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"Luke Ford reports all of the 'juicy' quotes, and has been doing it for years." (Marc B. Shapiro)
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff) LATEST POSTS:
- Tournier on Desmond Ford
- The Borrowed Robe: How Antisemitism Dresses in Each Age’s Virtue
- The Fence and the Blessing: How Jews Have Thought About Gentiles
- A Place For You
- Tournier on Luke Ford
- Tournier on The Nostradamus Kid
- An Alliance Theory of Antisemitism
- Tournier on Cinema Paradiso and Desmond Ford
- The Self-Hating Jew
- The Alliance Theory in the Academy
- Dennis Prager v Cedars-Sinai Lawsuit
- Dennis Prager Through Randall Collins: Interaction Ritual Chains
- What is a ‘Received Idea’?
- Jordan Bardella: The Manufacture of Normality
- Everyone Became Television: Bourdieu’s Warning and the 2026 Iran War
- Marine Le Pen
- The Coalition-Proximity Rule
- Nigel Farage
- Bernard Haykel: A Life Between the Text and the Gun
- Walker Connor (1926-2017)
BEST POSTS:
- * The Enlightenment Wasn’t Enlightened (6-23-26)
* Mr. Burge Draws The Line (6-23-26)
* 'Improving on Democracy' (6-17-26)
* People Leak To People Who Are Fun (6-11-26)
* Why Does Australia Produce So Many Great Journalists? (6-11-26)
* Steve Wynn and the Press: Power, Litigation, and the Contest Over Las Vegas (6-3-26)
* Sheldon Adelson and the Journalists (6-3-26)
* The Vigilant Animal: Thinkers Who Reject the Myth of Human Gullibility (6-2-26)
* The Cost of Refusing the Misunderstanding Myth (6-2-26)
* Show Me How It Travels (6-2-26)
* The Norm Explainers (6-2-26)
* Centering Marginalized Voices (6-1-26)
* What would it look like if the Washington Post put its reader first? (6-1-26)
* What would it look like if the Financial Times put its reader first? (6-1-26)
* What It Would Mean for the Los Angeles Times to Put the Reader First? (6-1-26)
* What It Would Mean for The New York Times to Put the Reader First? (6-1-26)
* Why Wembanyama Lives on the Perimeter (5-31-26)
* The Emotional Palettes Of San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco & Sacramento (5-27-26)
* The Administrative Capital: Sacramento Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* San Diego - The Quiet Republic (5-27-26)
* The Quiet Bar: San Diego Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* SF v LA Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* Why Talent Travels Poorly Between San Francisco and Los Angeles (5-27-26)
* San Francisco and Los Angeles as Rival Models of Urban Access (5-27-26)
* Social Cliques in New York, 2026 (5-25-26)
* Social Cliques in San Francisco, 2026 (5-25-26)
* The Rival Courts of Washington (5-25-26)
* The City of Private Rooms (5-25-26)
Category Archives: Guru
Sam Harris and the Secular Mind
Samuel Benjamin Harris (b. 1967) hosts a popular podcast and meditation app. With a PhD in neuroscience from UCLA, he’s best known as a critic of religion. Harris was born in Los Angeles. His father, Berkeley Harris (1935 to 1984), … Continue reading
Posted in Guru, Sam Harris
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The Neglected Intellectual
The sociology of intellectuals has a thin but useful shelf on this. Lewis Coser (1913-2003), Edward Shils (1910-1995), Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002), Russell Jacoby (b. 1945), and Randall Collins (b. 1941) all treat the complaint of neglect as a structural feature … Continue reading
Posted in Guru, Intellectuals
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Chris Kavanagh: Ritual, Fusion, and the Anthropology of the Guru Age
Chris Kavanagh grows up in Northern Ireland. The “Norn Irish” tag he wears online is not affectation. Ulster teaches what ritual, flags, marches, and sectarian identity do to ordinary people. Men there learn by twelve what group boundaries feel like. … Continue reading
Posted in Alliance Theory, Guru
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The Measurer of Gurus: An Intellectual Biography of Matthew Browne
Matthew Browne holds a professorship in psychology at Central Queensland University. The location tells you something. He is not at Melbourne or Sydney. He is at a campus most Australians could not find on a map, working on a stigmatized … Continue reading
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Decoding Rabbi Joseph Telushkin
Written with AI: Rabbi Joseph Telushkin is a norm translator and moral ambassador rather than a boundary enforcer or institutional governor. Telushkin’s power does not come from controlling entry, legitimacy, or halachic process. It comes from shaping how Jews explain … Continue reading
Posted in Alliance Theory, Ben Shapiro, Conversion, Dennis Prager, Guru, Marc B. Shapiro, R. J. B. Soloveitchik, R. Jonathan Sacks, R. Joseph Telushkin
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Rabbis Are Rarely Gurus
Rabbis are rarely gurus. They usually have little in common with the gurus discussed on the podcast Decoding the Gurus. The rabbinic role developed to do almost the opposite of what a guru does. Rabbis are interpreters, not originators. Their … Continue reading
Posted in Guru, Hasidim, Marc Gafni, R. Daniel Landes, R. Kook, R. Shlomo Carlebach, R. Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Rabbis
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The Leaking Gurus
ChatGPT says: Here’s a clean, Alliance Theory list of gurus who haven’t fallen yet but are leaking badly. These are not moral accusations. They are structural diagnoses. In each case, the social paradox is fraying and status-seeking is becoming legible. … Continue reading
The attention whore gurus selling wisdom who are as dodgy as puck, what are the most likely ways they implode?
ChatGPT says: Alliance Theory says gurus do not implode because they are wrong. They implode because they become liabilities to the coalition that once protected them. Here are the most common failure modes. These recur with boring regularity. Sex and … Continue reading
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Are there any attention whore gurus selling wisdom who aren’t as dodgy as puck?
ChatGPT says: Yes. But only a few, and only if you apply a strict filter. Alliance Theory helps explain why. Outside science and health, most “wisdom sellers” drift into dodginess because attention rewards certainty, moral clarity, and insider status. The … Continue reading
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Decoding Decoding The Gurus
ChatGPT says: Alliance Theory reads Decoding the Gurus as an alliance-maintenance project rather than a neutral epistemic one. At a high level, the podcast’s function is to police a boundary between “legitimate knowledge brokers” and “illegitimate charisma entrepreneurs.” It is … Continue reading
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