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In this new clip from my podcast with therapist Ryan Soave, we discuss a fascinating virtual-reality experiment he helped with in Andrew Huberman’s lab.

Participants were placed in simulated fear-inducing scenarios involving heights, spiders, claustrophobia, dogs, and even great white sharks. They consciously knew they were safe — but their bodies still mounted a fear response as though the threat were real.

That raises a much bigger question about fear, trauma, and anxiety: how much does the body distinguish between an actual threat and one that is merely perceived? Ryan explains how our nervous systems can enter fight-or-flight based on the reality our minds construct, and why this may help us understand how chronic fear and unresolved trauma can become embodied.

Watch the full clip here.

Full episode link.

In this new podcast clip, I hypothesize that one practical way to reduce the pull of addiction and unhealthy obsession is to “diversify your dopamine.” The idea is simple: when one activity becomes your only meaningful source of pleasure, validation, or excitement — whether that’s work, partying, social media, sex, or something else — it becomes much easier for that pursuit to take over your life.

I reflect on periods of my own life when my career was almost my sole source of satisfaction, and how building a broader life has made it less likely that any one pursuit becomes all-consuming. Exercise, friendships, time in nature, good books and movies, meaningful work, sports, and spontaneous fun can all become different sources of reward and meaning. Therapist Ryan Soave agrees with the broader principle, while adding that balance also means learning to slow down rather than constantly chasing stimulation.

Watch the short clip below for our full discussion on diversifying your dopamine as a practical antidote to addiction and obsession.

Watch the full episode

What would you like me to ask him?

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Catch my latest episode on treating addiction:

Watch full episode here

Here are five quotes from the conversation that stayed with me most - on validation, bad therapy, finding inner peace, and real freedom:

Watch the full podcast now:

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Chapters:

00:00 Intro
01:49 Florida, alligators & Rav’s reptile phobia
07:49 Fear, phobias & confusing discomfort with threat
10:08 The lemon experiment: how the mind creates physical reactions
12:00 Virtual reality, fear & working with Andrew Huberman’s lab
16:39 Why are mental health problems rising?
20:00 Does modern life make us less resilient?
26:24 Dating apps and the paradox of choice
27:25 Why commitment creates freedom
29:27 Remote work, structure & accountability
32:03 What makes a great therapist?
37:14 Are people actually more mentally ill than in the past?
47:50 Addiction vs. obsession
55:10 Can slowing down make you more successful?
57:18 The thing that makes you successful can ruin the rest of your life
01:00:21 Loneliness, ambition & obsessive work
01:04:34 “Diversify your dopamine”
01:07:49 Stop waiting for success to make you happy
01:10:18 Why Rav became obsessed with career success
01:12:39 External success doesn’t fix internal problems

Check out her recent story in The Free Press here:

The Free Press

This Week in Canada: Our Economy Looks Better Than Yours

Welcome back to This Week In Canada, where the economy looks pretty spiffy compared to the United States, Alberta’s job-growth engine has a new source of fuel, and our colleges and universities are officially awash in antisemitism. Let’s get to it…

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a month ago · 56 likes · 137 comments · Rupa Subramanya

Rupa and I are both immigrants and have a unique lens to analyze Canada’s failures in “multiculturalism” as we take hits both from the far Left (who want no borders) and far Right (who want no nonwhite people in this country).

Leave any questions for our conversation in the comments below.

The podcast has been on hiatus for a couple of months as I’ve been trying to find a more financially sustainable model to run the show as it has been hard to keep it running this year, but I’m hoping to be more consistent now.

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Stay tuned for an episode release tomorrow with addiction expert Ryan Soave from the Huberman Lab podcast.

Psychedelics and Big Pharma have historically been at odds with one another due to fundamentally conflicting business models and treatment paradigms. While conventional psychiatric drugs have traditionally emphasized scalable, ongoing pharmacological treatment, psychedelic therapies have centered on infrequent dosing paired with extensive psychological support.

However, those once-separate worlds are now beginning to converge. In a landmark development for the field, Eli Lilly has acquired ATAI, signaling that the world’s largest pharmaceutical company now sees psychedelic medicine not as a disruptive outsider, but as a strategic part of the future of mental health treatment.

This news has struck a nerve and stirred vigorous debate on the timing and long-term success of this acquisition. Some investors in ATAI seemed disappointed by the announced acquisition by Lilly, largely because they’re focusing on the immediate cash payment of “only” $6.75/share and cite ATAI’s leading market position in short-acting psychedelics. However, after speaking with people close to the transaction — particularly with some of the advisors involved — I came away with a very different perspective from that of the more critical voices.

A senior industry insider I spoke to said Eli Lilly “explored Compass Pathways as a potential way to enter psychedelics…but ultimately chose not to pursue a transaction, even though Compass sought an acquisition.” Definium, by contrast, was described to me by an insider as a “poor fit” for Lilly’s strategy, largely because “many see no commercially viable path for treatments that require patients to undergo 8+ hour monitored sessions.” In addition, they said the patent positions at Compass and Definium are relatively “less robust than ATAI’s”, against the backdrop of broader IP challenges around classical psychedelic molecules.

Moreover, those close to the deal I spoke with believe investors in the psychedelic sector are “underestimating the commercial execution risk of psychedelic companies like Definium, Compass and Resilient (formerly Lykos).” Scientific success and commercial success are two very different things. And their roll-out may have the risk of influencing investors’ views for the entire sector.

The biggest obstacle, according to both pharma executives and clinic operators I spoke to is the treatment duration. It’s one of those practical issues that many investors don’t immediately think about. Do clinics need multiple staff shifts to cover a single patient? What happens if an LSD session runs longer than expected? Would clinics ultimately need overnight facilities in this case? There’s also a very mundane but increasingly important issue emerging: the widespread use of GLP-1 medications. Because they can delay gastric emptying, they may delay the onset of orally administered drugs – potentially by more than an hour in some patients – adding yet another layer to an already challenging treatment duration.

ATAI, on the other hand, was viewed very differently. It has the strongest portfolio of short-acting psychedelic therapies (like BPL-003 which resolves in 90 minutes) that are significantly more commercially viable from a real-world healthcare delivery perspective. Equally important, its intellectual property portfolio was consistently described to me as one of its strongest assets.

Insiders told me the challenge for ATAI was the capital required to get this broad portfolio to commercialization. "Remaining independent would likely have required raising well over $1 billion over the coming years to fund late‑stage clinical trials and the build‑out of full commercial infrastructure for ATAI’s whole mental‑health drug portfolio,” one person close to the deal stated. Those financings would have taken place precisely during the period when the commercial launches of Compass, Resilient and Definium face the serious risk of disappointing the market’s expectations, as investors confront the reality of long, staff‑intensive treatment sessions, operational and reimbursement hurdles, and questions about the strength of their intellectual property and durability of clinical benefit.

That would have created substantial financing, dilution, and market risk for existing ATAI shareholders. Additionally, an insider source told me that “there was an existing constant selling pressure due to former Beckley shareholders selling off their unlocked shares month-by-month.” “This held down the share price and prevented a potentially higher headline takeover price from being realistic in negotiations,” they added.

Viewed through that lens, it appears to me that the ATAI board made the decision best for their intended mission to swiftly bring psychedelic therapies to the market. Shareholders receive an attractive premium today and immediate cash value, while still retaining meaningful upside through the contingent value rights without having to fund the remaining development themselves. If the milestones are achieved, the total deal could reach as much as $9.25 per share in total. Perhaps most notably, the people I spoke with expressed a high degree of confidence that those milestone payments are achievable.

Moreover, one insider involved in the deal shared his view that “this would also be in the patient’s best interest because Eli Lilly would broaden the scope of psychedelic treatments and study drugs for several clinical indications, not just one.”

In summary, it appears that this transaction allows shareholders to maximize future success while reducing dilution, financing, execution, and overall market risk. That’s not always the most exciting outcome, but it is often the one that creates the best risk-adjusted return for shareholders.

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The Illusion of Consensus is a fully citizen-funded publication. Rav’s work on psychedelics, Covid and Big Pharma has been featured on The Joe Rogan Experience, Jordan B. Peterson Podcast, The Megyn Kelly Show, and other prominent platforms. If you support the original, fearless journalism on this site, consider becoming a paid or founding member to receive exclusive articles, early-access episodes, and ask questions for future episodes. Or support The Illusion of Consensus with a one-time donation.

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It’s a great way to stay up to date with my content since email inboxes can get flooded and it can be easy to miss podcasts.

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Tomorrow I’m interviewing sexologist on the podcast.

I came across Coral’s work on Instagram a couple of months ago and was struck by the depth in which she spoke about human sexuality and dating and what it reveals about the human psyche more broadly. We immediately started exchanging voice notes and bonding over shared interests and curiosities in this decreasingly taboo field of inquiry.

You can find her most viral Substack essay on female arousal here:

And if you’re feeling extra provocative, here’s another one of her essays:

Just like topics like psychedelics & meditation I tackle on the podcast which are now increasingly being discussed by non-suspect, rational people, human eroticism and sexuality also ought to be explored by non-freaky, sensible people.

If anyone has questions they’d like us to discuss, leave it in the comments below!

Remember, paid members get access to such perks and will also be able to watch my podcast with Coral early.

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I was in Las Vegas recently for the first Enhanced Games — a new athletic competition that is considered to be the Olympics for athletes using performance-enhancing substances. The premise is simple: instead of banning enhancement, Enhanced Games allows athletes to use FDA-approved substances under medical supervision, while building a new kind of sports event around human performance, longevity, and physiological optimization.

One of the more revealing parts of my conversation with Enhanced Games co-founder Max Martin was our discussion about how much of the mainstream media covered the event. A lot of the criticism, both from journalists and online commentators, centered on the claim that the Games failed because they did not produce enough world records.

But that framing misses the deeper point. As Max and I discussed, the more important story may not be world records, but personal records: athletes improving beyond their previous limits, often years after their supposed physical prime. World records are exciting spectacle, but personal records are where the broader promise of human performance and physiological optimization becomes much more relevant to ordinary people.

Max also shared a striking anecdote about one journalist who questioned whether Enhanced Games’ clinical data should be taken seriously because some of the research was coming out of Abu Dhabi. His response was basically: if the work is being published transparently and conducted under institutional review board approval, why should its geography automatically discredit it? To him, this reflected a broader problem with parts of the coverage: journalists looking for conflict or narrative rather than seriously engaging with the data and context.

In this clip, we talk about what the media got wrong, why the “not enough world records” criticism is too shallow, and why the real lesson of Enhanced Games may be closer to Jordan Peterson’s rule: compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.

I recently attended Max Martin & ’s Enhanced Games event in Vegas. One of the most common media criticisms of the event was that it failed to deliver enough world records.

In this new clip from my one-hour podcast with Max, we explored why that framing misses the deeper point. World records are thrilling, of course. They are part of what makes sports dramatic and emotionally powerful. But if the broader question is human performance, health, and self-improvement, then personal records may matter even more.

This is where I invoked one of Jordan Peterson’s most useful rules: “Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.” Not everyone can become Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, Erling Haaland, or a seven-foot NBA player. But everyone has a body. Everyone has a baseline. And everyone can ask whether they are becoming stronger, healthier, more resilient, and more capable than they were before.

That, to me, is the more interesting promise of Enhanced Games. It is not merely about producing superhuman spectacle or smashing world records. It is about expanding the conversation around what is possible for the individual: the athlete chasing a personal best, the aging person trying to preserve vitality, and anyone interested in becoming the best version of themselves.

Watch this new clip now

Full episode link here

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The Illusion of Consensus is a fully reader-supported publication. If you support the original, fearless journalism on this site, consider becoming a paid or founding member to receive exclusive articles, early-access episodes, and ask questions for future episodes. Or support The Illusion of Consensus with a one-time donation.

In this new episode, I speak with Max Martin, co-founder and CEO of the Enhanced Games, a new athletic competition built around medically supervised performance enhancement. I recently attended the first Enhanced Games event in Las Vegas thanks to hooking it up (who I plan to interview at some point on our shared interests in psychedelics, pharma, and the future of mental health) and came away highly impressed by the event itself and the fascinating, high-quality people it brought together, including friends like Calley Means & Brigham Buhler.

Since launching this podcast and newsletter with Jay Bhattacharya in 2023, I’ve become increasingly interested in health guidelines, protocols, and policy — especially where institutional consensus often lags behind emerging science and human potential. The Enhanced Games provided a masterclass in what innovation can look like at the intersection of athletic competition, human performance, health optimization, and wellness.

My conversation with Max delved into bigger questions about athlete rights, longevity, healthcare, and the future of performance, including the world record broken by swimmer Christian Golomiev, the 21 personal bests achieved by athletes, and why Maximilian believes the real mission is helping people become their personal best — not just chasing world records.

Time-stamps:

00:00 Introduction to Enhanced Games and Human Performance

02:48 Max Martin’s Background and the Birth of Enhanced Games

07:35 The Impact of Performance Enhancements on Athletes

15:21 Challenges in Traditional Athletic Competitions

18:43 Future of Enhanced Games and Upcoming Events

30:14 Memorable Moments from the Enhanced Games

34:16 Awakening to Alternative Health Solutions

36:11 The Role of Enhancements in Athletic Performance

39:55 Personalized Health Protocols for Individuals

42:52 Regulatory Changes and Their Impact on Enhancements

44:46 Accessing Enhancements for Everyday Consumers

47:10 The Future of Enhanced Games and Athlete Longevity

50:12 Media Coverage and Public Perception of Enhancements

Watch Now:

The Future of Human Performance: Enhanced Games Co-Founder Max Martin

Support The Illusion of Consensus!

The Illusion of Consensus is a fully reader-supported publication. If you support the original, fearless journalism on this site, consider becoming a paid or founding member to receive exclusive articles, early-access episodes, and ask questions for future episodes. Or support The Illusion of Consensus with a one-time donation.

In my new podcast with Dr. Matt Johnson, I ask him about a remarkable new study examining psilocybin therapy for cocaine addiction:

(Study link)

The study, led by Dr. Peter Hendricks & designed by Matt himself, randomized people with cocaine use disorder to either psilocybin or an active placebo, both in the context of psychotherapy. When I asked Matt about the results, he said the effects were “really, really big.”

At six months, the psilocybin group was biologically confirmed to be abstinent from cocaine at extraordinarily high rates — close to 100% in the graph we discussed.

That number is almost hard to believe. It’s a small study, and we need larger replications, but if these findings hold up, this could represent a major breakthrough in addiction treatment.

What makes this study especially fascinating is the population.

This wasn’t a group of upper-middle-class wellness seekers who had read books on shamanism, meditation, or psychedelic spirituality. Matt emphasized that many of the participants were poor, Black, from the Deep South, and making less than $20,000 a year. Many were from the Bible Belt. They were not coming in with the typical positive associations toward psychedelics that you often see in highly educated, white, progressive, psychedelic-curious populations.

And yet, according to Matt, the results were striking.

He also mentioned something that doesn’t show up neatly in the published paper: many participants reportedly had powerful Jesus experiences.

Not New Age “universe” experiences. Not shamanic archetypes.

Jesus.

Matt said Peter Hendricks had described participants having experiences where Jesus “spoke to their heart.” These were often Baptist Christians whose spiritual framework was not psychedelic culture but Christianity. And during these psilocybin sessions, the healing content emerged through that religious language and symbolic world.

That’s one of the most fascinating parts of this whole conversation.

Psychedelics are often framed through a very specific cultural lens: Burning Man, yoga, Eastern spirituality, ayahuasca retreats, shamanism, or secular neuroscience. But this study suggests that the psychedelic experience may express itself through the deepest symbolic and religious architecture of the person undergoing it.

For a secular Westerner, that might be “ego dissolution” or “the interconnected universe.”

For a devout Christian in the Bible Belt, it might be Jesus speaking to the heart.

And clinically, the question is not whether the experience fits neatly into one worldview. The question is whether it helps people change — whether it helps them break destructive patterns, find hope, reconnect with meaning, and stop using a drug that has devastated their lives.

Matt’s broader point is that psilocybin does not seem to work by targeting one specific drug receptor system involved in one specific addiction. It’s not “anti-cocaine medication” in the narrow sense. Instead, the working hypothesis is that psilocybin may work on the psychology of addiction itself.

The compulsive loop. The emotional pain. The loss of agency. The identity of being trapped. The inability to imagine a different life.

That’s why we’re seeing promising signals not only in cocaine addiction, but also in smoking & alcohol use disorder (for most of our recent conversation we focused on Matt’s new study examining psilocybin therapy for smoking addiction).

This is not a magic cure. It requires preparation, support, integration, and serious clinical safeguards. Some people have difficult experiences. Larger studies are needed.

But the implications are enormous.

If psilocybin therapy can help people with severe cocaine addiction — including poor, marginalized people with little prior interest in psychedelics — achieve sustained abstinence, then we may be looking at one of the most important frontiers in addiction treatment.

And the Jesus experiences add another layer: maybe psychedelic therapy doesn’t replace religion or spirituality. Maybe, in some cases, it activates the deepest spiritual language people already carry — and helps them use it to heal.

Watch the full conversation where we discuss this new study (starting at 1 hr 9 min):

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The Illusion of Consensus is a fully reader-supported publication. If you support the original, fearless journalism on this site, consider becoming a paid or founding member to receive exclusive articles, early-access episodes, and ask questions for future episodes. Or support The Illusion of Consensus with a one-time donation.

Bret Weinstein joins the podcast to discuss dating, mating, sex, relationships, marriage, pornography, OnlyFans, dating apps and the collapse of courtship among Gen Z. The conversation also covers sexual signals, promiscuity, long-term commitment, the rise of the “sex recession”, and new concerns around declining dating among young people. We also discuss Andrew Tate, Nick Fuentes, The Weeknd, Zayn Malik and Gigi Hadid while examining how pop culture, social media and technology shape relationships today.

Chapters:

0:00 - Intro
3:11 - Gen Z’s Dating and Sexual Culture Crisis
6:12 - ‘Dating’ Is an Artificial Modern Construct
12:44 - Why Sex Education Fails Young People
20:15 - How Birth Control Changed Attitudes to Sex
27:10 - When Sex Had Higher Stakes
37:55 - The Evolutionary Case Against Hookup Culture
47:42 - Is Casual Sex Ever Beneficial?
1:04:38 - The Case for Finding the Right Partner Early
1:19:50 - The Weeknd’s “Lonely Star” Through an Evolutionary Lens
1:34:20 - Brett on Valentine’s Day

Support The Illusion of Consensus!

The Illusion of Consensus is a fully reader-supported publication. If you support the original, fearless journalism on this site, consider becoming a paid or founding member to receive exclusive articles, early-access episodes, and ask questions for future episodes. Or support The Illusion of Consensus with a one-time donation.

In this recent clip from my debate with former Bush/Obama drug policy advisor Kevin Sabet, he argued that comedian-podcasters like Joe Rogan ought not to decide national drug policy.

I took the opposing stance and argued various high-profile individuals have been pushing this for decades & this new executive order is quite conservative in that it only accelerates research and FDA approvals rather than outright decriminalizing these substances.

Watch the full clip here now

Full episode here:

In this new episode, I ask Johns Hopkins psychiatry professor Dr. Matt Johnson about his new study examining psilocybin for smoking addiction — and the results are remarkable.

(Link to study published in JAMA)

The study compared one psilocybin session against a standard course of nicotine patch, with both groups also receiving the same cognitive behavioral therapy protocol for quitting smoking. At the six-month mark, 52% of people in the psilocybin group were no longer smoking, compared to 25% in the nicotine patch group. And this wasn’t just based on people saying they quit — the outcomes were biologically confirmed.

What makes this especially fascinating is that psilocybin doesn’t work like a nicotine replacement. It’s not acting directly on nicotine receptors. Instead, Matt explains that it appears to work on the psychology of addiction itself: the habits, emotional patterns, identity structures, and deeply ingrained loops that keep people stuck.

Some participants had direct insights into their smoking. Others barely thought about cigarettes during the session. Instead, they had vast, mind-expanding experiences about childhood, relationships, suffering, mortality, the nature of reality, or what it means to be human — and somehow, when they came back, smoking felt smaller.

Matt describes this as a powerful perspective-shifting effect. People zoom out from the narrow tunnel of craving and see their addiction from a radically different vantage point. One participant realized he could quit smoking as easily as “flicking away a bug” — a stunning moment of agency where he saw that he could actually change something about himself.

We also get into why addiction is rarely just about the substance. Smoking can become a way to regulate emotions, cope with stress, bond socially, manage trauma, or feel a sense of control. As Matt puts it, substances often “work” in the short term — they give people a predictable way to alter their state. The problem is that over time, this can crowd out healthier ways of dealing with pain, stress, and emotional dysregulation.

That’s where psilocybin may be uniquely powerful. It can temporarily loosen rigid patterns, open people to new insights, and help them relate to themselves and their addiction differently. Combined with therapy, that altered state may help people move from “I’m a smoker who can’t quit” to “I’m a non-smoker who has agency.”

Matt is careful not to oversell it. Nicotine replacement, CBT, and other addiction treatments already help many people. Psilocybin is not a magic cure, and some people in the study did not quit. But the findings are deeply promising — especially because this was only one psilocybin session.

This is a fascinating conversation about addiction, agency, identity change, mystical experience, and why psychedelics may become one of the most important frontiers in addiction treatment.

Watch the full episode here:

Time-stamps:

0:00 - Intro
2:30 - Marty Makary Resigning & Flavored Vapes
10:40 - Vaping Greatest Risks
14:15 - UK’s Controversial Tobacco and Vapes Bill
19:20 - Matt’s Psilocybin vs Nicotine Patches for Stopping Smoking
43:14 How do Psilocybin act on smokers?
58:15 What else gave people stronger outcomes?
1:00:39 The Roll of CBT
1:05:07 Psilocybin safety profile
1:09:55 - Psilocybin for treating Cocaine Use Disorder

Support The Illusion of Consensus!

The Illusion of Consensus is a fully reader-supported publication. If you support the original, fearless journalism on this site, consider becoming a paid or founding member to receive exclusive articles, early-access episodes, and ask questions for future episodes. Or support The Illusion of Consensus with a one-time donation.

The UK just passed a landmark tobacco bill that would permanently ban the legal sale of tobacco products to anyone born on or after January 1, 2009 — an effort to create a “smoke-free generation.”

But is prohibition actually the best way to reduce smoking?

In this clip, I ask Dr. Matt Johnson — Johns Hopkins psychiatry professor and one of the world’s leading addiction researchers — what he makes of the UK’s new generational smoking ban. Matt is not a narrow scientist who can only speak on pharmacology — he has studied and written about drug policies for decades.

His answer is nuanced. Matt is clear that cigarettes are extraordinarily harmful and remain one of the leading preventable causes of death in the world. But he’s skeptical that outright bans are the right solution.

His concern: when you ban a product that many people still want, demand doesn’t magically disappear. It often moves underground. That can fuel black markets, empower criminal networks, reduce product safety, and create new harms — the same basic lesson from alcohol prohibition.

Matt argues for a more balanced approach: public education, age restrictions, harm reduction, and sensible limits on smoking in public spaces — without pretending the government can simply legislate addiction out of existence.

This is a fascinating conversation about cigarettes, addiction, prohibition, personal freedom, and where public health policy can go too far.

Watch this clip here:

Watch the full new episode discussing Matt’s new study testing psilocybin therapy for smoking addiction:

Something that challenges the status quo and exposes politicized “consensus” in science. And we wanted to fight back against the censorship industrial complex. The Illusion of Consensus became the central hub for consistent conversations with brave scientists who were censored, attacked, and demonized during Covid. We had on dissident experts — in the true sense of the word — across disciplines such as Dr. Robert Malone, Dr. Pierre Kory, Dr. Mattias Desmet, Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg and others.

Since Jay is no longer on the podcast (no doing bigger things at the NIH), The Illusion of Consensus has expanded and grown beyond just conversations about societal problems; I’ve endeavoured to provide you with science-based tools to reclaim your health and consciousness. I’ve had on the leading experts on sleep science, mindfulness, addiction, dating & relationships, vaccines, and psychedelic therapy for mental illness. Still, I’ve managed to do all this while continuing to challenge powerful figures like Republican Senator Ron Johnson on the Iran war and Mark Cuban on Covid vaccine mandates and DEI initiatives.

In the coming months, I’m excited to interview leading officials in the Trump administration — and those who have left it — to provide the public with an in-depth look into how power in DC works.

The Illusion of Consensus isn’t just commentary — it’s a powerful force in the discourse that reveals and shapes truth, science, and institutional power.

To continue providing illuminating conversations AND debates to hash out contentious issues, I need your help!

This Substack runs only through reader and listener paid subscriptions. Since Jay left for NIH, the economics of this project have changed dramatically. I am now at only 600 paid subscribers, down from 1,400 during the height of this project in 2023. I would love to get back to at least 1,000 paid subscribers to continue doing this full-time.

If you value the content I create here on a consistent basis, please consider becoming a paid member:

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Only for today and tomorrow, I am offering a limited 20% discount on annual paid memberships:

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You’ll get early access to podcast episodes, the ability to ask questions to my future podcast guests, and monthly Q+As.

Future guests of the show include Geoffrey Miller, Dave Smith, Ben Shapiro, Glenn Greenwald, Michael Tracey, Jay Bhattacharya, Calley Means, Rob Henderson, and more!

If you join now, you can access my brand-new 2-hour conversation with Bret Weinstein unpacking dating & mating through an evolutionary lens:

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Alternatively, for those who’d like to make a bigger contribution to my work, you can support The Illusion of Consensus with a one-time donation (you will automatically be added as a paid member to unlock exclusive content).

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Thanks to all of you for continuing to read and watch my work.

The Illusion of Consensus is not just a podcast. It is one of the few independent platforms willing to challenge institutional narratives, host forbidden conversations, and force a more honest public reckoning with science, health, power, and freedom.

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Time-stamps:

00:00 - Introduction: The future of media, and the importance of understanding human mating strategies
02:01 - Social medi…

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