Bret Weinstein

In May 2002 he and Deborah Ciszek, listing the University of MichiganUniversity of MichiganThe University of Michigan is a university founded in Detroit in 1817 that moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1837; it is governed by a statewide-elected Board of Regents and also has campuses in Dearborn and Flint.Open the full entry Museum of Zoology as their affiliation, published a paper in Experimental Gerontology proposing an evolved telomere trade-off between tumor suppression and tissue repair; it argued that breeding protocols had greatly elongated the telomeres of laboratory mice, so safety tests using them likely overestimate cancer risks and underestimate tissue damage.⁠[1]

He had earlier opposed a recommendation by the college’s Equity and Inclusion Council to require an “equity justification/explanation” for all faculty hires. The Day of Absence traditionally had minority students and faculty meet off campus; that year white people were instead asked to voluntarily stay away, which he opposed.⁠[2]

Organizer Rashida Love said the change was a show of solidarity with students who felt increasingly unwelcome on campus; he said he supported people choosing to absent themselves to make a point but was absolutely opposed to absenting somebody else.⁠[3]

In an email to Love he called asking another group to go away “a show of force and an act of oppression in and of itself”; Love replied that the event was voluntary and invited him to talk in person.⁠[4]

In congressional testimony he recalled that some 50 students he had never met disrupted his class, accusing him of racism and demanding his resignation; he saw it as payback for his opposing an “equity” proposal a year earlier.⁠[5]

Afterward, students and staff received a flood of threatening emails; some colleagues said his comments on national media endangered people of color on campus, while he called on followers to stop doxxing those who protested against him.⁠[4]

On Fox News he said the protesting students imagined he was a racist teaching racism in the classroom. President George Bridges issued a statement saying that discrimination of any form is not tolerated on campus and that free speech must be encouraged, and that a few community members were using media to malign those with whom they disagree.⁠[6]

He said the college police chief told him it was not safe for him to be on campus, and on May 25 he held his class in a downtown Olympia park. The college said the demonstrations of May 23 and 24 were nonviolent and stressed that white students have never been required to leave campus for Day of Absence.⁠[7]

On June 1, 2017, after a caller to the Thurston County Communications Center claimed to be armed and on the way to campus, Evergreen closed; it stayed shut for three consecutive weekdays while police reviewed new external threat information, and reopened on the afternoon of June 5.⁠[8]

In July 2017 he and his wife, Heather Heying, also a biology professor at the college, filed a $3.85 million tort claim alleging it had failed to protect employees from threats of physical violence and verbal hostility; in September the college agreed to pay $500,000 to settle, and the couple resigned; the college said it admitted no liability but settled in its best interest.⁠[9]

The college also rejected the claim’s allegations, saying the Day of Absence/Day of Presence activities were not discriminatory and that it had taken reasonable steps to de-escalate conflict and keep the campus safe.⁠[2]

On May 22, 2018, listed as “Professor In-Exile,” Evergreen State College, he testified at a joint hearing of two House Oversight subcommittees on challenges to free speech on college campuses.⁠[10]

In his written testimony he said what he had seen functions more like a “cult” than a conspiracy.⁠[5]

He started the DarkHorse Podcast in 2019; in March 2020 he and Heather Heying began The Evolutionary Lens, a weekly livestream within it. The two describe themselves as politically liberal former college professors and evolutionary biologists.⁠[11]

On June 8, 2020, the DarkHorse Podcast released an episode in which he and Yuri Deigin discussed the evidence for the SARS-CoV-2 lab-leak hypothesis.⁠[12]

In an essay for UnHerd he argued that, on the actual evidence, a lab leak was the most compelling hypothesis for the origin of SARS-CoV-2, and that if true it would call for curtailing research that enhances pathogens.⁠[13]

In the essay he recalled that as a graduate student he spent years studying tropical bats in Central America, handling hundreds of animals without protective gear.⁠[13]

A declassified report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released in June 2023 said all agencies considered both natural and laboratory-associated origins plausible but were divided: the National Intelligence Council and four agencies leaned toward natural exposure, the Energy Department and FBI toward a lab incident, and the CIA and another agency could not determine the origin.⁠[14]

On June 13, 2021, the DarkHorse Podcast Clips channel posted an excerpt of his conversation with Robert Malone and Steve Kirsch in which he said the vaccines’ spike protein “is very dangerous, it’s cytotoxic.” The FDA said there is no scientific data indicating that the spike protein in mRNA vaccines is toxic or lingers at toxic levels, and vaccine experts said they knew of no major dangers from it.⁠[15]

He appeared on episode 194 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, whose description calls him an evolutionary biologist, author and co-host of the DarkHorse Podcast; topics included the lab-leak hypothesis, censorship, vaccines, the paper on mice with long telomeres, Eric WeinsteinEric WeinsteinEric Weinstein is an American mathematician, investor and podcast host with a Harvard PhD in mathematics who has served as managing director of Thiel Capital and hosted the podcast The Portal; his proposed physics unification theory, Geometric Unity, and his coinage “Intellectual Dark Web” have both drawn wide discussion and controversy.Open the full entry and monogamy.⁠[16]

He and Heather Heying repeatedly claimed on their podcast that the antiparasitic drug ivermectin could prevent or treat COVID-19. YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry confirmed it had demonetized his main channel and DarkHorse Podcast Clips, pointing to its policy against content recommending drugs such as ivermectin to treat or prevent COVID-19 contrary to health authorities’ guidance; he called the decision an assault on science.⁠[17]

Writing in Science-Based Medicine, emergency medicine associate professor William F. Paolo argued that his claims that ivermectin was about 86 percent effective rested on a misreading of low-quality meta-analyses.⁠[18]

The TOGETHER randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of outpatients in Brazil, published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2022, found that ivermectin did not lower the rate of hospital admission or prolonged emergency observation among COVID-19 patients.⁠[19]

In 2021 Portfolio published A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century, the 320-page book he co-wrote with Heather Heying, which argues that modern “hyper-novelty” outstrips what humans evolved to manage. A Willamette Week review praised the authors’ skill at explaining biology and evolution but criticized the book’s treatment of child-rearing and risk for ignoring structural constraints such as poverty.⁠[20]

In a Tucker Carlson interview released on January 5, 2024, he said he had seen a credible estimate of about 17 million deaths globally from the vaccines, a figure from a report by Denis Rancourt, and claimed a World Health Organization pandemic accord aimed to eliminate personal and national sovereignty. FactCheck.org noted the report was not peer-reviewed and was methodologically flawed, that COVID-19 vaccines have saved millions of lives, and that the accord would not affect national sovereignty.⁠[21]

As of October 2026 the DarkHorse Podcast he hosts with Heather Heying had reached its 349th Evolutionary Lens livestream and is distributed on platforms including SpotifySpotifySpotify is an audio streaming subscription service offering on-demand music, podcasts, and audiobooks through a free ad-supported service and a paid Premium subscription. Its parent company, Spotify Technology S.A., is incorporated in Luxembourg, has its principal operations in Stockholm, Sweden, and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker SPOT). It helped move the recorded-music business from buying and owning music to on-demand streaming and is one of the largest audio streaming subscription services by users.Open the full entry, YouTube and Rumble.⁠[22]

His website says he earned his PhD at the University of Michigan and worked for two decades in evolutionary biology, including on the evolution of cancer and senescence and the adaptive significance of moral self-sacrifice.⁠[23]

Personal website: Public link: https://bretweinstein.net/ (opens in a new window)⁠[16]

X: Public account: https://x.com/BretWeinstein (opens in a new window)⁠[16]

YouTube: Public channel: https://www.youtube.com/BretWeinsteinDarkHorse (opens in a new window)⁠[16]