2.75M Q&A - Women’s Value, Loneliness & Bernie Sanders

what's happening people welcome back to the show it is a 2.75 million subscriber Q&A episode and I'm in a brand new studio uh for the people that are listening you not can be able to see it but this is my new studio finally finished in all its glory and I think it looks absolutely beautiful I can show you here look at this it's a London telephone box and a London Bridge here and uh see and hear and speak no evil statues and I've got a a thinking man thinking and a guy Atlas holding up the world and little dinosaur skull a secret little Easter egg of a hand uh climbing up and I love it I love the colors I think it looks it's perfect it's our brand it's the teal it's the orange the lighting's amazing so yeah my Director of Photography made me a a present for 2.75 million subscribers anyway I asked the questions on Twitter and Instagram and YouTube and there were lots so let's get into it Jim Cooper I love your podcast Chris I'm sure you're not misogynistic but the statement women's value to the world in many ways lies in their beauty and youth comes across quite sexist and reductive to me yes swing and a miss by me there using some imprecise language around a sensitive topic I think the response here was a bit surprising because I must have brought up this exact cliche in 30 or 50 videos in the past that men have historically been valued for their ability to provide status and resources while historically women have had a premium placed on their age in their looks I've never said that it's optimal or desirable but I would say that it's pretty reasonable as a historical assessment of how Society has judged men and women I mean even now in the modern world there's entire Industries dedicated to serving these cliches cosmetic surgery and makeup and hair extensions and apps that brush your wrinkles away are all playing into this need for beautification and youth the same as luxury car rental garages and online trading courses and pickup artist body language masterminds for men to enhance status and resources and the point that I was trying to make was about male body image issues that Society has typically emphasized the importance of beauty and youth in women for men stereotypically it's been less important and yet men are on track to overtake women in rates of body dysmorphia within a few decades I think it's an interesting pivot that men historically haven't been valued as much for their looks and that now seems to be changing and just because I talk about something doesn't mean that I support it analysis is not justification what I wanted to do was identify those previous stereotypes and then highlight this new world in contrast and it seems like that came across as me reinforcing the stereotype is legitimate and I get the sense that this is one of the problems with the audience growing so quickly because I think that I can just use imprecise throwaway shorthand references to tons of previous conversations like I used to when the show was smaller and everyone would understand my broader point but the show is probably half a million people bigger than the last time that this point got brought up so a ton of viewers have no context but then if I go through an in-depth reintroduction of each reference every time that I bring it up that's going to get clunky and repetitive and arduous and patronize everyone like you never learn anything so yeah I'm going to have to work on that hopefully that clears everything up and glad to hear that I'm not a misogynist shotgun orphan congrats on all your well-deserved success I discovered your pod in 2021 and you've quickly become my favorite person to listen to thank you when are we getting t-shirts and other merch please take my money yeah uh I've been wearing this three-eyed skull t-shirt thing on some training Vlogs and we've got one with modern wisdom across the front uh I think we made maybe 20 of those and uh it was just for me and Dean and a couple of the guys behind the scenes um I would consider doing it but I know I'm not I'm not a particularly good sort of seller of my own stuff uh I need to work on that but but soon I guess if I can find a way to do it without detracting from the million other things that I've got to do uh but it's nice to know that you like the that you like the designs they're pretty cool I really like them Sam Slytherin speaking as a lifelong Texan I think you can and should start saying Yol in which case you just drop the I but that wasn't a question okay will Chris Williamson start saying Yol I'm worried that Y is the nword for texting people and me saying it as yall is kind of like me hard aring my way through cultural appropriation so uh we'll see I guess um I know that you all was actually super popular with the lgbtq community because y all means all it was a gender neutral way to say you guys uh which is kind of interesting I've been here two and a half years can I say y'all maybe this is part of some deep state scop to get me cancelled by Texans I don't know I'm like really weaving through them today this is like a anyway it's a spicy one I'll consider you all I'll if the rest of Texas agrees Lucas I'm currently watching your Olympia prep Vlog with Chris what's going on with the autoimmune stuff I hope everything is going well yeah I kept this quiet I have kept this quiet all year um I've been fighting with some health stuff I think I've hinted at it a little bit and to be honest it's kind of it's coming out of me um without me meaning to uh I talk to friends and it's the thing that's on my mind it's been rough it's been like by far the hardest year that I've had and then I've been trying to keep the show on top of it and I'm seeing a lot of threat and anxiety and uh my resilience is lower pretty much everywhere um so I think I'm going to do a sort of fully dedicated episode or maybe even a series of episodes to talking about the stuff that I've been going through got disbiosis uh like par anti parasitic treatments mold environmental molds uh EBV like a pretty big list of things that apparently are not super uncommon for immigrants that first moved to America because the environment and the food and a lot of the other stuff is unfamiliar and then maybe get some Specialists on because it's a really big deal and the brain fog and the mood and the energy has been uh it's been tough so I want to try and use it as a learning experience in one form or another everything is moving forward as best I can I'm trying to not dwell on it and compensate where I can uh also this is the most my dog ate my homework excuse ever but uh I've made more more speech errors in the last 6 months or n months this year uh than I ever have I would have never made that imprecision error with regards to women historically having taken most of their value dot dot dot uh I would have never done that in the past I would have never I accidentally called Ed Witten Ed Dutton on the episode with Eric Weinstein I know this might sound like a little thing but for me somebody who is usually pretty sort of 100% perfect on speech Ed Dutton is this guy he's like a spicy RAC and IQ researcher Ed witton is a theoretical physicist like I just wouldn't have made that error and it keeps on happening I'm forgetting people's names I was looking at a dog that I know unbelievably well and just looked at it and didn't know its name I it's I'll talk about it Fly toward the end of the year and also you know again we're being transparent why not uh it's been oddd not talking about it and then H feeling like I've got this huge thing that's going on behind the scenes and then how do I is it even that big of a deal you guys are here to just learn stuff and and and be entertained and educated why should I burden you with something that's burdening me but then also you kind of the truth will set you free anyway it's been I've been thinking about it a lot and once I compile my thoughts in a brain that's full of mold I'll um I'll talk to you more about it and maybe it'll be helpful and useful to anybody that's going through stuff Con Air why are your forearms so massive yeah I this has been coming up more I think it's because I've been doing more uh training Vlogs uh I guess I do have like pretty big forearms but um I honestly it's just straightup genetics it's like I've never done direct the first piece of direct forearm training I've ever done was with my isrel on a podcast or training blog 3 weeks ago it's the first time I've ever trained them so it's like that guy that's got massive CES you go dude what do you do for training your CS he's like have good parents I don't know have parents with big CVS so uh they just are maybe it's a tumor of some kind and uh maybe this is what's causing all of the brain fog maybe it's just filled with mold and autoimmune problems I'm not sure Z Griffith 23 what's your relationship with caffeine nicotine and do you build in intentional breaks good question so for those of you who don't know I did 500 days without caffeine a couple of years ago um which was significantly harder than a thousand days without alcohol which I did the year before or finishing the year before and still now my favorite way to consume caffeine this includes new tonic is to try and do it every other day sometimes when you can't because you've got a bunch of days back to back where you really need it or you have multiple nights of bad sleep but honestly my best use case is just one day on one day off if you have it today you can't have it tomorrow and if you have it if you had it yesterday you can't have it today that's it as a rule and it means that it keeps your tolerance nice and flat uh I was taught not that long ago that I think it takes 9 days of cold turkey from caffeine to fully reset your uh Baseline that adenosine system sensitivity that was from Mano henselman so blame him if it's not true but uh you would be surprised at how quickly that sensitivity comes back nicotine I'm not using uh I haven't used that all that much knick-knacks are nice but uh I'm stimulated enough frankly from like newtonic and and just coffee as it is so I don't really need anymore vicam whoop padr advice for subhumans below 6 foot in the current dating Market uh I guess that makes me sub I'm 5 10 and a half 5'11 um I don't know man like I see guys who are not that tall crushing it with girls all the time and I do think that the internet makes way more of a meme out of height for guys than it is now there's a girl that trains in the gym with me who's 6'2 she's got like an actual tall girl problem that she doesn't want a date to guide that's shorter than her and if you're 6'2 as a woman and you want to wear heels at your wedding uh you're looking at professional athlet like that's a you know that's a high bar literally um I don't think you need specific advice for subhumans below 6 foot in the current dating Market uh it's the same as it's always been like be nice be as attractive and well presented as possible be emotionally aware present some status don't be a that seems to work Alberto nikle your podcast stands out as the best looking one on YouTube and the production quality is truly impressive thank you I'm curious why do you invest so much into the visual aspect especially since many listeners may not pay attention to it is it a personal goal for you or do you find it rewarding in other ways either financially or personally good question so I don't know I I like beautiful things just because I like looking at nice things I think there's utility in Beauty and there's so many complaints about the modern world being sterile and transactional and people are just mailing it in whether it's in music or in architecture or in art or in movies and doing the bare minimum to get by or kind of feeding this chicken soup Instagram story to you and I I don't know I want a body of work that I look back on and think that was beautiful that was amazing that was impressive we really push the limits I don't know it's funny the show sometimes gets criticized for how like why are you going to all of this effort it's all style and no substance like bro there is the first your's episodes had no video at all and then after that it was 300 episodes of me on Skype literally at 720p I'm doing it people have complaints for lazy content creators and then if you try and do something beautiful they've got complaints too so I think the lesson there is you can't really appease or satisfy anybody or everybody um financially it is a stupid idea uh it is a house deposit every single time that we decide to do one of these big sets of shoots um it is an obscene cost the single largest cost this entire year larger than all of the staff that work for me larger than any of the production fees larger than anything is the cinema shoots that's it uh rental house his insurance location so I don't know I hope for the people that like beautiful things this is a place that you can come and I like beautiful things so hopefully for those that enjoy it it's there for you as well and for the people who aren't that fuss you can just listen to it on Spotify or apple podcasts Ryan jig Chris what's your daily nutrition plan all right I don't want to be that guy but as part of this uh autoimmune recovery stuff I'm fully carnivore at the moment technically I'm meat and fruit so carnivore was like the Hipster keto and then meat and fruit was like the hipsters hipsters carnivore so I I'm now that guy I'm now a combination of Jordan Peterson and Paul saladino uh and the liver King uh and I don't want to become an evangelist which is why I've not brought it up because it's so like cliche to be the guy that starts doing meat and fruit and w't shut up about it uh but that's my current nutrition plan and I will come back to you in a couple of months and tell you what I think of it City Bumpkin will you ever get circumcised these questions um I feel like adult circumcision is a really extreme a very extreme procedure to go through uh without a reason um I don't know whether that's now a sort of a trend thing like when people used to guys used to get the top of their ears pierced uh or nose rings or whatever um I do know a guy who got into a relationship with a a Jewish woman and then before marrying her after he'd asked the father whether he could he had to I think convert or transition whatever it's called Uh to become Jewish H and part of that was adult circumcision which is wild uh so I I fear that I'm going to remain team forkin Nick kapal do you ever feel lonely uh yeah um I did a lot in my 20s uh you know there was a a note that I put in my phone my diary once that I was I just had a low low mood and I didn't really understand why and I was trying to work out what was going on and I just put I think I'm lonely and wrote that in my phone and uh it's got better since I've moved to America which is I guess strange that you become less lonely when you move away from home but I still do um it's weird this sort of transition thing with the microniche degenerate Fame thing with the show and detention and and and not really knowing how to deal with that and then feeling ashamed about like why would I why should I even complain about this like what a Bourgeois luxury to be whining about and then thinking well that's not a very sort of um delicate way to deal with yourself you're not treating yourself like a friend that you're responsible for helping there so it's like infinite regress of feeling guilty or ashamed or sad that you're guilty or annoyed that you're ashamed um but yeah you forget when you move to a country that speaks the same language as you but you're not from that you're still an immigrant and you know you wouldn't notice it the same if you were in Thailand or Russia or France or Argentina but if you move to a country where you speak the same language that they do natively but you're not from there it kind of creeps up on you the fact that you're culturally displaced uh and yeah I do it's been an interesting year of of learning stuff and I'm working hard at trying to beat that cranic since you did an episode with B Shapiro why not showcase the opposite perspective and how do you feel about the 2024 election uh yeah I don't know who the opposite perspective to Ben would be um I'm bringing on Crystal Ball from Crystal and Saga she's the left leaning host from that show uh Anna kasparian from The Young Turks uh I think will be on next week uh trying to get Bernie Sanders on been trying to get that guy on for ages but difficult to get a hold of perhaps unsurprisingly um I kind of get the sense that the rebalancing of right versus left is a little bit hard to do because that there isn't really a left leaning equivalent of Ben I mean Brian class has been on the show ardently anti-trump and definitely from the left uh even Nate Silva is from the left Ryan holiday's been on this year Scott Galloway's been on Destiny's been on Democratic candidate for president Dean Phillips was on earlier this year so I've been trying to sort of do showcasing the opposite perspective throughout the year but I know it seems like uh people from the right sort of carry more weight somehow uh for this so I know offsetting it rebalancing the force can be a bit difficult how do I feel about the 2024 election it is a car crash the way that the candidates have been going at each other the way that the Press has covered it like the current sentiment in America is it's what it's like meme univer if South Park made an election year this is what it would feel like ca Harris goes on call her daddy Trump gets shot once in another assassination attempt and then like they oh it's been so it's it's wild uh so how I feel about it is it makes for great TV but uh I'm glad that I'm in Texas where there's lots of room and uh I feel a bit safe down here and actually I'm going to be in Australia when the election happens which is probably the best place on the planet to be the original crash 007 do you have an inner monologue uh oh yeah um I I kind of don't I've heard that some people don't some percentage of people don't let me see if chat GPT what percentage of people do not have and in a monologue study suggests that 25 to 50% of people do not experience a constant inner monologue this means instead of hearing a voice in their head narrating their thoughts they might process information in more visual abstract or sensory ways prevalence depends varying on how the concept is defined and measuring different studies wow uh I have no idea what it's like to not have an inner monologue because my brain is singing barber shop with each other uh yeah it's been the one of the biggest tasks that I've tried to do to make the voice inside of my head my friend uh to find out like 25 to 50% of people it's just silence in there I don't know what are you doing what are you thinking about I don't know uh but yes I do and you should be kind of Oliva two different questions one asking for a friend what is a good response to someone who uses the word look to put down one's achievements number two what is your connection with music I noticed you wear Bring Me The Horizon and Parkway clothes have you always been into metal got any favorites ask answer number two first this is Architects this is an architect's t-shirt uh yeah I was an emo kid uh throughout all of my teens and just never gave it up listening to a lot of sleep token and neck deep bring me still now crushes Parkway misery signals uh bto's new album is phenomenal um Polaris I've just got into them they're outstanding so that's what I listen to uh when I'm training um deep house usually when I'm in the car or driving in a bit of country at other times and that's like my three car garage metal deep house by country music uh asking for a friend what is a good response to someone who uses the word luck to put down one's achievements it seems strange to me that the harder I work the luckier I get I've always loved that quote BH zv1 MN hey Chris congrats it is inspiring to see someone hit the J curve in real time thank you question how do I deal with the fear of not having people around me when I have finally made it I'm in an important phase of my life my relationship is probably going to come to an end because of my tal Vision on my goals there's this small voice in my head that acknowledges the possibility that I may never truly find the people I would love to share my success with I have sacrificed many friendships to I know I have what it takes but what if I end up alone I am 20 P.S I was used to being alone until I improved myself and then found some people but now it appears as if I'm at another revamp point in my life so I think this lonely chapter thing that I keep hopping on about is just such an unseen problem that a lot of people face and um it was certainly an area that I struggled with the analogy that I use for I think what you're describing is if you imagine personal growth or growing as a person as kind of like uh being a rocket ship taking off from Earth and you're moving at a particular velocity and there's other people around you and some are ahead of you and some are behind you and some took off at the same time and you're moving along but if you start to overtake other people you end up leaving them behind and this isn't a value judgment about who's better or who's worse or the people that grow more or intrinsic valuable whatever it's simply the the language that you use to communicate to these people and the things that you've got going on in your life and the type of challenges that you're facing are at the altitude that you are at if you're just trying to work on your meditation practice for the first time ever and a learning about how the GTD method for productivity works that's different to somebody who is balls deep in emotional regulation and has been to two years of therapy the the challenges that they're facing are just fundamentally different because the altitudes have changed so one of the problems that you have is if you're a very quick moving velocity as a Rocket taking off you're going to like you said you found people after you improved yourself and now it looks like you're going to break through another time that's something difficult that you're going to have to let go of it feels like survivorship bias like people that come back from war and they don't feel like they should have survived and they actually have and you're leaving behind a group of people that maybe you grew up with or you became friends with or you became friends with that are really important formative point in your life and it's tough uh so I think it's just a it's a price of doing business uh cost of Entry to Growing quickly and it sounds like you have Tunnel Vision on your goals you know that you want to achieve big things but I don't mean to be patronizing bro you're 20 and you have there are lots of people very far ahead of you that you can end up settling at their altitude with just take time it sounds like you're thinking about things that are maybe beyond your age so just have a little bit of faith that you're going to be able to bring this into land uh with a group of people that will care and when you find them it'll be so worthwhile because they'll have gone through the same things too and you'll be able to resonate Chiran dig 9833 I suck so hard at saying these usernames tell us more about your childhood and how you overcame bullying and became confident deep questions today um so the became confident thing I think is a probably a misnomer uh competent like I'm good at doing some stuff but especially this year I've just been Riven with uncertainty and low self-esteem and uh have kept going which Maybe is good for people who don't feel like they have much self-esteem or confidence to hear that even if you don't believe that you can do it you can still end up doing it but uh yeah the became confident thing is at least based on recent experience not uh not fantastically backed up uh in terms of childhood and no how overcame bullying I don't know like you you just get through stuff you know it was rough childhood especially teenagers was wasn't super fun being a social outcast it was never real aggressive awful physical bullying over and over again there was some elements that were pretty like atrocious but you I don't know you're just a kid you're made of rubber and magic and you just sort of bounc through things or at least I kind of did even if I was unhappy uh and it's only in retrospect that you can see kind of how wrong things were or how rough stuff was um the overcoming The Bullying thing I don't know I got rid of that chip on my shoulder maybe about 5 years ago uh you know that I was doing things to prove other people that had doubted me or had mistreated me or bullied me or whatever um wrong that was something that I overcame I think largely just through achieving lots of things that I never thought I would um after a while you have to sort of admit to yourself that the fuel you're using is toxic and if you're still being driven by that kid in you're nine when you were 13 that called you that name or whatever you're giving that person an awful lot of power over you somebody that you hate or don't like uh and also it's not allowing you to get to any peace like you're never going to be peaceful so yeah childhood was a mix bag I played lots of sports uh I spent a lot of time on my own in solitude and it came out of it in one piece uh or at least in pieces that were together should I say and um then in adult life you spend some some people kind of arrive all put together and then some people kind of have to put themselves back together and I was the latter uh and still largely I'm doing it but I know hey here I am still going Lorenzo Petra Piana 4707 hell uh what should you do if you realize that you're striving for success is only a compensatory mechanism for past trauma or an inferiority complex uh there are a lot of people just being seen by these questions it's a bit more somber of a mood today both from the questions and maybe from me I know why I am I wonder if the questions are maybe because we're going into Christmas or Autumn or something like that people are starting to reflect on the year they're feeling a little bit more Melancholy I don't know it's or maybe I'm getting a totally wrong and that's like a unfair assumption what should you do if you realize that your striving for success is only a compensatory mechanism for past trauma or an inferiority complex I think a lot of people it is I think many people are trying to prove to the world that they are valuable in a way that in the past they felt worthless and the inferiority complex of if only I can become sufficiently impressive then maybe the world will love me May maybe if I'm create this Grand Cathedral of of accomplishments and and Accolade and status and money uh someone will Pat me on the back and tell me that I'm good enough I think maybe that's most high performers maybe that's most successful people in the world and that's sad I think it's a an ironic realization that many of the people that we admire the most have the least admirable internal mental states that you literally wouldn't trade the life that you think is dog for the one that you think is amazing if you got to spend five minutes inside of that person's head um so what should you do if you realize that you're striving for success is only the compensatory mechanism well you've seen through the first illusion right you understand why that motivation is there and you can continue playing that game and trying to fill internal voids with external accolades or you can try and assess why that's the case if it was me I would do a good bit of internal work I would maybe speak to a CBT person or do some therapy or some hypnosis uh I would journal and I would try and work out okay why do I think that I need to be successful in order for the world to love me why do I need to strive in order to create this Grand important thing in order to feel like I am sufficient uh that I need to offer the world something in order for it to love me back why do I feel like that needs to be the case and is that true is that true are why do I love other people or what are the reasons like what why do I choose to be around the people that I choose to be around is it because of their success their striving how impressive they are or is it that they're funny and caring and hold space for me and are are kind or gentle or reassuring or enjoyable or energizing or whatever for the most part I've asked my myself this question too or a similar one and for the most part the people that I love to be around it's got all to do with like their accomplishments literally some of my best friends are the ones that are happy and are not striving and are not looking for this success like endlessly filling this hole like the Cookie Monster just eating new achievements um look inside and work out why you think that success is something that you need to do uh what are you compensating for what are your p traumas what's your inferiority complex and then decide whether or not you want to actually keep trying to be successful because you're not choosing to be successful you're being compelled to be successful it's a compulsion uh and I don't think that that's necessarily what you want to have in life you don't want to be forced to do anything you want to choose to do the things that you want to do Justin Dunley 1848 been a pleasure to feel as if we are a part of your journey since I found you almost two years ago thank you my question be from your perspective what do you think the future of Britain is for younger Generations growing up and what would you suggest to be what would be your suggestion what would your suggestion be to someone who wants to leave for a better life love you man you're a true inspiration to so many and seeing a fellow Brit Shine the way in Shine the way in such a fashion makes me driven for more I cannot read today apparently uh what do I think it the future of Britain is for younger Generations growing up what would be my suggestion for someone who wants to leave for a better life I mean if you want to leave you got to leave like there is no way to rework that game um I tried for a very long time to impact British culture uh and you know we had a few thousand people that worked for the events company between the ages of 18 and 24 uh personally coach maybe a hundred hundreds of young people um and they went on to do amazing things but unfortunately as anybody in the UK knows trying to find other people that are positive positive some uh have agency are interested in trying to make change to themselves and to encourage other people to make change as well it's a rarity so first off realize that if you're able to grow in that country it's a very impressive it's like uh lifting a weight on Jupiter or something that it is harder than typical to break out from the mold because the tall poppy syndrome the cutting down and the and the sort of mockery that everybody encounters or at least everybody that I know um is a big weight it's a drag uh so the future for younger Generations growing up I mean the UK was it had the second highest number of millionaires leaving in the world in 2024 China was number one with 15,000 the UK was number two with about 10,000 but China's population it's basically I think the UK is 3% of the population of China and yet it's 66% of the number of millionaire leaving and China's a literal communist Communist dictatorship so I would love to see it change I tried for a decade and a half to have impact on it but I don't know I'm I'm yet to be proven otherwise but hopefully I'm wrong j LeBron 777 impressive as thank you okay question any dream guests you'd love to have but feel they may slightly be Out Of Reach for now any names you'd be able to drop tons uh Ryan Reynolds would adore to speak to Ryan Reynolds I think he's super cool guy I think he'd be really fun to talk to uh Larry and Sergey from uh Google would be great Zuckerberg Bezos um who else is like really really Out Of Reach I'd like to have a chat with Beyonce I think she'd be really interesting to speak to to work out what it's like to be that famous uh or like a Taylor Swift's Justin Bieber I mean Justin Bieber at the moment with all of this Piddy stuff speak to Piddy him and S bankman freed side by side in a jail cell we could do a three-way conversation that'd be interesting uh yeah I don't know man there's so many just an endless list of people let's trying to get Bernie Sanders on for ages that was interesting but yeah I it'll be we're coming up to episode 10,000 and I really want to do something like phenomenal for that period maybe 999,000 and 1001 just absolutely sort of break open all of the expectations so I've set an expectation we'll see I'm trying to do something cool for that Matel 999 you mentioned in a prior video that you have tinitus many of us do and it will be helpful to hear your comments on the subject and how you've dealt with some of the annoyances that it brings yeah I I guess this is one of the reasons why I didn't bring up the health stuff before that so many people deal with challenges that it um it feels like another necessity for me to sort of make comments and and talk about it and the problem with that is I'm still going through it I'm still trying to recover and like it's slow really slow and tough and then trying to talk about your experience of dealing with a thing while you're still going through it I like I just don't want to be a Debbie Downer to you guys I don't like feeling like I'm not on top of my game or like I'm you know talking about all of this that I'm dealing with but on the topic of tinitus it sucks uh for the people that don't know it's just like a permanent loud ringing in your ears uh it specifically happens when there's lower volume so the reason that it happens I went to go and see of course I went to go and see NE specialist uh the reason that it happens is your brain when it can't detect frequencies it tries to fill in the gaps uh kind of like how the optical blind spot is filled in in post-processing by your brain this is not too dissimilar but for hearing and it just creates this quite loud buzzing noise and uh especially at times when you want it to be quiet like when it's silent on a night you're trying to go to sleep it is awful uh and it's for me uh brought on by inflammation it's brought on by my brain not being very happy and uh yeah anybody that lives with this chronically which currently I am but like you know for your entire life not just for 9 months like it's so bad it's so permanent it's like the hearing equivalent of chronic pain it always reminds you that you're there and the weird feedback loop is the more that you think about it the the louder it gets and it reacts to cortisol which means that if you think about it and it gets louder you get more stressed because you can hear it more which means cortisol goes up which means it gets louder it's vicious so yeah I am I'm sorry that you're dealing with that and uh yeah it's I've never heard anybody talk about it I've never heard anyone talk about it and then this I've just been swimming in it and it sucks so sorry Pono yanz uh Chris Wix what's it like being friends with Alex hosi uh it's pretty cool it's it's intimat uh perhaps unsurprisingly he's busy and so am I so uh it really is like speed messaging memes and stuff to each other and then not speaking to each other for a month and then doing it again then sometimes it's more frequent he's cool he's uh a good counterbalance to um feeling like a and uh in the right doses for me he is a a good influence Xander Journey what is the true definition of work life balance for you not the guy to ask bro not this year uh I have been so far on the work end of work life balance uh much to the anger of the people around me that keep on telling that I need to sleep or chill out more um the true meaning of it I think is finding a way to not just live life in service of work that a lot of the time we do things that are relaxation because we think that it's going to allow us to then go harder when we get back to work I'm not convinced that putting every single ounce of your identity into a single Pursuit your work is the best way to live I think hedging your identity across multiple things yeah you care about your company or whatever but also you're a friend and you're a part-time pickle ball player and you like CrossFit and you're into 80s Jazz and you're a father and a husband you know like you're all of these other things as well and I think that like the true definition of work life balance is having enough life that you don't think about work life balance um the ancient Greek word for work was not at leisure as a definition not at leisure so work was seen as an aberration and Leisure was seen as the set point and it seems now in the modern world that this has been turned upside down and Leisure is not at work or life is not at work so yeah work life balance should be that you have enough life to not have to worry about work life balance antibreak even tell us your simple hack on body language I am not convinced I have a hack on body language I was told by lots of people that watch some of the Vlogs that I stand very still and I reflected on that uh and I think what's happened is because I spent 10,000 hours in my 20s stood on the front door of a nightclub I got very used to standing very still with my hands three positions okay like this in front of me like that behind me or like this on my hips or in or Hands In Pockets I guess three or four positions and I can just stand there not moving for hours like I don't know a trained guard dog or something but instead I'm looking for people's stamps on their hands or VIP bands or something like that I have no hack for body language I I'm not even sure that it's a thing um mirroring and and and like holding masculine frame and all of that stuff I'm sure there's better and worse ways to sit being crunched over think if you're sat upright and you're looking around that's and you're awake that's usually a good start red hh7 FD if you could give one piece of advice to the young version of you what would you give it's the same one the same one all the time which is fearless uh I think a lot of my life both now and in the past is driven by fear uh worry anxiety vigilance being concerned that things are going to go wrong or that you've done wrong this sense I've had for a long time that someone's mad at me and I don't know why uh so fearing less I think about that would be a a good place for me to start and one of the interesting things that you realize with this question what advice would you give a young person of you younger version of you is that if you ask yourself that question and you get somewhere close to an accurate answer of it that thing that you wish that you could tell a younger version of you is almost always the single most important thing that you need to tell the current version of you uh I'm yet to hear an answer where the person has totally sanitized themselves from the issue that that thing would have fixed uh so think about what you would tell yourself 10 years ago and then apply it to your life right now um yeah CJ wolf ST1 Qi do you think it's humanly possible for you to get through a podcast without saying Downstream well definitely not now I don't know whether I've said Downstream yet so far but now you've made me say it so I I can't use this as an example do I say it that much do I say Downstream all the time I might do now I'm worried that I say it every other sentence uh I'm going to try at some point soon CJ CJ wolf uh but you've thrown me a curveball by making me say it today so not this time smoking Groove does any part of you miss the nightlife scene do you know what it is I've been reflecting on it more recently and I do miss like the memories I miss working with the boys building something I miss the interplay of the the team of staff that we had you know 10 to 20 managers that were very very very tight and then 200 to 300 staff every year I I loved it I really did and in retrospect it's sort of one of those things where you can only realize how beautiful it was uh with a bit more perspective I certainly miss working with my business partner Darren um I me just a phenomenal shrewd like Savage of a business person who uh I you could drop him you like one of those uh throw me to the wolves and I'll come back the leader of the pack it's like throw him into any industry and he'll fix so much of the operations so I certainly miss working with him and uh it is fun but I do not miss the late nights and the drunk people and the loud music and uh fair play the club promoters that keep it going into your late 30s I mean I salute you Jake are you redpilled if not how many steps removed from Red Pill are you I don't know how to answer that question um The Red Pill hates me uh the manosphere absolutely does not take me as one of their own I have never identified myself as those things I seem to sit in this amazing sort of balance where people on the left or people that are sort of more ardently femin like fourth wave feminism see me as a misogynist and then people on the right or people that are red pilled in the manosphere see me as a cck so I'm like I I I'm ideologically spit roasted by either side of this I don't know um no I I don't I if red pilled means understand evolutionary psychology and mating Dynamics yes uh if it means anything else I don't think so ganor can I get a VIP for Riverside mate uh people won't get this reference I wonder how many people in the audience will get this reference maybe less than 0.1 of a percent Riverside was one of the big events that we ran for half a decade we did maybe quarter of a million entries more probably through that venue uh on a Saturday and uh I ran the VIP along with the rest of the event so um yes you can certainly if it's still open I I will see you there on Saturday sagacity sweet science why don't you challenge your guests uh I'm trying uh I tried with Nate Silva I tried with Shapiro I tried really hard with c means I thought that was me giving it a really really good crack I tried with the therapist lady where my mold brain doesn't want to let me remember her what was she called bad therapy Abigail shria um it's a skill set that I'm building up I'm working hard at sitting with discomfort um I did one thing that I was pretty proud of on the will Tennyson episode which was he was telling this uh story he was getting emotional uh and you want to step in to stop the thing from happening you want to fix the other person and I have a compulsion where I feel like other people's emotional state are my responsibility so as a people call that people pleasing or or what or you could call that just being a good person I don't know uh pathology or or uh like charity but sitting with the discomfort of emotion is something that I'm really learning I learned it first from the theovon episode that he did with Shan Strickland which is just amazing sitting with that giving him space and then telling him what I thought which was I was sorry that he'd gone through it that was I thought that was really I was happy that I did that and I was proud of the way it went um when it comes to pushing back against ideas and all the rest of it I do I think I'm trying harder but there is uh always more to be done Adam who was your toughest guest and what would you have done differently with Mr Dawkins great interview by the way I well I mean it feels like you're begging the question a little bit there uh Dawkins wasn't an easy one uh firstly homeboy 80 secondly he's kind of disagreeable in any case thirdly we basically had the same conversation the night before uh so thank you for enjoying it um but that was that was a tough one I prematurely blowing my load in front of 1200 Richard Dawkins fans and then 16 hours later sitting down to be like right I've shown all of my cards do I have any more cards do I have anything else that I can talk about without going over the old stuff um that was that was uh was a bit of a battle Rahul when's the next episode with Mr hosi coming out he was just on he's been on twice this year and was twice last year so I think he's he's he's benched he's chilling out for the time being some point probably first half of next year he'll be back Payton below do did you have a backup plan or was it all or nothing for the podcast uh so it happened in stages that when I first started the podcast I was still running Voodoo my events company I was still modeling was that DJing it stopped DJing but you know I had a lot of different things going on I had my properties in the UK and was just like learning about me um so I was living perfectly comfortably but then the move to America uh that was all or nothing and I never really spoke about it at the time how much of a a risk it was I guess I never also thought about it all that much that I just knew that I was happier out here so I wanted to just go and it kind of didn't really care what I was risking but I'm so risk averse um for the people out there that are just terrified of taking risks like I'm here with you uh but I reached whatever unbelievably high threshold I needed in order to be able to convince me that I should uh actually commit to this decision yeah if I'd come out here and the podcast had gone wrong or if it does go wrong still like it's not like I've reached escape velocity with finances or or status or business anything like that like I still need to work every single day in order to keep this thing going and if it doesn't work I'm going to have to go back to the UK with my tail between my legs looking like a a right knob so yeah it was when I pulled the pin exited my last company I couldn't go back couldn't be like oh hey would you mind having me back in the company that I just left um I would I don't know what I would have done I don't know what I will do if if that happens so fingers crossed it doesn't check 82 hey Chris I've been watching you since the beginning and I'm so proud of your accomplishments thank you can you give an update on your experience in therapy I'm a male therapist in training and I'm a happy positive figure in the men's space is talking about therapy it makes my blood boil watching some amazing friends struggle through their life the 30s and 40s and feeling so low we have a crisis on our hands thank you for promoting Mental Health on your channel keep it real bro thank you I appreciate that um so I did therapy twice a week for round about the last year maybe with travel and stuff about nine months and I've actually stopped now I've taken a little break for a while partly because again this is how it's s like the talking about the health thing just falls out of you only way that you can say it is to be truthful I need more time per week to focus on the stuff that I need to do in order to be able to recover uh which is like IVs uh sauna sessions charcoal like tablet shower after you go in the sa like it's just it's complex there's a lot of that I need to do in order to be able to get my health back so uh I had to sacrifice something something had to break and I was taking 2 hours to get two and from therapy twice a week so it's was 4 hours a week at the perfect time at the end of one of my days two of my days so uh I stopped my experience with therapy was I learned more about myself in therapy in the space of 9 months than in 5 years of meditation that's not to say that either are better or worse but from a self- knowledge self understanding standpoint uh it is phenomenal it's like inviting somebody into your house and you've lived in this house your entire life and they start walking around pointing out rooms that you didn't realize were there like what's that door where does that door lead to you go holy like I didn't even and you open it and there's all of this stuff in there you go holy and then you realize that the back of the kitchen that you did know about leads to this Corridor that you just found out about and that leads leads into this and everything starts to connect and make sense and um yeah it's a an iron stake of perspective sort of stabbed through the middle of a lot of your assumptions about yourself um it's very good but it's rough uh it's not easy because you can't hide away from the things that you use bravado or uh momentum self-deception uh ignorance willful ignorance um to just cover over you can't you can't smooth things over in that way uh it just there is really nowhere to hide if you're doing it right so um good but to be used with caution uh would be my advice Ben Rose 2329 what's been your favorite books that you've read this year okay this is an easy one hell um so what have I really enjoyed uh medit for Mortals by Oliver burkman that's his new one that just came out and I got to read that early and then he came on the show and I love that man he's so great meditations for Mortals highly recommended you read it once a day for four weeks so there's like 28 small chapters and uh it's fantastic so that's one um I read seven EES again which is just this outstanding sci-fi book I went through a period where uh when I was feeling sad on a nighttime I was comforting myself with chick novels so I read the housemade uh that's actually pretty good uh uh Andrew michaeles or Alex Michel lady's book um the silent patient also really great good twist at the end um started trying to read Verity by Colleen Hoover it's just loads of sex scenes so I bailed out of that um what else have I read that I really enjoyed the anxious Generation by Jonathan height was good um Ted McKenna's spiritual enlightenment now uh is just so fantastic every time that I I think about the path that you're on from an Enlightenment perspective and spirituality it's a like the most objective look that I've ever had the least woo esoteric look at just what enlightenment is from a person who seems pretty enlightened um I've read some other stuff on night times as well that I can't remember I'll come back to you Nile Berry 202 who are your favorite bodybuilders past and present would love to see some of the '90s early 2000s Legends on the Pod love your recent Vlogs man unbelievable work ethic thank you uh favorite bodybuilders I mean Ronnie is an absolute Legend it kind of makes me sad to see him now you know it's this guy that used to be just this man Mountain Behemoth and now he's got to kind of gently walk him self from bench to leg press it's I mean the guy still just seems so positive which is amazing um Dorian Legend uh he was a little bit before my time who else like it would be interesting to see where some of the old animal athletes are like Branch Warren I think he didn't he fall off a horse hurt himself Branch Orum would be awesome to speak to um I know that a bunch of the guys listen to the Pod Ben pakulski in particular has reached out it' be cool to speak to him because he's pivoted everyone's gone in different directions spirituality or business or something else um but yeah there's some techie 8036 Legend last time you told me about how you fixed your back problems this time please be kind enough to give us the detailed start to finish of how you increase your testosterone all right yes I talked about this uh last year uh I worked with Marik health and uh now working with function and they are blood testing companies I think the first thing is that you need to work out what's going on inside of your body so you need to get your Bloods done you can't fix any of it people talking about just like randomly increasing the testosterone levels and they have no idea what their testosterone is um so certainly for me playing around with like FSH and lsh and what's your sex hormone binding globulin you don't just get to sort of throw a oniz fits-all hammer at the problem you can do that and it'll probably reliably give you results but there's lighter more precise ways to do it uh all of that being said I'm not convinced that I'm the best person to talk about increasing testosterone because this year with all of the stuff that I've been going through uh that has been a big problem so I think the only reason I've held on to any good condition is because of training a lot consistently uh but one of the problems that comes along with like chronic inflammation and autoimmune uh is it's not fantastic for testosterone cortisol and testosterone are not friends so uh this year has been again a uh a difficult one I don't mean to be a such a Debbie Downer today but the alternative is that I just don't tell you what's been going on and uh yeah I'm not I don't want to do that Geneva Arthur 8747 been listening since early 2020 my number one podcast ever since thank you I'm a 51-year-old mom of three and I've learned so much from you and your guests which has helped me in this phase of my parenting Journey with grown kids aged 16 to 23 currently your podcast isn't meant to be a parenting podcast but I'm a better mother due in part to so much of what you've shared wow thank you uh one question when will you finally get a golden retriever puppy I need a dog I feel like all of the all my whining and all of my bitching about like things are hard and I'm tired and my brain doesn't work would basically be fixed if I had a a nice little golden just here so maybe that's the answer to all of these questions uh that being said uh I do get to hang around with a uh new dog called Monroe he's beautiful and I get to see him uh relatively frequently at the house so I've got a little bit I'm slowly inching myself toward that but given I can't look after myself right now puppy might be a bit of a big ask but soon bradicus Finch what do you do in those times where even though you know you're doing the work and making the right choices for your future you have that nagging sense of what if this is it for me and there is no more what right do I have to expect anything more for myself it's hard sometimes not to feel like will in Fresh Prince asking what if I never get my life together semi-related note thought on be tooth surface as a positive metal album it very much feels like if modern wisdom was a record I mean first off the be to thing is phenomenal and I what's the new song attention my God so good so yes everybody should go and listen to btoo the surface especially the track ATN on that um what do you do in the times when even though you know you're working hard enough if you have this nagging sense of what if this is it for me and there is no more I don't know man I think expanding a Time Horizon here is pretty important um it's hard because of the people that you listen to if you're listening to podcast like this and reading introspective books and doing journaling and self work and all the rest of it your comparison group is so skewed you are comparing yourself with the smartest most introspective most balanced people in the world and you're watching all of these YouTubes and podcasts and and reading these books and trying these practices and you're comparing yourself to perhaps literally the number one person in whatever this domain is that you're trying to get better in and you're permanently going to be in their Shadow you have posited an ideal and by Design you're going to begin comparing yourself to that ideal guess what you're going to fall short I think if you expand your time Horizon and you start to look over months and years rather than days and weeks you will begin to see that what feels like no more progress and that this is all that there is for you that you actually have been making consistent progress throughout that and the alternative is stopping trying to get better um this what I think it is very much is a fear this fear that this might be it that things might not get get better but one of the ways that you can guarantee that things will not get better is to stop working at them um there are very few problems in life that a little bit more attention won't help with that doesn't mean work harder always uh attention can result in you actually needing to take a little bit of a foot off the gas but it's paying attention right and paying attention also includes expanding your your time Horizon and realizing God look at where I was two years ago and look at where I am now and you you have every right to wh that things aren't coming as quickly as you would like and that the required pace of progress that you need in order to stay motivated is not where it's at so motivation is waning that's fine you're that's that's okay but me you've got here like you've done an hour and 20 minutes into listening to me half on about introspection and and and lonely chapter and and health problems and you are learning things from people not me other people who are able to change your entire life and I I really really feel like just being less hard on yourself and and not fearing that things aren't going to come your way I'm I'm pretty much adamant that the out comes that you are supposed to get in life are the ones that you're going to get and over a long enough time Horizon people usually end up getting what they deserve and that for somebody that asks these kind of questions I think will be exactly what you want Joe sh do any episodes stand out as ones that underachieved in viewership compared to the value it provided conversely did any do really well that you didn't think was your best work that's interesting it's hard with the best work thing because I can be surprised by the performance it's like underachieved in viewership uh do really well that wasn't your best work what creates viewership and best work is not the same thing so really really great episodes often don't do lots of plays but that's not what drives the viewership in any case so for instance uh telsy gabbard came on earlier this year and destroyed the internet 6 million 7 million plays uh was pretty surprised by that in retrospect maybe shouldn't have been but still kind of was um great episode interesting thought that she was an engaging speaker uh but Oliver burkeman which is one of my top 10 episodes this year awesome so cool exactly why I started this show this sort of precise self-deprecating view of The Human Condition and productivity and life and what it's all about I knew that that was never going to do huge plays but that did really well like it didn't it underachieved in in viewership but as far as I'm concerned it it Val provided all of the value that I wanted to uh so yeah the Oliver burkman won I wish I could gift that to everybody that listens it's so fantastic um and Tulsa would be too or I'm like wow that came out of nowhere and then the Eric one Eric's popular but me that last episode just went to the moon coold to five sold for the new merch design any updates uh I I really probably should just get my act together and get this sorted but um I've said I mean people have been asking for this for like two and a half million Subs so I I probably just should stop staving things off and actually get round to it l Barber 83 have you ever considered updating a list of 100 bucks you must read yeah I should do that too um that's a little bit old now that being said there I believe in those books and I believed in those books when I wrote that list and even if I was to update it I'm not it's not like I would swap out all 100 because there are 100 books that you should read before you die maybe 30 would change or 50 would change perhaps but there's some like the almanac and Nal rant's not going anywhere sensualism by Greg mchu is not going anywhere red rising's not going anywhere um I don't know that's not a bad shout uh I'll I'll consider it and if I can make it better and if I disagree with more than 30% of it I'll consider doing it kpe DM gg1 HG what would you say to a young man who was very lonely that looks up to you as an idol uh I'm sorry that you're very lonely and I know how it feels and I hope that this show provides some Solace like a little an oasis of comfort and uh some compatriots even if they're virtual and on the other side of the internet and a community of people who actually are into this stuff as well it does feel I remember from listening to you know Peterson 2016 or you Sam Harris or whatever it is if you're living in but nowhere nobody around you that seems to be interested in the stuff that you're interested in can be a very isolating uh experience and it can kind of actually be even more isolating because you know that somewhere out there there's people that are interested in the things that you're interested in but they're not here and the fact that you know that they're there almost makes it feel like more your fault more real or something um but I'm sorry man I hope that I get to see one of the live shows or uh that you find your tribe I promise that there are people out there that are interested in the stuff that you're interested in and uh you're worthy of finding them Ethan 56 hey Chris congrats love the show how to deal with the lonely chapter and loneliness while pursuing your goals I've been working toward my goals for the past few years where I lost all my friends this year I'm quite young and struggle to find meaningful friendships and relationships how to find meaningful friendships and relationships while pursuing your goals and coming up really appreciate you again congrats I'm definitely seeing a trend here this sort of lonely chapter loneliness I'm growing my friends are falling behind oh and not coming with me and I I I have to make this odd trade between wanting to change myself and wanting to be accepted and there's this tension and then I feel this guilt about leaving them behind uh I'm young and struggle to find meaningful relationships and friendships being honest dude when you're young meaningful friendships and relationships are hard to find so don't see that as a personal curse that is endemic it is built into to the age that you are at which is one that's young it takes most people a long time to actually start to really care about the meaning that they put into their friendships and I didn't really think about that until I was 27 28 you know so much of it especially with my industry was transactional it was transient it was uh friendships of Fortune and and um convenience so half take it as a compliment for the fact that you're young but have progressed quickly half take it as not a personal curse but uh an accepted uh problem that any mindful introspective thoughtful person has to deal with and then take solace in the fact that there's so many other people so I keep itching this mustache which needs to go it needs to come off um take solace in the fact that you're not the only person that's asked this question how many other people three other people five of the people from I know there's like 2,000 questions every time that we do this and then they get they get stripped down uh so many other people are dealing with this as well so it's not just you and the challenge that you're facing is not one that only you have to go through and everybody that wants to get to the other side of it and is where you are has to go through this you have to go through it so go through it Dylan Burch congrats bro I've listened to hundreds of hours of your podcast thank you what's one what's one the the number one productivity tip you can think of and if possible the scientific backing reasoning for it thanks so much keep it up uh scientific productivity tip is a little bit difficult um certainly from a learning perspective memory is repeated recall not repeated exposure is the best tagline you're going to have to recall that a number of times if you want to be able to learn it but the way that the memory system works is not by seeing a thing a lot of times so if you were to read a page once and then try and recall what was on the page you will remember way more than if you read that page 10 times it is all about repeated recall not repeated exposure uh secondly I guess there's a nice breakdown of procrastination uh you can sort of break it out into a series of steps like do I know what I need to do next do I know how I need to do that thing um it kind of helps you to overcome a lot of the time at least for me the science of procrastination seems to suggest that most of the time when you're not doing a thing you don't know what you're supposed to do so it's an IL defined next step and if you do know what to do you don't know how to do it so if you get over those two things typically uh procrastination tends to fall away at least uh for me when I'm being my gold standard self John omler I'm really curious about when and how you got into metal metal core not to judge your book by its cover but I wouldn't expect someone with your background in the nightclub scene to enjoy that particular genre also thanks for turning me on to sleep token I can't get enough of take me back to Eden yeah that's what I'm here for this entire podcast is me just trying to slowly get people to listen to sleep token um yeah I guess I've been wearing metal shirts on the show more um because I can finally dress myself and decided that I was going to dress like 14-year-old me dreamed he could have dressed which is to have a ton of different metal band T-shirts um I've got in I I was listening to this music when I was 13 14 14ish 145 was when I first started getting into to it and then especially throughout college and all throughout uni I mean I went through the full gamut from job for a cowboy to avenge sevenfold to every time I die to Bullet for My Valentine to atray you and then bring me and you know and then sort of phased up into now what this slightly more melodic slightly more mature sound is the Polarises of the world the Sleep tokens Bill Murray um that I know it's it's I love it I love it I'm never going to stop listening to it so I'm I'm glad and polaris's album from last year highly highly highly recommended get it on Zion s45 what would you like as a teenager uh pretty uncool I think um pretty uh socially inept uh not exactly a charmer um and like not worldly very unworldly didn't really understand how the world worked at all I really wish I know there's no I think there's zero video of me from when I was a kid I have no idea where that would have even come from I really wish that I could show the difference between then and now you know like people bring up videos of sneer or whatever and he's 13 and they compare it with his red pill Arc and his Islam Arc um unfortunately because I was 13 like 20 years ago I that wasn't around um pretty uncool and uh spending a lot of time on my own kin Sanchez I read the Red Rising Trilogy and the King filler Chronicle Books because you recommended them along with Tim Ferris I think they were great recommendations yeah got any more uh seven EES Dude Love seven EES read it at least three times now I think that's fantastic the gotten Highlander by alist Art also great that's real life non-fiction what am I reading at the moment lexicon I've got uh I went through my chick novel phase earlier this year when I was feeling sad about myself um I can't I can't remember the rest of this I don't think I've done a massive amount of reading from that side I read a um tax Topia which was pretty cool but the Red Rising King filer Chronicles are just outstanding I read the narrow road between desires which is the new Nolla that Patrick rothus wrote and I tried to get into a bunch of other stuff but I've swung and missed a few times this year with non-fiction Josh Taft YouTube Do you ever worry about talking about things you are not well versed in and how do you overcome that fear of saying something wrong well as the first question for today highlight I do sometimes say things wrong especially if my brain isn't working correctly uh do I worry about talking things I'm not well versed in I think you can usually get away with that if you identify that you're not an expert um the internet doesn't have a a particularly good forgiveness mechanism for people playing with ideas and this is Eric Weinstein's idea of an accuracy budget that if you restrict only experts to speak on the things that they are experts in nobody else is allowed to talk about or play around with ideas outside of their tight domain of competence or whatever what you end up with is a situation where no one can ever play with ideas in the way that precisely sort of cross domain learning is supposed to work so I don't know I'm trying to I'm purposefully trying to get out over my skis and and come up with new ideas I came up with this thing to do with OIC uh a little while ago and I really enjoyed this evolutionary psychology perspective on why thin people seem to be very critical of widespread OIC use and my theory was that uh people who were able to easily get thin reduce down the status associated with being thin previously it was something that was difficult to achieve and required willpower now it just requires an injection once a week oversimplification obviously uh see now I'm having to caveat everything in case I put my foot in it again um that I thought was an interesting take is it right probably not but I like playing with it and I tried to caveat within that post which was I actually Ed the word Bros signed Theory so talking about stuff that you're not well versed in just stay up top look I've got no idea what I'm talking about but here's a notion that you should consider I think you can usually get away with that how do I overcome the fear of saying something wrong be around people who are forgiving of your ideas like you want to be around people who are like yeah that's interesting I think it's total that's not a bad take that's the perfect environment to be in quote Brainiac 2593 how to deal with the guilt of ghosting all your friends and acquaintances I'm an introvert but for the last 10 years tried to be more extroverted accepting invitations to Gatherings and giving much of my time and energy to help friends since the last 6 months been extremely reclus from everyone as I recover from burnout and work on my business feel like a fake who manipulated them through a performance of kindness not through though not malice yeah that's a difficult one um I don't think you necessarily need to ghost them my advice here would be to just say hey I'm really working hard on my business and I'm dealing with burnout I'd love to catch up at some point in future uh the fact that you're an introvert who for a full decade managed to be more extroverted and overcome it um suggests to me that you have a lot of capacity and at the moment maybe you just need a bit of time to recover so I would just tell them like be truthful hey I'm working on some stuff on my own would love to catch up but I I just need a little bit of space I've had to do that this year like it's been really bad I'm an hour and a half deep into this I can talk as much as I want um I've had to do something not not too dissimilar this year although it wasn't because I made myself more extroverted uh one of the really sort of unenjoyable challenges of some of the health stuff I've gone through is it impacts your mood and your extra version and your bravery as well sort of your courage to go out and do things and your desire to be around people uh so I've ignored texts or not replied to text for ages because I was embarrassed to say that I don't want to come out or can't come out or that it just feel too rough or or I don't know just I didn't want to see people I didn't want to hang about and I I wanted still keep the show going and I wanted you know keep this momentum and keep learning and and doing all the rest of the stuff and something had to give and a lot to be honest this year a lot of that was social engagements and and spending time with friends so a lot of friendships have had to drop um and a lot of the time with that I just had to say hey man like I'd love to hang but I'm just I'm sort of going through it at the moment so like I'll loop back to you when things are better and most people well everybody actually was like dude like I'm so sorry to hear that if there's anything I can do to help let me know so for the friends that I didn't get round to replying to I'm sorry and for the friends that said I hope that everything gets better I appreciate you and I think that your friends would say something not too disimilar as well nobody wants to force their friend out who's got burnout and he's recovering from it and he's building a business like ju what what to entertain them like to wh roll you out like some dancing monkey those aren't friends uhan one how did you deal with loneliness in school yeah really digging into my past traumas here aren't we um how did I deal with loneliness in school to be honest I just don't think I knew that I was lonely I mean I was I was alone all the time all I did was be alone I was alone in my room playing I was alone in the schoolyard I was alone in lessons I was alone walking home uh so I played Sports which was good because Sports Force you onto a team and I was good at sports which was also great because people kind of want you around even if you're socially kind of uh useless um if you're uh useful uh in a sporting environment you're functional um people keep you around so that was good I guess I made myself I made myself useful uh and I wonder whether that's a lesson that kind of followed me a little bit into uh adulthood which is in order for the world to love you you need to be useful or competent or impressive or whatever and that goes back to one of the questions from before which is how many people striving in success is very very tied to this need for validation uh this sort of compensatory mechanism I dealt with it by not knowing that it was a problem and uh yeah I think in many ways it makes you very robust as an adult because you're so used to being on your own you don't like oh moving to a new country and not knowing a single person fine I got going to know more people more quickly than I did for the you know half decade that I was in school um yeah it's weird kids are resilient man like it seems like the more that I learn about parenting Styles and stuff unless you do something really really atrocious to your kid for the most part they end up coming out like pretty fine or at least I did um after a lot of work that's not to say see I'm now I'm caveat again in case I get in trouble from the internet and it gets clipped not saying that you can neglect your child and that's an optimal way to raise them what I am saying is that parents who are concerned about not being perfect or about their CH children going through difficult things I think that they are more resilient than we all give them credit for and if we look back at our own childhoods what we realize is that we dealt with stuff that we were very very uh we we wouldn't want our kids to go through and yet we came out not totally shattered into pieces maybe just a little bit fractured realistic management how do you stay grounded with all the demands of your new found success the grounded thing to be honest is pretty easy um I'm not around many people I don't have a particularly big ego much to the uh perhaps surprise of people that don't know me well but no I I've never struggled with ego I think being so self-critical it's like it's weird low self-esteem or low confidence is a good proxy for humbleness like it does keep you humble how can you ever get too big for your boots when you don't ever believe that you're worthy of the things that you've done so it's like it's certainly not optimal but functionally it ends up doing uh not too different of a service um one of the more difficult things has been working out whether people want to be sort of in your life or around you because they like you as a person or because they think I don't know that there's some status to be associated with hanging around with you which even that like what am I rapper with like some mon like Montage what's it called Entourage of people see mold brain uh this Entourage of people around me um I don't think that I have this I don't know orbiters blast radius Paradise thing uh that would flate my ego to that point so uh and also I still work with most of the people that I did each new member of staff I don't think anybody's joined and left Mormon Ben assistant who joined four years ago is still with us Dean that was with me six and a half years ago still with me and each different person that comes along that I hang around with uh they keep my feet on the ground they definitely don't sort of believe any hype only the paranoid survive 444 congrats Chris any new dating advice have you been having any luck finding a woman with similar interests and depths to their Consciousness maybe I'm simply looking in all the wrong places You' been having any luck finding a woman with similar interests or depths to their Consciousness this is going to be a hard question for me to answer isn't it um personally not being a massive priority uh just trying to hold my life together this year has been a full-time job so any new dating advice finding a woman with similar interests and depths to their Consciousness if you are the sort of person that cares about the way that somebody else thinks I think allowing allowing yourself to not at least as a guy allowing yourself to not be distracted by Pretty Girls is a really really good idea because there are so many times where there will be a hot pretty gold that you think wow like you know maybe this is exactly perfect and then you realize that you don't have anything in common I'm sure that it has to be the same for girls as well some bloke that they go on a date with they're like you're really handsome and we have nothing in common and I am kind of losing brain cells by talking to you you just need to cut and run from those I think I know that it's seductive and I I know that they look pretty and I know they smell nice and I know that they like flick their hair in a cute way or whatever but they're not for you they're for someone but it's not for you so um like have the courage of your standards in that area now if you start to get yourself into the realm of well they need to be PhD level or above and they need to be this BMI and they need to have this boob size and they need to be this Ed and all the rest of it you're starting to set very high bars but what it sounds like is that you're struggling to find similar interests steps to Consciousness okay optimize for that don't optimize for the other stuff if you start optimizing for the other stuff you will sacrifice these and maybe you'll come across a unicorn and they've got absolutely everything but don't get distracted by pretty girls and pretty guys when you're looking for people with similar interests and deep consciousnesses that's my advice Eduardo Muno official what is the best way to manage the painful of being exceptional I mean how can you follow through with your purpose and goals taking the necessary actions to achieve them and not doing what everyone else does when the only proof you have that you're doing the right thing is entrepreneurship and self-improvement content on YouTube this is the other side of the Lonely chapter so part of it is the social side and the other part of it is the uncertainty that the actions you are taking are going to lead to positive outcomes at the end of your life I mean I don't have a title for my book uh and the amount of people that bring up this lonely chapter thing is wild the lonely chapter for a book kind of sounds a bit miserable but it's definitely resonating with people so um I don't know I I maybe maybe I should do a a more Deep dive on it but yes you're doing all of this stuff you're learning all of these productivity techniques and you're watching these YouTube videos and you're listening to these podcasts and you're taking these online courses and you've got skillshare and you've got readwise and you're doing space repetition and morning routine and and you have no idea if it's going to work but the thing is no one has any idea if it's going to work that is a painful cost of trying to do things with no promise that they're going to succeed if you knew that it was going to work there would be no risk in doing it because it would be certain so everybody has to deal with this this is the thing this is why I use this term personal curse it was what I wrote for myself you're not you haven't been given this bespoke idiosyncratic challenge that only you have to face this is what every person who gets from a place that they are to a place that they want to be has to go through because you need to try things with no promise that they are going to work there's no confirmation of Glory or success or Accolade or Prestige or anything on the other side none of it at all you're just it's and it's not even like your Dave David Goggins with broken legs running a a Navy SEAL hell week it's mundane daily just uncertainty and like ambient malays as you're reading another book on meditation and you're sitting down with your eyes closed listening to Sam Harris tell you to listen to your breath you don't know that it's going to work but that is the challenge the challenge is no certainty that's the way it is and the pain cost of being exceptional is getting through that uncertainty monai 941 how scared should I be of mold uh yeah okay so this was I guess another element of uh the Litany of health problems I've had this year uh much of it least in part was brought on by the past house that I was in the previous Studio which why we're in a new studio which isn't killing me hooray um ah I don't want to like put the shits up everybody because so many houses especially what's called subtropical temperatures will have mold for loads of people it's not a problem so how scared should you be of mold for loads of people not at all um but for some people for people who have a disposition for uh autoimmune problems or for other people who work themselves quite hard and are maybe running their immune system system a little bit ragged I'd get your heal tested and if you are tired no matter how long you sleep and if you are dealing with brain fog and if you feel like your mood is never up no matter what you do that happiness is something that is a heavy lift naturally when it shouldn't be and it wasn't previously I would get your house tested for mold and I would get an immune Market test done um there's a number that you can get done quite easily and I would check what's going on in your blood so for many people it's totally not totally not an issue if you've got mold in your house but for some people it's just get out don't try and remediate it just leave your house kwin 9292 when you have an academic like Eric Weinstein on the Pod and he's branching out in all different directions hitting topics and Concepts you might not understand or heard of do you then go back over the interview and take a deeper dive into these things to educate yourself further if so how do you do it do you make a note and then take a deeper dive into reading or watching the docs love the show let's go 3 million thank you um I have done some of that especially on the episodes that I really want to go back over I usually Eric's a good example because I have no idea where he's going to go um so I can't really sort of detect it Oliver burkman for instance I'll go back and listen to that but I've done so so much prep and I understand his work so well I think that I I know where it's going to go I don't really need to remind myself after I can just sort of luxuriate as it goes along Weinstein is much more like riding a very unsafe roller coaster car and holding on for dear life and hoping that you don't get thrown out so I don't take a ton of notes after the episode remembering that doing three a week means I already need to be thinking about the next one um but I do revisit them and I do enjoy listening to guests on the show because I made the show for me like they're all people I want to speak to by Design so yeah Ryan's Spalding what's the underlying theme behind every interview you've done like does it seem like there's a particular mindset or advice that's common in most if not all of the interviews you've done says two questions I guess the under theme is just how to understand yourself uh that's the thing I wanted to learn when I first started the show um I didn't understand myself I didn't understand how the world worked and I hoped that if I spoke to enough people who did that maybe it would help and I think it has uh the particular mindset or advice that's common in most if not all of the interviews that I've done it does vary but there is this sort of sense of letting go of sort of relinquishing ing of control uh a reduction of fear um that I think is is very common across a lot of the episodes um people people learning to not fear so much about the outcomes that they're going to get in their lives but working harder um so it's this odd blend right between the two it's this beautiful you can do it you can work harder and also the outcomes that you're going to get are going to come along uh no matter uh how much you fear or vacillate about them so uh even in that there is a paradox which I think is why continuing to go over the same kinds of topics is interesting because it each time it gives you a new perspective and gives you a way to manage the the distinction and the tension between these two things snowbear u2i will we ever see a modern wisdom Cinema production episode Bernie Sanders his episode on Joe Rogan is still one of the best episodes to date I love Bernie on Rogan I thought that episode was fantastic like I said we've tried to bring him on I would love to speak to him I think he's super interesting I I mean think about all of the different things that that guy seen he has been like competitor Outcast independent threat then like back in the tent but I I would why i' would really love to know I don't know how much you can talk about this think about the social politics internally inside of the democratic party if you're a guy who basically tried to he was the Trump of the left right he tried to sort of flip the I'm aware not specifically but like look caveat don't get me in trouble I promise um he tried to sort of flip the table over he was as close to that I think as you're going to get on the left of a of a disruptor in many ways I would love to find out does he think that he was sabotaged he seemed like he had all of this momentum going in and then and then it doesn't happen and God I mean yeah he's he's great I think he's he's like a fascinating individual um I would love to I'm really trying to educate myself about the best meaning parts of the left I think the ways that the left gets it wrong are so memed especially on my side of the internet that it's very obvious and it can sort of cause me certainly to be like hyper sensitive to them I'm like oh there's that thing again I'm like right okay what is the left in its absolute best light not from Libs of Tik Tok not a takeown from the daily wire what is the absolute sort of best foot that they can put forward and uh given that people are struggling with cost of living what does Bernie Sanders think about immigration I have no idea I have no idea what he thinks about immigration it's the biggest talking point for the right I'd love to know so Bernie if you're listening two hours deep into a 2.75 million Q&A episode call me are Jones es7 you are is sobriety still easy for you or is it the daily regular Challenge and have temptations as a fellow Brit it's the hardest thing to kick because it's pretty much in our blood as much as betting shops harder than sigs I reckon yeah dude I um like I wish that I could uh sympathize with you but honestly I don't ever think about it don't ever think about it um I did like I say that six months three times and then a thousand days once and it just broke I two six Monon periods broke it and then the thousand days just annihilated it um there's no part of me that ever feels the compulsion to have a beer but I remember what it was like I remember what it was like as a British young dude 22 or 21 I was working at the AA doing outbound T sales is that 20 I think it was 20 or 21 outbound T sales and there was a summer where I would get this Friday afternoon itch it would be 1 p.m. 2 p.m. and there would just be this desire to have a Corona and then to go and get on it with the boys that's how it f it was it was like an itch a a a gravitational pull toward a beer and uh it's nothing like a a dependency because I was only doing it every other week or something I just really wanted there was some times where it really called to me so I promise you if you work at it you may need to change your friend group you may need to go monk mode for a little while I promise if you stick at it you'll just something snaps inside of that link that you have between having a beer and having fun and sometimes having a beer can be fun but the only way to have fun is to have a beer that gets severed so yeah I hope that that helps wow that was uh two hours look I um I appreciate you guys listening uh to me start to open up about this stuff um and I really think that'll have the opportunity to hopefully teach people who are dealing with uh some of the health problems that I've gone through um or are worried about or need to learn about them I really hope that that's something that I'm going to be able to do more of on the show appreciate you being patient because it is like I'm learning out loud in real time here uh trying to get things right going to make errors going to um not be as transparent as I would like to be and then have to rcon and say hey I've been ill for however long or whatever I've been dealing with um so thank you for your patience thank you for your support 3 million next my my Lord uh all right I've waffled enough appreciate you bye