900k Q&A - Unreleased Andrew Tate Episode, Toxic Comments & Steroids
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In this 900,000-subscriber Q&A episode of *Modern Wisdom*, host Chris Williamson announces a major new product collaboration with James Smith, scheduled for release in early July after six months of secret development and extensive testing of over 150 variations. This marks their first joint venture under both names, described as a significant milestone akin to the fusion dance from *Dragon Ball Z*. The conversation also touches on Williamson's musical tastes, praising Sleep Token’s new album *Take Me Back to Eden* for its genre-blending style and highlighting Bring Me The Horizon’s *Sempiternal* and Deadmau5’s 2007 work as other favorites. He addresses the balance between hard work and success, using DJ Christoph's journey from being mocked by peers to warming up for Eric Prydz at Printworks Garden on New Year's Eve as proof that consistency can erode low-probability odds over time. Williamson emphasizes that while failure is possible despite effort, those who remain intentional, talented, and consistent eventually achieve their goals or stop trying; there are only two outcomes: success or quitting. Williamson discusses his approach to community management and content moderation, explaining why he has implemented a one-and-done ban policy on YouTube for toxic comments after noticing the comment sections becoming filled with negativity and unthoughtful reactions during viral moments. He clarifies that while criticism is welcome, repetitive offenders who contribute nothing of value are removed to maintain a high-quality discussion space. When asked about building a Discord or Slack community, he expresses openness but notes his current team size limits immediate expansion unless there is sufficient demand from the audience. On personal habits, Williamson reveals his daily routine involves scheduling specific tasks like clip review on Mondays and recording sessions on Tuesdays through Fridays, relying more on habit formation than rigid calendars to maintain discipline without burning out motivation. The episode delves into sensitive topics such as dating dynamics, where Williamson addresses why he discusses men's struggles with attraction despite being successful himself, arguing that his role is akin to a billionaire advocating for poverty relief rather than mocking the homeless. He explains that while intelligence in partners has its drawbacks due to potential disagreeability, it remains valuable if balanced with other traits like kindness and reliability. Williamson also shares insights on career changes, advising listeners not to heed naysayers when pursuing virtuous paths, even if they currently succeed at jobs they dislike. For a 13-year-old listener interested in business, he recommends gaining life experience through social exposure rather than isolating oneself in "monk mode," suggesting that real-world interactions provide higher-leverage learning opportunities than book consumption alone. Further questions cover the challenges of monetizing without compromising integrity, with Williamson admitting to leaving significant revenue on the table by rejecting guests who lack value or virtue despite their potential reach. He plans future educational products like morning routine and networking courses but stresses avoiding commercialization that feels like a "grift." On alcohol consumption, he advocates for elective sobriety as a tool for better decision-making and socializing without sedation, noting that nothing fun happens after 1:00 AM in his experience. Williamson also reflects on overcoming depression during his twenties caused by poor sleep patterns and emotional exhaustion from running events, highlighting how stable routines helped him recover. He shares anecdotes about awkward TV dates, including one where he fell asleep on a motorway central reservation leading to police involvement, contrasting it with other less memorable experiences. Looking ahead, Williamson hints at global tours starting in November 2024 and potential expansion into Australia, America, Canada, the UK, and Europe next year, contingent on audience reception of upcoming live shows. He confirms unreleased podcast content featuring Andrew Tate exists but was withheld due to ethical concerns about releasing it during Tate's peak fame given his controversial views at the time. Williamson also discusses bringing diverse perspectives onto the show by inviting experts like Richard Betts from the IPCC and David Packman, even when their viewpoints diverge significantly from mainstream audiences or host alignment. He concludes with advice on stopping overthinking by focusing on one domain at a time using periodization strategies, encouraging listeners to engage thoughtfully in comments sections as they help shape future community initiatives like potential Discord servers.
Read the full video transcript
Bonjour, friends. Welcome back to the
show. It is a 900,000 subscriber Q&A
episode. This one came along quite
quickly, and as usual, I asked for
questions on Instagram, Twitter, Locals,
and YouTube community,
and there were literally thousands. So,
I've tried to condense down lots of ones
that were all similar, and I'm going to
get through as many as I can today. As
always, thank you so much for all of the
support. I really do appreciate it.
This year has just been insane.
The growth, the guests, the quality of
the conversations, everything's amazing.
So, thank you very much for being a part
of it.
Let us get into it.
Dewinga 22, what is this product that
you're releasing with James Smith? Okay,
so I flew back to the UK for 44 hours a
couple of weeks ago to finish off the
final versions of something that I've
been working on in secret with James for
6 months now. We're going to be able to
announce it probably within 6 weeks So,
early July, I think we'll be able to
announce it.
And it is so good. We've been working so
hard on this. We've tested 150 different
variations, and
I'm I'm so happy. I can't wait to
release this. It's also the first
product that I'm ever going to have
released, and the first product that
James has ever done, the first thing
that we've ever properly put our names
behind. And we're we're joining forces
like like What Who did Who did the
fusion dance in Dragon Ball Z? Whoever
that was, that's like us.
Andreskoy1,
who is your current role model?
I think I'm quite fortunate that at the
moment a lot of the people who I used to
idolize are now friends,
partly due to living in a place that's
just full of absolute beasts, and also
because
I do something that I'm also a fan of.
I'm a fan of the podcasting independent
thinker space, and I also exist in it as
well.
Um
Definitely
thinking more and more about how to be a
positive person. So, guys like Naval who
have a very rosy outlook on life, who
can try and see the good in what's
happening is something that I'm trying
to take more of, but honestly, turning
idols into rivals and then rivals into
friends is one of the biggest life hacks
ever. It's It's phenomenal to have
somebody that you both respect and
admire that is now
a fan of even your work, and and you get
to look up to them. It's
It's really cool.
Maxpodzigan,
Sleep Token album thoughts, also your
favorite albums of all time. Thanks for
amazing pod. Thank you. This new Sleep
Token album, Take Me Back to Eden, is
out of this world. It's probably one of
the best albums I've heard in the last 5
years. So, if you haven't checked it
out, you need to go and listen to it.
It's amazing, man. I mean, they've
managed to blend metal with like hip-hop
rap with funk with this weird jazz
offset [ __ ] It's It's outstanding. I'm
very very impressed.
Other favorite albums,
Sempiternal by Bring Me is
outrageous. Um What else have I listened
to? Deadmau5's album from 2007,
the one that had more ghosts and stuff
on it. Those would be two that come to
mind.
Kwancy,
that mustache. Yes.
Yes, I know. I don't know. I was going
to grow my hair,
and I literally only got it cut today. I
was going to grow my hair out because I
was getting a bit bored, but it's so hot
in Austin that I can't bear it.
And the mustache, I had one of these
during lockdown, and I just thought, why
not channel my inner '70s cop/porn star?
So, this is
what we're playing with for the time
being.
Smelly Cat, congrats, sir. Well
deserved. Thank you. I feel like you do
these 100K Q&As every month now. Yeah, I
do. That 1 million episode is coming
soon. My question, love the Dr. K
episode. You guys got to talking about
sigma grindset and survivorship bias,
and he mentioned that there are some
people that work their ass off and still
fail maybe for the lack of proper
strategy. As someone who put in the work
and has built multiple successful
businesses, is it hard for you to
concede to the idea that hard work
doesn't always equal success? Do you
think that there are people who do the
work, have the right strategies even,
but still for whatever reason fail? Or
do you think there's always an
observable addressable reason someone is
unable to get to where they set out to
go, even in regards to the low
probability of success things like
living off creative endeavors as you do?
That is a really smart question. I have
to say as well, all of the questions
from today are
so phenomenal. Do you want to know
why this doesn't feel like the tenor in
the comments more? Like, they're so
reasonable and balanced and smart, super
super smart. And then sometimes some of
these episodes go hyper viral, and I
don't know, just reaches out into the
real versions of YouTube, like the the
cesspool YouTube.
And sometimes the comment sections are
just so boring, filled with like I don't
know, just negativity. Anyway, the
people that ask questions, you should
comment more on YouTube is my point. Um
Is it the case that
people can work very hard
and still come out on the other side not
succeeding? Yeah, obviously. You know,
you are rolling the dice every single
time that you try and have an
interaction
that you try and set out to achieve some
sort of a goal. You might not do it, and
that is
a risk that you take.
It is a difficult circle to square
because
every single person that I know
bar none
who has continued to work hard and is
talented and consistent has achieved
success. There's no one that I don't
know. So, here's a good story. Kristoff,
the DJ, CJ from um
Newcastle. I was with him last weekend.
He was playing in Austin.
I remember we used to go back to after
parties at this guy's house when we were
early 20s or something, and he would
play people songs that he'd produced,
and he was in love with Eric Prydz, and
then Prydz was his idol and stuff.
And he would bring these tracks in and
play them, and some of the guys would be
a little bit mocking like, "Oh, you and
your mate Eric, have you been speaking
much?" Obviously, Eric Prydz didn't know
who the [ __ ] this guy was. And he would
leave after parties
that were in his own living room to go
into the spare bedroom of his house,
which was his studio,
and make tracks for a couple of hours,
and then come back in.
So, he would abandon a party he was
hosting to go play,
work on his stuff, and then come back
in.
And the guy just didn't stop. I remember
thinking at the time, this dude is so
talented and hard working, it's it's
simply a matter of time before something
hits. And sure enough,
all of the people that had sort of given
him a bit of digs about, "Oh, you and
your mate Eric,"
I think 3 or 4 years ago he warmed up
for Eric Prydz at Printworks Garden on
New Year's Eve. And he's on Pryda. He's
on his label. He's playing every Monday
at Hï Ibiza this summer with Eric and
Adam Beyer. So, if you're in Ibiza this
summer, you should go and see Cristoph
play.
Um
My point being that
sometimes things are not going to work
out
even if you have put all of the hard
work in.
But the more that you are intentional,
the more that you work hard, the more
that you are consistent, the more that
you try and apply reason and talent to
whatever it is that you're doing, that
likelihood gets infinitesimally smaller
and smaller and smaller. And then over
time you can basically erode it away to
zero.
I know a lot of people. I know a lot of
people who are successful.
All of them are people who have had
failures, who have continued to iterate,
and then on the other side of that have
been have managed to achieve what it is
that they wanted.
It is low probability, but if you keep
going,
you either stop or you win. Those are
the two solutions.
Felix Blackquere
When are you coming to Montreal?
Maybe next year. The live tour thing
that we're doing in November, hopefully
will do really really well. Obviously,
it's all sold out and stuff, which was
great.
If that goes well and I enjoy it and
it's fun, we will do a full global tour
next year. Australia, there are so many
Aussies,
all of America, Canada, UK again, and
then maybe some places in Europe. So,
maybe next year.
Just Joel Williams, "Hi Chris, I want to
a change in career, but everyone around
me is telling me not to. Any advice?"
Don't listen to them. You don't need to
listen to somebody telling you what you
shouldn't do if you want to do it. "I
want a change in career, but everyone
around me is telling me not to."
Just do if If you've done the
assessment, and because you listen to
the show, you probably have worked out
what you want to want.
If the change in career is something not
to being a drug dealer, it's presumably
to something which is more aligned, more
virtuous, more ascended, more awakened,
in line with what it is that you want to
do in life,
just go and do it. Like, what You're
already succeeding presumably at a job
that you hate. Can you imagine how
amazing you would be at a job that you
actually enjoyed?
Uh so, yeah,
most people's advice isn't worth
listening to. You can aggregate it, but
I don't know, most people are midwits.
User 922281,
"Why did you ban me from commenting?"
Okay, so
I mentioned earlier on about the real
internet that you kind of push out into.
If anything achieves a bit of virality,
you go from outside of the core audience
that are the subscribers and the people
who align with what you're doing, and
you get out into just like the rest of
the internet, right? Like the general
public of the internet.
And I just found that some of the
comment sections were getting boring and
negative and cynical and this toxic
positivity thing that I'm on a flex of
at the moment,
I'm just bored of it. Like I'm bored of
all of you. Every single person that
comments with something that's
knee-jerky, unthoughtful, not mediated
through any sense of thinking about
what's going on. There's no context and
all that you want to do is just I had I
had some guy before I came on
commented on a a real on a a slide that
I put up, I wasted 2 minutes of my life
on another white boy that goes to the
gym. I'm like,
okay, you don't get to play in the
playpen. Like it's my house.
You have to behave if you want to come
in here. This doesn't mean that you have
everyone has to be a sycophant. I'm fine
with criticism. I'm just not fine with
retards.
That was [ __ ] So, it's a
one-and-done ban policy now on the
YouTube. It used to be that if someone
had commented a number of times cuz you
can we can see on the back end if you
click on a user, you can see everything
that they've ever commented on your
channel and there was tons and tons of
people it was always the same offenders
commenting just stupid stuff
and after a while I'd said to the guys
that are looking at the channel on the
back end like look, get rid of people if
they're being consistently just negative
and boring and not adding anything to
the conversation.
And now it's one-and-done and over time
the comment section will be sanitized.
So, just behave. This doesn't mean that
you need to agree with me. It means that
you need to not be an idiot. So, yeah,
and also like I say, everyone that's
contributing here, contribute in the
comments more cuz your guys' input is
way more interesting than what most of
the other comments are.
Juan
Mashiling, have you thought of building
a community in Discord or something? So,
I've actually been speaking to a guy who
his entire company builds Discord
servers around communities and there's
all
layers and admins and it gamifies stuff.
So, yeah, I have. Um, if people would
like that, if they want more of a
community side of things, that's
something that I'd consider doing. Um,
it's not something I thought of before,
either a Slack or a Discord.
Mostly cuz I don't use Discord myself or
I haven't until very recently when I
started doing Midjourney uh and Slack as
well I hadn't used until uh we started
adding some more people into the team.
So, I would and if people are interested
in that, then I don't know, comment or
something and and if there's enough
people we'd we'd consider doing it.
Gugos_Pan,
how to actually realize that people
don't notice us, especially our
appearance as much as we think?
Yeah, this is um
it's got it's obvious philosophically
but kind of hard to deploy in reality, I
think. You know, we are our biology is
created to make us feel concerned about
the judgment of others. This makes sense
ancestrally. If you knew 50 people in
your portion of the tribe,
you needed to be very very careful that
you didn't do something that would make
you fall down the rung of status because
status was so closely associated with
your mortality and with your quality of
life and so on.
So, we are your entire body and
physiology and mind is designed to make
you unsatisfied and remembering that
makes life make an awful lot more sense.
However,
you do know that you don't care all that
much about anybody else. So, why would
you think that anybody else cares that
much about you? You're just some random
person walking down the street with
tomato sauce on your top.
No one remembers. No one cares.
For me as somebody that was super
self-conscious throughout [ __ ]
forever,
it was just time and attention, I think.
That was a a big part of it. Realizing
that so much of the stuff that I did was
unnecessarily shaped by the opinions of
people who didn't have an opinion on me.
And
I
I really really think that if you
realized how little people care about
your appearance,
like you know, you some of your favorite
friends, you're friends with people not
because of the way that they look but
because of the things that they say,
whether or not they're good people,
whether or not they're interesting,
whether or not they're kind, whether or
not they're reliable.
Your appearance doesn't make that much
of a difference. I promise.
Escaping mediocrity, IQ or boobs in a
mate, how far would you give up
aesthetics for a smart girl? This is an
interesting one because,
you know,
men don't value uh intelligence as much
in a partner. This isn't to say that
they don't at all and obviously
intelligence is highly associated with
being interesting and kind and all of
the things I just said we care about in
the people that we want around us,
but it's not as important uh and a lot
of guys would happily take even like a
an 80 IQ girl who had the perfect body
uh and not not convinced that the
reverse would be true.
One of the problems you have is that
smart people in general can be more
disagreeable and disagreeability is not
all that enjoyable when it comes to a
relationship. So, it's not just like you
get either IQ or boobs. You don't even
just get boobs, right? It's like, okay,
has the boobs come with back problems
down the line? Does the boobs come with
an increased risk of something else?
There's like a polygenic score of
everything.
I think that it's a balance. Like
fence-sitting, it's a balance. Um,
but I
you
you can't work out whether or not you
should date somebody who is a 10 out of
10 but dead as a doornail or someone
who's super super smart but you can't
bear to see them naked. Like evidently
both of those are bad ideas. So,
personal preference, I suppose. That
being said, I did once hear someone who
made a perfect example of
everybody is a boobs guy until they have
sex, after which they're a bum guy.
Basically, his argument was that the
utility of a bum is is greater
up until it's greater to to use but
boobs are
better to look at.
I don't know, but interesting.
Nevy69,
what about a podcast with Andrew Tate?
Uh under house arrest at the moment and
I saw what happened to that vice guy who
tried to get in. I never said this.
Never mentioned this on the podcast
before. I recorded a podcast with Andrew
Tate
3 years ago, I think, 2 or 3 years ago.
It was in the height of COVID. Andrew
Tate, welcome to the show.
Hello. Good to see you. Good to see you
as well, man. And we spoke about uh
lockdowns, concern about governmental
overreach. Um, he was sort of waging war
against people that were getting
vaccinated at the time and complying
with government demands
and I had to turn the pushback. It was
like well-natured but I just didn't put
it out because it would have got the
channel absolutely nuked for talk of
vaccine misinformation. It was when
everything was super hot on YouTube. So,
I texted him afterwards and I was like,
look, mate, I I can't I can't put this
out because it's just going to it's
going to destroy the channel and he
understood and said, let's run it back
and we can do a different conversation,
we can talk about other stuff.
But uh yeah, that's just sat on a hard
drive somewhere. Unreleased Tate
content. This is another thing, man,
like
I understand that everybody all of us on
YouTube sell our soul to one degree or
another,
but there are people out there, like
that as an example,
I could have released that at the height
of Tate's fame as some, you know,
unseen, unreleased
2-hour Andrew Tate video. It would have
been clipped up to hell. It would have
got millions of plays.
But I know, I just didn't it felt like
it the time had passed for having that
conversation. Probably wouldn't have
been a super smart thing to do or a
super fair thing to do about Andrew cuz
he his views would have changed. There
are people on YouTube that behave like
normal human beings. Like that's a
normal thing to do. It's just
fair and not screwing over somebody.
I know that a lot of content creators
can seem like they're just ready to take
a bag or to compromise whatever value
and virtue that they have and that's
tempting all of the time. Every single
day that's tempting. Uh but I I do work
pretty hard myself and a lot of my
friends do too to like try and find that
balance. So, have a bit of faith in your
content creative favorites when you can.
Timo Shonen,
what has been the greatest challenge for
you in monetizing the podcast? Very
appropriate question.
Um, I mean, I largely haven't monetized
the podcast. There are people who have
followings
10% of what I do in terms of monthly
reach, in terms of subscribers, in terms
of impact, who make
10 times, 100 times more money. I mean,
not 100, but a lot more money than I do
and they've got courses and educational
products and they've productized,
commercialized stuff.
Um,
I think one of the biggest challenges
has been remaining
aligned with what I want to do. I've
said no to so many guests to come on
this podcast that I don't think add any
value to the conversation or I don't
think that they're good actors or I
don't think that they are virtuous
people or I'm just not interested in
them.
And even though they would have caused
tons and tons of plays,
and I'm trying to hold that same level
of
um
value and
integrity as best I can
with monetizing as well. And that means
I'm leaving an awful lot of money on the
table. Like I'm leaving tons and tons
and tons of cash on the table. I'm not
monetizing as effectively as I could be
or should be.
Um, so that's been one of them. Uh
balancing like integrity with
commercialization.
Another one would be that it's a very
heavy lift, you know, for all that the
channel is massive and channels of this
size usually have a huge team around
them.
It's not. We've got a new guy
who has been with us for about 2 months
now, Chase, who is my YouTube wizard, my
little YouTube dwarf mage guy, like
little spellbinder
YouTube person who's bigger than me. And
he's great, but it's still a very small
team, which means that anything that we
want to bring to market is very
effortful. So, I'm always the bottleneck
for this stuff. But, I would love to
release some educational products over
the next couple of years. Like, I'd love
to do a morning routine course, a
communications course, maybe something
to do with networking, maybe a podcast
mastery thing. I'd love to get those out
because I think that they're genuinely
aligned with me. I don't feel like I'm
selling out. It's not a grift or a shill
to teach people the things that you guys
ask every single Q&A.
But, it is a heavy lift. And I also kind
of don't actually know if you want that
what it is that you want. Do you want a
Discord community? Do you want courses
or whatever? So, I don't know, comment
or find some way to tell somebody to
tell me to do something. Maybe we'll do
it.
Murphy's Law, are you going to do a meet
and greet or after-party event following
your live shows? Yes. Didn't put this on
the advert, but yeah, we're going to
find a venue for after Dublin,
Manchester, and both of the London
shows. And everybody's going to be
invited, and I'm going to be there, and
some of the like bigger name guests that
are just going to come and sit in the
crowd will probably be there, too. So,
we'll be able to catch up and and
every I can meet everybody and I can do
photos and things.
When it's shows of this size,
most people
some people would do VIP tickets with
meet and greet and the photos and all
the rest of the stuff. But, I'd rather
just meet everyone. You know, if we're
doing next year shows that are 1,000,
1,500, 2,000 cap plus, you can't do
that. But, for now with the shows at the
caps that they are, it's realistic that
I can get through everyone. So,
yes is the answer.
Hello Fickle Vanus, what do you think
are the darkest elements that came out
of the manosphere?
That is a good question.
What do I think are the darkest elements
that came out of the manosphere?
I mean,
some of the fundamental assumptions
around that philosophy, I think are are
quite damaging. I think that treating
women as the enemy, as a
resource to be extracted from or as an
enemy to be used and discarded or
avoided at all costs
isn't a particularly successful approach
for a guy that wants to feel like he is
integrated holistically into the world
around him. Like, you're seeing 50% of
every every single street that you walk
down, half of the people that are
walking on that street are either an
enemy or a resource to be extracted
from.
Doesn't exactly make me think that
they're going to be a good person. And
it's not like these people arrived at
this conclusion on their own. The
thought leaders are giving these pieces
of advice out there. So, that would be
one of them that you've basically
demonized 50% of the entire globe. Um
I'm not convinced that
teaching men their primary goal is to
become as high value as possible, to
lean into discipline, and and do all of
the hard things, and you've got to be on
your grind, and you've got to make
money, and you've got to be in shape,
and all of the rest of it, but that
discipline ends at the boundary around
your penis.
You can be disciplined in everything in
life, but when it comes to women, like
just it's a free-for-all, bro, because
Genghis Khan or something.
Also doesn't
strike me as a particularly smart idea.
Like, it's just rank hypocrisy, isn't
it? Like, if you believe that discipline
and integrity and virtue and doing the
right thing are a smart way to go, but
you want to carve out this little niche
because you can't control where your
penis goes. And that's not me saying
that this is like something that any guy
can do, but if you're going to
proselytize about all of this stuff, you
need to have a philosophy that is um
contiguous with that, right? It needs to
run
at least you need to scale it to your
penis from your bank account to your
pants. And I don't know, I think those
would be two of them. But, I mean, I'm
writing this book with David at the
moment. For people that don't know, I'm
writing a book with David Buss, the
grandfather of evolutionary psychology.
And um it's going to come out soon. No,
it's not. It's going to come out next
year. It's going to be finished within
the next 6 months. But, I'm balls deep
in all of this research at the moment
trying to work out what's going on with
modern mating
deeper than I go on the show, which is
pretty deep already. And it's
fascinating, but it's dangerous. Like,
people aren't being fed particularly
good advice by mainstream media, and the
stuff that's on the internet has like
glimmers of gold in piles of [ __ ] So,
really trying to dig into that is
proving difficult. I would say those two
things. Adversarial nature between men
and women,
seeing them as an enemy to be avoided or
as a
an adversary to be used and discarded,
and this
lack of
um
discipline across all areas of your
life, I think two not particularly
positive concepts.
Wizard Wow, have you had guests cancel
last minute and suspected or knew that
it was due to them maybe learning about
problematic guests you had on the show
before?
Never.
I would say either never Well, I guess
how would I know? I've not suspected it
ever
happening. And certainly not recently. I
don't think I've had that many
problematic people on the show. Like,
you know, the most problematic guests
are people like Carl Benjamin, Sargon of
Akkad. He's up there.
I guess Jordan Peterson, if you don't
like him. David Pakman would be
problematic for a lot of people from the
right. Um
I don't know. I I I think that
most people seem to be quite reasonable
around people that you've had on,
especially if you seem to be acting in
good faith.
So far, I appear to be doing it.
Nick O'Neal, what software do you use to
record the podcast remotely? Do you have
any recommendations on how to optimize
audio quality when recording remote
interviews through Zoom or Microsoft
Teams? Critical Drinker sorted me out
with this. I was having a bit of a
nightmare recording
remotely, and he got me on to
StreamYard. You need to get StreamYard,
whatever the big dick biggest biggest
biggest dick platform is before you go
to like Teams and Enterprise and all
that. It's like Pro or Platinum or
something. And you can do local both
ends recording, audio and video separate
tracks, 1080p locally recorded and
uploaded, and it's all hosted in a back
end that everybody can access. You can
delegate user profiles. It's brilliant.
So, StreamYard.
Sam C, have you ever considered going on
Russell Brand's podcast or having him on
the show? He's just put a video out on
population collapse, and I can imagine
you having a really interesting
conversation with him. I would love to
speak to Russell Brand about population
collapse. He has gone
especially during COVID, it was a bit
like, "You don't know that they're
coming for you. You won't believe that
what they said about your children's
vaccine state." Like, it was all kind of
a bit
like if the sun made a a YouTube
channel. But, he seems to have dialed it
back, which is good. And the population
collapse video that he did was with my
friend Stephen Shaw, the guy that I
broke on this podcast couple months ago.
So, for as long as he's supporting
Stephen, [ __ ] brilliant. Population
collapse, fascinating topic. Russell
Brand, genuinely genuinely interesting
fellow. Little bit tough to get a hold
of, so I need an intro to him. If you
know a Russell Brand,
loop me in. That'd be great.
Holly Robinson, I think I'm too late to
ask a question for the pod. No, you're
not. But, two guest suggestions. Bret
Contreras, aka the Glute God. Not
familiar with him, but he sounds
interesting. Palmer Luckey, I did a uh
I did a podcast at Palmer Luckey's
house, actually. So, I've met him.
Palmer Luckey's interesting dude. He's
got like this military
wing thing that he does, and he was the
guy that founded Oculus and sold it to
Facebook. He's pretty cool.
Mhm.
M Siddharth 9080, what do you think
about Indian food? Phenomenal, but hard
to find good quality Indian food in
Austin.
Authentic
Vibhav,
how is it like being you? I think you
mean what is it like being you. Um
it's pretty fun at the moment. I think
my life, if people got to see what my
day-to-day life looks like, they would
probably be quite surprised. It's very
regimented, very normal, like kind of
boring for the most part.
Um there's
it's interspersed with cool stuff,
right? Like, last night I got to go to
the Comedy Mothership,
and went in and got to see Mark Normand,
and chilled out, and caught up with him
cuz he'd been on the show on Wednesday.
Or, you know, today Bill Perkins, the
guy that wrote Die with Zero, I get to
go out on his boat. But, for the last
full week, basically all that I've done
is go from here where I recorded a
podcast to the place that I sit and work
in my house looking over my garden,
answering emails, doing calls,
organizing stuff, trying to integrate
this like growth for the team so that I
don't need to do this all the time. So,
it's it's fun, but kind of repetitive.
And
I'm looking forward to having like
having more fun in my life cuz it's been
I've grinded a lot since I got to
Austin. So, I think it's time for me to
maybe let go of some of that, he says as
he begins to embark on writing a book.
Cade Darbyshire, do you think we'll
react too slowly to population collapse?
That's a good question.
Reacting too slowly to stop it, yes. I
think that we're already rolling down
the hill, and I think that we're
probably going to get
at least below
5 billion.
Maybe below like four. Um
what you are going to see though is a
rapid diminishing of particular groups
of people, particular sort of uh
demographic groups.
So uh
white liberals for instance are kind of
going to be eradicated
by population collapse
because they're not having children. So
who do you think you're going to be the
white liberals in future? Now don't say
that it's supposed to be the case that
we're supposed to have a society filled
with lot white liberals.
But if you care about
liberal values and that's something that
you want to propagate into the future
and you're not having kids, you are
ending not only your own genetic line
but also your own cultural line and your
own political line. Um
so what you're going to end up with are
uh rapid proliferation of groups like uh
orthodox religious uh fundamental
religious groups. So
um Mormons, uh Jews, Orthodox Jews
especially um like uh Roman Catholics,
Christians, certain Christian sects and
stuff like that. So those are going to
be the ones that are going to grow which
is interesting cuz it's like will you
react too slowly to population collapse?
Over time I think that a true true
existential risk, I don't think think
population collapse is.
But it's going to be shitty on the way
down. It's going to be shitty while
we're there. And it's going to lose not
like biodiversity but um like human
diversity actually is going to decline
an awful lot because the sort of groups
that don't reproduce are going to be the
sort of groups that don't reproduce
which means that downstream from that
there are fewer of them to make fewer of
them to make fewer of them. Meanwhile
other groups are going to make more of
them to make more of them. So if you
care about having a diverse population
which everybody who
doesn't care about population collapse
says that they are
you need to have kids.
L i n i.e.
What is the best way to become an
articulate and eloquent person?
I get asked this question a lot and just
intentionality I think is the most
important thing.
Think about what you're going to say. Be
precise with your speech. Practice it.
If you can, record it. Listen back to
yourself and work out what the twerks
and tweaks and ticks that you have are
that you don't like.
Get rid of them. Go again.
Working with a speech coach that I have
done and I still do and I will be doing
in the build-up to my performance at the
end of the year for the live tour
is honestly like
what brand of protein powder do you use
in order to get big as opposed to did
you go to the gym five times? Are you
eating your macros? Are you getting
enough protein into your diet? Are you
having your protein shake? Like the
brand of protein shake it's the top 5%
that was the leverage. Almost all of it
was just reps, spending time and
attention.
That's the way to go.
Russbroch,
just buzzed my hair similar to yours.
Good work. Uh do you like it for
confidence reasons?
It's convenience reasons to be honest.
Uh not having to do your hair is a life
hack. It's hot here in Austin. Uh the
reason I just got it cut from like that
long down to however short it is now. Uh
and I had a massive afro for almost
10 years. So I I've I've served my time
with long hair.
Good Art Soup, what is the field that
you're interested in but haven't covered
yet in the podcast? So I think that um
the existential risk of AI is something
that I'd love to revisit given that
we've got this
language learning model, chat GPT,
GPT-4, GPT-5 thing coming down the pike.
Um I think now is the time to really
sink back into that. I was obsessed by
it for a while when I first read
Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom and
now I've got all of the market in the
world to talk about this with and um
yeah, I'm going to have
Tristan Harris, I texted him a couple of
days ago, the guy that did The Social
Dilemma on Netflix.
Texted him, he's keen to come on at some
point. Jeffrey Miller is going to come
on and do a primer so that all of you
guys can understand the entire landscape
of what we're talking about, how AI
could be an X risk and then I've got uh
Katja
Grace maybe who's an AI uh researcher
that William MacAskill introduced me to.
So I've got a a ton of different people
that I'm going to kind of try and fold
together and really just work out okay,
how big of a problem is this? What are
the ways it could go wrong? What are the
ways it could go right? What do we need
to do to protect ourselves? What can we
do ourselves to influence the way that
this field moves forward?
So that, probably AI.
Kieran Comedy Coach uh very excited to
come to your money event later this
year. How will it be structured? Uh so I
think it's going to be similar to the
14 lessons from 2022 style episode. So
you know, segments of me telling
stories, insights from those stories. Um
hopefully there'll be some production
that we can tie into that to make it
feel a little bit more immersive, maybe
some music. Uh I might be speaking to
Mark from After School or someone
similar to get some visuals that can
kind of accompany what we're doing. I
did this I you might not have seen but I
narrated a story uh for After School
which was really cool. It's called um
The Slow Drip of Endless Fantasy, I
think. And uh
I really enjoyed it and I thought that
it drove the point home in a way that me
just telling you a thing can't.
So I'm going to try and have some of the
Philosophy Bro stuff, a little bit of
jokes and and personal stories.
Um some really tactical takeaways, you
know, how to apply this and then some
super uh inspirational points that will
tie in with
some uh performance-y,
music-y stuff too. Should be really fun.
I'm just going to kind of test the water
uh and see
what works, what resonates and then from
there, you know, come 2024, if we do a
really bigger tour, I'll have got a good
bit of like right, wow, all of that
stuff worked or this is really great and
this we can switch or whatever else.
It's going to be cool. I'm really
excited.
Raluca
Fenechiu
Uh no question. I just love you. Thank
you. I love you too. Uh keep the fire
burning.
We are doing good to the world.
True.
Cole Campbell, what is the biggest
sacrifice you make behind the scenes to
make Modern Wisdom what it is? I think
it's what I said earlier on that
um life
takes a big hit. Like you know, I'm not
a
lumberjack right with a
90 out of a thousand chance of
mortality per year or something. Like I
don't I don't lose 10% of my friends to
work accidents every single 365 days.
But
it is consistent. It is hard work. It is
grind. Like there's a lot that I put in
and it does
like it is sapping sometimes and it's
all me, right? There's no boss. There's
no one to step in
and to make this work uh become harder
uh become easier, sorry. There's no one
else that's going to come in and help
and do it. If I don't do it, it's not
going to get done. If I don't find the
guests, if I don't schedule them, if I
don't research them, it's not going to
happen. Which is fine. That's the price
that I chose to pay and I love the
like
show itself.
But there's an awful lot that goes on to
like just butcher sit and keep it going
and it's getting more. There's more and
more and more stuff that needs to be
done all of the time to keep the show
going. So I'm looking forward to uh
growing the operation to the point where
I can kind of just get back to only
doing the stuff that I'm really really
good at which is conversations,
researching.
That's it.
Cappy, do you ever feel like your head
is going to explode with all this
information you take in all the time and
if so, how do you process all of this
and make sure important lessons aren't
forgotten? Okay, so Chrisbot came back.
I spoke to the team that made it and
actually made an upgraded version 2.0
that is less um Switzer landy sit on the
fence. Is it Belgium or Switzerland?
Whoever it is. Anyway, it's like more me
supposedly. So let's see. Do you feel
like your head is going to explode with
all this information you take in all the
time and if so, how do you process all
of this and make sure important lessons
aren't forgotten? Chrisbot, don't be a
cook. Ha, I'm not sure if my head is
going to explode but I do feel like I'm
constantly learning and growing. I'm
always looking for new ways to process
and store information and I'm constantly
challenging myself to think out of the
box. I'm also a big believer in taking
notes, writing things down so I can
refer to them later. This way I can
ensure that I'm not forgetting anything
important.
That's not far off.
That's not far off at all. I do take a
lot of notes. Um
and you'll hear me in episodes sometimes
refer to them. I'll bring up some quote
I'm trying to find and I'll just tap tap
tap tap tap away and then
it comes up. Processing it and making
sure that the lessons aren't forgotten.
I've said this before, it's I have to
teach it.
I have to recall it to people on an
episode with a guest or in the
newsletter or on a tweet or when
somebody asks me just day-to-day during
conversations, I'm always recalling
information. You have to remember that
learning and memorization does not come
from repeated exposure, it comes from
repeated recall. You have to recall the
stuff. If you're not recalling it,
you're not going to learn it. Like
repeated exposure means nothing.
Repeated recall is what matters.
Akande Daniel, recently started watching
your podcast. You're a huge inspiration
to me. Thank you. Any advice for a
20-year-old who doesn't know what the
[ __ ] to do with his life?
Chrisbot, let's see
if you've got anything to say for this
gentleman who doesn't know what the [ __ ]
to do with his life.
Come on now, Chrisbot.
You cook.
My advice would be to take some time to
explore and find out what you're
passionate about. Don't be afraid to
take risks and try new things. You have
plenty of time to figure out what you
want to do. So don't be afraid to take
food a few detours the way. Life is all
about learning and growing, so don't be
afraid to make mistakes and learn from
them. Also, not bad from Chris Bot
there. Um, I would say
explore before you exploit. So, you can
go and travel to a new country, try
something different, go and work abroad
for a year. Don't be scared about taking
risks. You've got basically nothing to
lose because you haven't accumulated
anything yet. There is going to be a
point in your life in 10 or 20 or 30
years time where you have tons of
responsibility and restrictions and you
can't go and do this anymore. So, allow
yourself to do the things now that you
are only going to be able to do now and
that includes when I was 22,
I went and did the season in Ibiza and
it was maybe 2 months or something there
and I came back and I'd lost like
12 IQ points and had just partied for
the entire time.
But, it was fun.
And, I'm not going to do that now. I'm
not going to go and do the season in
Ibiza now. So, there are certain things
that you can only do that you can only
experience, adventures that you can
have, learnings that you can gain
at certain periods of your life. So,
what are those now? How can you go and
explore, expose yourself to different
things, different people, different
cultures, different languages, different
adventures?
And, you will discover, especially if
you're a reflective person, which it
sounds like you are, you're going to
discover so much about yourself during
that process.
Just keep on exploring and eventually
you'll find the thing that you're
looking for.
The Ben As Podcast, proud to say I've
been around since day one, almost. Dear
God, thank you. I I apologize. Uh, the
progression has been absolutely
ridiculous in the most positive sense.
Doing three a week like clockwork
deserves all the praise possible. Thank
you.
I'm wondering how you learned to
allocate your time to everything and how
rigorous you are with your schedule.
There has to be a ton
of hard days in between. It has to be a
ton of hard days in between. Keep
rocking. Well, thank you.
I'm not that I'm not that like rigorous
with the schedule in that there's no
calendar, but I do just try and do the
same things each day of each week. So,
Mondays we sit down, we go through
clips, we make sure that the full weekly
YouTube schedule has been lined up. I'll
do prep for all of the guests and I'll
try and check in on emails. Tuesday,
Thursday, Friday, I'll try to record.
Wednesday is publish day, so that's full
day running through titles, intros,
thumbnails, descriptions, everything for
the coming up week, then record intros,
record ad reads,
deal with advertisers, make sure that
everything's sorted there.
And then weekends, do the newsletter,
try and have some time to myself. Uh,
and then run it back from Monday. So,
I've kind of outsourced a lot of what I
do to just routine, but it's not like
it's a rigorous schedule. I don't have
some, you know, very carefully put
together calendar that's keeping me
accountable because as a disciplinarian,
I'm kind of [ __ ] but as a habit
follower, I'm actually really good and I
think that this is, you know, the other
side of talking about discipline, that
discipline can be made much more easy if
you turn things into habits, but because
having to rely on anything that isn't
discipline, like, you know, discipline
eats motivation for breakfast, which I
don't disagree with,
having to rely on anything that isn't
discipline makes it sound like you're
undisciplined, but you might as well
just use less discipline if you can and
relying on routine is one of those
strategies that I think that you can
use.
Alex Davidson, why are you so interested
in the fact surrounding how a majority
of men struggle to attract women when
you yourself are well outside of that
demographic? I imagine that the men that
are in that demographic listening to you
talk about their plight is a bit like a
billionaire explaining how much poverty
sucks to a homeless person. You're good
looking and successful, so why are you
fascinated the average guy's dating
struggles? I'm looking forward to your
million mark, man. I think your show is
underrated. Keep up the good work.
That's a very good question.
Uh,
tough bit of pushback, but also uh, [ __ ]
sandwich to make me feel nice at the
end. That's the sort of comment that is
critical, but acceptable
on the podcast channel. Um,
the analogy between me being like a
billionaire explaining how much poverty
sucks to a homeless person, if I wasn't
successful and I wasn't good looking and
I was talking about the plight of men,
people would accuse me of just being
bitter.
Even though I'm not those things and I
talk about them,
I'm accused of being out of touch. So,
it's a very difficult like it's
unfalsifiable really for me to talk
about. I can either be in that cohort
and be accused of being a misogynistic
incel soy boy or I can be outside of it
and I can be accused of being like a
bourgeois opulent larper. So,
I think the reason that I do it, the
reason that I'm interested in it is
because any topic that is not being
discussed by the mainstream media, but
needs to be discussed
because it's affecting people's lives,
what am I doing with an independent
platform if things that interest me and
that I care about and that are
underrepresented that I don't bother
talking about them?
Um,
I do think that
there is value in hearing from people
who are on the ground experiencing this
sort of stuff,
but
I don't know. Like, do you why do people
follow guys that are in shape when
they're learning how to get in shape? Is
that not like saying, well, this guy is
genetically gifted or he's on steroids
or he has been training for longer than
me, so what's the point in learning from
them?
I'm not too sure.
Uh,
the guys that are in that demographic
that want to hear from anybody talk
about the plight of of men, they can go
to any channel that they want. You know,
there's Wheat Waffles, that's like a
black pill content creator who is still
on the come up and doesn't consider
himself to be that good looking. So,
they can go and listen to him if they
want, but
I don't know. Like,
the billionaire explaining poverty to a
to a homeless person, I would like to
think it's a little bit more like the
billionaire saying to the world we
should care about homelessness and
dedicating a good bit of his time to
trying to raise people out of it and
also to give awareness to the world that
poverty is something that we should care
about. I'd like to think that that's the
the approach that I'm doing. If it does
appear like I'm just some like bourgeois
larper laughing from his high horse as
he doesn't deal with any of the problems
that the normal world has to deal with,
I'm not convinced that that's true and
also I hope that it's not the case
because I genuinely do care. Like, I do
care about both men and women. Anybody
that's suffering, man. Like, for all
that
the Fiat 500 drivers of the internet
don't think that this is the case,
I am a really, really empathetic person
like massively to a a fault to the point
where
it makes me make decisions incredibly
slowly. I massively regret things that I
say to people even small I I there's
comments I've made over the last year
that I can't stop thinking about because
I'm like terrified that it makes me into
a piece of [ __ ] even though it was just
some passing joke that I made or a bit
of banter that the other person's never
going to remember.
I care about anybody that's suffering
and especially people that are suffering
that are being ignored by the
mainstream.
I think that it's a good investment of
my time. But, I appreciate the question.
It's a really good question.
Johnson Uha,
I'm 13 years old,
interested in business and I go to the
gym.
What do you recommend I do to acquire
more knowledge and invest in my future?
Dear God, man. This is the second time
in a row now that
a child
who watches this podcast has come on and
asked questions around business and and
personal development and stuff. First
off,
massive, massive props to you being
someone who is
uh, just under a third of my age and is
asking yourself questions that most
people my age haven't got round to
asking themselves yet. Congratulations.
Secondly, I don't mean to be
patronizing, but
experiencing life and just allowing
yourself to indulge in
uh, social situations, exposing yourself
to as many different experiences as
possible
will be the highest leverage thing that
you can do with regards to your
learning. Like, there is so much
unrealized wisdom and insight that you
can tap into by just experiencing the
day-to-day
like,
uh, vicissitudes of being a human
because you haven't had a massive amount
of it yet that you're going to capture a
lot of that. So,
I would be very cautious around going
monk mode at age 13, focusing on reading
all of the books you can and spending
your time in the gym with your
headphones in listening to Sleep Token's
new album.
I would
spend time probably around people that
are older than you. If you can get in
with good, well-meaning 15, 16,
17-year-olds that'll take you under
their wing. You got to be careful that
they're not going to, you know, take you
down a dark path, but
you're basically
like
13 years ahead of your 13-year-old self.
So, finding people that are a bit older
would be a big help.
Uh,
if you are serious about trying to
maximize the time that you spend in
terms of understanding knowledge and
investing your future in,
find the content creators that resonate
with you the most,
listen to them, consume their stuff,
read however you feel is appropriate,
and then apply that to life. Like, don't
don't be too concerned about starting a
business at age 13 unless there is some
niche that you know that you can nail
and you have a competitive advantage.
Living life,
exposing yourself to your content and
then going and applying that day-to-day
would be great. But, dude, you're going
to be
a beast. You're going to be a monster.
Like, you're you're going to be
phenomenal as long as you don't knock
yourself off. So,
keep going.
Chung Lu, do you have advice for someone
who wants to start a podcast, but don't
feel qualified?
None of us were qualified. Nobody
started a podcast that was qualified.
There is no podcasting qualification.
When I started doing this, the first
ever episode was me in my old studio
with a single Blue Yeti attached to the
middle of the desk that made tons of
noise and I kept saying, "Mhm." every
3 seconds and it was filmed on an iPhone
and the guy's girlfriend was in the
corner of the room.
And
that's it. And now we reach like
hundreds of millions of people every
single year. So,
you don't need to worry about the
qualification. And
no one's watching you when you start
doing something. People that have a fear
that when they start doing something,
they're going to suck, and the people
that are watching them are going to
laugh at them, the beautiful thing is no
one's watching. So few people know that
you're doing the thing that no one is
there to watch how much you suck at
doing the thing.
There is no pressure. You can just
start.
How can a more traditional woman who
wants to be pursued be more proactive in
her love life?
That is a cool question. Chrisbot.
Come on.
Red-pilled Chrisbot. This is the
newly ascended hardcore
4chan Chrisbot.
How can a more traditional woman who
wants to be pursued be more proactive in
her love life?
Hmm, that's a tough one. Good start. Uh
I'm not sure I'm the best person to
answer that question. I mean, I'm a guy,
so I'm not sure I'm the best person to
give advice on how to be pursued.
Are you saying that I'm not pursued?
But, if I had to guess, I'd say the best
way for a traditional woman to be more
proactive in her love life to make sure
she's putting herself out there. Go to
events, join clubs, and make sure you're
meeting new people. That way you can
increase your chances of meeting someone
who is interested in pursuing you.
That's not bad. This is kind of This is
a lot more like me now, I think. Um one
other thing that you could do, and we're
writing about this in the book at the
moment, is
uh
cultivating as a woman cultivating
openness and friendliness. So,
in a post-Me Too world,
86% of women say that they want a man to
make the first move, but around about
50% of men say that they are terrified
of making the first move for being seen
as creepy. Around about
20% of American millennials and Gen
Z'ers say that a man asking a girl out
on a date ask a girl out for a drink in
person always or usually constitutes um
not abuse, but like um
is overbearing and and shouldn't be
done. So, you have a world in which guys
are seeing anything that resembles a no
as a hell no, but girls who still want
to be approached. So, guys are scared of
approaching, girls want to be
approached, but are terrified of being
physically abused by some like random
man on the street, and like that just
causes neither of them to ever open up.
So, the goal for guys is to cultivate a
sense of overcoming approach anxiety
while still being safe and respectful to
women, and on the woman's side, it's
important for them like this is a takes
two to tango scenario. The woman needs
to be open and friendly. They need to be
receptive to the guys that they want to
hear from. You know, if you give off a
why men love [ __ ] vibe or like a
treat him like you don't like him thing,
he's not going to come over. So,
that would be
a good way, you know, a more traditional
woman who wants to be pursued and be
more proactive, you don't necessarily
want to be
uh
doing the short skirt and Tinder thing,
but you also still need to up your
chances.
Chrisbot got it right, you know, attend
places and go to events and join clubs
where you will be around the sort of man
that you want to date, and while you are
there, cultivate receptiveness,
openness, friendliness. I think that'll
work.
Rin
Rin Rin
Nulivin.
Did you think that you're going to get
this big?
That's a good question. Um
me and Dean always said, you know, even
when we I remember we were episode like
40 or something, and I remember saying,
"Fuck, dude, I can't believe that more
people aren't watching and more people
aren't listening cuz I think this
stuff's really interesting." And he
said, "Yeah, me too. It's really really
cool and and strange, isn't it? It just
hasn't sort of kicked in yet."
We've been saying and doing the same
thing for 5 years now. Like some of the
stuff that I put out on Instagram that
went that goes super super viral is [ __ ]
I've been saying for half a decade. And
it's just now that there's enough people
to listen or because of
I guess like um
the skewed perception of status changing
how people perceive the thing that you
say. Like that me 5 years ago didn't
have the same authority as me now,
therefore basically the words that I
say, even if they're the same, are
essentially different.
Um
Not much has changed. It's just been the
same conversations, the same curiosity,
and
I don't know. I'm very very happy at how
the growth is going. I want to change
the day-to-day experience that I have of
it cuz it's such a heavy lift,
but it's a price that I'm willing to
pay, and it's not going to be like that
forever, and
for as long as we keep accumulating
awesome people that ask questions like
this,
I'm happy.
Matt Lake. What was the hardest period
{slash} worst phase of your life that
you have managed to overcome?
Um
I don't think there's been a particular
individual period of time, but there was
a a chunk
a number of chunks during my 20s where
I was very regularly
um depressed, down, spending days in
bed. I'd struggle to get out of bed
and make excuses about not attending
meetings, and
it would make me feel very
uh like ashamed of myself, and
that was
born out heavily of a poor sleep
pattern, and I wasn't eating amazingly,
but it was mostly sleep, I think, and
not connecting and not being true to the
people that were around me.
And that took a long time, and like
every
end of September for probably 5 years, I
basically had a breakdown, a miniature
breakdown, because I'd worked so hard,
I'd invested all of this emotional
energy into running the events, and then
at the end of freshers' week, at the end
of the second freshers' week, it was two
it ran for 2 weeks, sometimes for 3
weeks,
I'd just break down, and I'd spend a few
days in bed, feel like an absolute waste
man, and then
drag myself back and restart the engine
and then go again. And it was That was
just the cycle that I'd go through.
So, probably that, and um you know,
COVID wasn't great for a lot of things,
and I don't like the fact that it
destroyed or destroyed it paused the
business that I'd spent a decade
building,
uh more than a decade, but
it was good to teach me what a stable
sleep and wake pattern feels like and to
also give me an insight into a different
kind of life outside of that.
Paul Nadiras.
Need a blue Modern Wisdom hoodie in my
wardrobe. When are they out, sir?
I've wanted to do merch for ages. I've
had a ton of conversations with merch
companies, but I'm not going to put out
anything that isn't awesome because
first off, I've waited for ages, and
secondly, if it's not nice, you're not
going to wear it. And thirdly, I want to
wear it. So, it needs to be good. We are
sampling a million different versions of
T-shirts and hoodies and everything, and
it'll be out 100% before the live tour
because we need merch for the live tour,
but
soon, hopefully. Will it be blue? I
don't know if it'll be blue. Maybe navy.
Blue makes it sound too blue, but navy
for sure.
Luke Blight. Thoughts on cutting out
alcohol and the implications it has on
socializing.
So,
I'm a massive proponent of going
elective sobriety.
Uh I've done
lots and lots of periods of it. The
implications it has on socializing
the gains that you'll accrue by spending
time around people that you genuinely
are interested in, and you don't need to
sedate yourself out of the experience of
being around is priceless.
For me now,
half a dec more than half a decade, like
six or seven years into playing with
sobriety and using it as a tool,
I do think that right now for where I'm
at, socializing is more important than
being sober,
but you don't need to drink to
socialize. Does it make you less
confident? Yeah, a little bit. Does it
mean that you're going to want to go
home at 1:00 in the morning as opposed
to at 3:00 in the morning? Yeah, but
that's a good thing. Nothing fun has
ever happened on a night out after 1:00
in the morning, right?
I know, I'm the night out guy, right? I
have a sample size of 1,000 club nights.
Nothing good happens after 1:00 in the
morning. So,
I there is almost
almost no reason
that if you've never gone sober, and you
live the sort of life that
most people do,
the kind of drinking patterns that most
young people do in the West, there is no
reason not to go sober. I can't think of
a good reason if you've never done it
before.
Uh what does Chrisbot say about this?
I've been sober for 1,000 days now, and
it's been a wild ride. Was sober for
1,000 days. Was a
vanilla ride.
I've noticed that I'm more productive, I
make fewer bad decisions, and have more
money in my pocket. Correct. I also make
I'm also more selective with the people
I hang around with because I don't have
alcohol to bond over. That said, I'm
still finding ways to fun have fun and
socialize without alcohol. It's all
about finding the right people and
activities that don't involve drinking.
All of this is correct. Socializing
doesn't just mean going on a night out.
Thanks, Chrisbot. Doesn't just mean
going on a night out. You can do stuff
during the day. Go and see some live
music. Go and see a comedy show. Go and
do I
sport any There's a million things that
don't involve that. But it's it's a
marker of how ingrained and embedded
alcohol is into our culture that people
immediately Soon as you say socializing,
oh, it's in a bar. Oh, oh, alcohol's
involved. So, finding a group of people
who don't need to drink to have fun, and
that you don't need to drink to be
around,
that's the life hack.
Gary F. I'd love to see a
behind-the-scenes of how you make your
shows. You must have a big team working
for you.
Uh there's not much to see, man. Like
this is This has kind of come up a few
times that I haven't really spoken about
it before, but
the process of making Modern Wisdom is
for the most part
very
unspectacular. It's me
with
notes and and documents and books and
videos
just frantically reading them all and
listening to them all and trying to work
out what I want to talk about
and then a couple of other people doing
things, Ben, Dean, and Chase.
Chase wizard, YouTube wizard, is helping
to take a lot of work off my hands.
Dean's always done the stuff that he's
done and then Ben picks up all of the
rest of the bits.
It's not very spectacular. Um that may
change and hopefully will do. Uh but
yeah, it's
the behind the scenes would be like the
the least
what you expect and what you would be
delivered would be so disappointing. I
don't think that it's going to be
worthwhile. Um it would be cool to do
one of the big episodes that we have,
you know, like another Goggins or
whatever when we we've got a few of
those coming up soon. Um that's fun, but
for the most part I I walk from that
house to this house. It's
come and stand in here and make sure
that I have a drink and then I start
talking and then I go back in there and
I upload everything and then
and episode appears. It's It's not very
exciting.
Bailey McGee, what is your next uh what
is your end goal? What's the next 10
years of Chris Williamson look like? See
if Chris Bot comes up with something,
but I'm going to answer it
while he talks. Um
end goal, I don't have one. Uh I just
want to keep on having interesting
conversations. It's been the way that
it's always been. Find people I'm
interested in, talk to them about the
stuff that I'm interested in. That's it.
The next 10 years of Chris Williamson
I if I don't do something catastrophic
and put my foot in my mouth or get
canceled or say say something stupid
mean
it really does feel like the world's at
my feet and it's I I said it at um
my birthday. Michael Malice very kindly
ran a birthday party for me a few months
ago and I said, you know, it it
literally feels like I can do anything
and it's beautiful and I've never felt
this way before that I have
every door open to me, every opportunity
is coming my way and I get to pick and
choose what it is that I want to do and
I get to hopefully like make the world a
better place along with it. I'm not
kidding myself. I'm not going to be
remembered in a hundred years time,
but I can nudge the civilization that
I'm a part of even the tiny tiny tiny
degree. I can give it a little nudge and
the people that are here at the same
time as me
hopefully I can make their existence and
their time on this planet make a little
bit more sense and be a bit more
enjoyable while they're here.
[ __ ] like
that's pretty cool. Like it's pretty
cool as a a day-to-day.
Chris Bot, what do you say? My end goal
is to maximize my freedom to do the
things I want all the time. That's
pretty hedonistic. I want to be able to
wake up in the morning and decide what I
want to do with my day and if there are
things I don't necessarily want to do,
that's not
strictly untrue. I want to be able to
get them done quickly so they don't take
up too much of my time. I also want to
make sure that I don't fall into the
trap of productivity dysmorphia where I
can't see the fruits of my labors on a
daily basis.
This Chris Bot is like this is
overconfident Chris Bot. So we've gone
from cocked Chris Bot, cocked bot to
confident bot. Now um
coolly, I mean he's he's not far off,
but
some of that stuff I don't think that's
what productivity dysmorphia means and I
made it up. Uh Omar
Sertelli,
are you taking steroids? No, I am not
and I would be in significantly better
condition if I was.
Tommy Conde, you get asked every Q&A,
intro song, please. Right, I did it. I
actually saw this come up and I I went
and I found it. It's called Chris Talk
Fly Away the JPB remix and Chris is K R
Y S Talk Fly Away the JPB remix. I
listened to this earlier on today before
I came and recorded.
Listening to that song
will make your head fall off because you
if you're listening to this on Spotify
or Apple Podcasts have heard it tons of
times. I'm you know, it's been played
millions tens of millions of times that
song
as an intro, an edit that I got my
friend to make, a DJ friend to make,
five and a half years ago.
And then you hear the full version of
the song and all of this extra [ __ ]
appears and you go, "Oh no, no, no, he's
supposed to say like such and such.
Welcome to the show."
Hang on. No, this this isn't this isn't
where it's supposed to stop. There's all
of this extra stuff. It's like the
uncanny valley, but for listening. So
yeah, Chris Talk Fly Away the JPB remix
is available on YouTube. Uh it's
creative commons license free, which is
why we used it and then I got someone to
edit it and it's the both intro and
outro. The actual outro to the song with
that the episode with that big long
swell is the breakdown from the episode
that you should be able to hear
actually. Uh but yeah, that's that's it.
Go go and enjoy and break your brain.
Soul Biscuits,
if I want to get fit, I go to the gym
consistently. If I want a girlfriend,
what do I do? What's my gym? [ __ ]
good question. That's a smart, nice
question. I like that. You are smart
people.
If I want to girlfriend, what do I do?
What's my gym? Well, the gym can be your
gym for this.
And you know, this is common wisdom from
me.
Go to the place where the kind of people
that you want to date
hang out.
Are you into girls that train? You need
to be in a gym. A gym that's social
would be a great idea. So something like
a CrossFit or a boot camp or
any kind of team sport like
[ __ ] me that the
field near where I live, they do
kickball, which looks like the lamest
sport I've ever seen in my entire life
and yet while the guys and the girls
stood waiting to kick the ball, the
dudes are chatting up the girls. So I'm
thinking, well, it's a co-ed sport. It's
not actually that dumb of a way to meet
girls apart from the fact that every
girl that goes there knows that you're
the sort of guy that plays kickball. So
you know,
um
other things, if you're into acting or
improv or art or whatever it is, there
are social groups that exist in the real
world
where other people into the things that
you're into go to.
If you're talking about
how do I progress?
How do I
uh improve the constituent parts of my
personal development in the same way as
going to the gym makes you fitter, what
is the progression place that you do if
you want to get a girlfriend?
It's just reps, right? It's just
interacting with girls. Destiny's got
this great piece of advice where he says
you just need to have lots of
girlfriends that you spend time around
and that's a really underrated piece of
advice because
good example, only child, never was
friends with a girl that I didn't want
to bang. Ever.
Never was because I didn't have a
sister. I got I guess apart from my mom.
I didn't have a sister. I didn't have
any girl friends in my life. So for me
from as soon as I was
14, 15, 16, all of the girls I was
hanging around with I were just girls
that I was attracted to.
But you lose out on a lot of the
uh understandings that you gain from
just how to interact with girls, which
is different to how you interact with
guys. So yeah, I think
hanging around in a place that's got
girls
that you don't need to be trying to get
with and just being okay with that and
knowing that they'll be okay with that
and knowing that you don't come across
creepy and just learning how to
communicate.
That's the lion's share of what you're
talking about, I think. Spooner Shawn,
what's one question that hasn't been
asked in the Q&A that you wish somebody
would have asked? Is there a topic
that's bubbling up in your mind right
now that you haven't got the chance to
deep dive on publicly because the right
question or guest hasn't landed
recently?
This is like the solution to
superintelligence from Nick Bostrom.
It's called machine extrapolated
volition. So basically if you can't get
if you can't work out what it is that
you want a machine to do, you ask the
machine what it should want to do if it
was to detect all of your preferences.
Chris Bot, I'm asking him this. Hmm,
that's a tough one. Yeah, correct. No
[ __ ] I'm always thinking about new
topics and ideas, but I'm not sure I
have a specific question I'm waiting to
be asked. I guess I'm just waiting for
the right opportunity to come
[ __ ] Bot and Confidence Bot merging
together here. Um
not really, man. Like I
talk for so many hours every single day.
Uh there isn't anything. There isn't
something that I haven't been asked and
you don't know what you don't know,
right? So
I will wait and Shawn and a bunch of the
other people from the locals regularly
ask phenomenal questions. So I'm relying
on them to come up with one.
Zohaib Siddi, do you have any advice for
someone who is trying to find good ways
of taking knowledge they've collected
over time and incorporating it into
their daily life? Thanks and I love your
podcast. Keep up the great work, Chris.
So this
mental masturbation concern thing is
something that I feel in myself as well
and I know that a lot of people that
listen to podcasts and consume lots of
content do because you are exposed to
way more content than you have time to
implement it and you get the illusion of
progress by exposing yourself to more
stuff and more stuff and more stuff and
then you look at your life and you
realize I haven't changed anything.
I got exposed to all of this new
information and what have I done
differently in my life? Oh, I haven't
changed anything. So avoiding mental
masturbation and the illusion of
progress
is very important.
Doing it requires narrowing down all of
the different areas that you're trying
to change in because you can't change
everything at once and if you try to,
you're going to get nowhere, right? You
have to sacrifice meaning you have to
sacrifice progress toward everything in
the short term to make meaningful
progress toward any one thing. So
forget worrying about all of the other
stuff. Focus on I'm just going to work
on dialing in diet and training for the
next month.
And I'm going to learn as much as I can
and I'm going to try and apply it and be
as applicable as I can. And once I built
up a little bit of momentum with those,
then maybe I'll switch to some
productivity stuff and then maybe I'll
switch to something else as well. When I
look back, I realized that a lot of the
times I stopped making progress was when
I took my eye off the ball of something
that was an obvious goal and then tried
to pivot. So, there was a period where I
was obsessed with productivity, the
start of this podcast. So obsessed with
productivity for ages and ages and I'd
capped out. I'd already completed, I'd
accumulated all of the information that
I needed and I presumed that more
productivity was just
the next YouTube video or the next
productivity hack away and it wasn't.
I'd already done that. So, it's like,
"Okay, I've done this thing. I've
completed it. Let's move on to the next
one. I can come back to it in future."
So, I would narrow down the sort of
things that you're doing. I would try
and be as applicable as possible and I
would ask myself when I'm reading or
watching or consuming anything,
how am I supposed to apply this to my
life? What's the way to get tactical
with all of this stuff? You listen to an
entire podcast that I have with some
guy.
Take one thing away from it. One How can
I apply this to my life? What should I
do? Try and habitize it. Try and make it
into a routine.
That should make a good bit of of
impact. But, it's it's a um it's a
disciplining of
not doing more
or it's a
a disciplining of restriction as opposed
to a disciplining of abundance. So,
that would be
it's a different kind of challenge, but
it is important.
Jake Burt, firstly, congratulations and
well-deserved and still severely
underrated. Thank you. Agreed.
Would you ever consider providing any
standalone information on how you've
developed your conversational fluidity
and brilliant questioning skills either
via a course, video series, book, etc.?
I think that the world would benefit
from people having more conversations
like you have on your podcast, but not
everyone necessarily has the verbal
skills to facilitate them. So, yeah,
communication mastery something that
I've thought about releasing as a
course. I would maybe even bring in some
guest lecturers, guys like my speech and
diction coach, comedy coaches that I've
worked with, and other good
communicators to maybe talk about their
skills and then try and create a
syllabus.
But, I'm also concerned about getting
out over my skis, you know? Like I
I'm a good communicator. I I've spent an
awful lot of time developing real-world
skills from the ground floor on how to
have a conversation.
But, I'm not trained. So, who the [ __ ]
am I to release a course on it? And this
is another reason, you know, this
cynicism thing that I'm railing against
at the moment.
I want
Modern Wisdom and I want the people who
consume my content to be as positive as
possible because I feel in myself the
lack of confidence and the uncertainty
and the skepticism that I have around
things that I can do because I can hear
what the worst elements of the internet
will say if I try and do them. So, if I
try and release a course of
communication mastery,
even if people care about it and even if
it adds value and even if it would be
good, the fact that I'm not formally
trained in it and the fact that I am
going to be like trying to reverse
engineer something which I just stumbled
upon myself is going to cause people on
the internet to have a vector of attack
for me which is going to mean that they
can say, "You shouldn't be [ __ ] doing
this thing." So, well, maybe I don't do
it. May It makes me reticent about going
to do it, which is why being positive,
encouraging people to go and try and do
something and see how it gets on and
[ __ ] hell, man, like good effort. You
tried to release that thing and it maybe
it was really really great. It adds tons
of value. I mean, you know, it was it
was all right and it wasn't so good or
whatever, but like you had a crack.
I know, like
presuming the best of people seems like
a really cool strategy and I that's what
I want. I want more presumptions of
positivity, uh the positivity
presumption paradox.
Um but yeah, I I would consider doing
that. I would love to release it. Um
again, need help. Course management,
building it, all the rest of it which I
just can't do on my own because I have
too much stuff to do, but I would love
to release it.
Uh I just need to find someone that can
bring it to life and overcome the
skepticism. And this is me one of the
first questions is like, "Oh, you
me advising some guy
just, you know, adventure and explore
and don't be worried about failing." And
here is me speaking my fear of failure
out into the world.
The guy that's about to hit a million
subscribers on YouTube and reaches like
25 million people a month.
That fear of failure continues to track
with you. It doesn't within domains that
you've already conquered, but in domains
that you're new in or you're moving
into,
it's going to be that. So, it's natural.
Like
even the people that you think that have
got all of their [ __ ] sorted still feel
this stuff. That should make you feel
more comfortable about not having your
[ __ ] together as well.
George Daniel,
when you were younger, did you have any
When you were younger, did you have any
limiting beliefs and if you did, did you
get over them? How did you get over
them? You are an inspiration. Thank you,
George Daniel.
Um
I mean, so many, man. My my sense of
self as a young
like
a teenage boy
was microscopically thin
uh and I didn't realize it at the time,
but I was chronically unconfident.
Here's the story. So, I remember that I
played cricket. That was my um
pursuit of choice as a kid and
there would be times where because of
the type of a player that I was, I
bowled something called leg spin, which
is uh
probably the most complex style of
bowling in the sport of cricket.
And that means that it's very dependent
on the conditions. If the weather's not
right, if the pitch isn't right, if the
game is at the isn't at the right uh
stage, it's very often that you would
not be brought on to bowl because it's
safer to bring on a a different style of
bowler, which is going to be more uh
robust for the particular uh features of
the game that you're playing.
And that would mean that a lot of the
time I would go and play a game
and then I wouldn't bowl
and I would sometimes not bat because
I'd be batting a little bit further down
the order. So, it's uh
uh TFC, a thanks for coming, uh when you
don't bat and you don't bowl. You
basically don't do anything in the game
apart from field.
And I would speak to the coaches from
the local county team that I was a part
of, that was the one that was trying to
get me to move towards playing minor
counties, playing major counties, going
into an academy. I was on England squads
getting trained by their like wrist spin
academy, going down to Loughborough
University and stuff.
And he would ring me on a Monday and
say, "How did you get on over the
weekend?" And I'd say, "Ah, man, you
know, like everything was it was I
didn't bowl, I didn't bat, you know,
like these things didn't happen."
And he'd get frustrated because I hadn't
accumulated any experience,
but I would feel relief.
I would feel relief because I hadn't had
to face the potential of failure.
I was so unconfident in my own abilities
that I would rather not have to face
potential failure
and inoculate myself from that by just
not being not entering in onto the arena
of play.
So, yes, I had an awful lot of limiting
beliefs and that rolled forward into
young adulthood, it rolled forward into
relationships, it rolled forward into
business, it rolled forward into my
sense of self.
It was I don't know, like I
have had an awful lot of challenges with
regards to self-perception and
it's the whole Mazi thing, man. Like I
wish I could come up with a different
quote that we didn't make go viral a ton
of times, but
you need an undeniable stack of proof
that you are who you say you are. Like
if you want to be confident, give
yourself some evidence. Outwork the
self-doubt that you've got. Outwork the
imposter syndrome that you've got.
You don't
if you're asking for confidence without
competence and evidence, you're asking
for delusion.
You need to have something that proves
to you that you are the person that you
say you are.
Iterating over time, just doing things,
trying new things, going out there,
putting yourself out there on the arena
floor
seemed to work for me.
Will Palmer, how do you deal with being
the outlier when chasing that dream job
while everyone else you know of
going to a 9-to-5? In other words,
dealing with the loneliness that will
occur in the pursuit of a life that you
want. My situation.
I resonate, man. I I I feel for you.
This is the price that you pay, right?
Loneliness is a tax you have to pay to
atone for a certain complexity of mind
or a complexity of life. If you want to
have a life that's different to
everybody else, you have to do things
that nobody else is doing. Like if you
do what everyone else does, then you're
going to get what everyone else has got.
And
separating yourself out from the pack,
this is why most people find things
difficult and this is where they stop
and this is why they don't win. This is
the point, it's the difficulty that
everybody else has to come over. Among a
ton of other difficulties, they have to
be able to see it. They have to have the
intention. They have to have the
discipline to go after it. They have to
have all of the different things in
place and then when it starts happening
and they realize how it'd be easier, I'd
have more of a social circle if I just
stuck about with my friends,
that's also going to be one of the
hurdles that people have to overcome.
Accept and understand
you didn't expect it to be easy. This is
what hard feels like. On the other side
of this is something that you want. Did
you expect it to be easy?
No.
This is part of the hardness.
Lean into it. Lean into it. The sign
that you are beginning to become more of
an outlier
is a signal that you're going along the
right path.
Presuming that you're not an outlier
because you're addicted to drugs or or
like beating up grannies on the street.
You're an outlier because you're working
harder. You're an outlier because you're
taking a a non-typical life path towards
something that you care about. That is a
good thing. It is not something that you
should see as a negative.
Hamza L Azzawi,
"When will you have Iman Gadzhi or Hamza
Ahmed on the podcast, Chris? Would love
to see you speak to these men." Already
had Hamza on the podcast, search Hamza
Chris Williamson and it'll come up. I'm
also going to some creator retreat with
Hamza in I don't know where it is in a
couple of weeks' time, so we'll be
together then. Don't know whether
recording, I don't think we are. We're
just chilling out. Um Iman, I voice
noted back and forth with him a couple
of weeks ago
and that's going to happen I think in
November. I'm in Dubai in November.
So, I'm going to have him on then.
Taran Ram, "How do you go about
desedating men while not making them
excessively dangerous, like burning down
houses? Uh personally, I think it starts
from education. We need to be
encouraging boys to build businesses,
participate in activities, and more
extracurriculars. Every time I go to a
high school or college, it's literally
girl up, girl business, girl that. What
would be a good starting solution?"
Very cool question. These are smart
questions. Please comment more on the
YouTube. Um how do you go about
desedating men while not making them
excessively dangerous? It's tough. It's
tough because the uh
uh fuel, the motivation that men have to
go and do these things can very easily
just be nudged toward antisocial
behavior, right? Like remember ASBOs?
Remember like
anti-so- like ASBOs? There was this
thing called an antisocial behavior
order uh that we had in the UK and it
was all these sort of
young working-class and underclass guys
in their teens who would wear Nike Air
Max 90s and stand on the corner of
streets and just cause bother. And they
were given these antisocial behavior
orders as a uh uh
disincentive. It was a way to stop this
from happening.
I would love to see the stats around
that because I think that it'll have
gone through the floor.
It's really tough. I I wouldn't disagree
that encouraging boys and and men to get
involved in
progressing and pursuing things that are
genuinely going to make them feel
fulfilled is a very cool place to start.
I would also love to see culture
re-pedestalize
men's
achievement. You know,
not every man that achieves something is
doing it from a place of toxic,
tyrannical, patriarchal advantage. Some
guys just worked harder at a thing. And
if you if you disincentivize men from
going after hard things and contributing
and achieving,
what do you think are the sort of men
that you're going to get? They're going
to be listless, apathetic, they're not
going to be interested in trying to
achieve anything. And then you're going
to say, "Well, where are the where are
all of the good men at? Why are these
men not pulling themselves up by their
bootstraps? Why are they leaving
education and employment at rates that
we've never seen?" 1% per month, 0.1%
per month is the retreat of men from the
US labor force since 1950. Every single
month since 1950, 0.1% of men have
retreated from the US labor force. Well,
if you make the culture completely
unaligned uh and unforgiving to men who
do want to achieve things, who do want
to acquire wealth or have ambition, if
you say that that's part of some awful
like misogynistic
[ __ ] vestige that's been passed down
from from previous generations,
you're disincentivizing it. So, what do
you want? Do you want them to be
listless and and and apathetic and and
spending whatever it is
uh thousands of hours per year playing
video games while smoking weed like
Nicholas Eberstadt taught us? I don't
want that.
But on the flip side, you are going to
have some guys that are going to go and
do mean things if they're you know,
spirited and and and full of energy and
vigor.
They're going to go and do other things.
So, balancing those two is tough, but I
would say that we are way way too far
into the world of sedation than we are
into the world of animation.
Jordan
Hewitt, "Congratulations. Are there any
plans on getting Andy Frisella on the
show?" Andy Frisella is the guy who
founded First Form and also created 75
Hard for the people that are familiar
with those things. Uh we've spoken a
good bit. He listens to the show. Uh
he's very complimentary on Instagram and
has sent me some really nice messages.
Um I think we've talked about getting
him on when he comes through Austin, so
at some point. Yep.
"Have you considered bringing on the
channel a scientist / expert that you
don't necessarily feel completely
aligned with in terms of views, just to
listen to a different perspective?" I
do. I try to bring on as many of these
people as possible. Uh Richard Betts
from the IPCC, he is a lead author on a
ton of the Intergovernmental Panels on
Climate Change papers. Uh he came on not
a million years ago. Uh he was really
interesting. David Packman, he came on,
he got flamed in the comments. He didn't
really have a particularly good episode,
but
he uh he's somebody that a lot of the
audience disagrees with and would
disagree with. Um
I try my hardest to bring on people. I
mean, I've had a couple recently of of
academics that are very left-leaning
uh but we they have such a a a unique
spin that is apolitical on whatever
their academic area is that we don't
actually get into maybe some of the more
screwy worldviews that we would diverge
on. So, yeah, I do try.
Funtivity
Colton, "Have you ever been on a date
worse than the massage date with Zoe? If
so, what happened? I just watched your
season of Love Island to get some
context about some things you talk
about."
Okay, yeah. So, um
no, probably not. But then I also
haven't been on many dates on TV. Uh
actually no, [ __ ] that. I have. The
other the other TV show that I did, Take
Me Out, I think that one might have been
more awkward. The first TV show that I
did,
I jumped off a boat in the middle of the
ocean when they didn't have insurance
for me to jump off the boat because the
date that I was on was that boring. And
then the girl that I was on that date
with sold a story about me when I went
on Love Island. The police were called
on my date with Chris. [ __ ] you
weren't even there. I'd left. I'd gone
to an after-party. I was with some cool
people. And then she sold a story about
me that I told her. The only reason that
the she knew about the police coming was
because I told her. And the only reason
that the police came was because I woke
up on the central reservation of
Tenerife's largest motorway having lost
my phone and my wallet.
It wasn't because
I'd caused some havoc somewhere. I'd
fallen asleep on a central reservation
of a motorway.
Anyway, yeah, that was worse. That one
was worse.
It I can't remember the girl's name.
I can't remember her name. And she kind
of looked a bit like Zoe, weird. Um some
what is it? Physiognomy or whatever it's
called uh where like the way that
somebody looks determines their
personality. I think that's the way it
works. Anyway, yeah, it was awkward. Um
Jenna McKay, "Hey man, first of all,
congrats on 900,000 subs. Been watching
you since your podcast with Kristoff."
Wow, that's old. "My question is, as a
19-year-old, you've been watching me
since you were 15."
Cool. "As a 19-year-old heading to
university in September, what is the
best way of finding people as
like-minded as me within the first week
of freshers? Struggled a bit during
school as I used to live in rural area.
PS, what was your freshers week like?
How did you survive it? Many thanks."
Okay, so my freshers week was
ruthless. It was 2006. It was Larry
British lout drink culture. Uh I had
found a group of housemates. I lived in
a flat with a bunch of degenerates that
were fantastic, really really great to
go to uni with. Uh but uni was second,
third, fourth on the list of what
everybody was there to do.
Um
Finding people that are like you during
freshers,
I would say, and this is something that
I wish that I'd done more of,
attend more of the uh groups and
societies and classes. Just join all of
them. Like I remember when I went to uni
and I thought, "Ultimate Frisbee sounds
super lame. I don't want to go and do
ultimate frisbee. Um I'm just going to
go to the gym and get big with the
boys." And I again, it was a safety net
for me because it meant that it was
routinized and it was something that I
knew I was going to get social
validation from.
I remember in my mid-20s, I looked back
and thought, "Why the [ __ ] didn't I go
and do ultimate frisbee? That sounds
awesome." Like ultimate frisbee sounds
really cool. So, I would join as many
different societies as you can. Expose
yourself to all of those different
groups. And just talk. Talk to people
and talk about what you're interested
in. Don't talk about what you think
they're interested in because if you
talk about what somebody else if you
talk about what you think somebody else
is interested in, you are going to get
friends around you who aren't keen on
you, they're keen on the role that you
play. They don't like you. They like the
person that you think they like the
person that they think that you are.
That's not who you want to be. You're
going to end up surrounded by a
community of people who don't have your
interests and who you have to play a
larping caricature of yourself to just
be around.
Be yourself.
Do lots of different things. Expose
yourself to as many people as possible.
Uh during freshers, the best thing to
ask someone is, "Hey man, what's your
name? What course are you doing? What
halls are you in?"
You can open up
for the first four weeks of term, you
can say that to a thousand people.
See the ones that are interesting, make
friends.
Good luck.
Fabuline,
"How long did it take you to become
comfortable recording yourself in front
of a camera? I tried this for the first
time recently and had no clue how hard
it was to explain a coherent thought
without stumbling over your own words.
Any tips on how to get better at
self-podcasting?"
I'm glad I I'm not glad that you were
traumatized by it, but I am glad that
you have felt the discomfort. And I
remember
the first few times that we started
doing solo down the pipe monologuing
things like this.
It is that hole there,
that black void with the lens in the
middle of it that looks like an eye
is a terrifying thing to look at. It is
so
unforgiving and dark and you just
stare at it and it stares back and it
just expects you to say things and
there's no one there to
give you positive feedback or tell you
that you're doing it right or that
you're doing it wrong or that you should
say more or say less or it's time to
shut up or
it's really difficult. Um
I haven't spent all that much time doing
solo stuff. I've spent a lot of time
talking to other people and I think that
my brain struggles to
uh distinguish between the conversations
I've had where there's been a person
there and now this thing which is where
there's no person there.
The
easiest ways, the best ways to get
better at self-podcasting, I think, are
to do what I'm doing here, which is to
have a conversation
a one-way conversation with prompts.
Prompts can come from you.
You could maybe even use Chat GPT to say
um give me 20 interesting but accessible
and easy questions to answer whilst
practicing doing a podcast on my own and
I bet it would create some awesome
awesome ideas for that.
Uh but it's tough and I would be tempted
to try and do podcasting before you do
monologues because this is the final
frontier. Like even when you're
vlogging, right? You know, like the Mike
Thurston style, here I am, I'm in Dubai
in my
Jaguar or whatever the [ __ ] it is that
he drives now.
Um
that there's prompts going on. Oh, look
at this. This is cool. Cup of coffee and
I'm here with my friends and I've got
the whatever.
This is the final boss, man. This, no
distractions, silent room, you and a
lens. It's super difficult and this
skill is going to become more and more
important. Friends that I've had have
applied for jobs where they've had to
submit video applications and if you've
never had to sit bonk and just put your
phone in front of you and say, "Hi guys,
my name is Chris and I'm really excited
for the job opportunity at IBM. Here are
why you should recruit me and this is a
blah blah blah blah blah."
If you don't have that in the tank,
you're going to be behind and if you do
have it in the tank, you're going to
find an advantage and even if you don't
need it, it's going to make you a better
communicator, so I highly recommend
learning it.
Ahmed Zobar Suroush from Afghanistan.
[ __ ] yeah. Let's go.
Loving your content. Can't thank you
enough, mate. Thank you very much. My
number one Afghani
uh fan.
Uh question, how to find balance between
time spent on being the least educated
person in the room and the most
educated. Both are necessary. Good point
and um plays off the back of Alex
Hormozi's uh comment around um more
people are kept poor by their egos than
get rich off them. Basically, if you're
able to maintain an ego, it's because
you're in a room where you're always the
richest or the smartest or the most
accomplished, which means that you're in
a room which is too small. Make your
room bigger. Make the people that you
hang around with more successful, which
will make your ego smaller because
comparatively with them, you're useless.
Um
finding a balance, I to be honest, I
wouldn't agree that you need to be the
most educated person in the room
ever, basically. I think that
maintaining being a stupid person, the
most stupid person in a room, is a good
idea. I mean, I've I've managed to make
a career out of being the dumbest person
in a conversation 640 times
and it seems to have worked okay for me.
It is good to educate other people about
things that you're a specialist in, but
just continue to find people who you
admire, who you respect, who you think
have got a growth mindset and are
interested and genuinely curious and
just allow them
to teach you about all of the cool [ __ ]
that they know and then in response, you
can teach them about the good stuff that
you know.
I there is no better way to learn than
that and that's why Austin at the moment
is phenomenal because there are so many
people that are super super smart
in different domains. So, you can be the
guy that knows about evolutionary
psychology, but they know about AI risk
or they know about meteorology or they
know about whatever.
Saycar,
congrats to us all.
Mhm. My question is, how do you just do
it? Like how do you stop overthinking
and take action? That is quite an
interesting question for Chrisbot.
My quest My answer would be that you
just need to commit to doing one thing.
Narrow the domain, as I said earlier on.
Stop distracting yourself with lots of
different things.
What the [ __ ] is he trying to respond to
this? Chrisbot, how do you just do it?
Like how do you stop overthinking and
just take action? I don't know, but I'm
pretty sure it involves a lot of
swearing and a few shots of whiskey.
I
Chrisbot, confident bot over there just
getting out over his skis.
Poor guy.
Um
stop overthinking and just take action.
Commit to one domain at a time. The
reason that you're feeling overwhelmed
is because you're trying to do too much
at once. You're trying to optimize your
sleep and your hydration and your
training and your learning and your
career and your relationships.
One thing. One thing. Focus on that. Get
really good at doing that one thing
and then move on to the next one. You
have periods. You can periodize your
life, right? 1 month to 3 months each
little block. Once you've completed it,
then you move on to the next one. You
can even plan it in advance. Check in
every couple of weeks. See how you're
getting on.
There you go.
I
Frazzy, my question is, what advice
would you give to someone with
disabilities and deformities to boost
their confidence and self-esteem? So,
I've basically gave up on life because
of my anxiety and depression. Your
videos have been a big help and I want
to say thank you. Thank you very much
for watching.
Look, I
need to be able to identify where I'm at
the boundaries of my competence and I
think that this is it. I
wholeheartedly believe that there is a
strategy and that there will be,
but I'm going to be pulling something
out of my ass if I try and give it to
you. I respect massively the fact that
you're listening to channels like this
and presumably other guests and similar
people that come on here and you're
exposing yourself to the right kind of
content. When it comes to getting really
tactical with it,
I would be bullshitting you if I said
that I had a solution. However,
I'm confident that you have the right
mindset to be able to find a solution
and I wish you all the best.
Duncan Disorderly, how many man-hours of
preparation do you do for each guest?
You seem to have a good set of knowledge
and ask insightful questions. Just seems
like a lot of work goes into each
episode. So, yeah.
It is there is a lot of work that goes
into each episode.
I'm going to ask Chrisbot see if he
knows how much work I do.
Um he'll probably say that I do it in a
line of cocaine in 5 minutes. Huh, I
wish I could tell you how many man-hours
I put into each episode, but the truth
is I don't really keep track. I just
know that I'm always doing something to
prepare for the next episode, whether
it's researching the guest, reading up
on the topic, just thinking of
interesting questions. I'm always doing
something to make sure I'm ready for the
next episode. That
That's like halfway between confidence
confidence bot and [ __ ] bot.
Uh it's usually about a day.
Um
so
on and off listening to the guest, but
it'll be spread out over a period of
time, right? Usually takes around about
a day or so. Um sometimes less, you
know, especially if it's someone that I
know that um
the topic inside out.
It can be a lot less. Um
but for the guys that are new and a lot
of this stuff recently has been new,
like learning about who I've had this
week,
video games,
um
uh not bullying,
god dammit.
Body dysmorphia, men's muscle dysmorphia
and something else as well. Uh
that takes a lot of work. So,
I'm prepared because it's what works and
I'm following the strategy that I used
to follow before I knew all of the
things that I know
and now I still follow the straight same
strategy even though I know a lot more
things, which means that I'm usually uh
really really well prepared for each
episode, but I hope that it comes across
and I hope that it it makes the
listening experience good because I'm
not
fumbling around and struggling for
talking points. I want to keep it, you
know, if you guys are going to dedicate
an hour and a half of your time to me
three times a week, I want it to be high
bang for your buck. I want it to you to
come away and think, "Wow, that was
uh really well structured and great and
it it there was no lulls in there that
didn't need to be in there." And um
yeah, I hope that it makes for a um
high ROI podcast.
Roger Page, thank you for all the
wonderful educational content you have
produced. Thank you. My question is,
when will you be adding video content to
Spotify? This is a question that we have
got
a lot and I don't know, to be honest.
It's a bit of an effort to make this
transition for some structural reasons
behind the scenes of
how you
create the audio. You rip the audio from
the video that would then distribute to
places like Apple Podcasts and Stitcher
and Google Podcasts and Amazon that
wouldn't be using the video. So, you'd
need a video version for YouTube, a
video version for Megaphone to upload to
Spotify and then a different audio
version that would go across everything
else. There'd be three different
versions of each episode three times a
week
and it's just a huge lift. Um if we
change the way that we do ads, I really
don't want to start doing mid-roll ads
because I think it destroys the
listening process, but maybe we're going
to have to if we want to do video on
Spotify.
So, it's just it's a it's a mess. It's
it's a little bit of a mess at the
moment. We have just changed hosting
from Libsyn to Spotify. I announced this
on the Twitter the other week, and
um
that's gone really well so far.
But, as of yet,
not going to happen.
Maybe at some point in future.
Not sure yet.
Right, that is an hour and 45. I
appreciate all of you. 1 million next,
which will be
wild. I
have some plans, and I will see if I can
pull them off. In the meantime, like I
say, if you are the sort of person that
asks these kinds of questions, if you
enjoyed this sort of discussion, which I
know that you do, comment more on the
YouTube. I would appreciate it. The real
world of the internet that this show is
going to continue to push out into more,
those people need to understand what a
well-balanced, thoughtful, interesting,
meaningful conversation is, and it is
you who can contribute to that, and you
set the tone. Especially if we're going
to talk about releasing a Discord server
and community and all this other stuff.
I need to feel confident that the people
that are the most reasonable, that are
all of the ones that submit thousands of
questions on each of these Q&As, are the
ones that are going to pipe up. And if
you do post something that's stupid,
then you're going to get a ban.
Anyway,
I'll see you next time.