The Bluestocking: New Gurus

we’ve swapped the local vicar for the Liver King

Happy Friday!

I know I said the Bluestocking was taking a break until next week, but the final episode of The New Gurus just aired, and it’s shooting up the podcast charts, so I thought I would plug it here too. I don’t have favourites, but if you only listen to two episodes, I would suggest the dating and crypto ones as standalones.

Here’s a taster of the show from my Sunday Times article (£) on Russell Brand’s reinvention as a guru:

So where did all these gurus come from? The author Tara Isabella Burton thinks the internet has created a rash of “new religions”, each with its own cadre of preachers. Although the latest UK census found that a record low number of us identify as Christian, Burton doesn’t think we are becoming more secular. She thinks our religious impulses are now channelled into alternative belief systems — everything from polyamory to tarot. We’ve swapped the local vicar for the Liver King.

Helen

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Podcastmas!

As promised, a smorgasbord of me banging on about stuff, starting with my chat to Chris Williamson (no, not the Corbynite one) about everything from modern dating to how Daniel Kahneman’s “peak end” rule applies to internet celebrities and their outrageous statements.

Next up is Blocked and Reported, where I gave Katie and Jesse a quiz that involved me having to write a fake Jordan Peterson poem.

Finally, here is one that’s a bit spicy—Aaron Rabinowitz self-defines as “woke” and we had a rare, respectful conversation about self-ID from opposing sides of the discussion on his podcast Embrace the Void.

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Quick Links

1. RIP to The Greatest CEO You've Never Heard Of (David Epstein, Substack).

2. “100 beers of solitude: the party starts with 100 beers on a table in the middle of the room, and nobody is allowed to talk until all of them are finished.” A thread of incredible party theme ideas (Twitter).

3. “Shirky Principle: To ensure survival, institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution. E.g. Arms manufacturers lobby politicians to push for new wars, and light bulb manufacturers deliberately make their bulbs short-lived so you buy them more often.” Gurwinder Bhogal—of the incredible Nikocado Avocado article on audience capture—on 10 concepts he’s learned in 2022.

4. The Spice Girls once made a Tesco advert.

5. The best headlines of 2022.

See you in 2023!