In Part Two of our decoding of Mel Robbins, things take a practical turn. But before we get to preoccupied with all that, why don't you pause, take a breath, and, in the context of your body, write down ten ways to make a bad situation worse. Your focus should then be on doing the exact opposite! For example, if one of your answers is to not listen to the podcast, then start listening, right now!

Next, before hitting play, let's work on building a daily manifestation practice. Write down five things you want, then sit in your body, picture yourself doing all the annoying steps, and flood yourself with the feelings of future success. This needs to happen every day.

One more thing: now imagine someone who is one million per cent behind you and ask them what is the best way for you to consume the podcast. They can be alive, dead, or fictional. Greek messenger Gods are permitted. You can even imagine your mother, if you like, but better. Alternatively, why not meet your future self at the front door and ask how listening to the podcast helped them to become so wise, slim, and successful?

There are other options too. You can manifest a legion of ancestors, reconfigure a difficult afternoon by getting sushi, and even transcend the limits of possibility with an elephant murder themed visualization!

You might think this sounds a bit like (too much) planning, mental rehearsal, and just trying to be a bit more positive. But it's much more than that. These mental activities are actually powered by very hard science. Ignore the tiny samples, one-tailed tests, and suspicious p-values... that all sounds like negative thinking.

And now you are finally prepared so choose your technique, release the brake, and visualise the download button. Your future self is waiting. They have a cool scar and some bad news about your future children.

• The Mel Robbins Podcast: “World Leading Psychologist: How to Manifest Anything & Create the Life You Want” with Dr Cassandra Vieten
• Cassandra Vieten: Imagine That: Transform How You Think, Feel, and Live with the Science of Imagination
• Institute of Noetic Sciences: Origins Story
• Hershfield, H. E., Goldstein, D. G., Sharpe, W. F., Fox, J., Yeykelis, L., Carstensen, L. L., & Bailenson, J. N. (2011). Increasing saving behavior through age-progressed renderings of the future self. Journal of marketing research, 48(SPL), S23-S37. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3949005/
• Robalino, J. D., Fishbane, A., Goldstein, D. G., & Hershfield, H. E. (2023). Saving for retirement: A real-world test of whether seeing photos of one’s future self encourages contributions. Behavioral Science & Policy, 9(1), 1-9. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/23794607231190607

Are you tired, stuck, or inconveniently constrained by reality? Good news: you may simply be imagining the wrong one.

In Part One of our decoding of Mel Robbins, we explore the world of a self-help mogul who is also just a simple mother of three in Vermont hosting a little ol' podcast with a HUGE global impact. Together with Cassandra Vieten, a psychologist who is (apparently) one of the world's leading researchers on imagination and consciousness, Mel explains how to begin to stop reacting and start imagining, visualising, and manifesting the life you truly deserve. This will lead to self-actualised transcendence through a variety of simple-to-implement techniques. But don't worry, the universe has also put in safeguards: manifestation only works if you use it for good, such as empowering your authentic self. So please manifest enthusiastically without any concern.

In the episode, you will learn about the delicate art of rebranding common sense into complex (proprietary) theories and be shocked to discover that mystical intuitions are a core component of any fully holistic scientific research. Mel's HUGE media business, meanwhile, manifests itself as an intimate personal friendship with each of her millions of listeners.

Expect the usual decorative scholarship, a new Five Second Rule and insights into how to Let Them and Let You, reality tunnels, obstacle courses, a thousand supportive women, lighthouses, tapestries, and the therapeutic potential of fire-breathing dragons. All of it is very hard science, as they repeatedly remind us.

Chris and Matt attempt throughout to give the self-help genre a fair-minded assessment. They even concede that wearing colourful socks and being a bit less miserable are probably harmless, but ultimately their dark reductionist souls are beyond salvation.

Part Two is coming next week. In the meantime, try to visualise it clearly, align your energy, and not to put one foot on the brake as you hit the download button.

Links

• The Mel Robbins Podcast: “World Leading Psychologist: How to Manifest Anything & Create the Life You Want” with Dr Cassandra Vieten
• A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein: “The Mel Robbins Griftpocalypse” with Princess Weekes and Kat Tenbarge
• CBS News: Extended Interview with Mel Robbins
• The Mel Robbins Podcast: “Try It for 1 Week: 6 Small Ways to Bring Back the Happiness, Energy, and Fun”
• The New York Times: “Mel Schneeberger and Chris Robbins” by Lois Smith Brady
• UC San Diego profile: Cassandra Vieten, PhD

Joe Rogan, the Great Khan of podcasting, is once again receiving a travelling jester at court. This time it is Jimmy Carr who arrives bearing gifts: pop evolutionary psychology, dubious history factoids, conservative "common sense", and an apparently bottomless appetite for telling Joe just how important he is.

After listening to their three-hour conversation(!), we conclude there is nothing much of note beyond serving as a nice demonstration of popular "alternative" podcasting in 2026. What you get is a medley of sycophantic praise; regurgitated pop science and historical factoids; right-wing political positions presented as basic common sense; and shocked reactions to pseudo profundity and mundane observations.

Along the way, you will also thrill as you learn Rogan and Carr's takes on motherhood, feminism, work ethic, astrology, religion, taxation, vaccines, human evolution, the Black Death, and stand-up comedy.

As for Jimmy Carr himself, well, according to us: he's a very much your standard middle-aged conservative British person who happens to be a comedian. Rogan's level of crankery makes Jimmy look moderate by comparison, but as we know that's a very low bar.

Links

• Jimmy Carr on The Joe Rogan Experience (2326)
• Jimmy Carr on Modern Wisdom #953
• Schulz, J. F., Bahrami-Rad, D., Beauchamp, J. P., & Henrich, J. (2019). The Church, intensive kinship, and global psychological variation. Science, 366(6466), eaau5141. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aau5141
• Robinson D. The Black Death and Clerical Prospects in England. In: Bothwell J, Hamilton JS, eds. Fourteenth Century England XII. Fourteenth Century England. Boydell & Brewer; 2022:129-150. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781800105904.008
• Xu, X., & Barrett, P. M. (2025). The origin and early evolution of feathers: implications, uncertainties and future prospects. Biology Letters, 21(2), 20240517. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2024.0517

Two absolutely shattered academic heroes heroically drag themselves through yet another supplementary episode to bring you the important guru news in between their restorative breaks.

The full episode is available to Patreon subscribers (Full Episode: 1hr 32 mins)

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

00:00 Introduction

02:13 Eliot Paisley's Anatomy of an Optimiser

08:52 Eric Weinstein wants a University Position and a Stipend

16:09 The Failure of the Anti-Woke Quasi Universities

19:19 Gary is Knackered Again

20:45 Gary is the best inequality economist in the world

24:36 How do I make a Documentary?

33:04 The End of the Year Approaches

37:44 Public Accountability

40:13 The Neurodivergent Trump Card

40:59 A clarification on bailiwicks

42:43 Tucker Carlson & Chris Cuomo discuss Russian Apologetics

48:53 Ukraine is selling weapons to Mexican Cartels

54:54 Civility Porn Judo

56:09 When Hasan met Prof. Jiang

01:01:37 Conspiracy Theory Buffet

01:07:24 Looking Good by Comparison

01:11:21 Comparing Epstein Conspiracies

01:24:03 Agreeable Conspiracism

01:27:13 Outro and Piers Morgan Invite

Links

• Eric Weinstein appeals to billionaires on Twitter
• Elliot Paisley: Chris Williamson Is A Slave
• Gary’s Economics: My Documentary is Coming Out THIS WEEK!! – why you should watch it
• The Times: Gary Stevenson: I want a wealth tax on the super-rich — like me
• News Nation: Tucker & Chris Cuomo: The FULL Conversation
• Hasan Debates Professor Jiang On His Wild Predictions | HasanAbi Archive

In this Decoding Academia episode, we venture into comparative psychology, focusing on a fascinating line of work by Fumihiro Kano and colleagues on social intelligence and theory of mind in great apes. By showing apes short videos and tracking where they look, researchers examine whether they expect others to act based on what they have seen, what they know, or what they falsely believe. This approach offers a remarkable window into the evolutionary roots of human social cognition or, alternatively, the most elaborate way yet devised to explore what a chimp thinks of a man in a chimpanzee costume.

We discuss what this kind of research might reveal about social intelligence across species: whether apes understand intentions, knowledge, and false beliefs; how their abilities compare with humans, dogs, and other animals; and why studying minds without language requires ingenuity, caution, and tolerance for participants who may simply decide the whole enterprise is beneath them.

There is also some discussion of the usual complications: small samples, difficult data, flexible analyses, replication, and the gap between a beautifully designed experiment and a result we should treat as settled fact. But the main story is the genuinely intriguing attempt to study Theory of Mind beyond humans.

Along the way, we discuss chimpanzee costumes, zoo life, dogs, and the disturbing possibility that crocodiles may be running more sophisticated cooperative hunting operations than most university committees.

*The full episode is available on Patreon (57 mins)*

00:00 Introduction

03:57 Chimpanzee Theory of Mind & Eye Tracking

13:03 Attention, Grabbing and Orientation

24:03 The Role of Memory in Anticipation

26:10 Revenge of the Researcher

31:21 Statistical Concerns

43:44 Comparative Psychology Thoughts

49:13 Non-climbing Tigers and Cooperative Crocodiles

51:20 Matt's New Friends and Outro

Relevant papers for the episode:

Kano, F., & Hirata, S. (2015). Great apes make anticipatory looks based on long-term memory of single events. Current Biology, 25(19), 2513-2517. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.08.004

Kano, F., & Call, J. (2017). Great ape social attention. In Evolution of the brain, cognition, and emotion in vertebrates (pp. 187-206). Tokyo: Springer Japan.