Most of Murphy's discourse around "how to be an intellectual" focuses on how to support yourself financially and build an audience or platform while doing work

Most of Murphy's discourse around "how to be an intellectual" focuses on how to support yourself financially and build an audience or platform while doing work that traditionally relied on support from academic institutions, not "how to be smart" or anything like that. Most of Murphy's actual intellectual work seems slapshod, but his efforts to figure out how to essentially do academic work outside of academia are interesting and seem to be in good faith. I don't get the same vibe from his as I get from alt-light or alt-right "Anti-academics". He doesn't spend an inordinate amount of time lambasting colleges for restricting free speech or supporting Marxists or any of the other standard talking points.