot of us is even more worse than we imagined. I don't know if you saw yesterday, Julian, the images from MacArthur Park. Oh yeah, a park that I love in Los Angeles, that the Gestapo coming in with the horses, just clearing out children playing soccer. If you're in a right wing media ecosystem and you didn't realize that that was coming, then this could seem like an overcorrection, when in reality this was always the plan all along. And it's. Rogan is just actually seeing it because he's forced to see it in front of him now, whereas that ecosystem didn't show it to him for years leading up to.
- [08:14]
Matthew Remsky
But the overcorrection is to the rumored hordes of criminal immigrants pouring across the border. Right. Like that's the overcorrection that he's talking about. Am I getting that right, Julian?
- [08:24]
Julian Walker
Yeah, well, he's doing that whole shtick about how the Democrats were taking us in this radical leftist Marxist position which included open borders, but that we were under more of a threat from them than we ever could be from Trump. And I think he's, he's rethinking that to some extent. Yeah. Those MacArthur park scenes, Derek, are absolutely horrifying. These super militarized guys, like marching in a regimented, like, fanned out line across the park while civilians are just hanging out.
- [08:56]
Matthew Remsky
Yeah. And just to clarify, for non la ers, this is not like an upscale park. Is this. This is kind of like a, I don't know, central. Describe the park. Like, who hangs out there?
- [09:08]
Derek Barris
It's predominantly Latinos. It's in one of the few remaining Latin neighborhoods that surrounds downtown, and it is within a mile of downtown. The area is largely business leading up to it, but there's, it's, it's a lot of Latinos playing soccer in general. There's a band shell that they have a summer concert series at as well. So it's pretty well trafficked. But it is, it is in, in. It's kind of wedged between Silver Lake and Echo park and downtown. And so you're in, you're in between very sort of prosperous areas. And it's probably one of the last remaining proximities for that population to sort of have some real estate in the general area.
- [09:49]
Julian Walker
And I think even, even a lot of people who thought that, that the rhetoric around, quote unquote, open borders and, you know, wanting to re. Establish legal immigration and get all of the bad people out who are just streaming across the border. Even for a lot of them, it's, it's so blatant that what we're seeing has this incredibly racist, authoritarian, disgusting, you know, unfair, brutal quality to it, and.
- [10:18]
Matthew Remsky
Also real, but also performative. Because Klippenstein got those documents, internal documents from the LAPD or from DHS that said that. Well, actually, this was supposed to be a show of force. Right. This was, this was, this was meant for intimidation primarily.
- [10:35]
Julian Walker
Yeah. Scare everybody. As much damage as Rogan has done. Let's shift to another topic here, which is Israel and Gaza. And I was actually interested to see that back In March of 2024, he had this to say.
- [10:49]
Joe Rogan
When you're killing 30,000 innocent civilians in response to something that killed 1200 innocent civilians and you're continuing to bomb an area into oblivion, which is what it looks like when you're looking at Gaza, there's many people that have made the argument that that is at least the steps of genocide or a form of genocide. You're destroying thousands and thousands of people's homes and killing them.
- [11:14]
Julian Walker
He was saying this over a year ago and he's continued to say these sorts of things. And there's quite a few MAGA and alternative right wing pundits and people who are influencers in this sphere who are saying similar things now, which is part of a MAGA civil that's happening not only around Israel and Gaza and America's support for Israel in an unrelenting way, but also the recent attacks on Iran. Now, as far as Rogan has fallen, turns out that some people still think it's worth going on his show. Like, for example, Bernie Sanders.
- [11:51]
Matthew Remsky
Well, I do think there might even be more value now if they're going to commiserate, you know, to a greater degree. But I think if Rogan is interested, as he always says, in interesting conversations with interesting people, I think few people are more interesting than Mamdani and maybe he should get him on.
- [12:09]
Julian Walker
Yeah, I mean, it remains to be seen, I think on Mumdani's end, if he can navigate that and justify that in a way that doesn't piss off a lot of people. But I think it would be an excellent move.
- [12:21]
Matthew Remsky
Yeah, I think if anybody can do it and not piss off his base, it's probably him.
- [12:24]
Julian Walker
I think you're probably right. You're probably right. So Bernie was on just recently, on June 24, and he said the following. Hamas is a terrible terrorist organization who attacked Israel and killed 1200 people. And Israel had a right to defend itself, but the Netanyahu government did not have a right to kill 52,000 people in Gaza, wound over a hundred thousand and cause children to starve to death through blockades. And Bernie then compared Republican lawmakers being too intimidated to vote against Trump to Democrats being too intimidated to vote against Israel. And Rogan and Bernie then also discussed the MAGA civil war over Iran with Rogan saying one of the things MAGA voted for was no war. And six months later, six months into the administration, that's Already popped off.
- [13:12]
Matthew Remsky
You know, you referenced other influencers on the right taking this line on Israel. And you know, I have to note that the Israel skeptical Carlson interview with Marjorie Taylor Greene is interesting but also terrifying to me.
- [13:25]
Julian Walker
Yeah.
- [13:26]
Matthew Remsky
Because they, I think, show the sort of endgame danger of this conflation between anti Semitism and anti zionism, that the result of that is actually more anti Semitism. Because when it comes, you know, when it becomes transparently clear to less informed MAGA voters that you can criticize that the state of Israel is doing what it's doing, you can do so openly and that you should, that's when we're going to see a huge surgeon of a different type of antisemitism coming from those who don't care about telling those things apart. So if you look through the comments, as I did underneath that interview or podcasts where Candace Owens is saying similar things, it's already happening. You're going to see people saying things like, oh, MAGA is finally waking up to the real Satan in the world. So, you know, my takeaway on Rogan, aside from that, is that, you know, if he pulls people out of maga, that's awesome. I also just want to say that a huge part of anti fascist history is remembering how folks were complicit in movements that they later try to disown while gaining power on both sides of the equation. Like gaining followers on the way up and then gaining followers as they become, you know, the naysayers.
- [14:40]
Julian Walker
Yeah, I mean, I'm not trying to give Rogan any flowers. I certainly wouldn't want to give Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Green, or Candace Oven Owens any flowers. I think it is worth observing and even to some extent celebrating that there is this fracturing happening within that coalition and that some of it is happening around people, just people who we see as absolutely amoral and, and corrupt and lacking in any kind of, you know, intellectual insight or psychological self awareness actually coming to a place of human empathy.
- [15:11]
Matthew Remsky
Yeah, random pangs of conscience, Right?
- [15:13]
Julian Walker
Well, random pangs of conscience, but that are being spoken out to their millions and millions of followers. And will some of those millions of followers take in the direction of anti Semitism? Y. I guess, you know, with Candace Owens, the answer is already pretty clear. But with some of the others, maybe, you know, it's yet to be determined how much of that translates into deepening alt, right, anti Semitic kind of boldness and how much, you know, has. Has a more positive valence.
- [15:40]
Derek Barris
Doesn't everyone deserve flowers, Julian?
- [15:43]
Julian Walker
They should buy themselves flowers and take themselves dancing.
- [15:46]
Derek Barris
Well, I'm not going to give any to Mickey Willis because you're bringing up Joe Rogan having that, that crisis of conscience around this. But Mickey Willis is certainly not having one around his friend. And he repeatedly talks about how he's his friend, RFK Jr. On Monday, Willis sent out an email to his list. It was titled A Different angle on the RFK Jr. MRNA situation. That's worth considering. It's effectively a plea to his fellow Maha Stans to not jump to conclusions about Bobby letting Moderna test a combination flu COVID vaccine for the 2027 flu season. Or it could be about the fact that Bobby agreed to recommend Moderna's RSV vaccine, which ironically helped the company get a 5.5% stock boost that week. I'm not sure which vaccine he's talking about because Mickey isn't clear on which one he's discussing because at the top of the email he uses the term endorse, which would make sense if he was talking about the RSV vaccine. But he later states around the same vaccine that Kennedy is going to require a double blind randomized control trial, which is in reference to the flu COVID vaccine. He also links to an apparently deleted tweet by Kennedy. So that doesn't help. So I'm not actually clear which vaccine Willis is trying to identify.
- [17:11]
Matthew Remsky
You are such a great journalist of public health and medicine, Derek. You are so focused on details. And I just want to say that I think it's useless here with Mr. Willis because what he's, what he's doing is, is he's not referring to this particular item or that particular item. It's really kind of the metaphysical concept of vaccine with a capital V. And so I think, I think we can expect him to get the details wrong forever. Because, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's just, it's like a. I don't know, like a talisman or something like that.
- [17:43]
Derek Barris
It's funny because he repeatedly, including in this email, calls himself a journalist. All I did was read the sentences in order.
- [17:52]
Julian Walker
Yeah.
- [17:53]
Derek Barris
Like it just tried to put a. Like try to understand the logic of it. That's all I did.
- [17:57]
Matthew Remsky
Yeah.
- [17:58]
Derek Barris
And you can't find it because he doesn't actually really care. You're right. The capital V vaccine is good because he doesn't care to get it right.
- [18:07]
Matthew Remsky
That's because he's got the eyes right. Like he's supposed to be doing that in selfie. He's not. I don't think emails really work with Mickey.
- [18:16]
Derek Barris
Well, he opens the email by stating that he has frequently disagreed with Kennedy's political stances before saying, Kennedy is a genuine, genuinely a good person, incredibly caring and refreshingly real. This is a common tactic with Maha broadly, as they talk about the character of the people, rather the content of what they're saying, to try to paint some sort of pleasing narrative because he has this insider knowledge here. He continues about the insider knowledge. He talks about his own documentary filmmaking creds. He talks about insider access, which he often feels the need to reassert in email after email. Then he gets to the real reason Kennedy sided with Moderna. Julian.
- [18:58]
Julian Walker
Half the nation would explode. The press would escalate their character assassination efforts. Democrats would exploit the fury to gain control. Big farmer shills embedded in the GOP would assist Democrats in reversing Bobby's achievements. And collectively they would establish even stronger barriers which would protect the vaccine establishment from accountability. There's also a chance that if Bobby pushes too hard, too fast and generates sufficient panic among the corrupt powers, he might meet the same devastating end as his father and his uncle.
- [19:29]
Matthew Remsky
You know, I have to say that I think he's also cramped by how contained this narrative is just to vaccine, you know, sort of politics and RFK Jr. And America. America, like, you know, with a building narrative, with a building rhythm like this. We should be hearing about China, we should be hearing about nuclear weapons, we should be hearing about sort of, you know, altered weather and stuff like that. But, but really, you know, the vaccine drama is the only thing that's going on in the world for, for Mickey. And so I think that's, I think he's selling himself short there.
- [20:00]
Julian Walker
I love too how in the email it's like this, it's this stack of probably like nine or 10, you know, eight or nine letters, sentences that each have ellipses at the end where he's, he's. It's just like all of this, like he's clearly building a speculative narrative that, that he's trying to have a lot of drama around. And where does it end? It ends with the, you know, still unsolved assassinations of the Kennedy family. And he could join their ranks if he wasn't playing 5D fucking chess by partnering with Moderna.
- [20:31]
Matthew Remsky
Right.
- [20:32]
Derek Barris
Oh, you read ahead of my script because that is exactly what Kennedy is doing. Thanks Julian, for the big reveal. But I have to point out that. But the actual email is about five times as long as what you read. And the ellipses come randomly. Sometimes they seem to make sense. And again, sometimes they're just there. He I'm not even going to get on that. But he does assure his following. He's doing his best to remain patient, that he has faith in Bobby and that these are only his personal thoughts and speculation. He remains hopeful that Bobby is, quote, executing a much longer term strategy than any of us can currently perceive. Which gets us to the 5D chess. Now I find the responses to finding out your champion isn't who they say they are pretty insightful. So Rogan did more to push MAGA than most other people and now he's having doubts and regrets. Willis did more than almost anyone to spread anti vax propaganda globally and he's not going to give up on his good friend quite yet. But. But watch it Bobby. You say too many nice things about those poison shots and you just might fall out of his good graces. And even though you funded plandemic Bobby, you may just find out that you're on the wrong side of a Mickey Willis production.
- [21:59]
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- [23:26]
Matthew Remsky
Just a few episodes back, we discussed the disastrous reveal party Aubrey Marcus threw to announce his spiritual throuple. The venue for this was his monetized confession and New age sales engine podcast that he's been running since 2012. And the master of ceremonies for the trio podcast, where he appeared with his wife Fialana, and his third, Alana Beale, where he revealed that the goddess Isis told him to impregnate both of them. The fourth partner there was his pet guru, Mark Gaffney, former rabbi and doctor of New Age Jabberwocky, who helped the trio explain to the world how they are reinventing, quote, radical monogamy in the field of erotic mystics. Unquote.
- [24:15]
Julian Walker
Twas brillig. Twas brillic.
- [24:16]
Matthew Remsky
It was amazing. But Marcus's followers, for the most part didn't buy it, especially the women who responded in the thousands, including a lot of fans who otherwise love the divine masculine feminine discourse, but can also smell a rat when it's being used against women especially. But Marcus and his team, or his team, we don't know, deleted thousands of those comments from mainly women followers who were calling out power imbalances and narcissistic bullshit. And so we talked about this in the previous episodes about, you know, sexual dominance being an essential part of his brand, about the danger of manipulating the discourse of polyamory, which people have some, some clear ideas about and other people don't have very clear ideas about to avoid guardrails like consent and equality and power. We talked about this as a charismatic crisis. And to just back up a little bit, you know, if after all of these episodes you still need a refresher on who Marcus is, I'll just do a few more points on him. His dad was that futures trader who made $80 million and was a devout follower of Maharishi Mahesh and oil money.
- [25:32]
Derek Barris
We should point out. I just find that always fascinating.
- [25:34]
Matthew Remsky
Yeah, Texas oil money mom was a nationally ranked tennis player in the 60s who went on to co found the foundation Fleshlight, which was the first sponsor of the Joe Rogan podcast.
- [25:44]
Julian Walker
It's just such a natural pivot, right from tennis to.
- [25:48]
Matthew Remsky
So he co founded on it with Rogan, this supplement company and they later sold it to Unilever for reported hundreds of millions of dollars. Now he runs something called Fit for Service, or at least we think he does because it sort of has this dubious, almost like zombie like presence. Now online, it's a coaching scheme that is sort of integrated. His podcast subjects, you know, he's now 500 episodes in, he's got 671,000 followers on YouTube. But fit for Service seems to be slowing down operations and public events from its pandemic peak because, you know, it was really big when traveling to elite venues and gathering together without masks was part of the transgressive and transformative appeal.
- [26:35]
Julian Walker
I just have to say that inversion is just amazing. It almost tells you everything you need to know, right? They peaked during the pandemic, and now.
- [26:42]
Matthew Remsky
It'S kind of like, eh, yeah, yeah, we can go anywhere now, right? So let's pull back for a moment and think about the structural fragility of the guru or top tier influencer, or anyone who flies too close to the sun, because that's where Marcus finds himself in the guru sphere. It can be lonely at the top, especially if you've put yourself there through delusions of grandeur or levels of privilege that disconnect you from common people, or by killing off competitors in the attention economy. Any thrill you might get from being at the tippy top center of a cult of personality is going to be fleeting because the position is just precarious. You've promised too much in return for exploiting the attention of your followers, and they can turn on you pretty fast. And in my time, I've researched and written about all kinds of gurus who reach their zenith only to find their nadir. These are men, sometimes there are women, very few women, mostly men whose charismatic power implodes to reveal a kind of stressful narcissistic emptiness. And so I just want to list a few to illustrate the pattern, and then we can put this together with what we see now. Before the digital and parasocial guru age, the power of spiritual charlatans was projected through this careful curation of magic and absence. By nature, these people could be exploitative to the point of abusiveness, but in the analog age, they could also hide. So, for instance, only real insiders knew that Chogyam Trungpa, the founder of Shambhala Buddhism, was a chronic alcoholic prone to psychotic breaks, who couldn't toilet himself without one of his seven wives helping him. Only insiders knew that Swami Vishendevananda had such separation anxiety that he needed his women personal assistance around him at all times. Only insiders knew how catatonic Osho became as he huffed nitrous oxide in the back of his Rolls Royces. Only insiders knew that Yogi Bhajan couldn't go very long without borderline non consensual group sex and also ate himself into diabetic gain of the lower limbs. All of this was hidden away. And in fact, in the pre digital days, these guys could implode in their brick and mortar ashrams. And they could also maintain or even build their mystique by being mia. In fact, even now I think Guru Mai of the New York ashram, do you remember the name of it?
- [29:26]
Julian Walker
Siddha Yoga.
- [29:27]
Matthew Remsky
Yeah, City Yoga. She, I don't think she's been seen for like 10 years or something like that. And she, in public, she, she releases audio letters or something like that.
- [29:37]
Julian Walker
But yeah, and then, and then it makes me think of, of Osho Bhagwan Sri Rajneesh. And you can see this in the, in the Netflix documentary. He, he went into a long period of silence at the most controversial period of their time in Oregon and had just had a spokesperson, right, who, you know, Sheila, who had her own agenda and became her own very important figure. But again, he could retreat into the mystique of like no, no, no, I'm in silence and I'm communing with the great beyond. Right.
- [30:06]
Matthew Remsky
And he can probably do that to a greater extent as the social pressure rises. Right. It's like, it's like the more the heat is on, the more transcendent. You can perform your own radiance to your following and things will be better. Or, you know, that's the gamble anyway. But Markus is in a totally different position. I think everything has changed. I don't think we're going to see guys like that anymore. He is a mainly online guru and he can use, you know, all of the old techniques. He can, you know, have a content sort of platform that is self sealing, that just refers to its own rules, its own logic all the time. He can use all the thought terminating cliches. He can love bomb whoever he wants. He can be obscurantist. But what he can never do is hide. So building and retaining an online following requires this constant extroversion. The follower turnover rate is high. You have to keep grinding. You have to keep posting and competing with everybody else on the platforms to stop the scroll. You have to network yourself, link yourself, affiliate yourself, optimize the SEO. Not only can you never go invisible, you have to keep building your footprint. And then when things go south, you might find yourself exposing yourself to death. And that's where I want to like refer listeners back to you guys pinging or reviewing. The Lion King or what's his name? Lion.
- [31:36]
Julian Walker
The Liver King. Hakuna matata baby.
- [31:39]
Matthew Remsky
He's the Liver King. Right.
- [31:40]
Derek Barris
I do wonder with Markus though. I mean, I completely agree with you with the online following, but the material we've been reviewing with his wife Valena, the. The third and the throuple. And today, with his ex, to maintain the Austin stronghold and the ways that I believe he manipulates people, he would still have to use some of those old school techniques from the times of what you referenced, right?
- [32:07]
Matthew Remsky
Yeah, I think so.
- [32:08]
Julian Walker
Yeah. Yeah. With the inner circle and.
- [32:10]
Matthew Remsky
But.
- [32:10]
Julian Walker
But that. But there's something that you're saying here, Matthew, that I. That I also think is really interesting to reflect on, right. Which is that in the old brick and mortar days, you could build this idea of the. And very often, you know, especially during the 70s and 80s, it was the Gu from afar, right? It was the. It was the exotic representative of a profound spiritual culture that. That we know nothing about. You could build this mystique and then you can draw in the real hardcore followers who are willing to sell their cars and sell their houses and donate their salaries and join the commune and not talk to anybody else and all of that kind of stuff. And you. For the. For the guru and their power structure, they. They really had ultimate control in those kinds of abusive situations. In this case, where now, you know, the medium is social media and the competition is so much more diverse and intense. The audience is also very diverse, and anyone can see what you're saying and anyone can pick it apart that the way that we're doing and how. How bought in the different layers of the audience is. Is going to vary. And so it becomes a much more difficult balancing act.
- [33:13]
Matthew Remsky
You know, one of the most interesting sort of conceptual metaphors that Hannah Arendt came up with in her study of authoritarianism was the notion of the onion layers and how in any high demand group situation, there is a pretty sort of hermetic seal between inner layers and outer layers. The outer layers don't generally know what's going on inside. So if we take the most extreme example of that, it would be somebody like Adi Da buying an island, a Tahitian island or an island in Fiji.
- [33:45]
Julian Walker
That's right.
- [33:45]
Matthew Remsky
And him having sort concentric circles of followers that are still active and going to his bookshops and meditation places in San Francisco and places like that. And they're meditating in front of his picture, but they have no idea what he's actually up to on his island, fleeing the law constantly. And the thing is, you make a really good point is that there is no ceiling between the inner sort of circle of whatever's happening in the, you know, Austin home of Aubrey Marcus and the wider parasocial environment. Like, everybody can access the Instagram feeds of the inner Circle because they all have to be influencers as well. There's no sort of, I mean, we don't know what's happening in the house. Like, we don't. It's not like we have surveillance or something like that, but there's no concealment from layer to layer. And that had a very protective function back in the day. That's kind of gone.
- [34:47]
Julian Walker
So the new tools, the digital tools, are a double edged sword, right? They give you unparalleled reach into possible recruits, but they also create a level of exposure that you have to continuously participate in if you're to remain viable within that business model.
- [35:02]
Matthew Remsky
Well, and this is why Marcus's next moves are kind of interesting. Because if you're him and you've been at this for years and your audience capture game has been running at full tilt and everything you seem to do just works and your brand continues to grow, what happens when you so obviously fuck up with your core following and they start coming for you? And it's really a question about the level to which the person themselves has bought into their own mystique and how much that has shielded that person from basic business practices or in the old days, the sort of operational security that Osho would have had around like, okay, well, nobody gets to talk to me except these three people, right? And what we see, I think, with Marcus's choices is that there's probably no board of directors giving advice. There's probably no functioning PR department that can tell him how to at least pretend that he cares about legitimate feedback. And so without those tools, what do we imagine the person who really wants to show, for instance, that women who think he's a dominating, gaslighting asshole are actually wrong? That, that he's not all that. Well, his choice was to enlist his former fiance and subcontractor to his coaching business. This is Caitlin Howe. To tell the world about what a good heart he has and how he always treated her like a queen. And secondly, you might find a world renowned therapist to help you publicly work on your inner pain. Not over the issues around how you treat people, but over how the feedback on how you treat people actually makes you feel. And that's, that's what Marcus did in this kind of one, two punch. And the results have been mixed, but kind of interesting. So in this first episode, it's called who is Aubrey Marcus Really? Ex fiance. Sacred Confessional. Everything's gotta be sacred, right? It's not just, you know, we're having a conversation, but it's, it's not just A confessional. It's sacred. So, anyway, the guest of honor is Caitlin Howe, and according to her fit for Service bio, she's the, quote, resident poetess, ritual artist, and ecstatic dance facilitator. And she leads or has led the emotionally fit sectors of the coaching program. Derek pointed out in an episode way back previously. This is not somebody who has any mental health qualifications, although the names of the courses and workshops that she's run kind of suggest that, you know, her work might be able to heal you of some pretty serious things. Okay, now, the great thing, we've got some clips, but the great thing about reviewing Aubrey Marcus's podcasts is that he kind of assembles all the best clips up front for you. So I did listen to the whole thing, but I just have the first two minutes here broken up because I think they capture the themes and the vibe. So we can just go through them. There's a couple of them, and we can see what they sound like.
- [37:56]
Friend
I am the best person to do this because I know you on a level that most people will never get to see, and I've known you for 18 years. It really feels like something a member of my family is hurting, and I feel it every day.
- [38:10]
H
You know, I've been in positions before where I've been attacked for different things in different ways, but nothing that's reached this level of volume.
- [38:19]
Friend
I don't think you've ever tried to position yourself as an immaculate guru. What I've seen is you be a bleeding, sweating human being that is wearing your heart on your sleeve and talking about everything that you learned through all of your mistakes for many years now.
- [38:38]
Julian Walker
I mean, you're the worst person to be doing this, first of all. And second of all, it sounds like they're on mdma. I know they're probably not, but if you've ever taken MDMA or, like, talked to people who are like, this is the super hard open, like, really the tone of the voice and just the level of caretaking that's going on, it's like, oh, my God.
- [38:59]
Matthew Remsky
Okay, so. But that. And you're not being influenced by the music. You're hearing that in their voices.
- [39:03]
Derek Barris
Yeah.
- [39:03]
Matthew Remsky
Okay.
- [39:04]
Julian Walker
All right.
- [39:04]
Matthew Remsky
I mean, yes, you're the worst person to do this, but I think it's very important because she's being juxtaposed against the tens of thousands of people who have actually given their commentary on the behaviors that they see. Okay, let's roll the next one.
- [39:16]
H
An error we made on the podcast when we called it radical monogamy in the field of erotic mystics should have been called radical fidelity, because fidelity is being faithful to the truth.
- [39:25]
Matthew Remsky
Whoa. So he made a mistake. It made me wonder whether or not he's firing Mark Gaffer.
- [39:32]
Friend
Yeah.
- [39:32]
Julian Walker
Who made the mistake? Exactly. Heads must roll.
- [39:35]
Friend
And I think that's something that people don't think about when they attack the image of another human being that they've never met or that they feel like they understand from a tiny sliver of a perspective that they get from something like a podcast, is how many people who love them, who are standing beside them, who are their family, get hurt.
- [39:55]
H
This phenomenon of just putting a label on someone to negate the nuance of their humanity, whether it's narcissist, conspiracy theorists, whatever you want to call somebody, label somebody the cause for every witch hunt, every inquisition, every war.
- [40:11]
Friend
There's so much complexity to the interior human experience, and that gets confused, completely lost as soon as we put a label on somebody.
- [40:19]
Julian Walker
Tell me you don't know what grandiosity is without telling me. I mean, oh, my God, this is so amazing. It's the cause of every inquisition and every war. And also, like, you've put out hundreds and hundreds of hours of your perspective, your ideas, your beliefs, your. Your practices and that, and now you're saying, well, people are just so unfairly judging based on a sliver of what they know.
- [40:41]
Matthew Remsky
Well, this is one of the paradoxes that I want to bring up is that. Is that this kind of sort of product is based upon endless confession. It's like, you know, she says. She says, you know, it's just a little sliver of your life that you're getting to see through. Something small like a podcast. These are fucking three hours long. Over and over and over. There's 500 of them. He's talking about himself all the time. He's modeling behaviors. Nobody's, like, sort of guessing at what he's saying. And so people, you know, but the thing is, is that they. I guess because they feel that they are in a. A ritual process of confession, that it is very wounding to have that taken seriously or something like that. It's very weird. There's a paradox. It's like, oh, you don't know me, but I also just overshared with you for years.
- [41:32]
H
Yes, I care about what people think about me, and also, I can't care that much. That doesn't preclude the deep compassion that I have for people who've been through a lot of pain, trauma, especially the women. There's a Lot of women who've been through a lot of pain and trauma, and you're one of them.
- [41:50]
Derek Barris
I know I've said this before, but I used to have a friend, and used to is the imperative here that called himself the most humble person ever. And he was serious. And so when I hear him say I have deep compassion, especially for women, that's that. All I hear is my ex friend's voice in my head.
- [42:06]
Matthew Remsky
And a lot of people have been hurt, and you're one of them. I almost slipped up there, I think Julia just sitting back. Julian's just sitting back and trying to. Or no words. Yeah. Speechless. Okay.
- [42:16]
Friend
There's a value that you're working through of having certain things reflected to you that's helping you really drop in and say, okay, what are my blind spots? What am I not seeing?
- [42:27]
H
Am I like Sauron, lord of broken promises and failed rings? Is that who I am?
- [42:33]
Friend
You never, ever tore me down. You constantly invited me to see how magnificent I was. You know, a lot of people are so dishonest and treating me so badly. And all I knew from being with you was being treated like a queen. And so thank you for seeing me. Thank you for never being one of those men.
- [42:55]
Julian Walker
Even if he is the bad guy. He's the ultimate bad guy.
- [42:59]
Matthew Remsky
He's Sauron. Yeah, right. Thank you. But thank you for never being one of those men. No, but it's a question, right? It's a question. Am I this evil guy? I.
- [43:08]
Julian Walker
It's not just do I have, you know, some issues and some things I need to work through and some people that I need to, you know, talk to about abusive mistakes. It's like either I'm this magnificent champion of asking questions and, and helping people to awaken, or the other alternative is Sauron. No wonder he's so resistant.
- [43:32]
Matthew Remsky
I think that, that there's a shred of the sort of crazy wisdom possibility that is the kind of old school version of hiding and withdrawing, right? Where he says, am I actually Sauron? Am I the. What did he say? The prince of lies? Or am I a deceiver? Or something like that. And that's part of what the sort of invisible or concealed guru has to maintain as well. So I think he's actually throwing it in there in the midst of. Of overexposing himself. I think it's pretty interesting. So how did this all go over, do you think? About as well as a recent Liver King video. I. I analyzed a sample of about a hundred out of the current 1500 comments, and the tone was overwhelmingly critical. But you know, there's a small cohort defending Marcus, or at least his right to express himself. But some standout quotes are the fake.
- [44:32]
Derek Barris
Tears are also super weird. This is like spiritual comedy.
- [44:36]
Julian Walker
You're gaslighting us saying your ex is okay with it, so we should be too.
- [44:40]
Matthew Remsky
You open this podcast talking about blind spots and spent the whole time defending them.
- [44:45]
Derek Barris
You can produce a dozen more podcasts with a dozen more yes people to stroke your ego. We can't unsee you. You could turn off fucking YouTube.
- [44:54]
Matthew Remsky
Yeah, right.
- [44:55]
Julian Walker
This isn't a radical model. It's a repackaged male fantasy with spiritual stickers.
- [45:01]
Matthew Remsky
Yeah. And then this is my favorite, I think. If you're crying, why is it only ever for yourself?
- [45:14]
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- [46:41]
Matthew Remsky
Okay, there's a second rehab attempt in which Aubrey Marcus enlists Dr. Richard Schwartz to give him a public therapy session. And this version, this episode has a real emergency broadcast feel to it because it looks like they're meeting in a hotel room somewhere. It's also it doesn't look like a very nice hotel room, right? Like somebody's in the middle of a conference or they had to get him on the fly or something. I don't know. Richard Schwartz is 76 and he's the super famous founder of internal family systems therapy. Now, he started out with a PhD in marriage and family therapy from Purdue. He's worked in psychiatry, including at Harvard in the early 80s. However, he developed something called internal family systems after observing that client clients were often describing themselves as having multiple parts within them and that these inner parts formed networks of relationships similar to family systems. So it's a kind of a, it's, it's a branches off of many Freudian ideas about internal parts that have to be learned about or reconciled or brought to the surface or, or, or, or understood in some way. He found that when clients learn to relate to their parts with curiosity and compassion, they accessed an inner state that he termed the self. And he does use a capital S, should raise a little flag. And this is characterized by confidence, calmness and clarity. He's written 50 articles, he's got several books out now he has a huge popular following and countless TikTok influencers who reference internal family systems and, you know, talk about their parts work all the time. This is their kind of go to mental health panacea. Very, very popular. Now, he's been on the Aubrey Marcus podcast previously to discuss his model, and from a few comments that Marcus makes in this episod, stayed in touch. I don't think, as in a formal sort of client relationship, there is a hint that they might have been doing ayahuasca, either together or sort of parallel. It's not clear that you know what that is, but he does reference it, so we're going to hear that. But what does the session sound like? I don't have a lot of clips here because it really is just. It should be private. I mean, it's a private therapy session in which there's basic ifs guidance that he's given on connecting with parts. We get to watch Aubrey Marcus connect with his little buddies inside. He cries a little more. And really the focus is on the internal parts that are responding to the public outcry and opprobrium in ways that are wounded, in ways that he could take care of. So it's really not about the external situation at all. It's about how his little critters inside him are feeling now. Now, this is the one clip I have because I think this kind of sums up how he's going to utilize this kind of performance of therapy going forward because he's chosen something and somebody very, very specific. I wouldn't be surprised if this guy displaces Mark Goffney by long. All right, here's Marcus and Schwartz.
- [49:56]
I
The last several years, I've become more spiritual, and the models become more spiritual. And as I have done the work of. And part of why I'm here is because I. Some of us, through psychedelics of connecting beyond here and up there, we run into these guides who have a lot to share with us.
- [50:26]
Derek Barris
Yeah.
- [50:27]
I
And a lot of the message is we're here to learn lessons. And the lesson plan is a lot of the stuff that happens to us. So if you take those, and we have a phrase that people are often tormentors in the sense that by tormenting you, they're mentoring you about what you need to heal. Because if you go to the parts of you that get triggered by these people, it's a very rich source of healing. And it's similar with these big events.
- [51:01]
Julian Walker
All right, so, first of all, he's not going to replace Mark Gaffney, I predict, because he is absolutely plotting and uncharismatic and hard. It's hard to keep. Stay concentrated on him. So.
- [51:12]
Matthew Remsky
But you know what? I can imagine somebody like Aubrey wanting a break from the Gish Gallop.
- [51:17]
Julian Walker
Yeah.
- [51:18]
Matthew Remsky
There's something relaxing about it. And when you watch them actually sitting across from each other, you. You can see that Marcus is actually consoled.
- [51:24]
Julian Walker
Yeah. And then next thing you know, this is always, I think, been the tricky part about this. This whole domain. There's several different therapeutic approaches, some of them more mainstreamed and some of them more fringe that engage in this kind of, like, internal work with, like, the different aspects of self. I think it's kind of adjacent to the multiple personalities stuff that the movie Sybil was about. It's adjacent to the repressed memory stuff. And here we see it's also quite firmly adjacent to a lot of New age spiritual bypass and, you know, of dissociating into various types of, you know, fantasy delusions about. About guides and about a divine plan for your trauma, which really is about tormentoring you so that you're going to be mentored into finding your true sel.
- [52:05]
Matthew Remsky
Oh, there's that pun. There's the pun. I missed the pun. Okay. All right. Yeah.
- [52:09]
Julian Walker
So it's. It's. It's all very weird. And I just have to say, if Aubrey has been dosing this therapist with ayahuasca, there's an incredible hubris of giving a 76 year old man powerful psychedelics.
- [52:24]
Derek Barris
Why is it always the abusers who spiritualize the abuse as if it's for the victim?
- [52:31]
Matthew Remsky
Well, that's the thing that I want to get to, with some of the feedback that I reached out for, from, from psychotherapists on this because that is definitely a red flag. But I mean, what we do have is the overt opening of this session. As I am now treating my model that people have found very useful as a kind of metaphor for internal landscapes. I'm treating it as a metaphysical model. And I do have to say, I want to say that like, I know a lot of psychotherapists, a lot of people are familiar with ifs and similar therapies and a lot of people find that it gives a great set of metaphors for various internal conflicts or, or confusions that are going on so that you can label things and you know, work with certain things in, you know, sort of, you know, subcogn ways and come to some kind of resolution. But most of the people that I think I know would appreciate this thing would be horrified to hear him talk about, you know, the parts are actually, you know, guides or they're entities or, you know, or what have you. So we'll come back to this magical stuff. But Derek, let me turn to this more basic red flag over the public performance of therapy for a millionaire who gets to center his own emotions while deleting feedback on his misogyny. I was pretty interested in that. So I reached out on social media for comments from licensed psychotherapists on this. The feedback was pretty consistent. If you are not a celebrity therapist, you are not impressed. And so this comment from Peter J. Ryan, lpc, he's a psychotherapist and teacher in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, provided a good summation, in my opinion. He started by talking about teaching video. He says when one party uses a teaching video to blow through traditional ethical concerns in order to sanitize unethic behavior, I have to say that it is unethical of a therapist to allow themselves to be used in this way. I think it's pretty easy to see the various moral hazards further isolating the people. Marcus Harmed Schwartz. Encouraging vulnerable people into this guy's orbit, blurring the lines between therapy and coaching. I mean, that's an old problem with this whole group, right? Self promotion that risks exposing clients to questionable practices. Privileging promotion of ifs over individual therapeutic benefit. And maybe this harms the guy by shining his shit and further encouraging his narcissistic Conduct. Another comment came in from Avi Steinhardt, lcsw. He's a psychotherapist with a private practice based in Brooklyn. Quote, this seems tantamount to some kind of public forgiveness without atonement, which is egregious. Now, I reached out to Schwartz on this point through his organization. I wanted to comment on the ethics of public therapy. Like, why do you do this? There were a lot of people in my comments as well who were saying, oh, yeah, he's been doing this stuff on stage and demonstrations for years. I haven't really found it that troubling. But this seems to be, you know, stepped up a little bit. Schwartz or his organization, they didn't get back to me. And then I went and I dug a little deeper around the notion of the internal parts stuff because I kind of want to get a sense, a more sort of grounded sense of what they're referring to because he also uses another word, which is entity, which also sounds metaphysical. I found an interview with a guy named Robert Falconer. He's a higher up in the IFS world. And the interview was written up by friend of the pod, Jules Evans, actually, because I think there's some overlap with, you know, psychedelics, therapy and so on here. So the quote from Falconer is, these parts aren't metaphors. They are fully developed, autonomous beings. And at the heart of all of these parts is the self, capital S. Falconer writes, quote, self is who the person really is. It's always the witness. This self is who you really are and it is undamaged and undiried. Now, what does that sound like, Julian? Does that sound like everything we've ever heard in our lives? Voltron.
- [56:51]
Julian Walker
It sounds like Voltron. It also sounds like importing Advaita Vedanta into some kind of sybil esque multiple personality scenario in which you actually have all of these different selves. And the healing of the fractured different selves is to recognize the true self, the transcendent atman that is at the center of each of them. Now, Advaita Vedanta may have, you know, for the philosophy nerds, a slightly different angle, but you get what I'm saying.
- [57:17]
Matthew Remsky
So Evans asks Falconer about the entities, and this is the quote from the interview. Dick Schwartz started calling them critters a long time ago. They had a staff meeting at one point and changed the name to Unattached Burdens because it made it sound a little more academically acceptable. This idea is like the third rail and Dick's terrified it's going to destroy the reputation of ifs. But I thought it was so important that I wouldn't shut up about it. And it led me to being exiled from the IFS community for a while. Okay, so not only public therapy as a performance of self correction, but Marcus has actually found a psychological system that I think could be really, really useful to him at this point in his rehab career, allowing him to externalize internal polluting feelings of shame and self criticism while giving him a foothold into a therapeutic lingo that's adjacent, as you mentioned, Julian, to the satanic panic, demonic possession, and so on. Now, how's this going? Well, more positively. So there's an upward swing as we track the fortunes of Aubrey Marcus. I analyzed a sample of the comments. Again, about 40% were supportive or sympathetic. Quote, you are the mirror that humanity. Humanity needs. Thank you for your service and your mission to awaken humanity. 25% were cautious things like, it's brave to show your vulnerability, but psychologically, you will inevitably censor your behavior when in front of the camera, we don't need to see your process. 20% critical things like, bro, really running from humility and accountability podcast by podcast. So, yeah, what do you think Aubrey's next move could be?
- [58:56]
Derek Barris
I think that critical comment nails it, because one thing we know about this man is he cannot let go. Yeah, and he will. And any sort of negative feedback, he's just going to keep doubling and tripling down. I think it will peter out. Hopefully. We're seeing. We're near the tail end of it, but it's going to be both. A repeated commentary, I believe, moving forward, that becomes part of his brand and identity. But I would expect a few more. He'll. He'll dig up a few other X's that will speak nicely for him and. Come on. Because I. I just don't think he. He's capable of ingesting feedback in any sort of critical way. And he's. And because there's continuous critical feedback on all of these, he's going to feel the need to again and again restate what he's been saying for what, like, seven, eight hours that mostly you've listened to, but we've all listened to a.
- [59:50]
Matthew Remsky
Lot of it already.
- [59:51]
Julian Walker
Yeah. And that's actually where he needs therapy. He needs some therapy to try to understand the compulsion to try to get through to people who are. Who he thinks are seeing him in the. In the wrong light. And this is a thing. This is. We. I think we've gone through in the era of the Internet, several phases of Sort of philosophy about how to go about building a charismatic brand, how to go about reaching out to people in a way that feels really personal, authentic, and speaks to their deep needs and ways they can resonate with and tells your story and gets them enrolled. Because there's so much noise on the Internet, you've got to do that if you really want to build loyalty. And a lot of the advice around that has been, you know, when there's drama, when there's conflict, lean into it because it's compelling. It continues the narrative. People stay engaged. And even bad attention is good attention because you're. It's good in the algorithm, et cetera. Marcus may be testing some of the outer limits when that actually ends up, you know, kind of curdling against you.
- [60:46]
Matthew Remsky
Yeah. Speaking into bad or leaning into bad attention. What have you got for us, Derek?
- [60:52]
Derek Barris
Well, since we're talking about guru rehabs, I want to just do an update briefly as we close here on the Liver King. Julian and I, we've referenced it. Julian and I covered him on Saturday since he was arrested for threatening Joe Rogan from a Four Seasons in Austin. His feed has been filled with incoherent ramblings about a variety of topics.
- [61:11]
Matthew Remsky
I totally missed that. It was a Four Seasons. There's a. There's a real sort of Kid Rock trashing hotel rooms on tour aspect to all of this that I kind of missed out on.
- [61:19]
Derek Barris
Julian caught that. I didn't. I watched the video, and I didn't realize that. And he caught it. And the video. I don't. Have you seen the actual video, Matthew?
- [61:27]
Matthew Remsky
I have. Right. I thought it was his driveway, though, because. Because he's got that sort of huge estate as well. But then I realized, oh, yeah, he drove to Austin, so whatever.
- [61:36]
Julian Walker
Yeah.
- [61:36]
Derek Barris
What's worse about this entire thing is he's regularly surrounded by family and friends who seem to be enabling him. Now, I want to be clear. The fact that he has support around him is a good thing, because if this dude was alone in this condition, I would fear for anyone in his vicinity. That said, I stand by my assertion at the end of the brief on Saturday that this dude really needs an intervention.
- [62:01]
Matthew Remsky
It's an open question about how alone he is, though. I mean, because with enablers, I. I mean, this is part of the tragedy of having primal followers and maybe, you know, family who's scared of you instead of friends.
- [62:14]
Derek Barris
Yeah, that's a great point. And, yeah, most of the videos are selfie videos, but on a daily basis, you do see him surrounded by people. So in terms of the comments, there's been a lot of chatter about his dilated pupils. When I posted the episode on Blue SK Guy, a paramedic and follower, Rosemary CG replied, and we're not diagnosing from afar, which would obviously be impossible, but in this case, I think hearing from a medic is relevant.
- [62:40]
Julian Walker
And Rosemary wrote, I sincerely hope someone takes him to a doctor because the differing pupil sizes is a huge red flag. I see that on someone in the field and my first thought is subdural hematoma putting pressure on the brain. Not to overstate this, but the last person I saw who had pupils that were that wildly out of sync died from a massive subarachnoid hematoma. It's extremely serious.
- [63:03]
Matthew Remsky
Okay, is this a stroke or a concussion situation? Usually, I mean, also, he, he looks like he's been visiting Walter White.
- [63:10]
Derek Barris
It is a stroke. Okay, so that, that's what she believes. And she's not the only one. She did comment. But on the Liver King's thread itself, a number of people are noting that this happened after the first clip that I played on Saturday where he was doing Barbarian, which was a thousand knuckle push ups and he's on camera bleeding from his nose and above his head. There was something, there was something going on. In fact, my wife and I just watched Parasite last night. I know it's an older movie from 2019, but the basement scene where he's banging his head against, you know, the to do the Morse code, like, that's what Liver King actually looks like in these videos.
- [63:48]
Matthew Remsky
Wow.
- [63:49]
Derek Barris
We've spent this entire episode talking about Aubrey Marcus, who, you know, we've seen it. He surrounds himself with yes men and women. And as you've pointed out, Matthew, he invites people to coddle him. Not really challenge him. It's bad enough when it's a dude fucking with women's emot emotions. It's a few steps worse when that dude is regularly carrying around and shooting assault style rifles for social media content.
- [64:11]
Matthew Remsky
Yeah, right.
- [64:12]
Derek Barris
Here's the update since we recorded that brief. Liver King, or Lion King as Julian refers to him, posted a video of a fake arrest. He hired three men to put on police uniforms. They brought two police cruisers and a police motorcycle. While he's being arrested, Johnson, Brian Johnson is his real name. He keeps repeating, repeating, these are my weapons, my head and my heart. These are my weapons, my head and my heart. Now right away it seemed off because his Dobermans were freely running around his property while he's being Cuffed. And that's not how dogs are going to be act in actual high stress situations, especially protective dogs like Toberman. So that already seemed off.
- [64:50]
Matthew Remsky
Yeah, unless the cops are giving them treats or something.
- [64:53]
Derek Barris
True, true, but they are not. Now 20 minutes after posting, Johnson put up another video laughing about the stage video where he admits it. He then posts a video in his gym SLG garage space. He lives in a mansion. It's huge. All of his kids are playing video games on separate giant screen TVs and someone's filming all of it while he's playing video game Mario Kart as well, he continues posting weird clips from the Kyle Kingsbury podcast, like, just really disjointed. They don't make any sense, like out of context. Then he posted a video where the camera is facing his weighted vest while he's working out. I mean, it's on his vest, so all you see are a few strands of his beard and his vest moving.
- [65:35]
Julian Walker
So creepy.
- [65:37]
Derek Barris
Yeah. Here, here's the audio.
- [65:55]
Matthew Remsky
Okay, so talking about confection professional, he's turned the camera against his own body. Like, I mean, and there's part of that. What's going on here is that I think he's, I mean, he, I, he can't be coherent, but I think he's trying to reach out to his followers and say, something's going on inside me and I need to share it with somebody. And, and this is like really sort of poetically, you know, encapsulated by turning the camera and just burying it in your own chest.
- [66:21]
Derek Barris
Well, I mentioned this on Saturday, I mean, when you see the Netflix documentary, and I only saw the first few minutes, but he's had a team filming professional content of his workouts for years now. He's just clipping the phone or the camera to himself and grunting. Most of the videos, like I said, are low production. There are selfies and it just goes on that, like that for a few minutes. That's it. That's all you hear. The next video video is him setting a contained fire inside of his house. He's burning some sort of document, and I'm not sure what it is, but he's burning like with sticks that he gathered from, from his property, probably. He then posts another clip from Kingsbury where he says, and I'm not kidding, he didn't lie when he said he didn't take steroids because most of what he was buying for $11,000 a month was growth, horror, hormones. And he only took one steroid. So he wasn't on steroids. He was on steroids.
- [67:19]
Julian Walker
Yeah, and he literally says it that way. I was not on steroids, I was on steroid.
- [67:25]
Derek Barris
And then finally, he hasn't posted today. I checked right before record. It will record on Tuesdays. But yesterday he put up a video of himself in a pool and it shot like so many of these videos from a very weird angle. And he gets all sciency.
- [67:39]
J
Don't try this one at home. But okay, when you put your brain stem in 32 degree continuous cooling. And by the way, if you ever try this and you actually have your brain stem in 32 degree continuous cooling, count backwards from 30 out loud. And when you're no longer coherent and lucid, then that's the delta that to zero before you get to damage. Okay, so we already know vasoconstriction, right? Cold vasoconstricts. Everybody knows this, right? And then the vascular system gets to go through this workout that otherwise we just wouldn't do in the modern world because we like to be cozy and thermostats and so getting really cold and getting really hot. Benefits. Heat shock proteins, cold shock proteins. We know about those. The metabolic benefits. Brown adipose tissue, more metabolically active. Okay, makes you feel good. Yeah, we know that one too, right? Getting cold, you feel good after.
- [68:38]
Julian Walker
Stream of ideas. Stream of ideas. And Tom Petty in the background.
- [68:42]
Derek Barris
Well, I want to point out, like, if you are immersed in the fitness world, like everything he says, like kind of hints at some things, like brown attitude is tissue. He's on my WIM HOF at that point, like in the method and you know, the thermostat. So there's an argument that people in, in countries closer to the equator who don't use indoor heating can better regulate their hypothalamus. Like these are all. But. But they're just words that he's putting out there without context. And that's sort of, I'm hating at with all these videos is like he's only inside his mind and he's just. As things come up, he's sharing them as if they're common knowledge and he's connecting things. But there's, there's a but if you read it, like you need a decoder to actually start to piece together. And even then, then you get to the end of this video, which is over three minutes, and you don't know what he's actually saying.
- [69:35]
Julian Walker
Yeah. And you know, Matthew, you started off by characterizing these dudes as flying too close to the sun, but maybe he's given Us the secret to his downfall, which is that he spent too long.
- [69:45]
Matthew Remsky
In the ice, maybe. Right.
- [69:46]
Derek Barris
Well, I'll keep saying what I closed with on Saturday. This man needs help. No one will need to say we told you so after the fact that. Because we can see it for miles from inches away from our face. And I fear there's going to be an article that pops into my feed very soon about something horrific and the fact that there are people around him that can also see this and are not getting any sort of interventions. I don't know the relations of the power dynamics. Again, we said it earlier with you don't know what's going on inside the house, but if that's. We can see some of what's going on inside the house and they need some other people inside that house.
- [70:32]
Matthew Remsky
It's such a weird time to be alive because part of, I mean Derek, do you feel like you go to Instagram to check in on what he's doing and part of you has to be thinking, oh, that might be it. Right. If he hasn't posted today, you know, who knows?
- [70:46]
Derek Barris
Absolutely.
- [70:46]
Matthew Remsky
He, he might be in a coma, right?
- [70:48]
Julian Walker
Well, he might be in a coma and he also might have, he might have, have shot people up.
- [70:52]
Matthew Remsky
Right.
- [70:53]
Julian Walker
He might have shot other people. He might have shot himself.
- [70:55]
Matthew Remsky
Right. So yeah, I mean this is not a good guy. He's. He, he defrauded a lot of people. He's also sick. He needs help. And, and the thing is too is that if he hadn't traded followers for friends, he'd probably, you know, fight any actual help that came his way until the end. Right. There is a part of me that appreciate. I mean, I don't, I feel weird saying this, but we are watching somebody basically die in real time in one sort of blaze of glory or another. I think we will be left with, you know, a years long rise and fall record on Instagram if they don't, you know, take it down as a cautionary tale, you know, worthy of Homer. I mean if Homer or had gear and a ring light.
- [72:04]
Carvana Customer
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- [72:10]
Matthew Remsky
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- [72:23]
Joe Rogan
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- [72:24]
Carvana Customer
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- [72:27]
Joe Rogan
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- [72:29]
Carvana Customer
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