Categories
podcast

The charlatan Chase Hughes featured on shows “Diary of a CEO,” Patrick Bet-David, others

The fraud Chase Hughes, whose major lies and unethical behaviors I’ve examined in past episodes (first episode and its text summary) continues to succeed in getting popular podcasts with large audiences to interview and promote him. Chase recently appeared on the podcast The Diary of a CEO with host Steven Bartlett; he also appeared on Patrick Bet-David’s podcast (PBD podcast). He’s also been on Dr. Phil’s show, and on Leon Hendrix’s podcast DRVN. I examine some clips from Chase’s appearances on two of these shows, as a public service announcement to the millions of people who might be at risk of becoming Chase Hughes’ fans. I recap some of the absurd claims Chase has made. I talk about why I think these podcasts keep interviewing him, and what it tells us about the internet information ecosystem. I examine an early podcast interview where the host told me for Chase’s bio he just wrote what Chase said and didn’t vet it, which is what many of these podcasts have done. More podcast appearances; more seeming legitimacy.

Episode links:

Resources related to this episode:

TRANSCRIPT 

Note: This transcript is rough; it doesn’t include various off-the-cuff discussions I went into, but contains the main points. 

This is the People Who Read People podcast, with me, Zach Elwood. This is a podcast about psychology and behavior; about understanding the things people say and do. You can learn more about it behavior-podcast.com. 

This is a PSA about Chase Hughes, because he’s continued being successful getting on popular podcasts despite his many, many lies and unethical behaviors. If you learned about Chase Hughes through the popular podcasts Diary of a CEO or Patrick Bet David’s podcast, or somewhere else, you should know that Chase Hughes is a fraud, a serial liar; someone who cannot be trusted. 

I do not use these words lightly at all; I use those words knowing that if I used them wrongly I might be sued by Chase for defamation. But it is just quite obvious that Chase Hughes has lied about all manner of things in his past, in ways that rise to the pathological and maybe even criminal – depending on if people who paid him under false pretenses wanted to pursue legal action. I call Chase a serial liar and a fraud because I know that if it ever came to a trial, I know any jury or judge looking at all this stuff, the evidence I’ve presented and also the many pieces of evidence that would be waiting to be presented — for example, from people who know and who have worked with Chase personally who have contacted me to tell me assorted details about his life – I know that any reasonable and fair person in a legal setting would come to the conclusion “yes, you are right to call Chase Hughes a serial liar and a fraud.” For that reason I’m confident that Chase will never sue me, nor would he be likely to even talk publicly about the things I’ve discussed here because they are so incredibly damning to him and he knows that. Same reason why his Behavior Panel friends will avoid these things as much as they are able. I mean, a lot of people have skeletons in their closet; Chase’s closet is like an industrial sized mausoleum. 

This is why Chase will never be on a mainstream serious program that requires any real vetting; he will be restrained to these various podcasts which, although they may be popular, obviously don’t much care about who their guests are and that seem to not give a shit about the stuff they put in front of their audience. 

To give you an example of what I mean when I say people are being duped in bad ways: someone contacted me thanking me for my first video on Chase Hughes because they had been drawn into Chase’s web and were considering paying Chase $20,000 for his so-called “graduate course.” I’ve been told 

Every few days I get emails from people thanking me for my work on this because they were starting to go down the Chase Hughes rabbithole. One person recently wrote me that they were worried about their child, who’d been drawn into Chase’s web alongside other magical thinking stuff, like the Law of Attraction, and despite not having much money their kid was considering spending a large amount for one of Chase’s products. 

Just to say: there is ongoing, real world harm being done so this is why I will keep doing this stuff. Maybe some of the people who pay Chase Hughes large sums of money are aware of the things I’ve brought to light, but I would hazard that at least some of them are not and would be surprised to know some of these things. 

Trust me when I say: I have much more interesting things I’d rather be working on. Probably much more important things, considering I have a lot of projects I’m trying to get to in the political polarization space. Even for the podcast, I have other things I want to focus on; I have a long list of guest and topics ideas. I’m honestly pretty frustrated that no one else has covered this and things have gotten this far. It shouldn’t have come to me to do this stuff. But that’s where we’re at; that’s the current state of the online content and information ecosystem, basically. So until some news outlet or someone with a large audience covers this Chase Hughes thing, and I think they will eventually, I’ll keep doing this; if you know of a show or journalist who might be interested in the fact that a fraud keeps getting attention from people like Dr. Phil and these popular podcasts, have them reach out; or just encourage them to cover it. I don’t want to be covering this but I feel like someone needs to; please, someone else help me out here. Chase isn’t real-world famous and is just internet famous but I think it’s still an interesting and newsworthy story, and may continue to get weirder and more interesting. 

If you want to learn more about Chase’s lies, or if you’re maybe skeptical about my claims, go check out the investigation I did into Chase’s past; https://behavior-podcast.com/debunking-chase-hughes-examining-the-bullshit-of-the-self-titled-1-expert-in-behavior-influence/ you can find a video about that on youtube but that’s a rather long video that goes into detail about the ways that I investigated him; my goal was to help people do their own research when they suspect they’ve run into a charlatan. If you want the summary, see the first episode about Chase on my website and it has a written summary. 

But long story short, to see the absurdity of it in a nutshell, Chase went from writing a childish pick-up artist book in 2007; here’s his pic and bio from his pick-up artist book – looks like he was doing some big things in the military at that time, don’t you think?  To then hawking his own shady and bullshit vitamin supplements online in 2008, making all sorts of grand claims about how they were used by all branches of the military and such. And then only five years after that he set up his website where he claimed to be a behavior expert. https://web.archive.org/web/20120923030135/http://www.chasehughes.com/lesson-outlines.html where he could teach you all sorts of things, like

Top mistakes Law Enforcement Officers Make 

Advanced Detection of Microexpressions

Foundation of Non-Verbal Behavior 

Absolute Importance of Pupillary Dilation and Nostrils

Setting up Human Behavior Baselines

Class Exercise to Commit Knowledge to Memory

Reading Body Parts 

And so on. 

Only two years after that, he claimed to be an internationally renowned expert in behavior analysis, in jury consulting, in all sorts of things. https://web.archive.org/web/20141013072122/http://www.chasehughes.com/bio.html  He writes that he:

has been involved with nonverbal research and innovation for nearly 12 years. The author of three books and reference volumes and over 13 articles covering topics from cult brainwashing to the use of clandestine hypnosis techniques in interrogations. 

Currently on active duty in the United States Navy; he has been teaching, researching and coaching in body language, nonverbal communication and deception detection during his entire career. His published works on cult victim deprogramming and neurology-based hypnosis have changed the way many forensic and psychiatric practitioners conduct business. 

Chase now lives in Little Creek, Virginia and has worked with  training and coaching interrogators, HR teams and law enforcement. His behavioral analysis of political debates and televised crime testimonies have become the new benchmark for over 29 United States media outlets. 

The Weaponized Communication Manual has gained a lot of media attention. The new manual, to be released in early 2015, contains the most advanced and comprehensive training and reference system in the world. The book focuses on the use of advanced psychology tactics, interrogation methods, profiling and exploiting human weakness and using neurology-based hypnosis to engineer human behavior.

As a recognized jury consultant, Chase has become a specialist in training legal teams to recognize and analyze body signals; from the way a shoe is laced to the inadvertent parting of the lips during questioning. 

You get the idea. He made all these grandiose claims despite nothing on the internet about Chase at that time or for almost all of the 2010s. Again, it doesn’t take advanced research experience or knowledge to see the patterns of immense deception and exaggerations in Chase’s life. The only really surprising thing about it is how many people he’s gotten to just go along with this stuff and turn a blind eye to it. The irony is that the Behavior Panel itself, which claims to help people spot deception and avoid narcissists and antisocial personalities and such, they’ve been instrumental in helping promote Chase’s bullshit and lies to many, many people. I believe they themselves were taken off guard by all this and now can’t easily turn back. 

Again, the main point of me doing this video is to raise awareness. If you’ve watched this video thus far, I’ve already done my job as you are I think much less likely to pay Chase Hughes money under false pretenses – and I hope you also may be more skeptical of pretty much anyline you see online, because Chase is a good example of what you can accomplish if you have no qualms about lying in order to quote “succeed” – and he’s also a good example of how little these popular shows seem to care about vetting guests. If Chase had approached me about doing an interview before I knew him, I would have taken five minutes and came to the conclusion that he was full of shit; there are just so many obvious red flags for anyone who cares to do a simple vetting. But so much of this boils down to perceptions; getting on a smaller podcast leads to getting on a medium-sized podcast; getting on a medium-sized podcast leads to getting on a larger podcast, and so on. Some of these popular podcast creators really do think only as far “Hey, another podcast that seems legit said he was legit; all these people interviewing him can’t be wrong, can they?” But yes, many people can be wrong; the simple fact is that people aren’t good at *** dealing with people who lie as much as Chase. Who lie at such an extreme and pathological level; we trust too much. And then people are afraid to call him out, even when they see these things, because they thnk “Maybe I’m missing something; all these big podcasts are having him on, right? He’s on the popular Behavior Panel show, right? Maybe I’m missing something.” The only thing you’re missing is how easy it is to fool people. 

So let’s look at Chase’s appearances on these shows. 

He was on the Diary of a CEO podcast a few weeks ago. I wasn’t familiar with this one but apparently it’s one of the more popular ones. This one has 1.4 million views and was released 3 weeks ago. And you have to remember; that’s just youtube; I would guess across all platforms and such there are at least another million views for this, probably more. Steven Bartlett, the host of this podcast, is really helping Chase find new fans. Steven Bartlett is a huge promoter of Chase Hughes, let the record show. 

Let’s watch a little of the intro where Steven asks Chase about his credentials. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvjR9GM2kX8 4:17

Again, there is no evidence that Chase Hughes has done anything impressive from a psychological perspective as part of his work in the military. From what people who know Chase have told me, he worked mainly on ships; he ended up being a Quarter Master, which is a military officer who manages logistics, supplies, and equipment. 

I’d ask anyone to present me evidence that Chase has done any training for any large military branch or department. I don’t think that can be done. Now I think it’s possible that Chase’s success in the last few years with the Behavior Panel and his various podcast interviews, may have led to some success in these areas; have given him experiences that he can then speak subjectively and deceptively about to imply that those things had some connection with his time in the military. 

For example, I noticed that this National Maritime Law Enforcement Academy (NMLEA) place shared some work by Chase Hughes on their site a while back. https://www.nmlea.org/post/2018/03/27/tactical-behavior-science-skills-changing-the-law-enforcement-landscape-and-preventing-vi In 2018, Chase and a guy named Mark Dupont https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrdupont/,  who is the Executive Director of NMLEA, apparently collaborated on an article. My guess is that Chase persuaded some people there that he was legit, or maybe he had a friend there, and they went along with him helping them. My guess is that they now regret this; when I emailed Mark directly and the organization asking about the nature of Chase’s involvement and pointing them to his many lies, they didn’t reply. 

I also think it’s possible some individuals in the military approach him for personal coaching and such. That would be likely actually, given Chase’s fame. That would then give Chase the ability to say “I’ve trained Navy SEALs” and this kind of thing.

This is just to say: Chase has become popular in the last few years; things actually come up now when you google his name, unlike in the many years prior! He’s got SEO! His recent upswing in fame means he can present a surface level case that he’s legitimate; he has clients; he has done trainings! But he will use ambiguous and vague language to obscure that such things have nothing to do with his military service. Another way to put this is that I would bet a large sum of money that Chase has never done anything impressive in terms of largescale training on psychological or psy-ops or brainwashing or interrogation or anything related to such things – of a major government department or office, as I think any serious department would vet him. This has been what people who know Chase personally and people who’ve worked with him, have told me, and it is what seems to be the case based on perusing online evidence. 

Again, Chase has many podcast interviews but he doesn’t even have a Wikipedia. Nor would he be able to have a Wikipedia because it would just be references to podcast interviews; having a Wikipedia would be the last thing Chase wants. Actually, if anyone watching this wants to create a wikipedia for this guy and reference my work, I think you’d be doing the world a service. It would be a harm-reducing contribution. 

We don’t need to watch more of the Diary of a CEO video; you get the idea. Once you understand that Chase has no compunction lying and using vague language about all sorts of things, a lot of it is just that. 

Let’s watch a couple clips from this Patrick Bet David podcast, aka the PBD podcast. This is another podcast that is popular that I’d never heard of. 

Note the paranoid approach to the title: “The Government Manipulates YOU!” – Chase Hughes UNCOVERS CIA Tactics & PSYOPs Truths”

This video has more than 350,000 views, but this is just one of many videos this podcast has released on Chase and it’s just one platform. They released a slew of shorter clips on specific topics, really doing their best to promote Chase. Patrick Bet David is a huge promoter of Chase Hughes, let the record show. This one 20 minute segment on Chase’s supposed ability to spot psychopaths instantly has 1.2 million views (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzIlhZbHL38). Again, this podcast was released just a week ago. 

The description here of Patrick’s video reads “Chase Hughes, a world-renowned expert in behavioral profiling and military intelligence.” Again, no, there is no evidence for that other than claiming to be so and getting other people to believe it is so. All these podcast descriptions say something different about Chase, too, kind of funny; it’s like a game of telephone. 

This kind of thing helps explain why people like having Chase Hughes on. Words like ‘psy ops’ and ‘government’ and ‘manipulate’ and ‘interrogation’ and ‘CIA’ and ‘brainwashing’ and ‘psycopath’ these kinds of things are exciting; people love drama, they love dirty underhanded deeds; they love conspiracy-minded thinking; these things get clicks; the algorithm treats them nicely I think. This helps explain why people like Steven Bartlett and Patrick Bet David have some incentives to not ask questions about people like Chase; he’s selling something exciting, something that will get clicks; and he’s been on other shows. There is just such an insatiable demand for constant content that will get clicks; this is part of the problem of the media system at large, and how it can derange and divide us. We need to fill space, so what kind of half-baked sensationalist, emotional bullshit are we going to put out there? 

Let’s watch a couple minutes. I’ve seen like the first minute but after that this is the first time I’m watching it. We’ll just watch a little. 

[PLAY VIDEO]

Starts out with a bang: “We’re always involved in psy-ops, all the time. MK Ultra was the beginning of a psychological arms race.” Just really leading with the highest-bullshit. Again, what I’m telling you is that Chase is in no position to tell you about psy-ops; he’s in no position to know if the government is using psy-ops or not; he will just imply that he has that experience. I’ve actually been trying to find someone to come on to the show who has actual knowledge of psy-ops and MK Ultra stuff; I’ve been in contact with people who’ve worked in those areas privately who know Chase is full of shit on such things but it’s just a matter of not having the bandwidth, or not wanting to get involved in the drama. But just to say: there’s a reason you won’t find people with actual military intelligence credentials talking the way Chase talks. I’ll talk more about highly paranoid views about psy-ops and such a little later. 

Note on Psychopath: This gets into why some of this behavior bullshit that Chase and others spread can be so bad in real world terms: I see so many people using halfbaked and ambiguous concepts they’ve learned on the Behavior Panel and other places to make really bad, stupid reads of people. When I looked at the Behavior Panel fan group, it was full of people hating on various celebrities and politicians based on some random ambiguous and in my opinion meaningless piece of behavior. But that’s what all this bullshit information about behavior and psychology does: the high confidence bullshit like Chase peddles in results in many people believing “I can do that!” and believing they can take minor, meaningless, high variance behaviors and use those to reach firm deductions, so they’re just using bad information and noise to bolster their prejudices and biases, while thinking they’re smart. 

Just a heads up: when you see people claiming they can teach you to do anything quickly and easily, whether it’s reading signs of a psychopath or whatever it is, making money easily; your alarm bells should go up. 

Jury consultant: Is Chase a trial consultant? He’s been claiming he was a “recognized jury consultant” since at least 2014. I know a pretty well known jury consultant and I sent her a message asking her what she thought about Chase’s claims. She wrote me back:

That’s bizarre.  I’ve never heard of the guy.  There’s no state licensing or regulatory body for trial consultants – anyone can call themselves one.  I guess the only way to debunk it would be to ask what cases he worked on, and then check with the lawyers who handled the matter.   He definitely isn’t “well respected” in the field.  The American Society of Trial Consultants (ASTC) is the biggest professional organization for our field and everyone who is anyone is involved.  I don’t see that he’s a member.

Again, stay skeptical, folks. Anyone can claim to be anything. And often, if they claim it long enough, people will start to believe it. If you’ve hired Chase Hughes as a jury consultant, you may be entitled to compensation. Contact the law offices of Zachary Elwood: I’ve been a respected prosecutor since 2012: the amazing thing is I’ve never lost a case! Not many people can say that.  

Maybe an interesting aside, I was reaching out to some of the podcasts Chase appeared on several years ago, when he was still quite unknown. Basically these were the podcasts that Chase could then use to bolster perceptions that he was an expert. There’s a podcast called Tactical Behavioral Science, hosted by Steve Kuhn. This was an early example of someone just trusting that Chase was an expert. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTS8VBax6PM The description for that video reads in part: 

“The leading military and intelligence behavior expert with 20 years of creating the most advanced behavior skills courses and tactics available worldwide: Chase Hughes is a leading behavior expert in the United States and the #1 bestselling author of two books on tactical behavior skills. He is the author of the worldwide #1 bestselling book on advanced persuasion, influence and behavior profiling. Chase teaches elite groups, government agencies, and police in behavior science skills including behavior profiling, nonverbal analysis, deception detection, interrogation, and advanced behavioral investigation. His Tactical Behavior Science course is a critical, life-saving course designed for law enforcement, and his Human Tradecraft course is specifically designed for intelligence operations personnel who depend heavily on serious human behavior skills. Chase developed the groundbreaking, world-first interrogation behavior analysis tool and the T.F.C.A. cycle that revolutionized law enforcement training in the U.S. He is also the creator of the Pre-Violence Indicators Index, designed to alert personnel to pre-attack behaviors and save lives.”

When I emailed Steve about this and showed him my findings about Chase’s many lies, he wrote me back the following:

I met Chase while he was in the military, I advised him on marketing and getting himself out there and ge attributed his Entrepreneur magazine cover to my advisory.

I never met him personally and did all of our sessions on zoom.

I took his word at face value and cannot confirm nor refute any claims.

That opened up another interesting thing. What Entrepreneur magazine cover was he talking about? This was a reference to a program that Entrepreneur magazine once had called Oracles, where they would write things that seemed like real articles but that were paid and promotional. Here’s Chase’s from 2019: 

https://www.entrepreneur.com/leadership/behavior-science-expert-chase-hughes-trains-real-world/342717. This is just one of many things Chase did to make it seem, at a quick google search, that he had legitimate and impressive credentials. I go into detail on more of those things in the first video. There are plenty of pay to be featured websites, basically.   

In 2019, Chase posted this image to his Facebook https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2175292245904349&id=666955706738018&set=a.667786449988277&locale=sv_SE. It’s not clear to me if that is a graphic Entrepreneur made or something Chase made, but long story short, there is no Entrepreneur magazine cover story with Chase Hughes, as Steve Kuhn seemed to think.  

I think this gets to the heart of so much of this stuff. People are just trusting. The psychology researcher Tim Levine has a theory called Truth Default Theory and writes about deception and how we fall for deception. We just assume people are telling the truth, for the most part; and this is a pretty good approach in most cases. It mainly fails when we run into people like Chase who tell so many lies and when our reasons to doubt them aren’t tripped. We trust that a big podcast like Diary of a CEO would do some vetting; we trust that they wouldn’t have on a serial liar onto their show. I interviewed him about this a couple years ago; it was one of the more interesting and practically useful episodes I think I’ve done. If you’re interested in deception and in understanding behavior, I think you’d like it. https://behavior-podcast.com/questioning-if-body-language-is-useful-for-detecting-lies-with-tim-levine/

Let’s get back to Patrick Bet David’s video, the one titled “”The Government Manipulates YOU!” – Chase Hughes UNCOVERS CIA Tactics & PSYOPs Truths.” This is aligning with the conspiracy-minded thinking that Chase spread recently; where he spread the idea that the New Jersey drones were maybe a government psy-op, with the government purposefully fucking with us for some mysterious, creepy reason. That video has gotten about 3 million views on youtube at this point https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTpQq1a9zhI. In that video, Chase used his pretend credentials to drum up fear, as he does in this Patrick Bet David video. He references all sorts of things from the past to create this fear; he references old stupid plots hatched by people during MK Ultra times; covert op ideas that had reached a peak of absurdity in the highly emotional Cold War times after WW 2. Nevermind that the things Chase brings up don’t seem to have any bearing on anything recently. 

Nevermind that Chase can’t point to anything recently that would resemble anything like a government trying to fuck with its citizens in such a silly way. It’s part of Chase’s brand to make you think extremely crazy and creepy and dark things are happening all around us; if he can make you believe that, his claims about all the amazing and dark and weird things he’s done will seem more credible to you.  

I’d say: if you’re curious about some of the MK Ultra things Chase likes to exaggerate and make seem like big amazing deals, go read a respected book on MK Ultra. The Search for the Manchurian Candidate. https://www.amazon.com/Search-Manchurian-Candidate-Behavioral-Sciences/dp/0393307948. Don’t listen to Chase about it. The truth is, similar to the UFO world, there are just so many people willing to exaggerate about what’s possible when it comes to hypnotizing people, or brainwashing and influencing people, or military psy-ops or other kinds of scary stuff. 

You should stay skeptical, for your own mental wellbeing and also because these are things that can distort your view of the world. If you’d like to read something I wrote for my book on political polarization on the topic of conspiracy theories, and how unlikely big hidden plots are, check out https://www.american-anger.com/post/conspiracy-theories. I think it’s important to be skeptical about such things and to view them realistically, because there are many paranoid, overly pessimistic narratives on the left and right, across political beliefs, and these things then can amplify our fear of each other and hatred of each other in ways that are completely unreasonable and make all sorts of things worse. Too many people are just way too paranoid about too many things lately; you owe it to yourself to question if you’re falling pray to overly pessimistic and paranoid thinking. You’re the only one who can enquire about such things and reach that conclusion; I’m just proposing that it’s good to ask if you’re maybe letting your biases and fears and things you think are true influence what you believe, which then feeds back in to support the things you already believe, in a self-reinforcing cycle. Try to apply Occam’s Razor; often the simplest explanations will make the most sense and will suffice. If you don’t have good reason to believe something, don’t believe it, even if you think it could be true, or if you think “that makes sense that would be true.” So many people are using their various angers and suspicions of various sorts to justify believing in all sorts of things; but I’m just suggesting that your emotions and fears can make you prone to believing bullshit, and even believing stuff that’s self-destructive to you and your relationships and ability to succeed in the world. The lower your bar gets for believing and indulging and sharing such information and beliefs, the worse off you’ll be. I’m just trying to help you and to try to work against the people like Chase Hughes who want to indulge your temptations to filter for pessimistic and dark and paranoid interpretations; again, Chase Hughes is not an expert; you should not listen to him. 

A common objection I get from Chase Hughes fans who write me goes basically like: But I’ve learned a lot from Chase; he shares some good information. If you’d like a longer rebuttal to that, check out my video about Chase Hughes and NLP, which goes into why so many people will leave good reviews for Chase and other people who share bad information and are exploitative. https://behavior-podcast.com/chase-hughes-and-how-he-put-a-military-top-secret-spin-on-nlp-hypnosis-seminar-ideas/ 

But long story short: Yes, Chase shares some good information. Anyone can read Wikipedia and share some interesting tidbits; Chase talks about the Milgram Experiment in that talk with Patrick Bet David; but the things he shared anyone could share after reading a bit about the experiment. The truth is that Charles Manson could give you some interesting tidbits and you’d learned some stuff. If Charles Manson hosted a podcast, we could learn a lot from him. Please on’t take that last sentence out of context, by the way. What I’m saying is that learning stuff from people is a really low bar. The much more important question is what completely bad and misleading and even harmful information might you be consuming from that person? Will you be able to spot the bad information and tell where the good information ends and the bad, harmful information begins? For someone like Chase who has told so many lies and done so many unethical things, the important question is: why would you even want to listen to someone like that? Go read a respected resource; or even just read Wikipedia; the standards for truth are clearly much higher on Wikipedia than they are in Chase’s brain. 

The other important question is: Will you be able to resist the exploitation when it comes? Will you be able to spot the exploitation? When Charles Manson is teaching you about MK Ultra and you’re learning a lot, and he says “well, sign up for my free course to learn a little more” will you be able to resist entering the funnel? Will you know when the funnel gets weird and dangerous? Or maybe just very expensive considering the weak and bad information you’ll be getting. 

No matter how educational Charles Manson’s podcast may be, there’s a chance he may have an ulterior motive. 

Now to be clear, I’m not saying Chase Hughes is like Charles Manson; I don’t know of anyone in his inner circle Chase has instructed to kill, for one thing. I’m just making a point about learning stuff being a completely trivial and low bar. I’m saying that it’s important to have a sense that where you get your information from is at least trying to respect you and respect the truth. Everyone makes mistakes, but few people tell massive lies about their experiences and credentials. 

Those are the important questions. 

Another objection I get from Chase Hughes’ fans or people who really want to believe his psy-ops claims because it aligns with their fears and views: they will say “Who are you? What’s your credentials?” My credentials aren’t important. I’m not the one making extraordinary claims about my expertise and and about what’s going on in the world. I’m the one just showing you why you need to ask more questions and be more skeptical. I’m just the one doing some very basic research that anyone could do to show you why you shouldn’t trust Chase Hughes and why you should in general avoid trusting people who make extraordinary, amazing claims. I’m the one arguing for more skepticism and doubt; my credentials aren’t important.

If I’ve gotten you to be a bit more skeptical about smooth talking people who make exceptional claims like Chase, I’ve done you a service, regardless if you agree with all my stances or not.  

All right, good luck out there. If Joe Rogan or Oprah Winfrey or the Today Show interviews Chase, I guess I’ll make another one of these but hopefully Chase has hit the peak of his scam curve and it starts trending a little downhill from here on out. 

This has been the People Who Read People podcast with me, Zach Elwood. Thanks for listening.