The truth seems pretty elusive these days.  But, the best of the IDW is your gateway to insights to embrace your inner nerd, think deeper, and live better.

The internet and social media are fundamentally changing the way we understand the world around us.  It feels like we’re moving into a Post Truth Era.  In fact, recent polls say:

Poll: 72 percent [of Americans] say traditional outlets ‘report news they know to be fake, false, or purposely misleading’

92% of Republicans say “traditional news outlets knowingly report false or misleading stories at least sometimes.” This sentiment extends to 79% of Independents.  And 53% of Democrats agree Mainstream Media isn’t always trustworthy.

New Landscape for Truth and Authenticity

This lack of trust results in a deterioration of our collective sensemaking ability.  We need reliable facts and honest, intelligent points of view to understand the world.

A new group of critical thinkers jokingly referred to as the IDW, continue to gain followers.  Hosts like Dave Rubin, Ben Shapiro, and Joe Rogan create great content and strive for intellectual honesty.  Intellectuals like Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris discuss and debate relevant topics with intellectual rigor and an authentic concern and respect for the truth.

But, the internet’s a big place and sometimes it’s hard to keep up. That’s why I decided to start publishing a monthly link round-up of the best, short-ish content from the Intellectual Dark Web.  I hope this episode of the best of the IDW will save you some time and point out something important you might’ve missed.  You can always dig a little deeper if you have the time.  I’m posting the Youtube versions here, but all of these are also available on podcasts if you’re on the go.

I’d love to hear from you if I’ve missed something.  Please leave a comment with your link below.  I hope this will become a community effort to share the best IDW content for the month.

Joe Rogan

January started off the New Year with a spate of self-improvement discussions.  My favorite is this one where Joe interviews David Sinclair, the noted Harvard geneticist.  David explains the revolution in anti-aging treatments.  The interview starts out with David explaining that he’s fifty years old even though he looks forty.  The rest of the interview David shares his insights on anti-aging.

Particularly, David takes the following daily:

• Resveratrol, the chemical in red wine proven to slow the ill effects of aging.  You can buy this over the counter in the form of a supplement.  David takes half a gram daily.
• He takes a gram of NMN in the morning with yogurt, which will raise NAD.
• At night he takes a gram of the prescription drug Metformin.  Metformin is a prescription drug for type II diabetes but has been shown to benefit anti-aging as well.

I did some research of my own and have started taking Resveratrol and Metformin as well.  Although I’m not a doctor and not qualified to offer any medical advice, I did find many articles confirming the anti-aging benefits of Resveratrol and Metformin in clinical human trials.  The findings on NMN are pretty new and haven’t had time to go through human clinical trials yet, although some are planned in the next few years.  Also, NMN is very expensive so I decided to hold off on that for now.

My doctor hadn’t heard of the anti-aging benefits of metformin.  But, she gladly gave me a prescription when I emailed her my research.

I liked the entire interview, but the first twenty minutes or so capture the essence of the discussion.

Here’s the link to the interview.

Ben Shapiro

Continuing the self-improvement theme, Ben interviewed Dave Ramsey to help people get a better grip on their personal finances.  Most Americans live from paycheck to paycheck lacking sufficient retirement savings or even a few thousand dollars in emergency savings to help them through the inevitable rough patches of life.

In this interview, financial guru Dave Ramsey discusses his self-help program that has helped millions of people improve their finances.

At under an hour, this is one of the shorter IDW videos.  But, if you’re in a rush listen to minutes 3 to 27 to get the meat of this discussion.  Also, exploring Dave Ramsey’s programs in depth will help anyone with their personal finances.

You can also check out my post on financial independence.

Sam Harris

Sam Harris interviewed Renee DiResta about Russian influence on the 2016 election.  Renee wrote a government report on Russian influence on the election.  This fact-based interview opened my eyes on some interesting social and technological aspects of the new information world order.

Sam often bemoans the decline of journalist integrity and the hyper-partisanship of fake news on all sides.  I agree that technology is changing the way we communicate and we’re in a difficult transition period.  But, I’m optimistic that the democratization and free sharing of information will ultimately prove superior to the centralization of information by a handful of large corporations. I think every intellectual will agree that a blog like SlateStarCodex.Com is better than the New York Times at its best.  Read my post explaining this here.

Dave Rubin

Dave published a ‘Best of 2018’ video that I highly recommend.  This gives a quick summary of his work in 2018.  Watch it and dig into whichever episodes fascinate you.

Here’s the link.

Jordan Peterson and Christina Hoff Summers

I loved Jordan and Christina’s appearance on the feminist podcast called The Femsplainers.  Jordan’s been widely criticized as anti-women so I really liked this discussion with two rational feminists.  Christina’s also great. She always brings an interesting perspective to these discussions for me as a man.

I also found this interview funny and wide-ranging.  Listen to the whole thing if you have time.  Here’s the link.

I’d love to hear from you.  Please leave a comment. I publish this blog as a forum for long-form discussions and I enjoy hearing other’s views because it gives me the opportunity to learn.

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