Modern Wisdom - #595 - 700k Q&A - Negative Self-Talk, Upcoming Live Tour & Ray Dalio

Episode Date: February 27, 2023

I hit 700k Subscribers on YouTube!! To celebrate, I asked for questions from YouTube, Twitter, Locals and Instagram, so here's another 90 minutes of me trying to answer as many as possible. As always there's some great questions in here about whether Ray Dalio is coming on the podcast, how to overcome negative self talk and whether I'll be doing a live tour soon. Expect to learn how I deal with nerves before big podcasts, my very simple memorisation tactic for the books I read, whether I class myself as anti-woke, if I think young men should leave the dating market all together right now, why I stopped working as a model, what t-shirts I always wear, whether I'm worried about EMFs from AirPods, my favourite chest day routine and much more... Sponsors: Get $100 off plus an extra 15% discount on Qualia Mind at https://neurohacker.com/modernwisdom (use code MW15) Get 7 days free access and 25% discount from Blinkist at https://blinkist.com/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM) Get $250 discount on Sacred Hunting’s trips at https://www.sacredhunting.com/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - 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

Bonjour friends, welcome back to the show. I hit 700,000 subscribers on YouTube and to celebrate as is tradition, I asked for questions from YouTube, Twitter, locals and Instagram. So here is another 90 minutes of me trying to answer as many as possible. As always, there's some interesting and different questions in here about whether Ray Dalio is coming on the podcast, how to overcome negative self-talk and whether I'll be doing a live tour anytime soon. Expect to learn how I deal with nerves before big podcasts, my very simple memorization tactic for the books I read, whether I class myself as anti-woke, if I think young men should leave the dating market altogether right now, why I stopped working as a model,

what t-shirts I wear, whether I'm worried about EMFs from Airpods, my favourite Chester routine, and much more. Don't forget, if you're listening, you should have also pressed subscribe as it is the only way that you can ensure that you will never miss an episode when it goes live, and you could consider it a celebratory congratulations. Thank you, well done thing, to me me for the 700,000 subscribers. So go and go and press follow on Spotify or the plus button on Apple Podcast. Ah, thank you. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the wise and wonderful me. Hello friends, welcome back to the show. It is a 700,000 subscriber Q&A episode. So as is tradition, I asked

for questions on Twitter and Instagram and locals and YouTube community and there was lots and lots. Goes without saying thank you very much for the support. Growth has been just insane over the last couple of months and it's, line continue to go up, which is very good. So yes, let's get into it. First one, oh yeah, also I'm gonna butcher everybody's usernames because you don't have easy to pronounce usernames mostly so, sorry in advance. Oh, Ghee Hollywood, what stopped you from caring

what others thought when getting started? This is quite an easy one because when you're getting started, no one is watching the stuff that you're doing. It's one of the advantages of things in the beginning that if you do make mistakes, no one is there to see them. Me and Darren, my business partner, when we used to run a bad club night, we would always, it would be a double-edged sword, right?

Because a bad club night that maybe didn't have many people attend, only a few hundred people went to it, would make us feel bad, because only a few hundred people saw that there weren't many other people there, but there was only a few hundred people to see how few people there were there. So it was actually not that bad. So you don't need to worry. If you started worried about starting something, no one's watching you in any case. Up until the point at which enough people watch you for you to bother caring, you don't need to care.

And when you get to that stage, you'll have accumulated enough experience to not suck at the thing you're doing. Coach Owen Miller, do you get nervous before podcasts? The ones with the likes of Goggins, Jocco, Huberman, et cetera. That's got better over the last year, specifically over the last year, it's got better. The last year, specifically over the last year.

It's got better. The first and second pizza and ones, I was a little bit antsy. I've started to build up a little pre-routine that I do during the day of a type of diet that I eat, an amount of exercise that I do, a little pre-game ritual of breathwork and meditation and reading and prep, then good music and it's starting to calm down. But yeah, I still do get, it's excitement now more than nerves, especially before Goggins.

I was just excited. And I think this comes as a byproduct of putting a lot of reps in. The same with anything, man. Like if you have an undeniable stack of proof that you can do the thing that you're supposedly trying to do, You should turn that nervous energy into a good amount of excitement, or at least that's the way it feels at the moment. Todd Kennedy, are you concerned about burnout? You're absolutely killing it Chris, but as my friend Wheatwaffles says, your type of lifestyle and work style and a lot of other content creators

are sprinting on a treadmill. So Wheatwaffles is a black pill, a YouTuber from the dating space. Um, am I concerned about burnout? I don't know, man. One man sprint is another man's stroll. And my ability to deal with discomfort in terms of workload is pretty high. I spent all of my 20s working really, really late nights. I remember this one day where me and Darren business partner drove down to launch our events company in Manchester for the first time. And I think we set off at four in the afternoon. We'd worked the whole day prepping for the event in Newcastle. Rented a van from Enterprise Rented Car set off at four in the afternoon, hit rush hour traffic, leaving Newcastle rented a van from Enterprise Rentacar set off at 4 in the afternoon hit rush hour traffic leaving Newcastle going across this bridge that where everybody goes over to get out.

Had to pick up I think three or four different things like CO2 canisters and lights and maybe another member of staff on route to Manchester went arrived at 9 o'clock set the club up. went, arrived at 9 o'clock, set the club up, ran the event, cashed up, and then at 2.30 in the morning or 3 in the morning when the event finished, we got back in the van and drove back and dropped everything off, en route back, I might have even been late, it might have been four in the morning that we left. And then we hit rush hour traffic,

getting back into Newcastle across the same bridge at 7 in the morning or 7.30 a.m. as the sun was coming up. Now, remember thinking, this is an absolutely ridiculous routine. My point being that I've created a routine of dealing with discomfort through just habit in my twenties. It's one of the things that Peterson said, during your twenties, work as hard as you can and see what your tolerance for discomfort is. See how hard you can work and see how hard you can rest. Turns out for me, the ideal with rest

a lot more poorly than ideal with work. Maybe in five years time, I'm going to look back and go, oh yeah, I was pushing too hard there and I could have extended my longevity. But I've been doing this at this pace for three years at three episodes a week and four years at two episodes a week and five years, one episode a week. And I'm still going at the moment.

So fingers crossed. James Holmgren, reading your top 100 books list, love it. How did you find the books in the first place? Do you have a special reading technique? Will there be more books added in future? So if you haven't got a copy of my reading list, it's 100 of the most interesting and impactful books, the most life-changing ones that I've ever read, you can get it at chriswillx.com slash books, or there will be a button appear on YouTube, and it's free, and it's got links to

go and buy them in description to buy while I like them. And stuff. How did I find the books in the first place? They were just accumulated throughout my, how would you say, like apprentice ascendancy from total idiot to slightly less idiot throughout the back end of my 20s and then the start of the show. Some of them are from guests that have been on the show. Do I have a special reading technique? There was a lot of questions to do with this. Memorization, if I have some structure, how am I able to recall some of the things that I do? Dude, this isn't me trying to do a humble brag. I was so embarrassed about my recall forever. Ask any of my friends,

toward the back end of my 20s, I was super embarrassed because I was listening to people like Jordan Peterson or Ben Shapiro or Sam Harris, and they just had this, it felt like an encyclopedia, like a photographic memory, which apparently Shapiro actually has. But it just felt like they could recall anything that they needed and I was trying to read this stuff and then would try and tell my friends about it or remind myself of it and I couldn't and I would get so frustrated because I'd think, oh my god, like these guys can do it and why can't I do it? It makes me feel like and it's just crushing, crushing volumes

of time and attention with content I cared about. And then the most important thing is having an outlet through which I had a reason to learn it, right? I have a reason to learn this stuff and to recall it because I have to talk about it on the show or write about it in the newsletter. The Feynman technique really, really does work. Will there be more books added in future? Maybe. I'm trying to grow the mailing list really, really hard. So if you haven't got a copy of that thing, go chriswolex.com slash books. I'll do a second volume once I reach another 100 that I think are life changing and I'm probably up to about 50 now, I think, since the last one, which

was maybe three years ago. So yeah, at some point, in the of what why the ads on the Goggins episode, very glad that you asked this because had a number of one star and three star reviews on Apple podcasts because of ads, mid-roll ads on the Gorgon's episode, which is one episode out of 600 episodes that I've done. You are free to never listen to the show again if you have a problem with me doing two mid-roll ads that last exactly 60 seconds out of a two-hour podcast that cost tens of thousands of dollars and took six months to plan. Feel free to go somewhere else. Like that really did get to me the fact that for the first time ever I started to do mid-roll ads simply because it is very, very expensive to fly an entire team,

a production team out to Andrew Shortz's studio in New York and then set everything up and have everybody on site or with Goggins to build a custom set inside of a soundstage in Vegas. It was so expensive and like I need to be able to pay for the people that come out, which means that I need to sell ads on the YouTube, which means that I need to put them into the episode. So yeah, I said all along, I'm not a massive fan of mid-roll ads and I'm not. I'm still not. I would rather be able to make the money in a different way. And if I start releasing a product and make a bunch of money that can support the show

that way, then you can have the episodes for free. But I can't go and just dip it into tens and tens of thousands of dollars to fund these shoots. And I think if the price that you have to pay to watch a cinematic 4K to our conversation with one of the hardest men on the planet is 120 seconds of me talking about two products that I actually care about, then that is a fair price. I feel like that's a fair price. But like, I understand why people don't like them. I'm sorry that they do interject into the podcast. It's easy to skip past, but I also try to make them interesting.

So I hope that they are a fair enough balance for you. Glenn Thompson, 93, when is the modern wisdom merch coming? Congratulations on your success so far. Thank you. I'm having conversations at the moment about merch. To be honest, I've realized I'm really bad at monetizing and turning anything into a business. So it is going slowly, but it will be happening at some point. I literally can't even give you a timeline because it's all on me. I really need a business manager,

like a brand manager of some kind, because the only way that anything happens is if I do it, and that means I'm always the bottleneck. I'm the bottleneck if we want to change podcast hosting platform. I'm the bottleneck if we want to update the branding and the artwork logo. You remember the logo thing that happened on audio platforms

that took I think five months to do because it's all on, it's a combination of all on me and all on Dean. So it'll happen at some point. And the designs that we've got are ridiculously cool. They're so good. But I can't give you a date yet, sorry. Mark Kushen thoughts on Alex O'Connor's recent decision to go back to eating meat after

championing veganism for so long. Alex, Alex, Alex. So for those of you who don't know, Cosmic Skeptic, Alex O'Connor is a very good friend of mine. And he was for a long time an atheist YouTuber, then pivoted into veganism, and then put a community post out saying that he has begun eating meat, not just exclusively seafood,

but also other types of meats. Me and Alex have had a couple of conversations about this. I know that he's going to do a longer term video, so I won't prematurely ejaculate all over what he's going to do a longer term video. So I won't prematurely ejaculate all over what he's going to talk about. But the bottom line is like he's still fundamentally believes in the ethics and the philosophy around veganism. I think he found the personal toll on him in terms of his health too great. And he wanted to see what would happen if he switched back to eating meat.

The problem is Alex is so ethical, like he's so ridiculously ethical that he felt like he should tell his entire audience as soon as he made that decision. As opposed to waiting, my advice to him, which I'm happy to tell you about when he rang me and said, should I do this community post, was, dude, just do the video. Like, why do you need to do the post? And he's like, oh, well, it feels a little bit unethical for me to not tell people immediately. And I was like, dude, that's so, it's fair play,

but it's so unbelievably transparent. Like, and you're going to take shit in the interim between the post and after before the video. So I was like, look, you need to, uh, at fair play. Like, the guy, I very much respect him for the people that don't know him or are concerned about whether he's a virtuous human. He's like a fantastic, fantastic human. I wouldn't hang around with him if he wasn't. So he's made a personal health decision, like, who is anybody to say, oh, what I want you

to do is sacrifice your health in service of a greater cause. Maybe you should do, but I mean, he's done a lot more for veganism than almost every vegan on the planet. So I don't think that he's done too badly. Chris, let poy the ven. Do you have any plans for the one million subscriber episode? No, I really don't. Perhaps not something that I considered I would need to think about, given that we only hit a hundred K two years ago. Less than two years ago, I didn't think that this would be a thing.

So any suggestions, please let me know. Comment, I really don't know what to do. Doing another Q&A, like would be cool or a live stream or maybe a Q&A from a special location, but I don't know. Scented popsicle. Personally, I think you're doing great and the production is great,

but what are some things you're trying to improve with future guest or future episodes? So I have a list of big names that I'm trying to get on this year. If I can even get through a quarter of them, I'll be very, very impressed and I think that you guys will be pretty happy. With regards to the production, I do want to do some different locations. I don't want to give away too much just because I don't want anyone else to do it just yet, but we want to try and do some really, really insane location shoots, which would be really

exciting. I've got a couple of locations in mind, and then we're going to try some with different technology, different shooting styles, and things like that too. But it's just rinse and repeat. Find people that I find interesting, talk to them. It's the same shit that I did five years ago when I started the show, like find someone interesting, sit down, talk to them. The only difference is that more people watch and listen now, that's it.

A'Pouh, the contrarian, great name. Any chance you'll get Neval or Curtis Yavin on the podcast. So Neval is probably, probably pretty close to number one. Problem is that he's taking this massive sabbatical from podcasts, apart from he released one with David Deutsch the other day. But I, he would be like the final boss in Final Fantasy IX for me to get on. I would just adore having that conversation with him and I would do something so special for the production as well. Curtis Yavin, I've met a couple of times in Austin, seems like a nice guy, not super familiar with that, what's it, Mel DeBus Moldbug thing that is Monica that he uses online, I'm not really

familiar with his work, I don't really understand what I talked him about, so I'd have to do a lot of research, whereas Navarro, like I'm ready to go, Navarro, if you're listening, come on. But yeah, I hope so, and Yavin, I'll think about it. Oh, in. Joan of Auro praised you as being one of the best interviewers stating that he loved your questioning. You truly deserve all the praise for this. Thank you. I didn't know. I don't know where he said that your genuine curiosity matched with your ability to ask phenomenal questions. Inspires me. How did you learn to ask such good questions? So there's a lot of questions similar to that one around podcasting, conversation, stuff

like that. Honestly, it's just time and attention. The same as the learning thing. You know, I've done this 600 times and inevitably you end up accumulating some good skills. Some more practical tips that you could take beyond like do it 600 times. Think carefully about what you're going to say, what you're trying to say, learn to be as precise as possible with your speech, which means use the right words, assess your language, don't berate yourself if you say the wrong thing or if you slightly mess up a word or if you misspeak, you don't need to fucking get the cat of nine tails out and start whipping

yourself, but assessing and listening back to your performance and saying, okay, like what was good, what was bad, I really loved the way that I used that, I really don't like the way that I did that, and then reviewing game tape of yourself, Rogan and all of the big comedians will review their comedy sets and say, I don't like that pause, I do like this thing. Why not do that for conversations or for podcasting? If you genuinely care about becoming as good as possible at it, then that's something that you should do.

And that was something that I did for a good chunk of the start of the show. I would listen back to episodes and I would observe my own performance and I would try not to episodes and I would observe my own performance and I would try not to lambast myself too much but would critique myself when I got things wrong. And then in terms of the actual questions themselves, just follow your curiosity. You know what you want to know.

You know someone's talking to you and something arises inside of you that's like it's like being prodded in the back and you go, oh, that, I want to know about that. What's that thing? And don't be scared of interrupting. You can't go too hard. But if someone, if someone hasn't, there was a clip that went a little bit viral online of me asking Goggins, what do you mean while he was talking because he'd left a statement unqualified or whatever. And the only reason I asked it is because it came up inside of me.

It just said, I don't know what he means. What do you mean? And it just came out. So maybe trying to get out with your own way a little bit. So you need the skill to be able to do the communicating bit and then you need to allow the curiosity and just turn that into a monster. Allow your curiosity to go on a big hypertrophy program.

John Hawk, are you anti-woke? If so, why, what's wrong with being conscious of racial discrimination in society and other forms of oppression and injustice? I think that being conscious of racial discrimination thing must be an online definition of being woke. I wouldn't class myself as anti-woke depending on like, using, using that definition,

I do think that some of the, like, progressive overreach and ridiculous intersectionality, gender dynamics, everything is homophobia, transphobia, patriarchal, super structure stuff. Not a massive fan of that, but I'm not against people being for racial, like, consciousness and understanding oppression and injustice and trying to raise up people from disempowered groups.

That's me. I came from super working class town. It's hardly palatial, right? People are born, live, and die in this place. It's not that this is the sort of thing that I would be for. It's incredibly blue in the UK, where I'm from as well. Not least it used to be. I've ruined that a bit recently.

But I wouldn't say that I'm anti-wag. I would say that I am concerned about some of the progressive overreach, but I'm concerned about some of the progressive overreach, but I'm concerned about some of the boring permanently reactionary defensive stuff that comes from the right as well, and that's getting super boomery recently too from certain areas, which is like something to keep your eye on. Constantin Kissin had an interesting tweet where he said, the future is not woke or anti-woke, the future is post-woke. I think that's pretty good. X, J, FX, opinions on tap water, especially in the UK.

Good question. So I'm really getting into the quality of water at the moment, at dinner last night. This guy is doing research into aluminium build-up in people's bodies. Obviously, fluoride in water has been a big deal for a long time. In the UK, I don't know as much.

I certainly know that I don't like the taste of the water from the taps in America, anywhere near as much as I did in the UK, is that just a climatizing to the taste. No idea. I have literally just today, an hour and a half ago, got off a call with a company called AquaTru and they make a reverse osmosis filtration system tabletop and they can fit it to your house.

So I'm got a bunch of different things from them being sent out and I will try them and I will tell you and if they are shit, I will tell you as well. If I don't like them, I will tell you I promise. But I think that quality of water is going to be a big consideration. And if you're not thinking about it, at the very least, just get a bitter filter. It's not doing that much, but it's doing more than taking it straight out of the tap. Yeah, I mean, there's even stuff to do when you're talking about the quality of water. Drinking chilled water is also not fantastic for you according to some views of physiology. So I'm like way too deep down certain rabbit holes within Austin's health and wellness community, but the problem is I'm not sufficiently deep.

I actually know what I'm talking about. So yeah, I'll report back. But yeah, be careful with tap water drink as much bottled water as possible, aim for bottled water in glass water if you can spring water or rain water is great. Harsh Darji, why did you quit modeling out of the country, man? I think the last job that I did was just after COVID, I was modeling a lot up until COVID happened and then COVID happened and then I got a buzz cut because I couldn't get my hair cut and I wasn't going to grow it back out. And then all of my portfolio didn't look like me because I didn't have the hair of my portfolio

and then ruptured my Achilles and lost, like a stone in weight and muscle and still would have been able to go back to it. But to be honest, I don't do anything other than do the podcast and have a life. But in terms of work, if I was to get a flow back to the UK to do an ad for Tesco or something,

they wouldn't be able to pay me enough to counteract what I would lose from not doing the podcast. And also, I'd just be thinking about the podcast. While I'm on a photo shoot, I'd just be wanting to talk to someone. So that's it. Although fun, enjoyable industry, do it if you've got the opportunity. Sabs P, how did you get started with meditation? Are there any tools you use guided meditation apps, videos, etc. Any books or methods you recommend? Yes. So I started probably when I was 28 and the first thing that I used was headspace.

I think a lot of people do, Andy put it come from headspace. Very good, great starting point. So I did about 500 sessions guided through headspace and Corey Allen, I think it's called release into now and that is a meditation. That's probably the deepest guided meditation I've ever done, which has got binaural beats behind it. You can get that if you search Corey without the E. Allen, just search him and meditation and it'll come up. That's great.

That's really good by. Now, I use a combination of insight, time for unguided and samaharice is waking up for daily. Just start doing it 10 minutes in the morning, every morning. Don't miss two days in a row. And don't overthink it. Don't berate yourself if you get distracted. Just keep on learning the process. And after, you know, like 500 sessions, you'll become moderately not incompetent. Richard Morley, what's your view on decoding the Guru's podcast? Okay, so I was on decoding the Guru's coming upon a year and a half ago now to do a right of reply after they criticized an episode that I'd done, and they have got themselves

into hot water recently. Chris Kavanaugh, one of the hosts, was called out by Scott Alexander twice on two different newsletters, Constantine Kissin, from Trigannometry, had a problem with them. They are able to poke people in very tender spots, and they were able to rile them up. I think one of the reasons that they caused a little bit of, I mean, Sam Harris went back on, so did I. Robert Wright went back on, Constantine Kissing went back on, Jamie Wheel went back on. I think one of the reasons is that their ability to have fun whilst doing this is quite admirable. It is that evidently enjoying themselves, which means that you think, oh well, maybe there's some truth in this, because

it's not just, it doesn't feel like it's just out to be snide, but there is some, sometimes like, vicious topspin applied to the things that they say. So I can understand why it causes people, discontent. For me personally, it was a very important corrective measure.

I have a lot to thank Chris and Matt about Even though it's got not necessarily that this was the reason they were doing it Or perhaps even anything that they intended to do But one of the byproducts of turning some lead into gold with this I Alchemized my experience on decoding the gurus because I was certainly not thinking enough about balance on the show And this was just before Rogan was about to do his double whammy of first the Robert Malone thing and then the N-word video.

And it just all came together. And I speak to Chris moderately regularly. Like I'd say that we're mates and we talk about all sorts of stuff that's going on in the world. And even though that's not the sort of show that I do, I, they enjoy it, man. And like, I don't know. It was useful for me as a creator,

it was a useful, corrective measure. And I appreciate the fact that they stepped in and told me where I was going wrong. Jewels, drums, how do you stay impartial or at least compartmentalize your partiality during interviews? This is super easy. I if I think I know what you're getting at, which is I just want to find out what the person's saying. I just want to ask questions and if you ask questions, you will inevitably end up kind of slicing through any of the

biases or concerns or existing stances that you have. For instance, the David Lay episode, one of the world's leading cook researchers. If you missed this one, go back and check that out. He, you know, I make no bones about it. I don't think that cooking makes any sense, evolutionarily, psychologically, socially. It just blows my mind that people can do this to watch porn about it, let alone allow it to happen in their lives. But I was interested. I'm like, look, I want to find out. And I think if you go into a conversation, believing that the other person genuinely has something interesting to say to you, or to add to your conversation, that you can't really go wrong. Like you're just going to continue to find out more. And even if you disagree with what it is that they're saying, if your pursuit of knowledge takes precedence over everything else, then it seems to work for me. And it comes across as impartiality, I suppose, even if I'm not all the time. And

you know, there will come a time when something crosses the line. I said it with David. I was like, like, I don't think it doesn't matter what you say. I don't think that using porn to educate, like, underage kids, even if they are teenagers that are maybe sexually active, I don't, I struggle to find a place to stand firmly on that ethically. There are points and walls at which I'll do that, but I'll ask more questions. And that seems to diffuse tensions quite nicely. Cryptic 15, I totally get the idea behind the phrase, do not outsource your self-worth to the world, yet at the same time, they combined wisdom and foresight of the world is much larger than our own.

As Jordan Peterson says, we outsource our sanity to the world. How do we strike a balance between avoiding being a grandiose narcissistic person and avoiding being a people pleaser with no genuine sense of their own self-value? Very good question. Dude, you, all of the questions are awesome. This audience is so insightful. Very good question. Dude, all of the questions are awesome. This audience is so insightful. I really, really appreciate all of the questions that you guys ask. So just interjection, thank you.

Do not outsource your sense of self-worth to the world, and yet the world has more insight and foresight around us than everyone else. Yeah, it's difficult. I would say that this is one of those times where the different stages of your development, this will be more and less appropriate. So don't outsource your sense of self-worth to the world, maybe more useful as you become a little bit more mature and a more well-settled and understand your own capacities and can have faith in your own abilities. But at the beginning of any end ever, using a little bit of feedback from the people around you is a good idea, right?

Like you don't want to just be a single-minded, I know what I'm doing person if you've never done this thing before. You need to get some feedback. If you walked onto a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu mat and said, I know what I'm doing with BJJ, didn't listen to the coach at all and just kept on getting tied up, but didn't listen to the feedback, then you're evidently dispelling obvious wisdom that could help you in what it is that you're doing. So perhaps one of the balances to look at here is how much insight do I have and how much experience do I have and how much should I take from this person? Does this person have my best interests at heart? Do they actually have experience

and expertise in what they're talking about? Do I have any count of nailing evidence that suggests that I don't need to listen to them? I think that would be a balance. A healthy dose of self belief in things that you have earned it in, a healthy dose of feedback in situations where you feel like you need it and then play with those two scales appropriately. Mrs. Anthony Bridgerton, when will you start to tour like Jordan Peterson? Okay, so there has been a lot of conversations about this. Like more, I think this is probably the first time I mentioned it on the show. A lot of conversations about doing a live show. I'm still not even of the, I still can't believe the size of the show, so my sense of identity is playing catch-up with where the show is at now. But it would be really cool to do, and I'm

quite excited about the prospect of kind of like the lessons, 14 lessons from 2022 or the five year anniversary or the like the big episodes, the hundred episode things that I do. I would love to do an extended version of that, perhaps with a little bit of production live. That would be awesome. And I mean, to tour doing this would be exciting. So I think at some point this year there will be maybe one or two UK dates and one or two US dates where I can test this show live and start to play around with the

ideas. I am going to do a few spots one in Miami at the start of March, one at the International Fitness Summit in Brighton in August or September and one in Dubai, I think in October. I'm going to do one at each of those where I'm going to test the show as well. And then maybe next year there will be a bigger, more well put together show or tour, which sounds insane to say. And I would absolutely love to see every single one of you there. Bill, will you play Cracket the Game? No, it's snapped my Achilles the last time I'm playing. I would need an awful lot more reassurance before I can do that.

Went back to playing it after 10 years off, ruptured my Achilles. Not too quickly. J. Liu, what's the song at the beginning of every podcast? I literally make sure to listen to it every time. Fuck what's it called? Fly, okay. Fly away. You're gonna have to ask it again

on the 800th episode, sorry. It's a dubstep remix that I found on Creative Commons license six years ago and it was a remix of a dubstep song. I really wanted something that was high energy, but had the melody in. And yeah, for the people that only ever watch on YouTube, there is an entire segment of the podcast that you don't listen to, because I will do an intro, a spoken intro to the guest, which lasts about a minute. Then maybe some comments about the episode, and then I guest which lasts about a minute, then maybe some comments

about the episode and then I'll do some ad reads and then maybe some more comments and then the episode will begin after a particular piece of music. So yeah, you're missing out if you don't subscribe on Spotify, but I you'll have to ask again because I'll get it ready for the next one. Christian von Ophel. What is an important change you think is happening right now that people don't talk enough about declining birth rates and the impact of hormonal birth control on women's psychology. I think both of those are huge. I think that in future historians are going to look back and think what the fuck are we doing?

How do we let this happen? How did nobody foresee this? It wouldn't surprise me if declining birth rates are the number one existential risk. No, it wouldn't be a true existential risk because it's not going to take us beyond the brink of unrecoverable collapse like an existential catastrophe, let's say birth rates 100% Here we go. Waki Pataki. Waki Pataki. 100% Here we go wacky

Pataki wacky pataki Willie be on the jerry podcast anytime soon um Maybe I haven't spoken to Joe in a little while I need to send him Documentary that I saw that I thought was cool. He'll reach out. He just, he's got his own schedule the same as me and I'm looking forward to the next time I get to speak to him whenever that happens. But it was so much fun. The first time was just bags and bags of fun. So, you know, when we go round two, very much looking forward to it. He said some very nice things after the last one. So, yeah, I'm hopeful. Eric is dating a bad idea for young men right now,

is focusing on growth and success of a self, of a, focusing on growth and success of a sex, and romance wise move for an ambitious person. I don't believe the trouble of modern dating is worth sacrificing the time and effort I can put into myself or my career, but I still feel intense phoenix. Maybe there is a balance, love the pod Chris,

you keep me going through my monotonous 10 hour shifts, keep it up man. While February, grinding away at 10 hour shifts, Eric, that's pretty impressive. Personally for me, like going through periodized monk modes is a great idea, but committing to it for the rest of time doesn't seem smart. I don't think that saying dating is a bad idea for young men right now makes a whole lot of sense. No, absolutely not. Sex is on the bottom of Masa's hierarchy of needs. I fundamentally disagree

with the view that humans on average, or even beyond a very small cohort of people, can exist without having a life partner. I just don't think that it's the way that we're designed. I mean, you can, but you're going to be, it's going to be a suboptimal life. I would say the same as my suggestion about sobriety, right? Periodize it. I'm going to go single and monk mode for a bit, and then I'm going to date for a bit and see how that goes.

Then maybe I'll go back to monk mode and then I'll go back to dating. You don't need to commit for the rest of time. I think that working on yourself before you bring somebody else in, especially if you've got baggage and stuff that you need to deal with and development and goals that you want to achieve is great. But I think completely closing off the potential for romantic connection is just not a smart idea. Like the person that could be perfect for you to spend the rest of your life with could go past you.

And if you're just, if you've decided in advance to make a completely arbitrary decision that I am not in the place to find a partner right now, even if you could be, I think that you are capping your success. And I don't think that exclusively looking at growth and personal development is all that there is in life, I think that there is more. Rebecca Tommelting, you mentioned in a recent podcast that increasing your vocabulary really helps you to articulate your thoughts and improve your communication. Do you have any hints, tips, methods for how to improve your vocabulary? Thanks so much for a great podcast and show. Thank you, Rebecca. For me, reading different books and then seeing words that I don't know and getting really excited about seeing the words and then trying to use them or trying to teach them to

somebody. So I'll go to the gym with Zach on a morning and I'll be telling him about something that I learned when I read. So I read for about 15 minutes on a morning, which is much. But during it, I'll really think, okay, what the fact I learned this morning, I learned about like, like, usefully irrational beliefs, or what's it called? You can tell how well I've remembered it, fictionally rational beliefs or something. Anyway, that was this morning from Gwinder, and I'll try and teach you to him, or a new word, or something like that. And I'll try and chip away for a good while reading different sorts of books, reading books from outside of this time and listening to people that use broad vocabulary. You know, if you hear one of the guests on the show say something cool, I learned the

word conniptions the other day, which is kind of like a fit of rage. I was like immediately asked the person, what does that mean? They told me. And then I'm like, connections. Pretty cool. It's cooler than saying a fit of rage. So I'm going to start using it. But you do need to make sure that you're using it in the right context.

Manusia, Chris needs millions of subscribers, one of five top channels on the internet. I couldn't agree more. Thank you. Yes. Jake Parker, what are your thoughts on writing a book during a time in which AI may soon be able to write it better and faster? Yeah, I mean, I fuck, man, I should just keep drinking this CV and chill out. One of the things that you need to remember about the way that chat GPT works is it's

a prediction engine, right? It's basically predictive text, but just strung out across sentences, paragraphs, and then pages. So although it may be able to convey quite simple information effectively, it's never going to be original, like by definition, it's not going to be original because all it's done is it's a language learning model that has taken existing work. And then this is how they're able to work out plagiarism in schools. You can run text that has been generated by chat GPT through a filter and it is able to work out how predictable the sequence of words were. And if it hits a particular threshold, it's obviously it's been written by that because

we don't write, all humans don't write with this preconceived parameters of predictability. So I'm not convinced it would be able to make it faster, a better, it definitely be able to make it faster than I can. I don't write that quickly. But I don't know, like it's not just the project of me writing something isn't just for me to, it's a learning project for me as well. And I'm not going to learn by watching ChatGPT write my book for me. And if Bing takes over, then it's going to be a battle between ChatGPT and Bing in any

case, and we'll just observe the Terminator War of the World thing going on. Cold pepper. Keep going, bro. Your genuine honest approach is a much appreciated in environment filled with lies and half truths. Thanks, man. I appreciate that. I really need Jordan Spencer, not a question, but your podcast have changed my outlook on life. I thank you. That's about as good of a testimonial as I could ask for. The username Beck, how do your parents feel about your success? Good. Mum listens to most of the episodes.

Dad drops in every so often. I think he got half of the gog in his episode. They're just happy that I'm happy. I got genuine yam happy and I love doing what I'm doing and I think that's all that they ever wanted for me. And they got out of my way very quickly. They gave me sufficient latitude to do, which is the opposite that you hear of only child parents, right, the helicopter thing.

They just moved out of my way as soon as I went to uni and just seemed to have a lot of faith in me being able to do my stuff, which I'm incredibly appreciative of. I've never felt pressure to have to do anything. Yeah, I think that happy that I'm happy, which is pretty good. Merks, eighties, do you miss the UK?

I do, actually. I have been feeling a little bit culturally sort of displaced every so often in America because it's un-stupid, but the things that you hold on to, like the cultural artifacts, making jokes about greggs or the time-stupid, but the things that you hold on to, like the cultural artefacts, you know, making jokes about Greg's or the time bridge or accents from where you are, they're an important part of culture.

They're an important ingredient of the way that you came up and to not be able to do that and to have to, it's so much more effortful for me to try and be funny or culturally charismatic or anything over here because I don't know what I'm talking about. I don't know what cool whip is and I don't know stories about the Barry bonds and stuff. I don't have the same cultural anchoring. So I do miss the UK in that regard. I miss the amount of nature and the type of nature, as well. That's not to say that Austin doesn't have some nice nature. It does, and I do prefer the weather here. But every time that I go home, and especially this winter when I went home for Christmas,

it was one of the best times that I've had. And I'm enjoying loving the UK again when I get to go back. It doesn't feel as much like a prison as it does like a holiday and that's pretty cool Lou Simpson 24 what haircut do you have had a lot of questions about this over the last few weeks like what number hair Could I go for and you've chosen a good day because I literally had this done two day? so it is a two and a half on the top, and it is a two on the sides, and it's squared off on the back. And I get it done about every three weeks,

and that keeps it pretty much like this. Jahaul, diary of a CEO when. So this is Stephen Bartlett's podcast, biggest podcast in the UK. I think by plays on average at the moment across all categories. Soon, I don't want to say, but you won't be waiting long. I don't think. Paul Hogben 23, do you keep all the books you read? I do, yes, actually, unless I give them, but you can see this thing for the people that are just listening,

it's the vertical bookcase that has the blue light behind me in the recording studio. And that has been slowly filling up. If you actually go back to the really, really early episodes in this house, you'll see that the books were super low. And over time, it's filling up like a loading bar. I must have left hundreds of books in the UK, which did make me quite sad,

but I'm accumulating more, so yeah, I keep them all. Hamze 6969, please call Ray Dalio in your podcast if you haven't, Ray Dalio is booked on the podcast. He's coming on to talk about his two most recent books, one of which I think is like a journal, which it'll be pretty exciting to talk about, but yes, I finally got through to him. I'd wanted to bring him on for ages, principles is great book. So yeah, Radalia happening. Rigatoni, how do you avoid negative

self-talk causing poor performance, causing more negative self-talk, etc. Yeah, this is something that I've battled with for quite a while. I'm currently mercifully in a, however, you would say, like a positivity phase. I wonder whether I'm going to peak and then come back down to a more negative self-talk phase, but for a long time, I'm talking like a decade, negative self-talk and a very unhelpful, critical voice in my mind was a mainstay. It was the primary voice that I hear. Very scathing, very vicious, very mocking, patronizing, passive-aggressive voice that I had every time that I fell short of my promises that I made to myself or goals I'd set for myself, the comparison game between me and other people. I'm very

familiar with that and then obviously what it does is it gets you nervous about your ability to do a thing which means that you do the thing more poorly which reinforces the fact that your bad self-talk told you that you couldn't do the thing, it's not good. The way that I fixed that was performance first, and this is probably, I'm sure that there is a performance psychologist out there that's just sticking his hands in his face. But in my opinion, leading with your performance first, just going out there, getting on the stadium floor, trying as hard as you can to do a thing as well as you can, little steps, making promises to yourself, keeping them over and over again, and then allowing your identity to catch up with that. And eventually you have an undeniable stack of proof that you are, who you say you are,

right? You've outworked that self-doubt, you've outworked that negative self-talk. to that self-doubt, you've outworked that negative self-talk. That seemed to work for me. Isham's music. If you were to start modern wisdom all over again with the same five years of experience, what would you do? I'm going to guess what you mean, like what would you do differently than I did in the first instance? Not much, to be honest. I was pretty happy with the way that everything went. It was slow and brutal for 300 episodes or 3 years, but it was still fun. It was only brutal in that there was no one listening to the podcast, like relatively to now. Nothing. I don't think I'd change anything, genuinely. Tim Organ 91. High-Cress, love the podcast, and your recommendation of Bacarot Rouge 540 was a game changer. Any others, so Bacarot Rouge

is a fantastic fragrance for both men and women. It's supposed to be unisex, but no idea. I don't know how I'd feel if I was with a girl who was wearing it, but it's amazing. Other ones, Hal Fettie by Pentalligans is really, really nice. It's a little bit more aggressive, it's less oily than the backerat rouge, but it's very nice. Not eventous by Creed, but there is one, I want to say it's called Everest or Himalaya or something, it's in a silver bottle and it's super fresh. That's absolutely lovely. And then Cairo, I think it's Halfetti Cairo by Pentalligans as well. Those are some more. But if you haven't tried Pentalligans Halfetti, that will blow your face off. It's so good. But it's not quite as good as backer at Rooche 540. Sorry women, I don't know. Any good girls for agrensers.

Robbo clock. What brand are your t-shirts? This was another hair and t-shirts. T-shirts have been asked about a lot. Zara, to all of the guys have been asking what the t-shirt was that I wore on Goggins, what the one was that I wore on Tom Billu, what the one was that I wore with Shultz, pretty much every podcast, I think every big podcast that I've done has been Zara. I almost exclusively wear Zara for smart clothing, Zara sponsored me. And I wear, I'm 5'10 and a half,

190 pounds or like 90 kilos, and I wear an XL in their fitted t-shirts and they are fantastic. They're really, really good. I highly recommend them. Pierre Ogis, you mentioned a few times that you were the most hated guy in school. Any reason why. I don't think I said most hated. I think I said least popular.

I may have managed to hold both titles at the same time, but I certainly least popular. Why was I the least popular guy in school? I just really struggled to connect with other kids. I just didn't know how to socialize. You know, I had had how to socialize, you know, I had had, like, relatively socially isolated upbringing as being an only child and having some tendencies of introversion. So it's not like, my dad stopped me from doing things, you know, I went and played sports, I played football, I did judo, and then I played cricket for a long time at a very high level a lot. I don't know, maybe I was just a bit like socially autistic. I'm not sure. I didn't understand how social stuff worked and I would obsess over weird things

that people did about the type of trousers they wore or the way that they carried their bag and I'd be adamant that that was what made them cool. It wasn't. It was the fact that they could communicate normally with other children and I didn't understand that that was what was going on. And it's like, it's been a really, really long effortful. This is how to be a human in a group.com, instructional video thing, for me to actually get to that stage. However, I have got to the stage now

where it comes a lot more second nature to me, which is lovely. Ciao, down food. How naked were you after the podcast with Cam? The podcast was fine. The issue was the day before. So the lift run shoot that we've done. For the people that don't know, I was on Cameron Haines' podcast,

he is this world's class bow hunter, incredibly hard man, endurance racing, dude. It's like a white Goggins that's got a bow in his hand basically. And I went to Oregon with him and he made me run up a hill a lot and it was hard. And then he made me do a hundred reps of bench, two twenty five with chains. And then we then we shot some bows, and it was difficult. But it was very fun, and we've been texting a lot, and he's a great guy, and I very much understand why a lot of people respect him. His super cool dude.

Tosty is the mating crisis as critical as made out, not just patterns being shifted back by tenures. So, I think what you mean by this is if people choose to get into relationships later, I may be a decade later, why is that a big deal? People are still going to pair off. The problem is that you have this immovable window of female fertility, right? You have a fertility window. That is a pretty hard line in the sand between the ages of whatever 38 and 48 varies very broadly

for a lot of women. I think that downstream from the mating crisis, the main concern that I have, Stephen Shaw's concerned about population collapse, which I am as well, but first and foremost I'm concerned about individual happiness. And I just think that the longer that people stay single, the evidence suggests the less likely they are to be able to find a partner that they're going to be happy with. So the longer that you do this, the longer that you remain out of a relationship, the less and less likely it is that you're going to get into one that makes you feel happy. We know that on average, most people should be in a relationship if they want to maximize

their happiness in life. Not for everybody, but it is for almost everybody. I think it's a big deal, which is why I care about it a lot. Yep, we can push things back, but you know, four out of five women who didn't have kids didn't intend to not have kids. That seems like a big deal to me, and that's almost exclusively because of the patterns being shifted back by 10 years, if that's what you meant. That's it. That is what we're talking about, right? These women that burst through their fertility window that meant to have children that didn't realize how late

it was, that then try, that then grieve over families that they never had. It's brutal, I hear about these stories, and it makes me feel so sad. And it should make everyone feel sad, you know? Ryan S. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H Ryan S. Hegel. What are your thoughts when you run into someone in person who's been impacted by the pod? This is a good question because it's happening a lot more now,

which is beautiful, but kind of odd. I'm not massively used to it, especially because a lot of the podcast consists of me in a room. I'm not doing live shows yet. I'm not going out and performing anywhere. I don't, I go out with my friends and we'll go for dinner and we'll do stuff and we'll go to the gym. But for the most part, it's just me grinding away, right? Doing you know what I mean? I was in Communus 13, which is the X, most hardcore drug lord ridden, dangerous part of Medellin, Columbia, a few last week.

This is a place that's got escalators outside to go up and down because it's so hilly. It's like amazing vibe. It's like fascinating vibe. Very, very outgoing and loud and vibrant. And I get to the bottom of one of these escalators on the way back to the truck, to go back to the hotel. And this dude stopped me and said, Hey, Chris, I just wanted to let you know the other reason that I left left my job and now I'm here in Columbia and I'm traveling and I can't say enough for how the show has impacted me in blah blah blah. And it is a little bit like I almost feel like people are paid actors to do that. So it's just great man. It makes me feel so happy. It's like it's beautiful to see that something that I enjoy doing so much impact other people in a positive

way. It's great. It's a dream. It's a dream. So yeah, cool. The Batchirchi. Get Peter Attia to your podcast. Heuberman put me in him in a text thread two weeks ago and I'm speaking to his bookings PR, personal assistant man. He will be on, I will get Peter Attie on the show, all things being well, Peter Attie will be on the show this year. He's got a new book out that you should check out. It'll be on Amazon for pre-order. You should do that. But yeah, thank you as well, Heuberman for linking us up. link in the sub. And not me mouse. I've never seen you wearing anything but vans. Why? Good point. I have been in a big vans, uh, like, flex for a little while. Um, they're just, so I think that vans might be the most versatile shoes on the planet. You could run in them, you could lift in them, you could do something up and to formal dress in them, and you could do casual in them.

They work with shorts, they work with jeans, they're fucking phenomenal. And if you get what's called the comfy cush version, which is maybe 10 pounds or dollars more, they put a special sole in and it's ridiculously comfortably. You could wear them all day. It's absolutely fine. I just, I really love them. They're great. I found them absolutely fantastic. So right now, the wardrobe of shoes is a combination of Bok Nanos, Nike, Pegasus 35s for walking and running, crocs and vans. That's the five-car garage of shoes. Funtivity, Colin, Colton. Are you concerned about EMFs from devices like airports, etc. Do you use wide or wireless? So, from what I know, the radiation that comes out of Airpods is non-ionizing. I don't know what

the fuck that means, but someone smart told me that I don't need to worry about it, so I'm not bothered about it. And Airpods don't seem to... I mean, the advantage of wearing a pair of air pods, the advantage of wearing a pair of air pods outweighs the future brain cancer that I may end up threatening myself with because they're just so good. It says everything about how good air pods are that I'm prepared to throw brain cancer down on the line. That's the price that I'm prepared to pay if I'm allowed to walk around my house at a 10 meter radius listening to whatever it is I need to listen to. Ariana Volanda. Is bald pussy still a thing? Do guys who care about women having pubic hair? women having pubic hair. Look, Ariana, I can't speak for all men. I know my preference, and I do think that guys care about women having pubic hair. If I have to fight through

a thicket to find what I'm trying to discover, that's not very good, is it? I mean, the difference in a guy having pubic hair and a girl having pubic hair is that what you're looking for isn't hidden behind ours unless someone has really, really grown it out. This dude's got to fall on Afro. I think Bald Pussy is still a thing. I know this is a controversial statement. This may be one of the most controversial things that I've ever said in my entire life, but I do think that ball pussy is still a thing. Owen Moran, whoa, did you just skip straight past 600k? No, I did a 600k Q&A as well, which you should go and check out. You should go and listen to it. Danny Colopy, what does your usual chest day at the gym look like?

Good question. Okay, so I would typically do back first. My chest day starts with back. That's what that's how mine begins. The reason for that is that all of my chest exercises feel better if I have got myself into sort of this shoulders back and down position. So something like four sets of RPE 7, 10 to 14 rep, horizontal row of some kind seated row, seal row, something like that, and just get those shoulders back and down. Then it would be incline bench, one to two warm-up sets and then four working sets with a drop set at the end, that would be with dumbbells.

Then what would we move on to after that? Probably flat bench or weighted dips. or weighted dips, then machine flies, machine fly machine, and maybe finish off with weighted push-ups or something similar. All of those are four sets of eight to fourteen, and the final set is always a drop or a double drop set. I'm sure that there's a better way to periodize this, but I'm just, I'm still the same bro that went to Newcastle Unies Center for Sporting Excellence 15 years ago. And we just did drop sets at the end of everything. So I'm just in that rhythm. Where are we?

Sean, hi Chris, I started listening last year. And I'm a huge fan. Listen during my workouts and morning shifts, absolutely love your discussions on behavioral psychology and self-improvement. Always brightens my day and I must give you a must heartfelt thank you. Thank you very much. Very meaningful. Question, what advice would you give to someone who is a jack of all trades,

but a master of none, no real friend groups and feels like they have nothing to offer the world beyond their curiosity and want to stand out or create content. Also return to college in age 26 to study health and human performance and physical therapy and other 7 to 10 years, what the hell do I do? Well, first off, you have all of the foundational makings of someone that is going to succeed at whatever you do because you are prepared to swallow your own pride to go back and do something which is nontipical at that age. Like you are going to be significantly older than most of the other people at uni. That's great.

You have a good amount of self awareness that you can, you know where some of your weaknesses are. It's evident that you're relatively humble and have got your feet on the ground. You're going to be absolutely fine. I would try as best you can, especially given that you're at college now to just expose yourself to as much as possible. Join the improv school, play ultimate frisbee, start doing Tai Chi, go to knitting class, I do all of the things because it sounds like you're yearning for a passion that will come and take hold of you. The problem is that you don't have that passion quite

yet. If you're a jack of all trades but a master of none, you only need one or two of those things to cross over. And you're going to be unbelievably good. So I expose yourself to lots of things, find something that you become obsessive about and just let it consume you. Like let it, whatever it is that you find that you really, really want to do, spend enough time exploring, try different things, discover a thing you love, and then let it infect you like a parasite and stare out of your eyes. That seems to be the way that most people that I know that do something that they love and that becomes a part of them kind of let the world work. Spooner Sean, as growth continues, can you see a time when the podcast alone stops exciting

you where you feel the need to add in something else to the mix as you tick off more and more numerical goals and dream guests? Can intrinsic motivation last beyond the point where this stops feeling like a challenge? That's a good question. It's difficult for me to have theory of mind about who I'm going to be in future because I'm not there yet. It's not stopped exciting me yet, is what I can tell you.

And there is still so much more headroom for me to step up into, I think. And also, the personal development productivity background, there aren't a massive number of people I don't think talking about this kind of personal development with the human behavior, about this kind of personal development with the human behavior, evolutionary psychology, cognitive science approach that are just saying, look, here's a ton of research, how does this make you feel? How does this impact your life? Do what you want with this information? Maybe I could be more applied, maybe I could say, you should, this is the solution from this thing and this is this and this is that. I mean, we do the life hacks episodes, but that's telling you how to create a great toasted sandwich or like where to sleep in Amsterdam Airport,

where there aren't armrests in between the seats. I think that there's a lot of impact still to be had from this show and from what I like to focus on. And I still have a ton of self work to do as well. And like, research is me search search is, I call it, I learned from William Costello, which is basically people research the things that they need to learn about in their own lives. And the show is absolutely that reflection for me too. So for as long as I am an as yet unactualized human, you're coming along for the ride. And hopefully it's useful with that. I could imagine that if you reach the zenith of whatever it is, maybe it needs to be something else,

but then we add in live shows maybe, or we add in a business or a company that trains other people, I don't know, like just just stuff. There's always going to be ways to tack little things onto the side of whatever it is that this show is and this sort of modern wisdom philosophy has become or the approach to life has become. And I think it's going to be a relatively infinite game. I hope. Claire McLeod congrats amazing numbers. Happy birthday.

Claire, my Cleod, congrats, amazing numbers. Happy birthday. I don't think it's my birthday. Oh, it will have been my birthday by the time that this was out. Wish me happy birthday, an hour and a bit into a podcast. Wish me happy birthday. My question is, I'd be interested to hear about who slash what day to convince you, read the stem cell treatment and what rehab program slash aftercare slash returning to training is.

Thank you, love your show. Thank you, Claire. Stem cell treatment, I went to Columbia, I received about 200 million stem cells over the space of six days into my shoulders, into my knees, into my back, into my Achilles, IV received 100 million as well. There seems to be some promising research when you get them at the concentrations that they're allowed to do outside of America. The rehab program will be a lot of time and attention. I'm going to get even smaller, which makes me super sad because I'm not going to be able to go crazy hard in the gym while I let the stem cells do their thing,

but I am looking forward to the injury recovery and rehabilitation, revitalization, prevention, longevity stuff all kicking in. Aftercare is a lot of walking at the moment for me. I am spending as much time as I can just trying to stay active. I'm stood up right now, trying to stand up as much as possible. Yeah, it was a really cool experience, physically pretty uncomfortable, emotionally pretty enjoyable, but it's not for the faint of heart, if you've got a low pain tolerance, like it's, you're going to know about it.

LJ22, great to see the podcast going from strength to strength. Congratulations. Thank you. Is the scheduling of upcoming episodes more of an art or a science? Do you look at the numbers to see if a Monday, Thursday or Saturday is a prime spot for a big guest or what days of the week pull in the greatest amount of views or do you use your instinct and intuition to appropriately spread out certain topics and subjects? Is there anything that makes a Kestotopic film or Monday-ish or Thursday-ish or these data-driven decisions? There's a really good question actually, I don't think I've ever been asked this before. But yeah, I do. I tend to try and have stuff on a Monday, which will require

a little bit more reflection, because Monday is the only day where there's three days between that episode going out and a new one going out. So slightly longer episodes sometimes tend to be on a Monday, ones that are maybe going to need a little bit more reflection from people tend to go out on a Monday. Thursday episodes tend to be something similar, although maybe a tiny little bit of a step down. And then the Saturday episodes are, I sometimes try to make them a little bit more of an easy lesson.

It's not massively day to driven. Saturdays do sometimes underperform compared with the other days of the week, but YouTube is the other way around. Sometimes Thursdays don't perform too well. We probably should be publishing on a Sunday because Sunday's the most active day. But to be honest, I just I made this decision arbitrarily because I was like, okay, Monday will be a good day to release a podcast because everyone's going to start the week and they'll know it's modern as the Monday. And then I needed to do two a week. So I said, well, Thursday, that's good. That's another day of the week. Friday will be weird because everyone's waiting

for the week, the weekend to come around to Monday, Thursday. And then when I need to do another one, the only day I could do was Saturday. And now I've got lock-in. So here we are. Henry Webster. I'm starting my caffeine-free journey after drinking a lot of coffee since at least my early teens, 20 years ago. I've quickly noticed that not only was I using caffeine to give me energy, requiring more and more to just reach a base level, but I had come to use caffeine to cover up negative emotions. Did you have any such personal insights when you stopped drinking caffeine?

Thanks Chris, been here since under 50k and still loving it. Henry, Henry, you're an OG, thank you. Yeah, dude, I mean, people use caffeine as a not only a mood enhancer, but a mood stabilizer. I feel bad today, okay, I'll pump a bunch of caffeine in and I don't know, I'm sure, Cuban will be able to tell you what's going on, but there is some cascade of things.

A good, a good, strong caffeinated drink with some good music, and it's, you're flying. It feels really good. So yes, you will absolutely use it to cover up negative emotions. The lifestyle things, I think, have spoken about, ad nauseam, covering up your fatigue, you're not looking after your health,

you're not looking after your health, you're not looking after your sleep hygiene, and you're using caffeine as a buttress to keep yourself going. Everybody knows this already from hearing me hop on about it. The emotional thing is super, super interesting and definitely something I noticed and something that I haven't spoken about. So very much appreciate you reminding me of it. Yeah, to cover up negative emotions, if you're feeling a little bit down, and you crack a big coffee into yourself, it kind of, you're so wired and focused and just on edge that it doesn't really matter what is going on. You're just going to blast through it with your caffeinated snow plow. So yes, I did notice those things. Although I was pretty far down the

old, like, self-work route. And I was facing my negative emotions pretty face on. I can't really hide from my negative emotions. They don't so much creep up on me in the middle of the night as they burst the door open and smash me in the face with a hammer. So I didn't really need to go caffeine-free to be aware of them. They were front and center. Jared, not. Congrats, dude. When we're talking about moving toward projects or goals, what is your advice or how did you learn to just sit down and do the thing? It feels like a muscle that needs to be built, although the barriers often feel overwhelming, keep up the awesome work. Thank you. And yeah, to do the thing or just do the thing

is something that I've been thinking about a lot. I keep tweeting it once a week, probably on Twitter. You'll be reminded to just do the thing. And Stephen Pressfield says this in the War of Art. Real writers know that the difficulty isn't the writing part, the difficulty is the sitting down to write part. And that is it. How many times have you put off doing a task or you've procrastinated your way through a task, but you haven't actually started,

it's not like you got into the task and got distracted and stopped it, you didn't begin the task. So, yes, sitting down and doing the thing is a muscle that needs to be built. Some of the things that you can do, cold turkey, which is a app for Macbook, maybe available for Windows as well, which can literally block websites and applications on your computer, and it will stop you from using things and you can't get around it. It won't let you use this stuff unless you donate money to charity. Now to you that chooses what times it's on, what times it's off, if it's on, if it's off, which websites, which applications, etc. But that's a good way to start because it just reminds you like, hey, dickhead, you're supposed to be working. In terms of building up the

muscle, making it as frless as possible to go from the state of not doing the work to the state of doing the work, in terms of planning your day, allowing yourself to have long uninterrupted blocks with which to do it. Let's say that this is disgusting, but probably true of most people, that it takes you 30 minutes to start doing the thing, right? Let's say it takes you 30 minutes. If you have a meeting in an hour's time, you get 30 minutes of work at most. Whereas if you have organized your day, so you go, okay, I know that I'm going to have to pay an entry price to do this thing.

I'm going to have to sit down and make myself feel like shit and like listen to the right music and fiddle around with my desk and brush the dust away from whatever it is and get distracted. And then eventually I'll sit down and do the work. And I have this long uninterrupted period to do after that in which I can do more work. That's a good way to structure your day.

So those would be some things. And then after that, if you do begin to do the work, once you have got through a period of it, just give yourself 30 seconds once you finished up, even if you get distracted too soon, even if you haven't done as much as you wanted, even if the day has become side-swiped, take 30 seconds at some point and just sit with the enjoyment of being a person that did a hard thing. This is from Hard Wiring Happiness by Rick Hansen, and I'm really starting to lean into

this despite the fact that I had him on the show four years ago, allowing yourself to feel gratitude and enjoyment for things well done, shortly after you do them, reinforces the positive pattern of encouraging you to do it again. And that is not something that should be taken lightly, like it is really, really powerful.

So restrict the apps you use, maybe called Turkey, maybe something else that would be effective, make it as frictionless as possible. Laptops in the right place, keyboards all set out, everything's charged, everything's ready to go, the drinks there, it's chilled, it's blah, blah, blah, you've got all this stuff, and then feel good once you've done it. I'm Ed Mahamad. I was the one that always wondered how you cooked and remember things from what you have read and stuff. I wish you could share your techniques. This is what I said

at the very beginning, dude, I was embarrassed of my recall ability and it's just because I permanently have a platform to teach other people or another person about it and the friends that I spend time with, the guy that I live with, we are permanently having interesting conversations about topics that I care about. If you find someone that you can have a genuinely in-depth conversation with, just lean into that. Read a thing, teach it to someone. Read a thing, teach it to someone. Explain it, reword it. That will fix it in your mind, that will cement it into your brain pretty effectively. Tucker Dixon, if you were to advise someone to quit either soda or booze, which is the

bigger health impact, booze all day, like don't even think twice. If that's a genuine question, dude, get rid of the booze. It's gonna make a world of difference to you. So, and I mean, Zivia, supposed to be good for you, maybe. Not sponsored. Marcus Phillipsen, what is your best advice for aspiring podcasters?

Speech coach, acting classes, improve vocabulary, do a hundred episodes. Do a hundred episodes before you start dicking about with anything. Just spend either between one and two years doing your show and get that time and attention in. It would be like saying, what specific formulation of protein powder do you think I should eat in my post peri training window? How long have

you been going to the gym? I haven't yet gone to the gym. If you have accumulated a significant number of podcast episodes, the next thing that I would suggest that you do would be review game tape, go back over the things that you're doing, it would be make sure that you are fully prepared. So sleep, hydration, food, vocal warm-up, which you could get from a speech coach, then I didn't use a speech coach for the first three and a half years, maybe like three and a half

years of the podcast I didn't have one. And Miles is phenomenal. The guy that I've worked with is great. However, he was like the sprinkles on the top of the icing on the top of the cake. He rounded everything out, almost all of the development. And this is for everybody that's been asking about using a speech coach You're going to improv or doing acting classes and stuff almost all of the I would say 95% Or maybe even more of the skill that was accumulated was done Simply from time and attention of doing the show So it is very much it is not the key is not the acting

class or the improv or the comedy coaching or the speech coaching. It is doing the thing a lot and being attentive when you do it paying attention. Chris Yabsley, any advice on how to reduce the chances of overcorrecting during self-improvement? I feel that self-improvement can often lead into states of feeling inadequate. Could this be detrimental when, for example, pursuing a new relationship or entering the dating market over correcting self-improvement, feeling inadequate? Okay, so this would be maybe an interesting book for you to read would be The Gap of the Game by um, come on. You wrote genius blogging. Come on, Christopher.

Nope, forgotten his name. Anyway, it's called the gap of the game. He's been on the show twice, but it is late. So my point being, when you are focused on comparing where you are now with where you want to be be versus where you are now with where you used to be, you are always living in the gap, as opposed to living in the gain, which would be the opposite. Yes, spending time doing self-improvement immediately posits an ideal, as soon as you posit an ideal, you then begin to compare yourself to that ideal, and the gap is pretty painful. You notice, oh my god, look at all of the things that I could should would be doing. But look at how far you've come. You've nailed it.

You're like a million miles further ahead than where you were and almost everybody else as well. Living in the gap is not helping you. It is not pushing you forward that much more. fears of insufficiency and a fundamental lack of fulfillment from the progress that you have made isn't pushing you that much further. So first off, let go of that, let go of that belief, allow yourself to feel pleasure and pride in what you have done. And I think it could be detrimental, actually. I do think that a lot of guys, you know, know FAP as a perfect example of this. Like know FAP, very well may benefit a lot of men to get them away from poor habits around porn and their own penis. However, breaking a streak makes them feel so bad that it might be a net negative for them.

I think the overcorrecting during self-improvement and the states are feeling inadequate are a phase and I think that you will grow out of the phase. Maybe you're in the trenches right now and it sucks and I've been there. I honestly genuinely have. Just stick to the plan, continue to iterate, continue to improve, continue to do the things. Every single day you will get better and over time you will look back and the old version of you, even the version now that asks that question, will be fucking unrecognizable. It's pretty cool.

Dave in capital letters. What new information did you learn in the last year that most changed your perspective on something? Biggest change has been this hormonal birth control thing, like pretty shocking. Dr. Sarah Hill, your brain on birth control, one year ago, if you'd said to me, do you think that hormonal birth control should be restricted, reeducated,

or that women should be encouraged to maybe cycle naturally. I would have said, like, fuck no, what are you talking about? Whereas now, I think it might actually be unethical to not do that, which is pretty crazy. And anyone that hasn't considered the dangerous psychological impacts of putting women young girls on hormones at age 13 or 14, like you should check out the episode I did with Dr. Sarah Hill. It's crazy. Joel Snape, what's the number one thing you look for in a podcast guest? That's a good question. I might be giving a symposium, I'm giving a symposium, be part of a symposium at HBES, which is the human behavioral evolutionary society conference in somewhere on the East Coast. So it actually be part of a proper academic conference, and I get to do 15 minutes, and

it's how to not suck as an academic guest on a podcast. What do I look for? What were the points I put up in there? Good storytelling, good communication. I really need the guest to have some sort of existing media presence, not because I want to capitalize on their platform, but just because I need to be able to work out whether or not they can do the thing. It's very rare that I bring somebody on the podcast that I can't see a existing video or episode of. I need to see if they can communicate their ideas effectively.

I'll roll the dice with someone that has an amazing insight and just go like, ah, Gwinderbogel, perfect example. The guy is a digital ghost except for my podcast. It just doesn't exist on the internet. It's like Twitter, Substack, and Modern Wisdom. That's it. But I figured he writes so well. He can't, even if he talks 90% worse than the way that he writes.

He's still going to be a top tier triple A guest and sure enough he was. I think it's storytelling, I think it's presentation, I think it is genuinely novel insights, and it's having a good vibe. You can get a long way with just having a good dynamic, a nice dynamic to you. Greg Hill, do you engage in a gratitude practice you'd like to share? So I did formal gratitude for a long time. I have filled up 10 diaries, I think, of six months. I did a lot, an awful lot, and maybe even more. I did it for a very, very long time, every single morning and most evenings. However, I have stopped that now. I have found that I have

a limited amount of time on a morning and the most bang for my book, things that I do in my morning routine, walk, breathwork, meditation, read, start the day. Previously added into that would have been journaling gratitude, rehabilitation, something like ROMWOD or a mobility program, and then cooking. But I'm eating out so much in Austin that that's pointless. Gratitude, I would just get this six minute diary or the five minute success journal, something like that. Handwritten, I think is good because first thing in the morning

and last thing in the night, you don't want to be on your phone. And they're both great. Six minute diary, I think you can still get, if you use MW 15 on their website in the Europe, you still might be able to get a discount on that. It's like, they're both these things are 20 bucks, are 30 bucks for six months. So just do that.

And, and, Yadav, what would your advice to a 20 year old struggling through life in relationships? What would be your advice to a 20 year old struggling through life in relationships? I need more information than that, bro. It will get better. I can tell you that much. As you grow up, as you become more mature, your ability to deal with the vicissitudes of life gets so much better.

Me and Zach, my housemate, were talking about this a lot the other day, which is we think that now is the golden years. Looking back, I think that this is going to be the period of my life where I'm like, that was fucking dope. I was sufficiently young to still have all of my health and my strength and my energy, but I was sufficiently old to have all of my maturity. And if you are, let's say that you are 20, 20 year old, dude, you have got so much headroom for progress

and development, and I know that right now might feel like your entire world is imploding, or this is your world. But this is such boomer advice. This sounds like my mother talking to me here. Over time, you're going to look at the little blips that you have now, especially if you're doing the sorts of things that the people that listen to this kind of a podcast do. You're going to look back and laugh at the things that worry you. I always wish that there was a way to take a photo of the

texture of your mind, you know, like take a record somehow, or have a time machine where you could go back and just experience what it used to be like to feel the texture of your own mind five years ago or ten years ago. And I think if you were able to do that, you would be amazed at how much more resilience and peaceful and calm and balanced you are now. And you think, oh my God, I can't believe I used to be bothered about this sort of stuff. And in six months or a year's time, this is exactly how you're going to feel. I promise you, this is exactly how you're going to feel. Do the things that you need to do. Take time in nature.

Get some sunlight. Get up at the same time. Go to bed at the same time. Eat well get some sunlight, get up at the same time, go to bed at the same time, eat well, drink well, train, have people around you that you can talk to about things that you're interested in, continue to iterate, continue to develop, follow your curiosity. Basic things will continue to carry you through. They will get you through good times and they will get you through bad times. And once you're out the other side of this little period of relationships,

you will find another amazing relationship and everything will be sweet. Look, I'm going to leave it there. That was longer than I intended, but these were really fun. And I think by the time this goes up, we're going to be halfway to 800. I don't know what I should do about the 100k things once we break a million. it's a crazy thing to say, but I really don't know. Should I keep doing 100k, Q&As every 100k? What if it ends up being every month? Is that going to be overkill? I feel like it might be overkill. But thank you, anyway, brilliant, like such, such good questions today. I really, really genuinely do appreciate all of you.

I love the comments, I love the comments section. I love the fact that you correct other people that steaming that are obviously being too unreasonable. You guys are all great. Love you. See you at 800K. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,