Reflecting on the Pandemic, Zubin Damania

A wide-ranging conversation on the experience of sensemaking during the pandemic, with Zubin Damania (ZDoggMD). Zubin first came to my attention with a viral video at the start of 2020 where he channelled some righteous anger at the medical establishment's response to the pandemic, and said he hoped that the crisis would be the trigger to “burn this broken system to the ground”. For years he's been arguing for a significant change to the medical system, away from treating people as interchangeable parts in a machine and towards a more holistic vision of what he calls Health 3.0. During the pandemic we compared notes on what we were seeing, through shared frameworks like Ken Wilber's Integral Theory and Jonathan Haidt's “moral tastebuds”. He argues for nuance and complexity, and dubs his political perspective as “alt-middle”. 0:00 - The Pandemic & the Information Ecology 04:02 - Zubin & Health Care 3.0 08:09 - The USP of Rebel Wisdom, curating a conversation 10:09 - The pandemic was a stress test that we failed 14:03 - The internet leaking out into the real world 16:37 - The religiosity of the Covid debate 19:53 - The rise in conspiracy narratives 22:56 - Questioning our own thinking 29:33 - Public intellectuals going off the rails 32:48 - The hermeneutics of suspicion 39:00 - A culture of bullshit 44:14 - Conspiracies thrive in the gaps of the mainstream 46:31 - The pre/trans of the insurgency after 2018 53:34 - Paradox of being outside the institutions - audience capture 58:27 - Warping effects of the tech platforms accelerated on creators 01:00:37 - Attention hijack as opposite of mindfulness 01:02:41 - The tragic arc of Jordan Peterson 01:06:55 - The return of the repressed 01:14:14 - The return of psychedelic medicine 01:18:57 - The limitations of psychedelics 01:22:51 - Meditation & Awakening 01:29:36 - Ayahuasca 01:32:14 - Culture War 2.0 & the memetic tribes 01:43:06 - Post Pandemic Awakening 01:46:39 - The English Taboo Against Earnestness 01:49:30 - Mutual Appreciation Society

Om Podcasten

We uncover the most rebellious ideas in philosophy, human potential and transcendence to find direction through the chaos of the times.