Modern Wisdom - #1019 - Finn Taylor & Horatio Gould - History is a Freakshow

Episode Date: November 13, 2025

Fin Taylor is an English comedian, writer and podcaster. Horatio Gould is also an English comedian, writer, and podcaster. History is basically one long reminder that no matter how bad your day is, someone in the past was probably getting catapulted off a castle wall. Feel better? Good. Humanity may be a litany of disasters, but the past is packed with lessons, even some dark humor, if you look closely enough. Expect to learn what makes the Japanese unique and why so many Japanese people practiced Seppuku, why post-war Europe was the funniest time in modern history, wether life was better in the past or just way, way worse than we imagined, why there is a rise of pro-Hitler media across social media, if too much irony is a bad thing, why racism is so ingrained in modern science, if fertility and embryo science has gone too far and much more… Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get $100 off the best bloodwork analysis in America at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Get Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D, and more from AG1 at https://ag1.info/modernwisdom Get 35% off your first subscription on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Get a Free Sample Pack of LMNT’s most popular flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

you are historians now. Yes, very much so. Big pivot. Yeah, hard pivot. Into academia. I mean, this is what the man of sphere has come to. Yeah. If you're speaking to historians, you'll get us on to talk.

It doesn't matter. We can say what we want. And there are people going to be like, what, really? Podcasts that need academic guests. They use all of them. This is how low the barrel is that I'm scraping. This is how your business model works. Once you've had whatever, what's his name, Graham.

Graham Hand God. You've had them on four times. You have to get a new guy. Legitimacy has declined so much that it's got to you guys. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, it's not clicky enough. Graham Hancock is just not. Yeah, people are used to it.

They need to get these guys on. They need someone who's really pushing the boundaries. Have you been any more capable of predicting the future now with all of your illustrious studying of the past? Has it given you any insights about what's going on in the modern world? It's made me calmer about it. Yeah. It's just always fucked.

That's true. History for me has always been quite like a soothing thing. It's been a lot worse. And it was going to carry on. being like this and yeah it's like ASMR because people keep saying like you know back in the day

what do you mean back in the day yeah it was awful it was always awful this is the best it's ever been the 90s was slightly better but yeah there's four years it's been human's gone like this it's gone like this

and now it's like that no I reckon it went like that and then it was like in between Diana and 9-11 and then it's just been yeah exactly it's been going down but people it's it is still like step back it's unreal

coffee's good I mean new tonic now agreed thank you for Look, you don't have this in the Middle Ages. People didn't even have that 10 years ago. Oh. We're living in the Newtonic age. This is, this is the Newtonic age.

To place this, to place this for anyone listening. That is true. That is very true indeed. No, it's an interesting one. I think the fact that both America and maybe the UK as well had such a little golden era, 80s, 90s-ish, where everybody felt like living standards, stuff's getting better. End of history. Yeah.

But just that you have this felt pullback from then until now, but you had probably steady incline, careful doing that. Yeah, we're on the wrong set for that. You're in a safe space, brother. Kind of up until then. So when you compare us between that, I think everyone looks at the golden era that parents had and thinks, oh, well, wouldn't it have been lovely

to have grown up in the 80s and the 90s? Yeah, and it's before social media and stuff, and I guess that there's just a little sweet spot. But I guess if you just do history a lot, you just look at it much broader. And so you just view it, you take a much bigger step back and it's just like, yeah, you know. Yeah, I mean, like, we're more likely to die naturally now than ever before. What's that, what do you mean?

Well, as in like not dark, I mean, I mean, obviously there are people in your orbit who don't want to die. And that's the new, that's the new frontier to conquer. People won't die. People won't die. Yeah. Yeah. Good on them. They refuse to. I'm, I'm looking forward to it, frankly.

I would like to die at some point. It's not before my time, but I do think there's a time. There's a time in a place. It's time and place. But as in a bit of normal, the way you would die up until about 100 years ago was probably very bad compared to now. We just did a Japan series and they did the amount of suicide.

They love committing suicide, Sapuu. Yeah. And it's because it's like, life's so rubbish, you just want to do something big and then kill yourself. It's like a brilliant life. The best thing about your life would be committing a suicide. Yeah, in 16th century Japan. Yeah.

What caused them to do that? There had to be an incident. They didn't have modern wisdom to listen to to help with their mental health. That's true. There was a severe lack of mental health podcast. To get them up at 4.30 a.m. So young Japanese men were committing Sapuu on mass.

And it would be the slightest faux part. You'd fart at the dinner table. I can't live with this. But was it... Guts everywhere. Was it some kind of weird honor culture? Yeah. It's still like that.

But yeah, they absolutely fucking loved it. Because I thought it was just like a racist trope. But when we went and studied it for these episodes, You can't believe everyone ends with Sapuku. Yeah. And if they don't, I'm immediately thinking like, well, that's a bit dishonorable.

Yeah, their death is treated as suspicious if it's not suicidal. Yeah, exactly. Suspicious circumstances. He didn't seem to do it himself. What's that with it? What made Japan such an odd country?

Because even now, it's about as close to kind of an alien planet as you can get to, I suppose. Well, it's an autistic culture, right? Culturally, on the autism spectrum. It's up there with Scotland, yeah. Scotland, yeah. Germany, that's an autistic culture.

I think Japan... It shuts its doors for 300 years and had no internal wars, which is very rare in history. It was playing World Warcraft in the basement for 1,000 years. And what does that cause if you shut the doors for 300 years and does have... It's like... I don't know, it's like homeschooled kids.

Yeah. Oh, is this weird? Oh, yeah, we shit with the door open. Right. Yeah, because there's no outside influence. It's very moderated, and then they, that's why they're so, and they were never, they were never colonized, but they always took stuff and made it Japanese. Yeah.

Which is why, like, what? Oh, so you put a squid and fuck it. No, that's not. Actually, we did find that the first octopus porn was in like the 1800s. Yeah. It's like a wood carved octopus porn. Yeah. Because they had obscenity laws about showing, so the blurring, blurred porn, that's been going on for a while.

To get around the obscenity laws, but to still get the rocks off, they'd show, they'd carve. Someone would carve it. That's fucking elaborate. Yeah. stuff of the job. Carved. Beautifully carved, actually. Octopus, fucking a woman.

Octopussy. In 18, whatever, 1840 or something. Okay. Don't they have those handjob on TV things? I've seen that. What's this? So, Japan, Japanese TV has these weird, like, I don't know, competitions where a girl.

Hand job competition. Milking competitions. On TV? Maybe it's not, well, it's certainly like. Maybe it's on porn hard. I don't know if that's. Honestly, I'm not kidding. I feel like this has been broadcast outside of X-rated.

Tikeshi's Prime Minister. Whoever comes last because of Prime Minister, yeah. Like the most diplomatic game of Soggy Biscuit ever. High-stakes, Soggy Biscuit. Yeah, elite level. Okay, so Japan closes its doors for a long time and becomes weird. That's basically how you make a culture odd. I wouldn't say it's odd.

It's just unique, very unique culture, very distinct in a way that other cultures maybe emerge more. Yeah, it's very selectively globalised, right? Most cultures don't get to choose how they get globalised, right? It's just this kind of permeable wall and it just blends all together. Japan is like, we'll take that, we won't take that. So it's like very structured how their cultures developed. Does that play, does that Sapuku heritage play into kamikaze stuff when it comes to?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's just the technologically advantage. Who wants to kill themselves? Me, please. Yeah, it's the easiest to find. My grandfather did. His granddad did. And everyone's, like, so jealous when it's like, he gets to fucking fly.

He's dying, doing what he loved. Oh. But there's a... Taking meth and... The whole thing about their belief system, it's like Shinto and Confucianism and Buddhism, it's like a whole mix of it where all of it is like... It's so detached from the everyday life is so... You're such an observer of your own life that killing yourself for a greater cause is, like,

if to our heads, acceptable. Whereas with the West, we're like... like the individual, the freedom, life, that's the most important thing. Right. But the Japanese is honour and it's wearing no shoes in the house. Yeah. And your life is subservient to wearing, not wearing shoes in the house. They're not, Chris Evans.

But that leads to what we would call the night night bomb, which is the night night, the big bang. Go to bed. Night, Nagasaki night. Night. Yeah, Groschman Knight. Night night is Nagasaki. That leads to a culture where you just will not surrender because you're not. Because you're, you know, you're so Buddhist, you're so detached from your own life.

You're so in the moment. You're so mental health, perfect score that you're just will kill yourself because you're above it almost. It doesn't sound like modern wisdom. Well, I don't want to... But you know about that Japanese soldier was found on that island in 1974? Still fighting the war. He was still fighting the war. Yeah.

So in one of the islands in the Pacific, I think he got stranded during World War II. And they found him in 1976, I think. Yeah. And he was like, he still came out. He was still with a... He thought the war was going on. That's how fucking mental they are. But God love him.

God love him. God love him. What was the name of the operation where America thought we're going to have to do a land invasion if the atomic bombs don't work? And they were getting ready and they had a million body bags. They were ready for the most. Well, that's one of the reasons in deciding to use it, one of the, I can't remember the name the operation, but they were basically, and I don't know how you'd ever actually do this.

They were tallying up the potential deaths from the night night bomb and the potential deaths from a land invasion of American souls and they said that actually it was again, I think maybe just they just wanted to use it. Yeah, I think so. I think we've got this new thing. Yeah, cool type. It's good for Christmas. It looks fucking sick. Anyway, they said, and it's the ultimate dad

toy, isn't it? It's your president in the shape. When you've got like a, yeah, when you've looked online, you've looked all the reviews and you've got like the right hedge trimmer, you really want to use that. Anyway, they said in their calculations that the less deaths would be used from the atomic bomb than a ground invasion. Presumably less American deaths.

Well, yeah, obviously. Yeah. But also, I guess maybe less Japanese deaths because it's that slow encroachment that makes you think, well, we can push them back. We might be able to win as opposed to, okay, that was a big mess and we didn't really seem to be able to do anything about it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we're not historians.

That's the thing to say. Hang on. So can you just, what level of credentials do you have? I've got none. I have a degree from Bristol in history. And if you weren't a comedian, you'd probably end up in a history teacher, probably. Yeah, I mean, everyone in my family is a teacher, and a lot of them are history teachers. Okay.

And my aunt ran the photography at the Imperial War Museum my whole career. So there's a real, there's a real, and like, you know, the obsession with Nazis is, but I'm realizing it comes from Christmas. So your aunt takes photos of guns, that's sort of your credentials. Yeah, right. She collects photos of guns. And she, yeah, yeah, but that's it. My whole family is history teachers, actually, thinking about it. And then you just, you just...

I just like it. You're just autistic, I think. Yeah, well, certainly... Spent too much time on chat GPT. Yeah, something like that. Yeah. So we don't have any credentials. But we are, we are comedians.

Yeah. And it's a comedy podcast before it's a history podcast. I'm worried that we've been called on here as historic. Not at all. The West has fallen. But this is the podcast is legitimizing. Yeah, yeah. As I said, this is how low the barrel is being scraped in any case.

Also, part of the bit as well is how much you get away with having a posh accent and suits. It's amazing. It carries you a long way. We're just talking out of our fucking ass and people are like, oh, I don't know. I just keep saying, you know, I do learn things. I really want to hit America

because they can't, they're so vulnerable to Brits and suits. They are, yeah. Like, they just think you're... If you put a suit on, it would be absolute murder over there. Factor for weakness. Yeah. I mean, the amount of havoc you can run

with the British accent in America. I mean, you're doing it right now. Yeah, it's true. But it's crazy. Add the tweed suit in. Russell Brand, Graham Hancock. Yeah. I saw Graham Hancock.

James Corden. James Corden, yeah. I mean, it's mad, isn't it? Jimmy Carr going on those podcasts? I mean, they can't believe it. He's a smart guy in a suit. It's like they'll believe anything he says, even if it's absolute bollocks.

I saw Graham Hancock on a, like, one of those, I think it was fucking, not Huberman. It was one of those podcasts saying that he believes every candidate for US presidency should have to of take an ayahuasca. Yeah, I did see that. I did see that. And him saying it in a suit being British, it's like, that is quite a good idea, you know?

Yeah. It's a terrible idea. You have to take psychedelic drugs to be the president. Yeah, because that's who you want in charge. It's a might not have a problem. It's someone who's at any moment could have a flashback. Yeah. An American's like, maybe I'm wrong because he does have a posh accent.

Yeah, he must be. Yeah. Yeah. So that's the dream. I do want to hit America. I'd love to try and see our. far we can push it. Do a university's talk.

Yeah, just like how far can we be intellectuals over there? Yeah. I think that you'd be very well respected. And they would, you probably could actually reshape what Americans think about their own history. I'm sure you'd be able to sigh up them into believing something else. Well, you're trying to recolonize the curriculum in the minute. I am writing a book

called that. Recolonize the curriculum. Yeah, he's recolonizing it. What does that mean? What does that mean? I don't know. I'm not sure I'm allowed to talk about it, yeah. Okay. But But yeah, I am writing a pseudo-historical book. Okay, okay. Well, it seems like you've kind of specialized in obscure bits of history as well.

There's like a 24-year period of, or 34-year period of post-war British prime ministers, which I didn't even know as a period of history. And you did... Well, it's British history after the war until Thatcher is that the political consensus is very, very, very funny. Yes. And also, why? If the podcast is defined by anything, it probably...

That's the period. Yeah. It's sort of, if the podcast aesthetic is anything, it's British people broke in the 70s nostalgicising the 50s or the war. Yeah. That's sort of the vibe that we're going for. So us doing that massive series on post-war promises,

even though it did lose a lot of viewers, but yeah, people like, you're still going on. This has been a month. And then also, there are now people this week when we started talking about Japan going, what do you mean you're not doing fashion? He'd been here for 10 episodes and you're not doing the internet. episode on Douglas, Alec U.

Like, so it was like being forced to watch a really boring prequel in the hopes that you were about to get the main series. Yeah, and now you've just... You just don't give it to... But we do a test cricket approach, though. It's like we're doing every inch of the... No matter how boring they are, we will cover the...

And you've blue balls. Yeah. Yeah, millions of people. But the section we just... The 10-part series, that was more the Attlee consensus and how it broke, right? So after the war, Atle's post-war socialist consensus,

building the NHS, welfare stay, all of that sort of stuff. And basically how that slowly broke down to the point that mummy came in. They got so desperate that they elected a woman as prime minister to come in and clean up the mess. That's the sort of, that was the reach of the theory. Postal Britain, cuck dad, bitch, mum. That's how, that's defined this country. Because he's Attlee and Thatcher is who we all are.

That's the world we're living in, really. We're living in Thatcher as well, but there's still remnants of Attlee. What's defined this country is Clemen Attlee and Margaret Thatcher, for sure. I'd never heard that name before. Clementeatley? No. So he was the prime minister who was in the war cabinet. for Labour, with Churchill, served well in the war.

And then afterwards, in kind of a shock, he was voted in over Churchill straight away. Because even though Churchill's a war hero, everyone wanted a change. The country was on its knees. But also, this happened at Potsdam. At the post-war conference, Churchill's there one day,

goes home to the election results, and then Atley comes to Potsdam with whoever, is it Truman? Yes, it'd be Truman. Truman and Stalin. Yeah, and Eisenhower and all these people. And Attlee looks like a fucking competition winner. So Boxing at the conference when they're divvying up. It's the one after Yalta where they're all divvying up Germany after the war.

And on the plane, Attlee finds out his prime minister. And no one thought he's going to win. You can see photos and he's like, fuck it. It's like, fuck a fan with Stalin. Yeah. It's crazy. But when he comes to power, in the space for about a year and a half, he builds the entirety of the welfare state.

and then from that moment onwards until Thatcher comes in the state is just creaking because you start to live in a globalised economy the Middle East kicks off turns our lights off and so but everyone

everyone in politics has fought in the war no one feels they can disrupt the consensus until a woman comes along why can't they disrupt the consensus because it's all the money they're paying for the unions and this is where the union power gets too big in the 70s

Also, the blitz spirit, these guys all fought together. So there was just a much more communal attitude for rebuilding Britain. As Thatcher releases this kind of free market and also this sort of psychological individualism. Yeah. Where it's like all about making money suddenly, about the individual. And it's not tied to him. So that's the tension, the conflict is this sort of very socialist beginning to a very sort of capitalist meritocratic. It snaps back hard.

But, you know, we've still got the NHS. We've still got the welfare state. They're still like at least. We didn't have the NHS before. No, no, that was a wildly invention. And also, he was basically a one-term prime ministership. He was only in for six years. But did so much.

In the first two years, pretty much, did so much that it's like the most productive and revolutionary prime ministership. But I do think it was only possible because of the complete blank slate at the end of World War II. I mean, your view is that we didn't get bombed enough. Because it was one of the other. We got bombed annoying Because you were like

If like all of our rails were bombed Then we could rebuild them Because that's like They're they're actually paying to do the The breaking down Well what wait if you want to get into it Yeah Germany and Japan arguably win the peace

Yeah Because they were so devastated Defeated And then they were basically funded by the American To rebuild So they their economy start growing very quickly After the war They have a massive 50s boom

Britain is bankrupt and yet not completely destroyed and yet we spend all our money because we're pretending we're not bankrupt no but also we spend all the money the Americans give us the condition of them giving the money is that we have to have a nuclear bomb

and so we start arming ourselves because we're in the Cold War era and so that's why we have no money from the off that's why so many houses from that period are still there they build these temporary prefab houses that were meant to be like the last three years

that's well Welsh housing stock still It's crazy Anyway, there's a whole 10-hour symphony Of that Were there other Any other unlikely heroes

That you sort of fell in love with Post-war I mean Howard Wilson's second term Wilson's a beast The episode is called Stop Pegging Grandad Yeah That he was being

Sexually dominated by his private secretary During Martia Actually this isn't one of your euphemisms No you can look at the rest of his history They talk about it So it's real

Okay Hang on So the litmus test for Finn versus history is the rest is history. I mean, I ran into Tom Holland at a historical exhibition. I said, by the way, I'm about to start a podcast, which is misremembering your podcast. And, you know, so that's basically what the premise of this podcast is. In many ways, it's just trying to remember some of their episodes and getting it wrong. That's sort of the shtick.

Yeah, it is. But there's a brilliant, probably my favourite is because Sambrook is a very, that is one of his specialist topics, is political history in the 70s. Yeah. There's a series on 1974, the crisis year that it's fucking hilarious It's the best one probably

Yeah And that's where we Why we want to do this Because like Heath as well Heath is such a funny Primary Basically Marcia He Wilson on his second time

His first time was pretty revolutionary It was like Repealing gay rights It was the 60s Repealing gay rights Introducing gay rights Right Yeah sorry

Repealing gay rights What's about to happen Yeah And by his second time He was completely exhausted. They're all exhausted. He had early on set. Yeah. And then his assistant, he had this sort of psychosexual thing.

Wasn't his wife, his assistant, Marcia. For example, he was at, I think in Downing Street, this happened, that Marcia said, come here, you little cunt to the prime minister in front of all of his aides. And then he went. Yeah, and he just went with her. Yeah. So she was just like this, she, uh, when he won, when he won his record fourth election, she told him the wrong address for the celebration parties there was no one there.

She cancelled it. Yeah. Because she just liked to dominate him. Yeah, and she was there and he right to turn up and then she started bollicking him. They had an affair in the 50s and she told his wife,

she said, I went to bed with your husband six times in 1956 and it was less than satisfactory. Yeah. And, but she's his private secretary. So through the whole of his political career, he has these two wives and one of them is pegging him

in Downing Street. Whilst the country He's completely crumbling. Yeah. I mean... Wilson's great. Ted Heath, because it flipped between Wilson,

Heath's to go over the 70s. The rudest man has ever... Yeah, and he maybe is a paedophile. Who knows? Who knows? You couldn't possibly know. But he absolutely hated women so much

that they were invisible. He transcended misogyny. So he had one person whose life was run by a woman that was pegging him and another one who didn't see them at all. And they would flip between Downing Street because the country kept going

to state of emergencies. There had to be so many elections. It was like Brexit. But it was worse than Brexit. But then the great irony is the man. who literally didn't see women, he got so annoyed by them,

then gets usurped by Thatcher. And he hates Thatcher. He hates Thatcher. And he goes into what's called the longest sulking history, where he's still in the commons. And he becomes the father of the house. He's there until like the 90s or whenever he dies.

And whenever Thatcher speaks, you can see him turning his snows up. Yeah. Oh, I love Heath. Yeah. So Heath and Wilson are two other favorites. Yeah. Before we continue,

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function it is only $500 and right now, the first thousand people can get an additional $100 off, meaning it's only $400 to get the exact same blood panel that I use. Just go to the link in the description below or head to functionhealth.com slash modern wisdom. That's functionhealth.com slash modern wisdom. That's so good. I didn't realize that there was so much bullshit going on that we needed to have these snap elections just back to back to back.

Well, one thing I found quite therapeutic, which I've always found therapeutic about history, is realizing how fucked things were to put some perspective because certainly if you're on Twitter, it feels like everything's grind into a hole, everything's awful, but you just look 20 years, 30 years backwards, and you're like, it could be a lot worse. 1974, comparing it to British political history now,

you remember, It's a lot of the same things we're going through now, but worse. Energy crisis, economy. Three-day week. Yeah, all of that sort of stuff. What's the three-day week? They didn't have the energy. Because the miners were demanding so much money and the Prime Minister was going to standoff with them,

and then the OPEC crisis kicks off with the Middle East wars. So suddenly energy is insanely expensive, and the miners realize that they actually, what, they've got all the leverage to demand what they need, but the country can't afford to pay them what they want. So Ted Heath doesn't give them what they want He says Everyone can only use electricity for three days a week So rations electricity

TV ends at 10pm That's when football starts getting played on Sundays Because they can't afford to use floodlights Yeah So football which was always on Saturdays Yeah, it has to be in the daytime I mean it got so bleak And apparently that's when

Kinky stuff starts Because one of the government advice was You can only work for three days So to pass the time Why don't you experiment with your sex lives. So butt stuffed starts because the light's gone.

You've got to pass the time somehow. You can only do with the lights off. Yeah. Yeah. That pegging guy could have been perfectly time. That's probably when he started getting pegged. Yeah, exactly. But it got so bleak, Edie Armin

was trying to send an airplane full of vegetables to feed the starving Brits. He said we're so heartbroken to see the way that, you know, our former colonial masters are suffering. Great bit. That all of the people, we've gathered around and everyone's like done a whip around. It's like reverse reparations.

And Britain, it's comic relief in reverse. Yeah. It's EDME, Ugandan dictator, sending charitable donations to Britain. It's exquisite. It's exquisite. The point is, though, when people say there's country in the toilet, there's a feeling that it's like we're in terminal decline. It's like, it's been far worse.

Do you realize how much worse it's been? And within our parents' lifetime, and we've gotten out of it. So I do think it's good to have a bit of framing sometimes. Speaking of the vegetables thing, I had John Lyle on. he wrote The Dirty Tricks Department which was about the founding of the OSS Mind Control. Yeah, we did a series on Oh, like, CIA.

Oh, like MK Ultron. His second book was on MK Ultron. His first book was the founding of the OSS, Stanley Lovell, William. A fellow historian. Fucking. Anyway, there was a story that he looked at because he's in the archives in Texas

and he's reading these original documents. The Vegetables thing reminded me of a story where a psychological assessment had been done of Hitler, and they'd found out they had a very fragile hold on his masculinity. Oh, yeah. And, uh, go on.

I won't take it. That was the most secure man I've ever seen. Yeah. Uh, so their, their attempt was, they found the gardener who grew the vegetables that went to the,

the, what was it, the bird's nest? Eagles nest. Um, the, Berth's garden. Yeah. I know that one. Yep. Yeah.

Bang. don't even finish and finish the question Buz. Found the gardener who grew the vegetables that went to the Eagle's Nest. Yeah. And they Hands, I believe it was called. I don't know that. I don't know. I met him once. Shook a sand.

Tried to inject the vegetables that were going to the eagle's nest with female sex hormones. Yeah. In an attempt to try and trans Hitler, they said his mustache would fall out. And his voice would go higher. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know this. You do know your history. That's incredible. What an obscure bit of history.

Incredibly well. Yeah. What an obscure story to know. I thought I was going to be able to teach you something new. No, I knew that. You can't get anything about Hitler past Finn. Nothing goes past. Okay, you're a world expert on Hitler.

Let's say that, yeah. That's what I'd like you to say. The world expert on Hitler. Or the Hitler's biggest fan, I think is a better word. Yeah. The biggest empath. Cosplayer. No, I'm an emperor.

I'm an empath. Yeah, he's a selective empath. He's only an empath. for one man, reverse empel. He has no empathy for anyone else. No. But yeah, that idea of injecting vegetables. Yeah, female sex.

Well, I mean, trans, Hitler. I mean, that opens up a world of possibilities. Imagine. Powerful. The things we never got to see. Yeah. Interesting for the worst crimes of the 20th century, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, all terrible relationships to their fathers.

Imagine if they'd had modern wisdom back in that period, who had a good relationship with their father? That's us. Like, I feel it was before, it was pre-good relationships with fathers, right? This was handshakes, father's way. Yeah, I mean. I mean, as a father myself, I do.

Like that. I'd like to see who, did Churchill a good relationship with his father? No, horrendous. Fucking awful. I don't think you could say that was the cause of them because it was like everyone.

We're the first generation to be dads that are trying. Yeah. That are actually invested. That's a really good point. Because if you look at them, you look at their life

and it was clearly this, but then you look at anyone on their street, you look at anyone in the village. Why did he not become mad? Why did he not become Stalin? Churchill, how do you think he would get on

in the modern world of TikTok with day drinking and booming influencer? No, he's like that guy. He's like drinking a day, that guy. What's his name? Sandro. He got a shout out. Sandro, he does the

problematic pub podcast. You've got to watch this. He's great for your listeners. He's like the opposite of you. Okay. In that your health, you know, you're a bit biohacky, right? Yeah, biahac light. Yeah, right. This guy is the, what's the opposite of a biohack?

I don't know. It's a biofuck. This guy. This guy, what are you drinking a day? He's what I drink a day. And then he'll go on holiday to Magaloof with his friends. And then he will proceed to video every drink he drinks. And it will be, you know, 25 beers.

Highlights. He'll go through the cocktail menu at his hotel, 14 cocktails. Yeah. Strawberry Dackery, lovely. Lovely. He's a starlet. So that would be, if we can get any of that up, if you can do some research, put it up, please.

I'd love to shout him out. He doesn't have long left. Can't have long left. Is it a YouTube channel or Instagram or what? It's on TikTok. Yeah. Okay, brilliant. But anyway, Churchill, day drinking, booming speeches.

How do you reckon he'd get on, modern world? Can you get away with that? I guess it's kind of like... The culture has shifted, certainly. But then we have, there has been a dearth of political charisma, and I think that's not politicians' fault I think it's as trust has gone not trust is gone

as trust is gone as trust love you Liz charisma's gone because trust is gone charisma left when trust did yeah no

we've got to stop electing people because they're fit but the charismatic politicians we haven't really I guess I guess Farad is probably the last successful is that because

to be statesman like is not to be sort of gregarious in that way. I guess statesmanship is old-fashioned if we're living in the era of Trump and Farge and Vance and stuff. But is there a link between the success of the country and the success of the politicians? Because if you look at the politicians

during the Victorian age, when Britain was the predominant power in the world, they did seem more charismatic, but just by the nature of what they were dealing with, right? Do you feel like... We also didn't have to deal with the public in the way... Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. I guess Trump is kind of like a sober choice. Churchill, at least.

Yeah. He's like, it's very gregarious. The booming speeches, he just doesn't do the drinking bit. Yeah. And maybe it's just Churchill's accent and, like, dress sense that lends a sense of charm to the outrageousness. Yeah. Was he outrageous?

Well, by today's standards, I guess. But then at the time, maybe he wasn't. Yeah. What's more impressive, I think, is the, it is extraordinary that level of, I don't know anyone who has that level of productivity drinking that much. Yeah, I just, it's quite, I don't know how cultural that is. I think people drink less now. People are much more health conscious now.

But seeing as you're so normalized to drink and smoke that much. But if I started drinking or smoke, I wouldn't get anything. The more interesting question is how would Brian Johnson get on in the war cabinet? Yeah. Wow. That would be wonderful. The fuck's this nonce. Yeah.

Have a beer, would you, mate? Yeah. I mean, you want to live forever. It's the 40s. Going to bed at 10 p.m. Yeah, come on. Fucking wake up. He also did deal with depression his whole life, though, right?

Really aggressive depression. Yeah, let's get serious. Let's get serious, Chris. Churchill? Churchill was depressed. I thought he was. Was he not the black dog thing that was following him around? Is that not his whole thing?

You look at what he was drinking. Is it possible to be not depressed being that hung over all the time? Yeah, because Churchill would be depressed. One, he wouldn't even know what depression is. I don't think depression existed in the show like the 70s. He was just a British bloke, which is like sometimes he was in a grump and he didn't know what that was. Right. So I don't know.

You're drinking whiskey on the nightstand. You're drinking whiskey when you wake up. He had a, he made, is it Paul Rod. the champagne and he had a custom-sized bottle made because he said a half bottle was not sufficient and a full bottle was too much to have with lunch so he he's sort of a two-thirds what I drink a day that could have been it yeah I it's weird like World War II stuff is kind of ASMR for white guys in their 30s yes documentaries yeah yeah and that is I imagine that there's just an infinite amount of stuff

that you can keep going back over with regards to that. Well, we're trying to stretch it out on our pod because it is the, it's real just nitroglycerin for the listeners. They love it. Yeah. Because it is, it's probably the most exciting thing that's... Well, it's like all of history, right, was leading to the night-night bomb

and everything's been going out. It's like an hourglass, I sit. It's like, history is like a pyramid leading towards the big atomic explosion. So that's like that, and then everything's been a fallout since then, right? That's how, so I think World War II is just, if you like history, it's the big, it's the season finale. It's the perfect amount of, long enough ago that it's interesting to research, but close enough to us that there was sufficient information captured about it to be able to.

Yeah, but also the kind of the biblical nature of the light and dark, good and evil. Yeah, the sides are more fun. That doesn't really happen and the fucking aesthetics and so much of culture like Star Wars is built off that similar, like. evil, dark sides with the great outfits, they look great, and this kind of iconic baddie, and then the rebel, I know it's based on Vietnam

Star Wars, but, you know, the rebels and stuff. That doesn't really happen in conflicts since. You're saying sartorially World War II was the sort of pinnacle. You have to say that. Also, when you're looking at Hitler in the 30s,

people didn't have a Hitler to compare them to. So the idea of evil is Hitler. Hitler invented that, really. And also, it didn't really come in until the videos from the camps came out. The kind of idea of this, like, everyone comparing everything to Hitler,

there being this idea of true evil and stuff like that. That just didn't really exist in the same way. Obviously, there was, like, religious things where it's like heretics and that sort. But our modern sense of evil is all comes from here. And the bad guy, you know, like James Bond, all the outfits.

Yeah. Did it blowfell as a dictator? Yeah. You know, that whole, culturally, we're so born out of World War II. Yeah. Like action films. But then have you seen... I don't know what your algorithms like.

The amount of pro-Hitler stuff is getting crazy. Pro-Hitler stuff. You're not getting it? I haven't seen any of that. What's on your algorithm, Chris? Like, just dog videos. And it's very fluffy mine. I don't tend to get much of that.

Like, boobs? Boops? Boobes? No, not really. What is going on? I'm Tits and Hitler. It's crazy. Mine's just...

I'm not even Hitler, it's just it. So, what do you mean pro-Hitler? Oh, it's crazy. There's like a whole community of stuff. Also, the Pakistani guy with the moustache. Yeah, yeah. He does pranks in a... Oh, I love that guy.

Shout out. I don't know what his name is. It's like... What's shocking is like, there's like, Hitler's speech has been translated into English. And it's not only like memes that are like, I guess, kind of quite like nihilistic set, like being pro-hit because it's edgy, whatever.

It's the comments that there's a whole... Is it ironic or not? No, it's broken past. iron. It's genuinely pretty terrifying. So it would be like, we owe Germany apology. That would be a lot of the comments. Is it just anti-Semitism repackaged as pro-Hitlerism?

I've got a friend who sends me all of these because it's just... Well, that's where the algorithm's going. I've considered it might just be him. And on Twitter... It's not me. I should just stress it's not. I have a friend. You sat next to me in the room. Yeah, you've sent me some. But on Twitter, now that Elon's taking the handbrake off, it's just gone crazy

the Nazi stuff. I got sent like a three-hour documentary with like a quite a proper voiceover well-produced. It's like a pro-Hitler one. It opens with a misunderstood artist, a man who changed the world. So like there is definitely, I think when you're told someone's evil and that's like the most defined kind of like truth. Yes. The idea that you've been lied to is thrilling for a lot of people. Very seductive.

Very seductive for sure. But it is definitely crazy what's going online in the Hitler space at the moment. The Hitlosphere. Are we in the Hitlosphere? We're in the Hitler's sphere. You are orbiting the Hitler sphere. We're the sun, I think. A quick aside, I've been drinking AG1 every morning for yours.

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Right now, you can get a year's free supply, vitamin D3K2 and 5 free AG1 travel packs, plus that 90-day money-back guarantee by going to the link in the description below. Or heading to drink AG1. That's drinkag1.com slash modern wisdom. That's drinkag1.com slash modern wisdom. I would not have guessed that. There's videos of like Hitler playing with his dog trying to show his light aside. They are. I mean, they're great videos. I really like that. Happy. There's a happy Hitler. You tell you some about the photo shoot he did in the, is it in the 20s? There's a photo shoot or maybe it's the early 30s. Well, when he's trying to work out his act. But it, no, it is like a comedian. Does he do early bits?

Is there any of his early material? The work in progress shows of Hitler. There's very rare, these very rare photos, basically, where Hitler's trying to work out his, like, his stick. Yeah. You know, because it doesn't just come straight out. When does that? That's Chaplin.

He's the biggest Chaplin fan in the world. Right. And it's hard to get it, Hitler, but he got every Chaplin film sent to him. And then in 1941, a great film, the great dictator, an amazing Chaplin film. which is a parody of Hitler during the war made in the middle of World War II

he gets everything sent to it and this got sent to him and it made fun of him and he was heartbroken. It was like... Because of your hero, your biggest hero, the guy who's fucking facial hair wouldn't it have been a real middle finger if he just shaved it off?

Chaplin? No, if... Yeah, oh actually, that would have been even worse. I mean, I feel like Hitler doing the middle finger I feel he's done a lot worse. I don't think... I feel the Holocaust was the middle... Yeah, but that, that's worse than that.

Was that aimed at Chaplin, the Holocaust? No, I guess not, I guess not Fuck you, Charlie I'll teach you False! Yeah, no I don't think we can say that hot tape Chaplain calls the Holocaust

It's the thumbnail title of this Exactly what you want now Yeah, that might work Yeah, I don't know Trying to repurpose or trying to reinvent Hitler's position And what he stood for seems like Well it's fringe now

But all these things that were fringed five years ago coming into the mainstream so i wouldn't be surprised it's more that niches are getting bigger yeah yeah niches are big now because of the because of the fragmentation because the echo chambers actually start to grow because it's more that if if the market digitally is everyone then a niche of that market is still quite large is a massive amount of people yeah it's enough to hold a community together exactly totally wow yeah i uh i love that john lyle buck because all of the little obscure bits and pieces of stories that were in history. There was this thing I learned, you were talking about the Japanese before.

At some point, the CIA, or the OSS, tried to scare the Japanese by putting luminous paint. Foxes are a bad omen in Japan, apparently. So they tried to scare them with glow in the dark what they thought would be foxes, but they couldn't get enough foxes. So I think they used something, and not skunks, they used some other type of creature, and then they put them in water and found that they, washed up both dead and the water the stuff had been a luminous paint yeah had been washed off them so then they put a huge fox head out with a PA system and broadcasts like sounds it's crazy what

they tried to do to in a desperate attempt to just sciop like the early versions of siops really like it was wet clay that people were playing with well that there was like they tried everything and they're like we're going to have to put a nuclear bomb on them on we we've done the big screaming fox head That didn't work. Tried to trans Hitler. But that's like the... We tried everything. In the Aztecs, you remember, in the Aztec series,

when the, it was a holding out against Corsese's and their version of the nuclear bomb is a guy dressed as a mask. This is the last, this is like the... But when the Aztecs are doing their, like, final stand. The ultimate deterrent, you don't want to press the button, but you do. And it's a guy dressed as a massive owl. Yeah. Who comes out and goes, ooh! And they all just shoot.

And they're like, we don't want to have to use this. But you've forced our hands. Yeah. And there's just something going like... He's like, ooh, and then Spanish just kill him. And they're like, oh, okay, right. It's the same equivalent of dropping the nuclear bomb, but it bounces off into the sea, and it's like, oh, fuck.

Or the nuclear bomb, you drop out a plane a guy dressed as an owl. Yeah. You just drop on the Rochema. I know nothing about the Aztecs. The only thing I'll say about that is the misconception is it should be viewed more as a civil war than like a colonising thing. it was like everyone talks about there's like 600 conquisca doors

who took over all the Aztecs it was actually two Aztecs who the Meshika was a rival clan who were fucking overloads of other Can you remember the name of the rival clan? I remember a lot of Clatch Clach Clarland Clash Clarlands

Yeah Tach Carlins And then they basically allied with the Spanish to take over the Aztec Internal Civil War assisted by someone from outside What's missing is that

it wasn't 600 country stores versus all the Aztecs. It was 600 good T stores with thousands of other trash clans. Versus a guy in a massive owl suit. I mean, yeah, yeah, with an al-suit. They had guns and... One guy had an al-Soo. Yeah.

Were the Aztecs as brutal as... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. To be fair, it's pretty nuts. Similar to the kind of you think, you know, the Sapuku thing with Japan, that's a stereotype. Oh, no, it's not. Similar to the human sacrifice. Oh, they fucking loved it.

What was the festival of blood things? What was the timing of this? What? This was, to be fair, because you always... When you think of Aztex, it feels ancient. Yeah. It's medieval. Right.

Well, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a mutual. It's a meeting, it's a world to, yeah. It's basically an iron age civilization with a kind of early modern European one. That's the, yeah. So they had, is it 15, 16, I'll say, Cortez. But they didn't have iron, they didn't have steel. They did sort of have wheels, but they didn't have wheels. They didn't have wheels that they'd actually use.

They thought of a wheel, but they hadn't made a wheel. They made a, they looked, that was wheels on kids' toys, but they'd never thought to use that to carry. It's funny because they had they would chop people's heads off the top of these pyramids and the human sacrifice, ripped their heart out, chopped their head off and the head would roll down the steps and they didn't quite link that rolling with the wheel.

Yeah, it was interesting, like the physics was there. They did invent slinkies. Yeah. No, that's a joke. That's not true. That's where our podcasts... Yeah, we can't give them the credit inventing slinkies. We don't know.

We don't know who invented the slinky? I don't know. No, we can't know. We can't know. We can't know. It was my feeling. But what was the festival of blood It was like the crazy one

It's basically a bank holiday festival Where they killed like 80,000 people So yeah like day off work Day off school Like criminals No it'd be right It would be the Clatch clarelands Prisoners from the Tash Kratz

So if you got If you got captured They were not like killing you in battle They're like capturing you And then chop in your head To then sacrifice you to their gods Okay Because also their form of battle

Was more like a step up dance battle Like it was a bit more ritualistic So that's why the Spanish When they're just like shooting them It's like oh I thought it was more like That's why the owl guy is the end thing. Because it's a dance off and you go,

I can't compete with the guy body popping. I can't compete with the guy body popping just as an owl. This dance off is over. There's one guy doing the world. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, they'd killed like 80,000 people at once and they're like just, the stench of blood was just extraordinary. They're not everywhere.

They're doing it. They don't have steel. So they're doing it with obsidian glass like shards. It's like a rock that. Volcanic. sort of rock that it's sort of like glass and it's very sharp oh and you chip yeah yeah you sort of like a flint type thing but super sharp super sharp so they're cutting into the breastbone and pulling after the head no I actually see that and then they fucking hell and they have a big

axe an obsidian axe I think so if your heart gets taken out do you get like a couple of free pumps where you get to see it for a second no I think the blood's still going round um but it's like heads cut off there's still there's still a bit of consciousness for a few seconds, isn't there? Or is that chickens? No, you can't. No, you can't. No, no, no.

You're telling me, if you chop my head off, my POV, like, I'll see the carpet as I'm falling towards it. Yeah, because there's a lag, right? Wow. Again, can you get one of your science guys on? Brian Johnson. Get your fucking head guys on this.

The real test of the Ryan Johnson is if he someone cuts his head off. How long does he stay alive? Yeah. Because if it's longer, then if it's longer, than if they cut my head off and fair play. Fair play. Have you heard Brian Johnson on this?

I have. Yeah. It was once a while ago. He's a sweetie. He's a really sweet guy. I tell you what, I did say it would be funny if you got hit by a bus

just because, like, comedically. Yeah, if he died at 62 because he got run over. It is funny. But it is nice to have someone nosing about in that sphere. Someone's got to be doing it.

You know, it's nice to have just a person doing it. The way to think about Brian Johnson is that he is like a scout. in an army and you don't want an army that's filled with scouts and I also probably myself don't want to be the guy that tries to climb up to the top of that mountain to see if there's something interesting over the far side yeah and I'm like but I'll happily have him go up and come back and tell us let me tell you what I found up there if he comes back he's nosy as hell

but he did digging around it's like you shouldn't be digging around in there let he did it's like trying to change the source code OS of your Windows computer Windows XP you're like make you're going to break something in there but he did he did tweet not long ago he said I guarantee I will die in the most hilarious and ironic way possible. Yeah. Well, it's just cosmically, you know, it would be too funny. Yeah. To just slip on a banana and hit his head. Because the oldest person in the world right now is British, Ethel.

Ethel, Breastroom. We're starting to come. Ethel Case Room, we're starting to campaign. She has to overtake the record, which is held by a Frenchwoman. Yeah. Yeah. There's another campaign. I think she's been cooking the books, though, the Frenchwoman. There's a campaign we started on a podcast to get Ethel Case Room passed. So Ethel Kateroam is, I think, on 1113?

She's 127. I believe. No. No, no. The French one is 119. That's the oldest. So Ethel is 113. French one's still alive?

Yeah. No. No, she died. Right. So that's the finish line. No, so we got to keep Ethel alive. Because if they were both racing at the same time, that would be because you could just. Take out.

And that's an easy one. You can fucking one slap to the face. Strong breeze. Yeah. No, no. So if you see Ethel like a, like a, like, marathon runners on the 20th mile, you know, cheering.

You got this. You got this. Come on. Give us some fish and some companionship. Fish and mate. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Give us some blue zones. What is funny, though, is you got the Brian Johnson thing. It's going to be interesting to see if he outlives an olive oil farmer in Sardinia. Yeah. It'll be just some guy, you know, smoking. Giovanni. He was just like, this old Italian guy is going to outlive Brian Johnson.

He's going to... He's drinking olive oil and just smoking and having fish. He's got mates. Supposedly it's mates. That's what everyone says. You know, it's fascinating. Brian's a good example of this. There's certain people who sort of capture a cultural niche. Because when you're thinking about longevity, biohacking, kind of the modern world of that, you think, Brian Johnson.

Empathy with Hitler. Yeah. You think Finn Taylor. But it kind of speaks to the fact that there was some subculture beneath the surface that needed a figurehead, not maybe too dissimilar. or two Hitler. And whenever that person sort of comes up, look, for better or worse, like a Tate or a Dan Bilsarian or something was, there was obviously some story going on, some subculture thing happening.

And then there's this person that's the tip of the spear. Right, yeah. That is like the epitome of this. They're like the distillation of all of this stuff. And I think Brian Johnson's kind of. He's emblematic. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Bonnie Blue.

Bonnie Blue. Yeah, the end result of sort of the modern sexual. collaboration stuff. Yeah. Yeah, but then I tried to watch a bit of the Andrew Tate, Bonnie Blue podcast for research because we had it on our other show. And I just thought this is like a fucking GTA cutscene. Like, neither of these people are real.

Like, it's just not real. And I don't know if it's people, their followers are like, they're playing along with the not real of it. And or they're actually taking it real. But because if you're just, they're not, neither of them are real. Because you've grown out online, the line. between irony and sincerity it's just become completely blurred so it's sort of like no one's a very few people are honest now yeah the internet right the sincerity is basically yeah it's gone non-existent um

do you know the idea of k fabe do you know this from professional wrestling no okay so it's just basically the i have a mortgage chris so any any professional wrestling stuff i don't know that's true i will default if i engage with it um basically the idea that sort of the hyper real like the fake real the sort of Trumpian like a meta story people just sort of buy into that and they kind of don't care hyper normalization that

Adam Curtis film you seen that no what's that you'd like Adam Curtis you'd like Adam Curtis you should have them on he doesn't do me I don't think I'm super familiar with him he makes these films these documentaries is a documentary maker where he says it all got a little bit strange

yeah so he makes these he's this guy that's allowed yeah British guy's allowed into the BBC archives and he just lives there like a hobbit for years going through all these archive footage. Someone brings some food down to Adam Curtis actually. We need to check on it because he's been down there for about 15 years. And he builds these incredible films

they're all on the eye player and it's all used with documentary stock footage and then he sort of tells this story of... Thatcher thought she was unleashing British's potential she was actually something much darker. Bonnie Blow.

That would be it though and it's... So it's like the British Ken Burns in that way. Sort of... Yeah, but it's much more like... Enchanting... And like the music's more hypnotic, it's much more kind of like, in some ways, emotional.

A little bit psychedelic in that way. Yeah, definitely. Because Ken Burns, Vietnam is totemic and amazing. Ken Burns' Civil War, I can't, I can't. I couldn't get through it either. It's just the camera on the paintings. Yeah. I can't do it. But I think the Americans love that shit,

but I think that Vietnam series might be That's as good as it gets. I think that might be the best. It's phenomenal. And it goes on and on, and this one's an hour and a half, and this one's two hours and this one's... The key thing I've realised if you're a documentary maker like Adam Kurtz and Ken Burns,

you've got to make the people who are watching it feel clever and that's what Ken Burns and Adam Kurtz do really well. I watch it and I go like, well, I'm brilliant. And then you ask, particularly with Adam Kurtz, it's because he will always tell a story about history and politics that you haven't thought of. And you feel really smart.

And someone asks you about that and you're like... It opens the door to like, here's what's really going on. There's a bit of that amongst his fan base, definitely. they are, they make you think about things in a way that no other do. Yeah, but it makes you feel like you've come up with it. Basically feel like, it makes you feel like you've like drunk the world and you can see everything and you're like, and then if anyone asks you what it's about, uh, fucking music playing and Thatcher and there was a lake, there's a lake where they did a deal and then

that's why Bin Laden exists. I'm an idiot. I'm fit. Yeah. Yeah. In other news, this episode is brought to you by Momentus. If your sleep's not dialed, taking ages to not off, you're waking up at random times and feeling groggy in the morning.

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they will give you your money back. Plus, they ship internationally. Right now, you can get 35% of your first subscription and that 30-day money-back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to live momentous.com slash modern wisdom, using the code modern wisdom, a checkout. That's L-I-V-E-M-O-M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S dot com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom. A checkout. I still don't know why Vietnam started and I've watched that Canburn. Yeah, that's what I mean. You're watching you're like, well, I'm brilliant.

Well, many ways it starts, well, let's not get into it. We'll do it out at some point. It's a quagmire. Yeah, it is. Yeah. But it was interesting you're saying how no one's... It's the French's fault. It's interesting you were saying that earnestness has gone. I'd consider you quite an earnest person.

I think I am, yeah. I have a problem with ironic speech. Too much ironic speech. We don't have that problem. Yeah. I imagine. We have the opposite problem. Yeah.

I don't need more honesty. I think it's a syndrome, I think it's a syndrome. Well, even that, I don't mind. Like, it's the internet show that you guys do, then that's the internet. Like, the whole thing is like matter and there's jokes on jokes and it's... But you're one of the best guests, if not the best guest on the show, by the way. Why?

Your reactions. Yeah. I think that... You came into it with that. People laughed at how I laughed. It was a weird life. Yeah. But I was trying to not interrupt too much, because you're still talking.

Yeah, I know. cachoring throughout the whole thing. I was like, okay, I'll try and be like... It looked like your soul... Gracious. I was trying to be, like, gracious about, like, not exploding all the time. You cared a lot about us getting a good show, and that really helped, I think. Really helps.

And I think also this world's the funniest to write jokes about. Yeah. The kind of man... Really? Oh, yeah. Because every guest we have on internet is to... Fundamentally, actually, is to open up a world of jokes. Distilled out of what's going on here.

It's not about Bonnie Blue. It's about, let's do things about only fans and stuff. like that you know we have wine culture yeah wine culture yeah but this is what i've been interested in for so long this whole world and it just opens up anything motivational anything kind of the kind of well i think part of the reason it works so well is that uh you could laugh at it all and i think that punctures the sincerity and the earnestness and the control that comes through in like clips of this and your other clips a friend of mine actually was like oh yeah i love that episode because i got those guys clips and i thought the fuck off who's that guy

and then I saw the show like oh fair play he seems like a really nice bloke doesn't take himself too serious and that's where the show actually for a university internet is best is when we had it with MDOT as well

it's like people people think they come to thinking oh good they're going to tear this guy I hate this guy and then they see how they're laughing along and they're aware of the absurdity

of what they do so you can humanise anybody maybe it's dangerous yeah and I think what's tough about Bonnie was that like I knew I knew we weren't gonna get the same kind of reactions from her than we got from that u or m dot but i also thought if there's

even a chance she submits to the silliness and even just engages with the fact that like all morals aside the absurdity of what she's done it is absurd the numbers are hilarious if she even submits to like laugh along with that it would be amazing yeah and obviously it will get views because she's she's very current um but i just thought oh there's a chance we get her to kind of laugh at it. And I don't think she could because I think she's such a... She has these... She's done so many of these interviews. She's got like a shit. And she puts up a guard and she's allowed to...

She does get... That's her protection mechanism. I mean, she's got a soundboard of things she said. If you... I'm not traumatized. I'm a feminist. I'm the real suffragette. That's her soundboard. She's blessing all the time. But yeah, so it's always a... It's so funny for a show that is so, like, it's expensive to make.

It's so stressful to make. We write it for weeks before we film it. People think it's like a podcast. We have these two-hour window with the guests. We've got to get everything we think is funny about that. It is a real, I felt the pressure me, and there was no pressure on me. It's a high-stakes thing. And it all, ultimately, if it's a good episode or not, rests on whether the guests is in a good mood.

Because if we've worked ages on a joke, like four of us, Paddy, Young, Vittorio, and us two, if we really care about a joke, you're in the room and sometimes the guest can track. it doesn't get the right reaction and it's just the timing you tried to get you tried to get me to say the word men oh fuck yeah the barbershop quartet that wasn't me trying to be awkward i was just trying you're probably just really confused yeah i was like because you were waiting to we had to get the joke out again this thing and i didn't say the word men i was like well it's like you know guys you know it's like young dudes and you were like what's the opposite of all right yeah yeah yeah but it is that it's like this it's such a stupid show and so many well obviously it's a stupid show but to make it it's so stupid because it you know it's part not that i'd ever do it on

tv because i don't think it would work but the part of the reason it wouldn't work on tv is that um it's just too high stakes yeah it's too high risk it's too much of a noble medium compared to well it's not just that the guests might walk out it's that really you have to get everything in one take sort of have you had anyone walk out yeah mdot tried to and then there were so many cameras in the way that you couldn't get out but then i also think he was sort of playing along. Yeah, he seemed like a really good sport. Yeah, he's great.

I love, I love him. Yeah, I'll tell you what, he jammed us. Yeah, he really charmed us. Did you do, because we were messaging about this, did you go and do some in America? No, so we've just gone back after. I think you could get Brian John. I think we could ease to get Brian John. Finn as well, I think Finn's character is built for Americans.

I think America's taking themselves more seriously. Yeah. And I just think. There's so many people that are right. The clash will be much much. Do you know Aubrey Marcus, owner of On it, He founded on it with Joe Rogan. Right.

Recently revealed that he's in a, like a polyamorous marriage where he's having kids with both partners kind of at the same time. There's something there for sure. There's a standard moment, right? Two family WhatsApp threads. I think it's all part of one. Yeah, I think it's all part of one that's just can't be, can't be. Two women in it. Family unit, wife one.

Different threads. Like the Slack Channel would have a couple of people. of different versions in the organization. But anyway, the earnestness thing is a really cool. No, it's a really, really good point. Do I have a problem with that? I like ironic speech when it knows what it's doing. One of the problems with it only ever being irony

is that you don't ever actually get to come into contact with reality or what someone thinks or what they feel about a thing. And that's kind of fine when there's a bit of self-awareness. But it feels like a lot of the stuff on the internet, If you look at most Twitter disputes, for ex-disputs, whatever, it's someone going, like, I know you are, but what am I? It's this very standoffish. It's very incincere.

It's very sort of cutting and sardonic. And at some point... Sorry, to interrupt. I think the problem is that with that, is that you separate. Although I certainly do. I mean, it's easier if you're a comic, but it's like, everything I do online is comedy. Because it's online, it's not real life.

I then have a family life and a personal life that is not... You know, I don't use Instagram like a millennial. You're not being ironic with your kid. You're not being sardonic with your kids. Here's me and my kids at a pumpkin patch at Halloween. Yeah. Ooh, so many pumpkins. Who gives a fuck?

That's not how I use it. I use it to make comedy because I'm a comedian. Yeah. I think that's how everyone actually treats online. It's not real. But then there are people who cross the streams who are like comedians that then try and make actual points or maybe they interview like Trump genuinely. And it's like never clear whether it's joking or you're just platforming a guy or, you know,

that whole world. Yeah, you open for a Trump rally. Yeah, it's like, well, what are you at this point? Yeah. Yeah, Tony opening for Trump. It's like, well, you... If you're anti-Trump, that's a great place to be in, as a comedian. But if you're pro-Trump on a pro-Trump rally, then that...

What's the point of this? The comedy doesn't get injected in the same way. Certainly our view of comedy, but... Well, that's the... I think that you separate church and state. That's what I think you do. But also, on the... I do agree with you at the... You know, there's a danger with the irony and incitarity that nothing is...

Meaningful anymore. Meaningful. but the something is also symptomatic of that culture is I do think there's a lot of bad sincerity out there's fake sincerity

they're the other side because there's this performative sincerity and performative irony or like sincerity it's like you don't know who you are and you're just sounding sincere there's this the music let it all work out

like there's that music playing underneath it but what you're saying is absolute bollocks I would much rather be ironic and sarcastic if you have nothing meaningful to say in a sincere manner So the curtain's fallen, right, in that people know that, you know, like a mum influencer is broadcasting her private life for followers, for money, for brand deals.

Yeah, so how can you say that that's earnestness? Yeah, it's not earnestness because you have privatised your home life. And therefore you live in a state where you can't actually live earnestly because at any point you're thinking, well, this is a moment. Always performative. Exactly. So actually, I think online will always be sarcastic and ironic and dumb. and what people need to get better at doing

is real when people are real and when they're not. And take online less seriously. Yeah, because it is... But I guess it is serious. Well, that's the thing is that things like Charlie Kirk and it all kind of bleeds in and Kirk was clearly doing...

There was moments, things of what he said, where I think he would say it's like more of a schick, it's rage bait. And does he end up getting killed for that? Who knows? Like, do you know what I mean? It's at what point would he separate his clips from him as a person? It all seems quite muddles.

Yeah, definitely. And it's really, it's something I think about a lot. And you're right, somebody that is, thinks they're being earnest and is just not self-aware, and that is their whole sort of persona online. Like the performances, like got inside of the person and is staring out through their eyes, and they haven't been able to separate out themselves from that anymore.

That's cringe. Yeah. That makes everybody like... Or it's a grift, or it's, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Or maybe they are aware. or they're half aware or they've got whatever

but that that is what that's like catnip to the internet right like pointing out this person who snake yeah yeah grifter shill Pito

whatever yeah you know what you can do that in real life though yeah yeah you can do it in real life you know when nonce comes from you know the word nonce comes from or is it not

is it not on normal courtyard exercise yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah prison stuff so good yeah anyway just yeah the earnestness ironic speech thing is, I think

it does dependent. It would be nice to have some people, Brian Johnson for all that you can criticise, he is quite self-aware about how insane his life is. And to tweet something like, I can promise you I will die in the most ironic way possible. But that's why I'd love to have them on our show because I think actually

because people would go going, oh, it's this fucking guy because people judge, they hate him because it feels like he's telling them to live better. And then people always hate that. So fuck this guy. And then if he could laugh at it with us, people would like, well, fair play. you know and I think that's kind of what the show is it's like a sense of humor test almost which is a very British thing I think it's a very British show you find the American

British British thing because obviously you know you grew up in Stockton Britain and I feel Stockton is bad Stockton's very British it's very it's the worst place I went on that tour last year what's quite interesting is when you said where you lived and you without a pause said that's the worst place I'd have been it's the worst place Stockton yeah the escape velocity that you need to get out of there is quite high and like the North East I think it was traumatized. Newcastle, Northumberland's gorgeous part of the world.

So close. Yeah. It's past. Yeah, it had a... But the appeal of America, right, would be this attitude. It feels like even though you're British, you are much more enamored with the American point of view.

There's no ceiling. Or there's more sincerity in America? To a degree, there's less self-awareness all the other time. The big thing for me is sort of enthusiasm or encouragement that I seem to to thrive. Maybe it's low self-esteem. If the people around me are pretty enthused and encouraging, like, oh, I can maybe go and do that thing. Like, in that great. There's not any of that in Stockton. No, whatever the opposite is, gravity is like five times heavier in Stockton than it is anywhere else. So that, I know, I just like being around it. I had this debate with Piers Morgan

and he said, I love when my friends sort of, piss taking is sort of my favorite mode of bonding. And I'm like, yeah, I get that. And every British working class guy grows. up with that as like the mode of bonding between you and your friend's class I'd say. Ironic speak. Yeah, every class. Ironic speech, lack of earnestness, sort of piss taking. But after a while, if it never come, if you never come into contact with sincerity, it kind of feels a bit like, well, like where does the world exist? Is it all this like hyper world? Like, where is something? But also that, that, you know, when I go to, when I go to America, in the first day, I'm like,

the, the, you know, the tipping and the service, I'm like, fuck off. They're a bit much on the, hey there, I'm going to be your waiter, like, all that. And then. you get into it and you're like, oh, this is really nice, actually. Yeah. Because it's a holiday. And then I don't think if I could live there. You can live there. Because it's too much.

I'm cursed. Yeah, I'll never not be. It's a sugar rush. Yeah. I'll never shed my Englishness and I do think I'd find it. But I'm also very European. I like walking around. I like walking around and I like people being rude to me in shops.

I just don't, you know. New York might work. Yeah. New York's, that's why New York's the place. New York feels European, the most European part of the States. Yeah. I've enjoyed that but you're right it's dose dependent for America

stuff and there's a small contingent of British and Irish people in Austin and I think that we sort of cling on to each other like life rafts You must need a bit of a break right? Yeah but there's still a lot of people A little bit less a tiny bit more Yeah I think mercifully a lot of the team That I work with there's still I mean British guys

Like so beautiful British boys Platriots Patriot. I wanted to ask you guys if you knew, I found an interesting snippet of history. Did you look at the dancing plague of 1518? No, I don't we have? Not yet. Can I tell you about it? I'm aware of it, but yeah.

Oh yeah. People just can stop dancing. Oh yeah, we did talk about yeah. Well, maybe you did that. No, no, we didn't cover it properly. I'm going to do a bit on the dancing plague of 1518. We'll get back to talking in just a minute, but first, some things are built for summer. Sunburns, hot girl walks, your ex posting there, you were road trip. And now, lemonade and salt? Uh? Element just dropped their brand new

lemonade salt flavor and it's everything that you want on a hot day. Tart, salty and stupidly refreshing. It's like a grown-up lemonade stand in a stick with actual function behind the flavor. Because, let's be real, if you're sweating through workout, sauna sessions or just

walking to your car in July, then you are losing more than just water. Element replaces the electrolytes that your body actually need. Sodium, potassium and magnesium with no sugar, no junk and no nonsense. I've been drinking it every single day for years, and in the Texas seat, this lemonade flavor in a coal glass of water is unbelievably good. Best of all, they've got a no-questions-asked refund policy with an unlimited duration,

so you can buy it and try it for as long as you want, and if you don't like it for any reason, they'll give you your money back, and you don't even need to return the box. That's how confident they are that you'll love it. Plus, they offer free shipping in the US. Right now, you can get a free sample pack of elements most popular flavors with your first purchase by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinklmnt.com slash modern wisdom. That's drink LMNT. dot com slash modern wisdom entire towns in europe literally danced themselves to death began in july in strasburg when a woman named frau troffier stepped into the street beautiful beautiful proud troffia uh began uh stepped into the street began dancing uncontrollably within a week

dozens joined her and within a month the number had grown to 400 people many danced for days without rest and some reportedly died from exhaustion stroke a heart attack authorities were baffled Doctors ruled out supernatural causes, I don't know how you do that, and blamed it on hot blood. Incredibly, they even hired musicians and built a stage, hoping that people would dance it out. That only made things worse. The cause remains a mystery. Theories range from mass hysteria, triggered by stress and famine to ergot poisoning. But no explanation is universally accepted.

I mean, there's not much to do. Isn't it always ergot? That's sort of the... Adi is kind of the gods of... Wait, that's not an egot. That's not an egot. It's not winning an Emmy. No, it's not an Emmy or Grammy and a Oscar. I'm going to tell you. No, it's the, it's the wheat. It's the wheat thing when bread goes bad.

Supposedly it's witch trials, witch crazes. Right. Moldy bread. Moldy bread. A woman eats some moldy bread and she goes, cuckoo. Well, that's solved then. And bloke's just like, or string her up. Which.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, but the dancing stuff is, you know, I guess how are you going to get your dopamine rush? You need that somewhere. For a month. It's pre-phone. 400 people dancing for a month. Dancing for a month. It's like the worst version of the, um, And do they all die?

And do they all die? Many danced for days without rest and some reportedly died from exhaustion, stroke a heart attack. They could have just accidentally synthesized some kind of drug, couldn't they? Yeah. And then, what, for a month?

That lasts for a month. They probably just keep eating it because they're not aware of, you know, dosage. See. Pre-dosage, isn't it? And also, you're a god-fearing people, so if you get anything psychedelic, you think you're being possessed by a devil.

But even in the Greeks, you remember the wine, the Dionysian cult they all drinks. It's the same thing, supposedly. And they'd eat, what's it called? Eating a goat with your bare hands is like a word for it. We're eating an animal, tearing an animal apart. Yeah.

Yeah. That was wine culture. Two thousand years ago. You drink glass of wine and then go like that bloke that you had on the show. Yeah, Tom. Yeah. Well, that's where it's ended up now. Now it's a ponty guy walking around London and going, oh, shardet.

That's how the story of wine has changed. Yeah. Eating goat with your bare hand to walk around. And now it's beautiful. culture. What I drink in a day? What I eat in a day? What I eat in a day? What about Darwin? You did Darwin. Yeah, one of my favourites.

Scientific races. Well, why was your favourite? Is the story of Darwin on the Beagle? Fine. When we start getting into, I do think one of our best episodes is part two of that series where we look at the... Both of eugenics. Yeah. Basically, Darwin was looking

at bugs and writing in his little notebook and everyone was like, brilliant. Let's rank races. I love all of these theories. That's Brilliant. Let's measure black people's skulls and say how low their IQ is. Phrenology, was that physiognomy? Phrenology. There's something so funny about the esteem of scientists when the science is completely wrong. Yeah.

That is hilarious. Well, the smartest people in that age were the most racist. Yeah. So it's been sort of flicked a little bit. We have a catchphrase on the podcast, which will, he's a scholar and a racist. Yeah. Because in the 19th century, it was scholarly to be racist. And also the idea of- Because racial science was a Victorian polymath, it will be people who have done extraordinary things in multiple fields, invented like the weather pain,

invented like so many different forms of science history, but they also... So there's a man called Francis... Francis Galton, who in many, invented the modern weather, maps, meteorology, so many things, but he was also a massive eugenicist, and he literally invented the dog whistle. That was, we found out on the podcast, and that was one of our big... So when you say jog whistle politics, when you're talking about race, but you're using words like urban and inner city when you're actually what you mean is black people and that's like a way of getting like a message yeah yeah that's why i call it a dog whistle because you can you can

hear it you can hide messages and speech that you can get away but he invented the ironically dog whistle for dogs and what are eugenicists but to be fair to him yeah he never did dog whistles because he was just saying yeah he was shouting at dogs yeah well you didn't need to dog Yeah, there was no, he was writing a book saying, you know. Black people are stupid. Yeah. It's more calling your doc. You know that Galton had.

Fenton! Fenton! It's the opposite of dog was saying. He had a pattern for how you could cut a cake so that it wouldn't go off. A circular cake. You weren't allowed to cut it like that. I don't know. He'd registered.

I don't know. He'd registered it. I read an article by Adam Mastriani about Francis Galton. Yeah. It's fascinating. I mean, again, birthed some pretty dangerous idea. Skolling a racist. Scoling a racist.

So you circular cake and you sort of cut a corridor out the middle of it and you push it together. That was apparently revolutionary in the early 19th. He's a brilliant man. Well, yeah, as opposed to cutting a wedge and then how do you fill the wedge? Right. It's exposed from the inside. His sister had some spinal problem. Yes.

So he taught her as she was laying, she would be laying facing the ceiling. and he would read to her, I think she would read to him, and that was, she would lay on a table, and that was how they would, because he was homeschooled. He also said in his, whatever, biography or memoir, that when he started working in the doctor's office or a pharmacist's office, that he decided he was just going to try every different medicine from A to Z. Yeah.

And he got to one that was, I think, C or D, I can't remember what it was that he took, and it caused him to shit himself so badly that he remembered it five decades later. Oh, right. And then he stopped. To be fair, I don't think you want to ever be able to brush off shitting yourself that you remember it

You don't want them to blur into one so much Right, okay Yeah, part of age of what, 10? Yeah, yeah, I think once you're an adult I can remember my shake myself Yeah, you want those to be memorable You hold on to them, they're almost They're formative memories

You don't want it to be like, I'm shitting myself so much I couldn't possibly Yeah, I don't know what day it is I just know that I've shot myself Could be a Tuesday I remember when I didn't shit myself that was a memory there I didn't shit myself

now that's very distinct because normally I'm constantly covered in shit but that episode there was crazy stuff which because of because of the Nazis

you can't even go back over it in the same way so we discovered so many there was like because of the kind of moral consensus that came after World War II saying that all of this stuff

is racial science this is leading to genocide and the And the Holocaust kind of was the full stop on that, where it goes. People missed the 80 years that was leading up to that, that had so much funny stuff, if you view the world like we do. But there was amazing stuff where there was like disabled people

campaigning for themselves to be sterilized. Serialized out of, yeah. Saying, I cannot read, I shouldn't have kids in a misspelled sign. I was going to say he wrote the sign. Well, there's an amazing photo of people. know whether they're genuinely meant to table people holding the signs or they're people pretending. Paid actors. False flag. False flag. Yeah, yeah. Crisis actors. And there was a, there was a, there was a, they're like a Sandy Hook victims. Yeah. There was a massive thing. What did we find out?

It was like, so there's a big camp, there's in the 20s in America. America and, interestingly, the America and Nazi Germany were like, they were the two people who were really going for eugenics. And there was a eugenics office, I don't know where. Yeah, the race race. Yeah, it was the race for race, not other race for life. And there was something about, because in a buildup to the 30s, like Ford were basically militarizing Germany, like all the Nazi industrialization, remineralization was a lot of American companies. And there was a fucking eugenics. This was when eugenics was a charity.

Right. It was like a eugenics charity in America who were writing, or rather Hitler took, just copy and pasted their text and made it. Nazi policy on racial science but they influenced a lot of American states and I think the most amount of forcible sterilization

involuntary sterilization in stelle in style is California which coincidentally is where everyone looks the fittest. Yeah yeah it's quite funny it's quite funny that the sunshine Selection state was where the most selective breeding happened in America There's also this amazing graph which was

Was it Victorian about the, when they were trying to categorize stupid people? Yes. So you have, I think at the top, you have moron. Moron is the cleverest stupid person. Yes, so the moron can do simple... This is scientific terms for what we'd now say of mental health conditions. This is what the scientific term was in the... This is where like imbecile and stuff would be in.

Yeah, so you do moron, which I think means that you can do low thinking skills, I think is that. Like low cerebral tasks. Is Kretton going to be in here? I imagine it's high-grade imbecile, which means you can only do stuff with your hands. Then medium-grade imbecile, low-grade imbecile, and then at the bottom is idiot, which means you can't do anything.

Yeah, you can't keep yourself alive. It's an idiot. That's where that word comes from. But I didn't realize that Moron was ranked above idiot and imbecile was in between. I didn't really rank them. So in your bio back in the day, you'd have like, proud moron.

Yeah. Right, okay, because you're the top of the bottom of the... Well, it's more the mental health labels nowadays. People are like autistic queen or whatever. Yeah. In 1910, you'd say proud. moron you'd say imbecile ally or whatever you know i'm imbecile adjacent yeah yeah yeah medium grade imbecile oh my god so how much how much was darwin at fault for his ideas more than he thought he

was darwin writes the book uh on the theory of natural selection then there's another one and then but then a lot of people around him go yeah this explains uh they bring in malthusian concepts of like the poor and like um what's that thing where you're talking about lizards guys no no no no no We get it. Yeah, we get it. We get it. Chinese people are stupid. I know what you're saying. And so it's Darwin's cousin who might actually, is Golton, maybe Golton was Darwin's cousin.

I can't remember. Anyway, they take the work and apply it to things like, you know, the empire, slavery, all these things are, they're trying to sort of retroactively justify things like colonization and slavery. Imperialism. Yeah. It makes sense to them through that lens that these people are stupid because we've conquered them. Yeah. And we have to paternalistically nurture them to our level. I mean, Hitler's, it's a very darn win in the view of the world.

Yeah, the end point. Natural selection, power of the will. Hitler's the Bonnie Blue of scientific racism. In that, as far as it can go. As far as it can jump. The numbers. And I mean that for both. The numbers.

But like, you know, Hitler takes scientific racism to the endpoint. And that's why there's, that's why everyone goes, well, we're not even touching this stuff. Phrenology is debunked. All this stuff is, you know, is not science. But we're bringing phrenology back, aren't we?

Yeah, just because it's very funny to call ourselves. Have you done it in the studio? We're going to start a thing where all guests are going to get calipers out and we're going to have

like a top gear leader boards where we're sort of like And is it bigger head is better? No, thicker. Thicker head is better. Bigger head stupider. Yeah, mentally thick. Smaller head, better.

Yeah, it's a complicated science. Yeah, yeah. I know you wouldn't get it. You're not wearing a suit. You're not qualified. It's true. I mean, I'm a shuffer. A head's too big.

We should do branded merch. Calipus. We should do brand of Calipus. That's a good idea. Do you think we're about to go into a world with embryo selection for IDF? You know, yeah, it's not a million miles away from sort of, yeah, gene therapy, isn't it? And all that stuff. That's legal in the U.S. you can...

Embryal selection is embryo editing is not. Right. So you can do... Editing means you can just be like, yeah, yeah. Get rid of that. Oh, that's good. That's nice. Because what about like the bracker gene and all that,

those genes that cause cancer and it's a woman's thing, you wouldn't know what it is. But some women have this gene mutation called a bracker, which means that they're very likely to get ovarian or breast cancer aged 40. And that's where it turns out most of varying cancers from this one gene mutation that you can screen for. Supposedly you can screen for it in a unborn baby or an embryo. I don't know.

Does that that's legal or not? I don't know. I'm pretty sure you can screen for everything now. I mean, there's companies in America that will allow you to do a polygenic risk score. You do a little sample. And then they'll say, well, here's a dashboard, 10 fertilized eggs. Yeah. And if you embryo 1, like, wow, intelligence is high, but immune system's quite low and autism risk is quite high.

And then you go look at the second. And like, well, intelligence is back a little bit. Wow, so you have like a sort of mixing board. And can you, but you can't. Top trumps. That's it. So you can only choose. You can, it's like having, yeah, it is like top trumps.

or FIFA when you get the player stats. Yeah. But you can choose. You've got your, there's your harvest. Build a five side team, you know. Or you're going goal, big hand. Yeah. Literally like that.

And you can do that. I think what's kind of weird about that is everybody has some sort of understanding that traits are heritable, right? That's how dog breeding has occurred. That's why people have got the same eye color as their parents, etc. So there's some amount of heritability. but because eugenics was such bad branding for anything that was to do with behavioral genetics

that it's like everyone's got this like oh fucking hell squamishness about it. Yeah it's real ick but this is going to bring it back into front and center because as soon as parents realize that they can select their kids so that's how ugly kids brilliant. They're going to have

they're more likely to go to Ivy League they're more likely to do whatever. But what's going to be interesting is if everyone is selected it's going to be like how middle class families decorate their living room it's going to be a sign of taste it's going to be like oh that's embarrassing you chose your kid to be like that that was very like trendy for the time but now it's gosh it's very gosh it's dated now it's new money that kid yeah it's like that's a new money like it's new jeans that's new jeans we're old jeans as the only parent here the whole

the whole thing about parenthood is that you don't choose the card you're dealt and you raise the kid no matter what the kids you play the ball where it lies you can only play the team in front of you. You're a parent to your kid. That's why you should never really take advice for any other parent because they're dealing with another kid. But what if you're cutting out like really severe, like the far end of it? What about cutting out severe disorders and stuff like. Well, yeah, you can do. I guess I guess we just wear that line is. Yeah, it's part of that line. This is exactly the debate will be. It's the exact question, which is, okay, we say that selecting against Huntington's or like negative traits is good, but when it's just a

single spectrum, the argument is it's just a single spectrum all the way up to, well, a more robust immune system means that they're going to survive and then well you know intelligence is correlated with not going to jail isn't correlated with life satisfactory no but all that yeah all that stuff I mean you have to have surely it's a suffering line where all the rest that's not predestimate you can't predetermined when someone's going to go to jail that's but you can predict it you can predict it at least a little bit higher IQ is negatively correlated with likelihood of going to jail yeah but again that's like but then there's those things if you've got high IQ you're being a safer um normally you're probably in a safer home environment.

Yeah, exactly. I haven't done the data. No, but what I mean is, I guess part of the thing about being a parent is that you just have to, you're dealing with the kid you get. And mentally, it's a much easier journey if you are like, well, this is the kid I've got. This is the kid I'm going to. Rather than like, this is the kid that I would like to be, rather than going, well, I actually. I should have picked differently because the whole time, the choice paralysis you have

when you're picking what your kid's going to be. Like Netflix is just too many things. Because you're like, oh, fuck. No, I shouldn't have picked that. He's so fucking annoying. This is an 80s China. There's no return policy. Yeah, because also you probably love your kid less in many ways because the, um...

You feel like you miss-sol. The magic. The unrequitedness of the love for your child is this is no matter what, this is what's meant to happen. But if you're like, I fucked out. I knew I should have chosen in real three. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

And also you shout at them when you fall out with them in their teenagers. Yeah. Your whole point is you watch them grow. Yeah, that's a good point. And you don't have really much control over them. So if you go. So if you go into it thinking you have control, mentally that is the worst place to be in when you have children is thinking you have control over it. You don't have any control.

You're just trying to keep them alive and make sure that they are happy. That's the mental, as my advice, surrender control. Yeah. Because you're not in control of anything. Yeah. Have you found that hard? No, that's great. It's liberating.

Hands off the wheel. But you tried to take. Not hands off the wheel. I'm driving. car i just um they're just shitty everywhere naked you know just hands off whatever man whatever no whatever you're trying to drive a career forward and get the show and all of the prep and all the rest of the things that you do ring fencing that partitioning that off and saying oh but i'll just you know hope for the best with finding the line finding the line

between control and not control it's like at this stage you know they're four and two they're like if I'm around a lot, that's good, you know, because the alternative is to go, well, my career, you know, but your career is a never-end, like, it's a never-ending thing. And I don't think you look back on your life thinking, I wish I've worked more, you know. An interesting situation that people are in now, at least some people, that have the choice of whether they want to work or not work, that we went very quickly from a world where the dad was five days a week, up at five in the morning and then back on an evening, trying to, you know, single family income, single person income type thing, to now people

have started to put that philosophy forward as themselves, it's self-generated. It's like, well, I'm going to push myself into my career because I want to validation, et cetera, et cetera. It's like, well, you've got the, there's someone who is pretty validating there playing next to you. But I also think, I mean, I get a lot of these reels about like the science behind dads. But there is, there's a woman, you might have had her on, doctor, I think. she's a doctor, sounds like one, who talks says that a child's mental health is linked to how available and present

their dad is. Maybe it's daughters, maybe it's girls, maybe daughter in mental health. And I just think just being around is like, as a dad, you know, you can be, you can be hopeless, but if you're around, you're doing something. Do you feel like a bit of a spare part for the first few years? No, no, you're like a cheerleader from the side? The first six months, you are, you are a spare part, but then you know you need to prop up the wife

you're there as the pit crew kind of but also that's I think that's something meant to tell themselves to be like oh I'm not really it's not really my thing you know it's a defense just a comfort blanket be like oh I don't know what I'm doing you know there's a lot

I'm not even needed here there's a lot you can do everything that isn't the kid you can bottle feed the kid like I saw a video I saw a video of a guy on a plane who must have been maybe the wife wasn't there he was traveling with just relative

like newborny type kid and tried to bottle feed, didn't want to put a photo of the wife over his face and stuck the bottle through a hole in the t-shirt fine. Yeah. I mean they're idiots. You can check them. Outwitted them.

Then he starts doing it without the kid and it's like he enjoyed it too much. That's a dog. That's a kid. Madness. But yeah, I mean I get I sort of, the old gene therapy thing, I think you're kind of ruining the surprise of parenthood. And I guess, you know, suffering is a legitimate debate as to how much suffering you can edit

out of someone. But yeah, I just think it's a slippery slope because you will just start having these expectations by as your kid that are like more foundational than your own neuroses in that you have bought and ordered your own child. So you're going to go mad. Yeah, you knew you should have got the new. fucking Subaru in grey instead of in wine. When we were potty training, my daughter,

who's we have a dog and the dog shits outside, there was about six months when my daughter would go outside to have a shit. Because I'd learnt from the dog? Because she learnt from the dog. And then you're like, how do I explain to a three-year-old that you're not a dog and the toilet is here? If I had bought a genius, I would be so livid. But because of the fact that she's at least not pooing on the floor,

I'm proud of her. I'm proud of her, you know. yeah i uh i don't know maybe maybe we'll see the the new world of i think that i should be present like that's a you know revolutionary if you were to look back 50 years yeah it's like i'll meet you when you're 18 yeah madman kind of handshaking a glass of scotch from 18 see you later yeah the churchill thing just going back to that i remember i read a letter from him he said to his father how proud he was to have finally got into this regiment right and his dad responds with with just the most fucking hutting.

And it's this whole thing, like you have cost me this much money, you have failed wanton and disrespect and all the rest of it. And then at the end of it, he signs off and he says, your mother sends her love. Yeah.

Fucking root at least. Yeah. So being around, just being there. I think that does something. Yeah. Even if you're getting shout at that all the time. Yeah.

Just being around. Gentlemen, what are you doing next? What can people expect over there? the next few well i don't know when this is coming out uh probably three weeks something like that okay so we'll be in the middle of our tour yeah which is sold out so people can't get tickets for anyway yeah uh there's stuff in the pipeline there's lots of stuff finverse the internet there's stuff that there's

finverse history twice a week yeah uh we're we're one of we're i check this morning we're like the 26th patron in the world yeah so join the patreon join the patron join the what do you get for being in the uh patreon you get a bonus episode every week. You get early access to the week's episodes, add free listening. And it's all the same, right? It's Finn versus history and the internet. Well, you can do two tiers. So you can pay for both shows. You can pay

for just one. Right. I think the main thing people do the Patreon is, especially with the history podcast, everyone wants the episodes immediately. Because if you listen to one part, people don't like being forced to wait for the next part. Yeah. So the main thing you want to binge is that you can get like 10 about the prime minister. If it's like two weeks, you can get four immediately. They're like Labrador.

They just don't stop eating. Yeah. Just eat 10 hours of postable. in his day. Yeah. And they're throwing up everywhere, bloated. It's, yeah. It's also, I really, I think that what you guys are doing is super cool. Oh, thanks, man. I really look forward to seeing. No, my pleasure. My pleasure. Until next time, boys. Thanks, Chris. Cheers. I get asked all the time for book suggestions. People want to get into reading fiction or nonfiction or real life stories. And that's why I made a list of 100 of the most interesting and impactful books that I've ever read. These are the most life-changing reads that I've ever

and there's descriptions about why I like them and links to go and buy them, and it's completely free, and you can get it right now by going to chriswillex.com slash books. That's chriswillex.com slash books.