Galileo has many heirs. I don’t mean biological descendants; rather, some intellectuals see Galileo’s face in the mirror staring back at them. Freed from the shackles of academia (or simply kicked out of their university), they find a lucrative niche for themselves, telling their enraptured fans that, just like Galileo, they have an Earth-shattering theory… and a mysterious “they”Ěýdon’t want you to know about it.
Bret Weinstein is a name you might be familiar with. An evolutionary biologist, now self-titled “professor in exile,” he hosts The DarkHorse podcast with his wife, fellow evolutionary biologist Heather Heying. The podcast has nearly half a million subscribers on YouTube alone and has featured high-profile guests like Russell Brand, Sam Harris, and Vivek Ramaswamy. Weinstein has himself guested on The Joe Rogan Experience, seemingly the largest podcast in the world. And while his calm tone of voice may denote sound judgment, Weinstein has become an über-conspiracy theorist, to the point where he believes the Powers That Be are crafting fake conspiracies specifically to make him look stupid.
Being Galileo is hard, but someone has to do it.
The scientific revolution will not be televised; it will be podcasted
Weinstein’s journey to the limelight began with the incident that took place in 2017 at Evergreen College, where he taught. To summarize a complex situation, Weinstein vocally disagreed with a college-wide event meant to discuss and address racism; some students confronted him and damaged property; and eventually both Weinstein and his wife, who was also faculty there, resigned from Evergreen with a total settlement ofĚýĚýfrom the institution for failing to protect its employees from verbal hostility and threats of physical violence. The on-campus confrontation drew the attention of the American media and made Weinstein a darling of conservatives who view college campuses as bastions of irrationality. (For a comprehensive view of what happened at Evergreen, I suggest theĚý.)
Weinstein and Heying received further attention when Bari Weiss wrote a piece forĚýThe New York TimesĚýentitled “Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web,” giving credence to a loose group of free-speech advocates who apparently held dangerous but much-needed Big Ideas. This dark web has flaked away over the years due to internecine fights and shifting priorities, andĚýĚýis gone.
But what made Weinstein particularly relevant in the eyes of the average science news consumer was his appearance on anĚýĚýof The Joe Rogan Experience, which in terms of sheer viewership eclipses the so-called mainstream media. Sitting next to Dr. Pierre Kory, Weinstein explained to Rogan that ivermectin worked against COVID-19 and that the vaccines were dangerous. (This was the exact opposite of reality.) Importantly, Weinstein painted himself as part of a group of “heretics,” independent of the structures controlling others, hence free to analyze the data accurately and report on it without being muzzled. He became one of the leading figures of the pro-ivermectin contingent during the pandemic.
To this day, WeinsteinĚýstillĚýbelieves in the effectiveness of this anti-parasitic drug in preventing and treating COVID-19, despite the clear evidence thatĚý. On theĚýĚýof their DarkHorse podcast, Weinstein and Heying double down on their pseudoscientific perspective on the pandemic: ventilators wereĚýĚýand “not necessary” for COVID; ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine are theĚýĚýagainst the virus; and it appears we are facing aĚý
You may wonder how these extraordinary claims can still appear credible to their listeners. Part of the answer is that the podcast pair rarelyĚýcommitsĚýto a position, preferring to ask questions and to hypothesize. A lot. Similarly, I could convince a number of listeners that the Earth is flat if I spent hours on my podcast laying conjecture after conjecture and simply asking questions about what may be hidden from us.
Of course, many scientists, like Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz and Dan Wilson, have taken Weinstein and Heying to task on their health-related misinformation; but their refutations can be ignored by many DarkHorse fans. They come from “pharma shills” or “bad faith actors.” Other fans are still hoping Weinstein will address these concerns properly. Maybe one day.
Over years of pumping out incredibly long, weekly podcast episodes, Weinstein and Heying have “hypothesized” a number of truly staggering things, both in the sciences and outside of them.
Weinstein wonders if the allegedĚýĚýof COVID diagnostic tests might be a feature not a bug, as it allows someone to claim anything at any moment. He tells Joe Rogan that the evidence for the HIV virusĚýnotĚýcausing AIDS isĚýĚýSimilarly, the poliovirus might notĚýcauseĚýpolio but might simply be a “fellow traveller” in people who have the disease, which is actuallyĚý. Also, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau might be Fidel Castro’s son (Ěýsays Heying before dismissing its relevance) and he is also gay (Ěýsays her husband).
This denialism of facts and reality can easily lead you into conspiracy territory: how else to explain that you are right but everyone around you is wrong?
Indeed, we must now confront the Goliath in the room.
Traps abound
Some conspiracy theorists fret over an alleged “deep state.” For others, it’s the Bildenberg Group, or the World Economic Forum at Davos, or a Satanic cabal, or history’s classic villain: the Jews. For Weinstein, it’s Goliath.
Goliath is the name he gives to the shadowy powers conspiring against the world and against Weinstein personally. The Israel-Palestine conflict unfurling now? That’s Goliath tryingĚýĚýunder 24/7 news coverage of a world event. He has also hinted at Goliath trying to get him to die by suicide. One day, a browser window allegedly appeared on Weinstein’s phone with a DuckDuckGo search engine page with the search bar containing the word “suicide.” Weinstein believes this might have been a threat, because he and his wife have beenĚýĚýfor Goliath.
Real conspiracy theories aren’t enough for Weinstein and Heying, however. They must be on their toes for fake conspiracy theories manufactured by Goliath to make them appear foolish. “Traps abound” as Weinstein likes to remind his listeners, and there are psy-ops (or psychological operations designed to influence the population’s attitudes) everywhere. That story about Haitians eating pets in Springfield, Ohio?ĚýĚýWeinstein comments, but if it turns out there is no merit to this story, it was an irresistible trap, possibly set by Goliath, to discredit the people who will believe in disinformation. Indeed, Goliath is apparently trying to drive a wedge between Weinstein and his friends, a secret strategy he calls the coalition slicer-dicer. “It could be next-level chess by Goliath,” he calmlyĚý.
Still with me?
Throughout all of this, Weinstein believes his thinking is scientific in nature, but it is not. “I know how it sounds; on the other hand, I’m a scientist,” he says onĚýĚýafter alleging that the Democratic Party mandated the U.S. army to get vaccinated against COVID in order to kill its soldiers with the vaccine, possibly because they were paid by the Chinese. “I look at patterns,” he continues calmly, “and I eliminate potential explanations based on the fact that they don’t fit, until we’re down to a small number of explanations that might underlie the pattern.” This is a wordy and horrible bastardization of Sherlock Holmes’ line about eliminating the impossible. What Weinstein is actually admitting to here is confirmation bias: he rejects what doesn’t fit his narrative, and his narrative is that the mainstream is wrong, Goliath is all-powerful, and he is the real truth-seeker. This should act as a reminder that having received a doctorate does not immunize you against bad thinking and conspiracy ideation.
The hosts of the podcastĚýDecoding the GurusĚýhave elaborated what they call aĚý, a way to characterize and rate secular gurus who spout pseudoprofound nonsense and market themselves as renegade public intellectuals. Bret Weinstein fits the profile to a T: presenting himself as having cross-disciplinary wisdom, arguing against the establishment, and having an audience which will defend him ardently. These gurus will often claim to have developed an all-encompassing, revolutionary theory which has been rebuked by institutions too afraid of its implications.
In Weinstein’s case, he elaborated his revolutionary theory in grad school, hypothesizing that laboratory mice have undergone a major evolutionary change that at once single-handedly (and quite simplistically) explains ageing and makes them poor models for drug safety experiments. These mice, he claims, have very long telomeres, which means they can deal with drug toxicity much better than we can. Thus, Weinstein’s household isĚýĚýbecause all medications could be toxic.
This is not true: laboratory miceĚýĚýthan wild mice, and toxicity studies are also done in humans before a drug is approved. But Weinstein sees himself as a Cassandra, seeing a clear hazard that everyone else is ignoring. Moreover, he claims that his insight was shared with a future Nobel-Prize-winning scientist, who stole the idea from him, when in factĚýĚýthat hypothesis before Weinstein thought of it.
Weinstein is not alone in claiming to have developed a paradigm-shifting theory inconvenient to the establishment. His own brother, Eric, who studied mathematical physics at Harvard and was managing director at Thiel Capital for nine years, came up with a theory of everything, which was widely criticized by the scientific community. I had the opportunity to speak to Dr. Moses Turkle Bility in 2020, back when he argued that COVID was actually due to shifting magnetic fields and that aĚýjade-nephrite amuletĚýmight protect us from this “disease.” Although he had formally studied molecular biology, he had also elaborated his own theory of everything, meant to reconcile quantum mechanics with gravity.
Wanting to be the next Galileo is a seductive idea, but science rarely undergoes paradigm-shifting revolutions; rather, it tends to move in incremental steps. But when people dismiss Weinstein’s grand ideas, he can simply hint at a larger conspiracy meant to discredit him.
This podcast is sponsored in part by….
In my opinion, Weinstein is Alex Jones for intellectuals. If Jones is too animated for you, Weinstein’s calm, NPR-worthy dulcet tones will provide similar misinformation and grand conspiracy theories with a professorial air, couched in a never-ending stream of “might”s and “could”s and “one can imagine”s. Speaking in a calm voice is a really effective way to convince your audience that your preposterous ideas are actually worthy of consideration. It has worked for fellow podcasterĚý, whose content often is not based in relevant scientific evidence, and forĚýAndrew Kaufman, the psychiatrist who hypothesized that demonic possession might be a contributing factor to mental illness. In 2020.
But if Bret Weinstein really is a savvy scientist able to cut through the nonsense of mainstream science, why is his podcast sponsored by so many pseudoscientific products? There’s theĚýĚýwhose products are magically “without chemicals” and whose ad read leans hard into chemophobia by claiming to stay away from chemicals that have “impossible-to-pronounce” names; there’s theĚýmade from powdered cattle bones that will allegedly pull “toxins” out of your mouth; and the conspiracy-monger staple: precious metals from American Hartford Gold, endorsed by Bill O’Reilly and Liz Wheeler. Buy gold and silver now before it’s too late!
But the sponsor that raised my eyebrow isĚý, which sells a colostrum product made for adult consumption. Colostrum is the first secretion of the breasts after giving birth, a sort of pre-milk, and AMRA sells cow colostrum for you to drink. Their website is littered with fearmongering, pseudoscientific claims aboutĚýleaky gut syndrome, andĚýĚýthat come from unreferenced studies. When I asked them to provide a direct link to these studies, their email response failed to do so. The company used to claim their colostrum wasĚý, before getting in trouble with Truth in Advertising. All around, an embarrassing product for a biologist to hawk.
It must be a 5D-chess move on the part of Goliath to discredit Weinstein.
No longer satisfied with pontificating about how everything can be seen through an evolutionary lens, Bret Weinstein is now the co-founder of theĚýStar-Wars-inflectedĚý. This weekend, they are meeting in Washington, D.C.—peacefully, Weinstein reminds us on his podcast—to give voice to their various antiestablishment grievances. They will be joined by similarly minded contrarians, such as Jordan Peterson, Pierre Kory, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
When Heather Heying was giving health advice on a recent episode of the DarkHorse podcast, she ended her recommendations by saying, “Turn off your devices.” That may very well be the only thing I agree with here. Don’t listen to the DarkHorse podcast. Turn off your devices and go play outside. Your mental health can only improve.
[Thanks toĚýĚýon X for having kept close tabs on Weinstein’s claims over the years!]
Take-home message:
- Bret Weinstein is an evolutionary biology professor who left Evergreen College with his wife, Heather Heying, and who started The DarkHorse Podcast
- The pair regularly makes unscientific claims about COVID-19 and other infectious diseases, while still promoting ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as the best drugs against COVID despite the clear evidence we have for their lack of efficacy
- They promote conspiracy theories in which a mysterious force they call Goliath is trying to make them look foolish by planting false conspiracies they are meant to fall for
