Over the last decade, the internet has devolved into a playground for influencers who peddle anything and everything you could imagine. But Helen Lewis says it isn’t just superficial TikTok stars telling you how to properly contour your face so you look like a Kardashian. She argues that the World Wide Web has became a digital revival tent, full of new leaders promising all kinds of enlightenment.
In fact, she says, we’re living in a golden age of gurus.
Helen Lewis is a writer for The Atlantic and host of the new BBC podcast, The New Gurus, which explores the “spiritual” leaders of the twenty-first century who have completely overtaken cyberspace. She profiles productivity hackers, dating coaches, wellness influencers, crypto bros, diversity experts, and heterodox intellectual heroes—who all make a living by captivating millions with their unconventional ideas (like drinking your own urine to get healthy or paying $5,000 to go to a dinner where you’ll be told you’re a racist).
Helen explains why these figures are so appealing right now, how our current moment stokes a belief in the most outlandish ideas, the limits of individual experts, and what, if anything, she’s learned about fighting our worst instincts, which are so easily amplified and indulged by the internet.
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Memo to Helen: the Covid fear pushers were wrong about most everything. HCQ + Zinc (Reisch - Yale). The mortality rate >1% (Ionidis Stanford.) The Jab (John’s Hopkins reduction in immunity.) Masking (Cochrane study). Natural Immunity (The Greeks). Lockdowns = massive depression & suicides, etc. So YEAH. I’d like a big fat apology for all the totalitarian idiocy.
Bari, I am an early reader and cheerleader for you and as a single woman breaking barriers on Wall St-- your stepping away from NYT to substack and now Free Press was inspiring for me. Now, I have to question what I see is a disturbing trend in your content. This podcast hit it for me---- It was full of the author's bias and you, as an interviewer, didn't ring in. When the author discredits scientists like Weinstein and says the vaccine is "safe", that is when the interviewer needs to push back, offer the facts and realities, separate out the biases for the audience. You did none of that. Given the wave of focus and attacks on podcasts and their misinformation, perhaps your strategy is now going the commercial route. Please follow your own guidance on Courage. We need you to have courage now more than ever. Its been the very reason I am a paid subscriber. Without your courage, your content is another commercial.