Modern Wisdom - #776 - 2m Q&A - Private Life, Future Of Podcasting & Becoming Religious

Episode Date: April 27, 2024

I hit 2 million Subscribers on YouTube!! To celebrate, I asked for questions from YouTube, Twitter 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 my thoughts on Andrew Huberman's recent drama, the future of the podcasting industry and whether I'm becoming religious or not. Expect to learn what I'd tell my 18 year old self, whether I'm afraid I'll ever run out of content, if I can keep up the pace of 3 episodes a week, if I just bring on people who confirm my worldview, how I try to keep my private life private, whether I know how to max out growth during puberty and much more... Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get up to 32% discount on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom (automatically applied at checkout) Get 10% discount on all Gymshark’s products at https://bit.ly/sharkwisdom (use code MW10) Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT Flavours with your first box at https://www.drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom (automatically applied at checkout) 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: http://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: http://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: http://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

Hello everybody, welcome back to the show. My guest today is me. I hit 2 million subscribers on YouTube and to celebrate I asked for questions from YouTube community, Twitter and Instagram. So here is another 90 minutes, nearly two hours of me trying to answer as many as possible. As always, there are some great questions in here

about my thoughts on Andrew Huberman's recent drama, the future of the podcasting industry and whether I'm becoming religious or not. Expect to learn what I'd tell my 18 year old self, whether I'm afraid I'll ever run out of content, if I can keep up the pace of three episodes a week, if I just bring on people who confirm my worldview, how I tried to keep my private life private, whether I know how to max out growth during puberty and much more. Obviously a little bit late on the two million thing, I think we're at sort of 2.1 ish now, but we've been doing a lot, I've been busy, okay, give me a break. But yeah, I again, I'm trying to tap into being more open and honest and

transparent and vulnerable about kind of the trajectory of what it's like to go through this, whatever this is at the moment. And I hope that that comes across. I am trying not to lose my humanity or relatability or whatever authenticity as everything continues to ramp up and scrutiny and vigilance and my ambient anxiety stuff continues to look in the background.

So hopefully that comes across and hopefully you take some stuff from this. Remember I said on the last one, like I am no different to you. I'm just a bit further kind of along the ladder of whatever we're doing in life here. So yeah, I really hope that you take a lot away from this. It's a skillset I'm trying to develop

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Me. What's happening people? Welcome back to the show. It is a 2 million subscriber Q&A episode. You already got to see me kind of do a touchy feely thing with a behind the scenes vlog. If you didn't watch that, you should go and check it out. But as is tradition, I ask for questions from Twitter and YouTube community and Instagram. We got a lot and these ones are really, really insightful.

I don't think I've had as many awesome questions before. So as the show gets bigger, the audience appears to be getting smarter as well. So hooray. Let's get into it. Spunky Kumar. Spunky Kumar. How do you know who your real friends are? That's a good question.

I guess I realized in my twenties that a lot of the people that were my friends were actually just drinking partners. There were people who went to the same events as me and drank at the same times as me. But if I was sober or if there wasn't something super simulating happening, I don't know how much I would enjoy. I wasn't finding myself spending time around them. So I guess a good question to ask yourself is, do you spend time around them when it's just you, when there isn't a ton of other stimulation?

Because what, if the only time that you can ever hang with people is if you go to a festival or if you go and watch a movie or if you, something crazy is going on, how deep is that connection and how much are they just an available observer that can accompany you to like a chaperone, kind of like a chaperone for each other. Uh, so your real friends are the people that you would happily spend time with

them in the most boring situation possible. I think that's a good judge of how close you are. Benjamin Doran. How can you work hard and push if you don't see results immediately with love tips? Well, this is ultimately everything. When you start doing a thing, for the most part, the gains accrue very slowly.

There's some things where it doesn't. Like going to the gym is pretty good because new gains are pretty high or skill acquisition, physical skill acquisition is always pretty quick in the beginning. You start playing pickleball and you're never going to be as good over the space of 10 sessions as the first 10 because you didn't even know the rules when you turned up. But largely when you start doing a thing, the results tend to be pretty slow. And then as you get better and better and better over time, the results will come more

quickly. My solution, it's so trite to say it, but that motivation is the thing that gets you started and then habit is the thing that keeps you going. Once you begin a routine of doing anything, stopping yourself from doing that routine, whether it's good or bad, actually becomes really difficult. I'm training first thing in the morning at the moment. If I don't train, my day feels off. It's genuinely harder for me to not go to the gym than it is to go to the gym at 7.40 a.m. in the morning. So my advice would be use as much motivation, whether that comes from wanting to be better,

resentment for the people that have scorned you in the past, this desire to prove yourself. Use whatever fuel you have, both good and bad, to get yourself moving and stay as consistent as possible. And then after you get to the stage where results will begin to come, you should have already got that routine thing going too. So for me, results not coming in the beginning is hopefully solved by the fact that your motivation is at its highest. And then as motivation begins to wane you should have the habituated routine to come and sort of take over from there

Spencer Coleman 444 Do you think that the guests you have on could be supporting your worldview rather than challenging it Yeah, actually I think, I think so. I think we all find people who we feel like we're going to vibe with. You know, we, we, we get on with people who share our values and who we think, well, this is going to be a fun conversation. You know, they think this thing and I think this thing and we, you know, I'd love

to teach them about this idea because I think they'd be really interested in it. As opposed to someone who has a completely different worldview and you're kind of this thing and I think this thing and I'd love to teach them about this idea because I think they'd be really interested in it. As opposed to someone who has a completely different worldview and you're kind of speaking different languages. Do I think that it would be a better world where the show had more people on who challenged my worldview? I don't really know what that would mean. Like I'm open to pretty much anybody saying anything at me.

And I guess it specifically means what worldview we're talking about. Like is the worldview evolution because that's quite fundamental or is it a subset within evolutionary theory? Is it, uh, to do with culture or is it to do with a specific subset within culture? Is it to do with how we should deal with the media? Is it how we should deal with celebrity? Is it how we should approach fame? we should deal with the media? Or is it how we should deal with celebrities? How we should approach fame? So I think I'm certainly trying my best to bring on people who have differing

points of view. Perfect example of this Abigail Shrier, Bad Therapy, she wrote a book. Everyone's kind of keen about it because it's in the same ballpark as Jonathan Haidt's book and Jean Twange's book. It's this sort of critique of the fragility of Gen Z, which has been passed down and its screens and smartphones and all the rest of it. I actually quite disagreed with a lot of her takes and I tried to be really challenging when I had a conversation, but from the outside, it probably looks like it's something that I would be on board with.

So I'm trying hard. I genuinely am trying hard to find a more challenging approach to doing the show, to bringing on people with differing points of view. That being said, it's kind of hard to get people who don't agree with me to come on. It's not just a one way street. I don't just get to choose people who come on and they come on. Like I've tried to get Hasanabi on the show for forever. Like every time that I reach out to people who seem to be left of center, it's maybe like twice as hard, three times as hard to bring those people on.

So I would love suggestions. If you guys are like, Chris, you need to speak to this person. This person would be great. Throw it in the comments. Like I'll pick it up on one of the guys will pick it up. And then we do see that stuff. So if there's someone that you think is well-meaning

and awesome and interesting and insightful, I am down to speak to any of them. So yes. The Slayer Moody. Hello Chris, do 2 million subs still feel as good as the first 1000 subs? Bonus round, how do you celebrate such a monumental milestone? Love from Montreal. Thank you. A thousand subs felt really good. James Smith has this idea of all wins feel the same.

And it's true. You don't get an Uber surcharge rating for hitting two mil compared with when you hit your first thousand, which is cool actually, because it means that small wins give you a good sense, even though they're not big wins. Small wins can be just they're not big wins. Small wins can be just as good as big wins. And we celebrated by going to see the Texas Rangers play the Houston Astros and going in thought it was going to be an amazing game, ended up losing 3-0 and basically nothing

happened. But the experience was awesome. We got Terry Blacks delivered. We got in a really nice van and got driven up there and stuff. That was, that was fun. Uh, but the game could have been otherwise better. G-G-Gurgos Pan. Nailed it.

Any info about your upcoming book? So, yes, um, I have signed, uh, Penguin Random House portfolio in the U S the US and Hachette Hodder in the UK. This will be submitted at the end of 2025 summer, so it's about a year and four months or a year and three months now. That's all that I'm going to tell you for now. Delivery KP1. Do you worry that the flash that is your increased production value

takes away from the substance of the wisdom that comes from your guests? This comes from someone who delivers all day and doesn't see your set, except for the clips I see after I'm finished working. So, fair comment. We got a lot of feedback about this to do with, and I knew that this was gonna come, right?

We spent a lot of money and tried to do something kind of experimental and different and cool. I hoped, uh, cinematically for the most recent episodes with Ferris and Atir and all the rest of them. Um, do I worry that the flash increased production value takes away from the substance of the wisdom that comes from your guests? I don't understand how it would, especially if you're just listening. If you're just listening, nothing changes.

It's the same presets that we use to master the audio. It's the same mics, it's the same mic quality. It's the same conversation. That's fine. For the people who are watching, I like to think that we held onto the purity of the conversation. It didn't detract from it at all.

If anything, it made it more immersive for the guest. All of the guests said it really sort of fostered a sense of being in the moment and it made it feel like more of an occasion and they really wanted to show up. And as the scenes change and move, which you'll see in the episodes that are after Dr. K, that even embeds it more.

That makes it more immersive. So I would like to think that it makes the conversation, the purity of the conversation itself better. And like I say, if you're not watching, then you are not going to notice anything different. I have no idea how it would take away from the substance of the wisdom that comes from the guests. And if you are watching, you still get exactly what you got before with some beauty laid on top. And I think that something done well with beauty and earnestness is never really wasted effort. So hopefully that's how it comes across.

Also, one other point. Gotta say it. Saying there was a few criticisms about this is narcissism, this is ego, this is all style and no substance. Bro, we did 750 episodes from a spare bedroom before we decided to try and use a video wall. Like, how is it? How is it anything other than substance? Like, hundreds and hundreds of episodes before you even knew what the show was with dusty academics with a fucking unpronounceable surname. How is it? How could it ever be anything that I could do another 750 episodes on a video wall in

fucking virtual reality and still have done more episodes in a spare bedroom. So I don't think that that is a valid criticism. Axel Sovich hold one, how to max out growth during puberty. Wow. I am the wrong guy to ask, dude. I was a late bloomer, small bloomer. Um, mental growth. I have no idea. Uh, but if you're talking physical growth, I'm not the guy to ask. I was puny. I remember I was 20 years old training at the Edinburgh university gym.

And I remember the day that I broke 70 kilos, which I think is like one 55 for the Americans and was like, yes, I'm massive. And, uh, that was 20 and it and I'd been training for like hard for three years then as well. So not the guy to ask. Sorry. Stefano James, how long can the desert be? How long can the desert between old set of friends and new can last? Okay. You're moving.

I'm going to get this is to do with the lonely chapter. So you have an old set of friends that you've outgrown the new set of friends that you haven't yet found, you're starting to grow, you're doing new things. And you're kind of in this middle section, the lonely chapter. Ah, it can last for a really long time. Like, I'm not going to sugarcoat it for you. It really can carry on for a very long time and that sucks. And I wish that I could make it shorter for you. And I wish that I could land you at the place where you have a community of people like the person you want to be like.

But it's going to take time. And the problem is that if you try and come into land during this big growth period and those friends that you find aren't growing as well, you'll outgrow the friends that you find in the middle section, if that makes sense. The best analogy that I used, I came up with this while I was doing a live talk. Imagine a rocket ship and the pace of your personal growth is the velocity of your rocket ship and other people are moving along as well.

One of the problems is if your rocket ship's moving quicker than theirs, you start to outstrip them. And after you get sufficiently far apart, there's just fewer things for you to relate to. There's fewer things for you to talk about. There's a degree of tension between you and them and they can sense it and you can sense it. And even if it's not spoken, it's kind of unspoken. And one of the worst things that happens is, okay, you outgrown one group and then you see, oh, there's a person that's ahead of me. And then your personal growth continues to go by. And this isn't making some value judgment. This isn't saying that someone who does more meditation or spends more time fucking

thinking about their emotions or whatever is better or worse. There's no value judgment. My point is just that being able to relate to other people is something that is hard if you are not moving at the same kind of pace and in the same sort of position as them. And I give you all the sympathy in the world, but it is worth it. I promise you it is worth it. So hold on in the desert. Jack K 0 6 2 5.

If you could talk to your 18 year old self, what's the number one thing you'd say? It's a good question. What was I like at 18? Fucking clueless. I was absolutely clueless at 18. It's the same thing I'd say to myself now, dude. This is one of the things like it's such a common question of, you know, you can go

back in time and tell yourself anything. And people often think that that insight is something which related to them then. And don't realize that it's probably still the thing that they need to hear now. And it's don't fear the opinions of others. Like don't be concerned about what other people think about you. Not only are they probably not thinking about you, not only do you not care about what they cheer for because you've seen what they boo for or what you care about what they boo for because you've seen what they cheer for. Not only do you, they're probably so wrapped up in their own life that they don't have time to think about you. All of the layers and layers of like,

why no one in the world actually cares about you. On top of that, it's only you. You're only here to experience things and the emotions that come along with them. That's all that's going on in life. So compromising yourself in a desperate attempt to try and be liked or wanted or validated by other people is fighting a losing battle.

And it's probably the same thing that I need to hear now. Nick Lashiersfeld. Fuck, these names. Such good questions and such horrible names. How do you avoid getting stuck in psychological intellectualism to really feel your feelings. Bro, you see me? I don't know. This is a big, this is something I'm really thinking about a lot at the moment.

And you know, I had this quote from Alain de Botton from forever ago. Loneliness is a kind of tax we have to pay to atone for a certain complexity of mind. And is it a blessing or a curse to feel things so very deeply, all this stuff. But what I realized was I wasn't actually talking about emotions. I was talking about the rationalism of what emotions do to us or about what they sound like, not what they feel like. And I think that intellectualizing your psychology is a protection strategy. It takes you, it removes you by one step from having to feel something.

And I find this in myself during therapy when I'm having a conversation and I'll explain the narrative of where this thing comes. Oh, that could, because this is why, and this is why it's adaptive. And I can see how this would be the case because of this thing that came in my past and this fear that I've got about the future and so on and so forth. All of those things are ways to give yourself distance from having to feel the feelings you're explaining them. You're not embodying them. And, uh, to be honest, dude, I don't know.

Um, as I said in the last Q and a, I'm chronically aware of all of my shortcomings at the moment, so I'm not your guru. I am not going to like say that I have some answer to this. This is something I'm working through too, but we can work through it together. Some stuff at least tactically that I found that works for me is when I catch myself explaining away feelings, intellectualizing them, coming up with some interesting quote or anecdote or whatever, either on my own or to other people or to therapists or friends or whatever the fuck. When I find myself doing that, I try and stop and go,

how does this make me feel? And just say that. When this thing happened, I felt, and even if you're imprecise, you don't need to bring this into land with a bow on it and a beautifully boxed up and wrapped and push it across the table. It made me feel strange. This is something Matthew Hussey said. Such a great frame, actually. Here's like another good piece of like tactical advice. Being, allowing yourself to be imprecise with explaining your feelings because they're not transparent to us. They're not obvious to us. So saying when this thing happened, it made me feel strange.

Like it couldn't be more vague, but it's trying to put across this uncertainty that you have in yourself about what's going on. And I think that that's a really good starting point because intellectualizing is giving yourself distance, just saying when this thing happened, it made me feel X if you can work it out or even just strange or a bit odd or a bit off and I don't really understand. That's a good start. Arc quotes one. Do you ever get afraid that you will run out of content?

This is the advantage of being a podcaster. I don't need to come up with the content. I just need to find other people that have got interesting things to say. And then I just ask them questions. I will never run out of questions to ask interesting people ever. I could do this for a million years and that wouldn't be an issue. Thankfully, I don't always need to actually come up with all of the new insights. That's the, that's the job of the guest, but no, I'm not.

And I, uh And there's way more people that I want to speak to than time I'm going to have to speak to them in. So I better hurry up. Rixmus11, what's the biggest animal you could beat in hand-to-hand combat? Wow. Well, biggest doesn't necessarily mean most vicious, right? You know, like a sloth. And some of those, like, I'm pretty sure there was a giant sloth. Maybe that was megafauna that's already extinct.

I'm pretty sure I could fuck up a giant sloth. What else is big? I'm looking for, I'm gonna try and hack this. I'm gonna look for something that's big, but dosar. I'm pretty sure I could beat a cow. Now cows, a ton, couple of tons. Wouldn't back myself against an elephant. Wouldn't back myself against a horse either.

Horses are basically like jacked cows. Cow, I'm going to say cow. Thank you. Marcus Phillipson, you have produced the most beautiful podcasts in the world. Thank you. What's next in terms of cinematic episodes? How can you push the boundaries further? We just did world first video wall thing.

Um, I am thinking about VR quite carefully. I don't know how we could do it. I've kind of got a couple of ideas about doing in parallax so that you can actually see the background move. Um, I want to do some stuff on location. We've got this amazing new AI tool that helps us to clean up audio, which is why the audio is very buttery,

or it should be buttery, which is great. I would like to, those are the two, those are the main two, VR and on location, I think are two good directions for us to move in. But it doesn't necessarily need to be new, you know, we can find an even nicer location, we can light things even more softly, we can find an even better angle, we can shoot things at an even more, you know, perfect, the edit on the back end, the color grades, all those things. There are ways that we can iterate without having to totally change what we're doing. And I think that the volume LED wall stuff

was one of those. It was a step change, but not totally, you know, ripped apart from what we've done before. So, but yeah, give me time. We just did one brand new thing. I need a little bit of time to come up with the next one. Chinese Tazan. Hey bud, great show.

I wholeheartedly support you. Thank you. How do you keep your private life private? Um, by not talking about it, by not spending time posting. This is Douglas Murray was the person that taught me about this forever ago. And he said, keep your private life private because once it's out there, there is no taking it back. And there is a degree of, it's kind of like open season in some ways.

You know, we saw this with Huberman, which is kind of strange. She was someone who had kept his private life private, and then that got thrust out into the media. Um, but if you're someone that's trying to navigate a relationship or a marriage or a family or whatever, that's hard enough as it is. And then trying to do that with a few million people watching. Like, do you remember when Logan Paul got into, he got married to that chick that you're seeing Nina, I think she's called.

I teared up at that, him getting down on one knee thing. I thought that was beautiful. He's crying. He's blubbering like an idiot. Like she's really happy. I was like, this is fucking beautiful. Like, this is cool, but you know, she's got a history and then the internet finds it and then they make a big deal out of it. And then it's like, you've just got engaged.

You've got all of the eyes of the world and you've got all of this pressure. And then you've got all of these people commenting on your private life too. So for me, no, thank you. got all of the eyes of the world and you've got all of this pressure. And then you've got all of these people commenting on your private life too. So for me, no, thank you. I will happily talk about the learnings that I have about my private life, but it's, I don't know, I'm like, I'm an, I'm an introvert at heart and the idea of people picking my private life apart makes me feel uncomfortable. So, uh, the way that I do it is by not talking about it.

And oddly by not talking about things, people get distracted by other stuff, right? Like there's always going to be a Logan Paul or a Jake Paul or whatever, who's got their entire relationship out there for the internet to see. That's way easier fodder for people to focus on. So focus on them for that and come to me

and I'll give you like fucking Aristotle quotes and ways to improve your sleep. Mimox review fan, why do you not use the Premiere feature on YouTube? Good question. I never watch Premiere. So the only advantage as far as I can see, it basically allows people to see pre-recorded videos

as if they were live and it creates a live chat and people can comment and have discussions about the videos as they go up as if they were live and it creates a live chat and people can comment and and have discussions about the videos as they go up as if they were live, which I guess is great for community. It's just never really appealed to me. We do publish an awful lot of content as well and sometimes uploads go wrong, there is a sound quality problem, there is something else. There is a sound quality problem. There is something else. And if that is the case, I really don't want to have some countdown clock that we're beholden to. You know, we turn videos around in a really short space of time.

Poor Dean's got, you know, banks and banks and banks of hard drives, everything plugged in desperately trying to find the footage that he's looking for. I think it would add a degree of complexity and not really make that much of a difference, but I'm open to the argument on the other side of it. I know the trigonometry guys use it a lot. G dog Brown, when you doing another UK tour, PS love the content. Thank you. Uh, we might do a show in the UK toward the end of this year. I'm speaking to Luke, who is my tour manager about it. And we might get to do something really cool, but I don't want to go hard on touring until I've got more of a new show because I'm going to come back around to the same places and

I don't want to talk about the same stuff exclusively. But we may do one big one, maybe UK, one big one, US, UK, and maybe Oz, but we'll see. Bren, Bren, Bren, Bren, Bren, Bren, Bren, Bren, Bren, Bren, Bren, Bren, Bren, Bren, Bren, Bren, Bren, Bren, Bren, 59, I feel like I've learned my lessons, but keep repeating them. What could I do to actually change? Yeah, this is, this is kind of a vicious cycle. My, my first, the first place that I do to actually change? Yeah, this is kind of a vicious cycle.

My first, the first place that I go to is you haven't learned the lessons if you keep repeating them. But I understand that that's not necessarily true because you can know something and yet not be able to get your actions to come in line with it. And I think this was probably the six months

leading up to the first time that I went sober for a while. That was probably what I was feeling. You know, I would learn and unlearn the same lesson every two weeks, go out, get smashed, party, have a great time, wake up, feel awful, feel awful the day after, feel kind of a bit better the day after that, get back on my routine the day after that. And then, you know, 10 days later, go and do it all over again. And that was one of those ones where I'd learned the lesson that you don't really enjoy drinking that much alcohol kind of sucks.

It doesn't make you feel that good. It ruins all of the things that you really care about, which is progress and consistency and self growth and connecting with people and understanding yourself, and then I'd go back and get, get drunk again. So I understand, you know, we're not masters of our own actions. And if you know something, but don't seem to be able to make the thing that you know manifest in adjusting your behavior, that's frustrating. So I feel you.

One thing that could work that helped me was there uh, there's a workbook from awaken the giant within by Tony Robbins. It's an hour and a half long. It's an audible audio book. And he talks about front loading as much pain as possible and front loading as much pleasure as possible. So pleasure pain, pain principle, the pleasure, pain, fuck you. The pleasure pain principle is what motivates pleasure, pain, fuck you. The pleasure, pain principle is what motivates you

to go and do something. So if you have so much pain that you can't stay in the current situation, you will end up changing it. If the pleasure that you would get from making the change is front loaded, you will also make the change. So thinking about how much has the current thing that you're doing or not doing cost you in the past? Think about all of the bad scenarios that it's got you into. Let's use alcohol. Think about all of the times that you felt terrible.

Think about all of the hours that you've wasted. Think about all of the money that you've spent. Think about all of the consistency you've lost, the health that you've degraded, the relationships and friendships and stuff that you've hurt by doing it. And then think about what it's costing you now. Like where could you be right now in a different situation? If you hadn't done those things, then looking in the future, what will it cost you in the future? Think about all of the times that you're going to spend hours, the days that you're going to spend hung over, looking at the ceiling, hating yourself.

That's the pain. And then you want to ramp it up to 11 by going and reading, looking on the internet for the worst examples of you. If you kept doing that thing. So someone that's been a party boy for 20 years and then looked back and has written a diary entry on Reddit or something about what they wish that they changed or how bad that they feel that they'd done it or somebody that's got, you know, a great story about somebody that never actually grew up from being that sort of adult infant, like hedonic

lifestyle thing. And then think about the pleasure. Think about all of the ways that you're going to feel proud about yourself when you make this change, about how much better your life's going to be, about how much more fulfilled and more time and consistency and energy you're going to have to dedicate to stuff that you care about and how much more proud you're going to feel. Those two things, if you can front load the pain and if you can front load the pleasure of what would happen if you did the change, that seems to motivate me quite well. And I got that from Awaken the Giant within the workbook on Audible by Tony Robbins. It's like 20

years old. Phone Punk. First off, I love your podcast. Thank you. With the recent hit piece on Huberman, are you prepared for a similar type of thing to come your way? Seems like they want to take everyone down in the self improvement space. Much love. Yeah. Uh, I think every podcaster kind of had, they put themselves into his situation. You know, the guys that are maybe single and dating put themselves into

Huberman's position and the guys that are not maybe put themselves into Jay Shetty's one. So like Huberman's was private life and Jay Shetty's was his professional life. You know, a lot of scrutiny and criticism and stuff around that. Um, to be honest, no, I'm not, I'm not prepared for a similar type of thing to come my way. I wouldn't, I w that would be very difficult to deal with. And I don't know how you deal with it.

I got to speak to Andrew last week and, uh, I mean, he's older than me and more mature than me and maybe more resilient than me, but if I don't matter how resilient you can be, God damn David Goggins, and that is still going to affect you, that's still really going to affect you. I think Rogan's solution when the CNN controversy thing was happening was heavy kettlebell workouts, ice plunges, and three grams of mushrooms a day. going to affect you. I think Rogan's solution when the CNN controversy thing was happening was heavy kettlebell workouts, ice plunges, and three grams of mushrooms a day. Uh, I guess that's one protocol that you could follow.

Um, it does seem like there's clamoring from legacy media to take down people that they feel get above and beyond their station. Obviously there's, you know, there's actual newsworthiness as well, but I think it would be naive to say that people in a dwindling area of public attention wouldn't throw shade or turn their ire toward people in a new ascending side of it in an attempt to try and sort of delegitimize what's happening over, I guess, our side of the fence.

I don't know. I mean, do I need a PR firm? Do I need someone that can give me advice on this? It seems like the more expensive the PR company is, the less they tell you to say. Like, the best ones just say, don't respond, keep moving. But yeah, it would suck. I really wouldn't like that. Again, you know, I said, keep would, it would suck. I really wouldn't like that. Again, you know, I said, keep my private life private.

I very much tried to do that. I love being open and honest about learning what I've done in my life, but I don't want people like getting into my business, right? Like that's, that doesn't make me feel very good. So hopefully it doesn't happen, but that may be a pipe dream. Philemph, Phelm Kennedy 6653. You mentioned in your recent podcast with Eric Weinstein that Latin Rite Catholics are one of the fastest growing religious groups in the West.

Have you or are you interested in speaking to anyone from that group or have gone to their services? So I don't know much about them. I would love to go to one. If there is one in Austin, I probably should try and find it. I actually went to my first American church service on Easter this year at. God damn it. Uh, the Ridge, the Ridge Bible, Bible something.

God damn it. Anyway, it's 20 minutes away from me here. And it was like a rock concert. It was why, it was not what I expected. I don't know what I thought a Easter Sunday service was, but it wasn't that. So it was cool. And I think there's a lot to be said for having ritual, having a sense of community,

doing a little bit of self inquiry. I came out of it feeling nicely down regulated, but like look at what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to, I'm trying to intellectualize something which is faith to a lot of people, but that's because I don't have that faith. I would be interested in going. I don't know why I speak to someone from that group about, although an interesting conversation would be why do you think that lots of people are being attracted to it?

So maybe I will speak to someone from it. Lewis Hardcastle differences you have personally felt since switching from coffee to new tonic. Good question. So the mood change is the biggest thing for me. L-thinning seems to really help smooth out the jitters that I get from anxiety. And this has got like double the dose that you'd have to go to bed on the nighttime. So when you couple that with the caffeine, it seems to work really well. I just, I feel better.

That's one thing that we've never spoken about. We still don't talk about it. The mood improvement, the mood elevation is so great. It just makes you feel good. And I'm like, if I feel good, then I want to work harder and I'll work longer, regardless of whether the panics, ginseng is helping my like. Omission commission error rates and stress induced fatigue reduction ratio from rhodiola.

I say, it's not necessarily about that. It's about, I just feel better. And now I associate the taste of it with something that is. I associate drinking that and that flavor with feeling good and being in a good place and going to the gym or sitting down to do a ton of work or it's nice. It's like a ritual. It's like a flavor based ritual. She's good. John nine F John nine John Q F nine and, nighttime slash pre bedtime routine. So I really tried to get better at this.

Three to one is the best method that I found. Three hours before going to bed, stop eating. Two hours before going to bed, stop drinking. One hour before going to bed, turn off blue light. The one hour is the hardest one because a full hour of just reading or listening to an audio book can actually make me feel more awake.

But I've definitely got to like three to 30 minutes. Uh, I've managed to get myself to that's the easiest one. You know, there's a million other things that you can do. I always have a shower on an evening time. I guess that's just something that's part of my routine. I don't shower in the morning. I shower on a night. Um, eight sleep set on cool.

I have a minus three. What else? Nasal strips. Uh, what do I have it on minus three. What else? Nasal strips. What do I use? They're called intake? I think they're called intake nasal strips. The ones that I use, they're like a hard plastic shell that attaches to two tabs that sit either side of your nose. And they're hardcore, they're really good

because my nose doesn't breathe too well. I got deviated septum. Read for a bit, fiction only, never nonfiction. And they're hardcore. They're really good. Because my nose doesn't breathe too well. I got deviated septum. Read for a bit. Fiction only. Never non-fiction before I go to bed because my mind starts worrying if I don't. That's it. Magnesium. Sleep packs from momentous. But even them, I only need to use probably every other night. That's it. 3, 2, 1.

That seems to be the sort of 80, 20. Conner D, when you were younger, did you ever have an internal slash subconscious belief or feeling that you would be successful in your life? Not in one specific area, but an innate feeling that you were destined slash driven to do something magnificent with your life. To be honest, man, no, I don't think so.

I was pretty sure that I was a loser and I'd still very well maybe, but we all have a very strange experience of our own inner experience, right? The phenomenological nature of being you is orders of magnitude deeper than even your best friend, even your twin, even your partner that you meet when you're 16 years old and stay together for the rest of your life. You only ever get to see the tiny, tiny, tiny amount of their nature, and you get to see this sort of bottomless depth of yourself.

And I think that that can make us all feel like we're special. In some ways, we feel like we are unique because the depth of our own insight about ourselves compared to the depth of our insight about anyone else is so asymmetric that how could we not think that there's something different or strange or special or whatever about us? But when it comes to the successful thing, destined, driven to do something magnificent with my life, not really. I'm a good role model or avatar for the person

that was probably pretty unlikely to do anything. And that's not to say that running a podcast is really doing anything, but whatever degree of success I have managed to achieve, uh, was not predestined by the way that I came up through school or my self belief or anything like that. Like I've largely stumbled onto it by a combination of like solitude, consistency, resilience, not even resilience. It's like, it's like sort of boneheadedness in my routine.

Like that's kind of been what's happened. And then you sort of come out the other side of it and you go, oh, like we did a thing, a thing happened. So yeah, if you don't have that much self belief, you can still end up at a place where other people think that maybe you've been successful. So I think that's quite a, hopefully that's an inspiring story. Like you can still think that you're going to suck and end up not sucking. So hooray for us. Steven in capital letters.

Steven would love to know your further thoughts on the future of podcasting. I think you've got a great thing brewing with unreal engine powerwall in your latest teaser. Thank you. Um, future of podcasting Unreal Engine Powerwall in your latest teaser. Thank you. Future of podcasting. Yeah, this is kind of interesting. Like, I think it's probably gonna go in, I mean, it could go in so many different directions. Certainly my area of the world,

I think it's gonna bifurcate into two when we're looking at how it appears. You're gonna have Matt and Shane's secret show, that secret podcast thing, where it's one camera filmed on like an iPhone with handheld mics on a couch surrounded by Cheetos packets and Bud Light. And then you're going to have 4K video wall VR,

negative fill, reverse contrast lighting, red cameras, anamorphic lenses, like my side of things. That being said, I don't think that anything is more or less pure than anything else. There's definitely a legitimate pushback of some people said that the whole point of what we were doing with podcasting was to make it less sort of encumbered and less high friction between the creator. We didn't want to make it feel like it had been molested, right? That the conversation was what we were there for and what's all of the fluff that goes around it. And I understand and I get that too, but like if you can do the thing, if you can do

the purity thing whilst adding the visual beauty in, great. But then I also love me some casual bro talk on a couch somewhere that isn't super curated. So future podcasting, I would say a lot of obsession over the quality of the guests and the quality of the conversation will be the best direction that anybody could go in. It doesn't matter how it's presented. It doesn't matter how this is presented.

I could, you know, we did this when it, the first 50 episodes of the show didn't have video. The same thing, I just want an interesting conversation. I think that's what people come for ultimately. So what I know will be the future of podcasting will be quality of the conversation, variety of guests, how engaging are they, how great are they at communicating

their points? And then all the rest of this stuff just sprinkles on top of icing on top of cake. And that's just like cool to play with. Jojo Purzy. Are we cooked as a society? Every day I think what the fuck is the point now? Everyone just hates. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of cynicism. I'm going to guess that you spend a good amount of time on the internet because I do think that everyone just hates is the sentiment. It's the like cynicism set point that we see online. I would advise you to try and get offline a little bit more, spend some time, advise you to try and get offline a little bit more, spend some time IRL with people who don't spend that much time on the internet.

And you will find pretty quickly that they're probably, they think that it's fine when probably not cooked as a society. Everyone doesn't just hate, you know, it was at an eclipse party yesterday here in Austin and spent the whole day just having interesting conversations about what's the likelihood that the moon is 400 times smaller, but 400 times closer, and what do we think about aliens? Like no one had, no one was hating on anything. There wasn't any criticism, but there's something about the dynamic of the internet that causes people to just get so cynical and cutting and sardonic and zero sum with their mindset. Um, so I don't think we're cooked as a society.

Humans are unbelievably adaptable. And, you know, one of the reasons that I love stories like that, um, one-eyed world war two veteran that I spoke about on Rogan or endurance by Alfred Lansing about Sir Ernest Shackleton's crossing of the Antarctic or the Forgotten Highlander by Alistair Urquhart. The reason I love these stories is it kind of reminds us about the resilience of humans that you think that we're close to the limit of what we can take, of how adaptable we are.

And then you learn about these sorts of stories and you go, oh, this, this is like 55 degrees of black belts beyond where we're at. So no, I don't think that we're cooked, but I understand why you think that that's the case. And when I spend too much time on the internet as well, I sometimes think that too. So I think touch grass, TLDR touch grass. Sean Curran, 2920. Why do you constantly speaks? I'm sayings and riddles. Can you not think for yourself? You just plagiarize other people's thoughts. Well, I'll do my best to try and decipher what you mean there, Sean. I appreciate the comment that I repurpose other people's content and insights and quotes.

That is fair. I would say that citing other people's work that has impacted me is probably one of the most, like, tributing things that I can do. Here's an awesome insight that I've learned that I think other people would care about. And I resonated with it. I'm not convinced that that's plagiarizing. Like it's not plagiarism if you cite the person.

And the other part is that no one owns the truth. No one owns the truth. If this insight is accurate about the world, the way that this person presented it, absolutely that they were the originator of this particular idea, but they don't own the truth. That is the way that the world is and no one gets to own that. So if I'm aggregating insights from other people and then presenting them, what the

fuck else is my job as a podcaster in whatever this version of this sense making e space is? What else should I be doing? If you want me to come up from first principles, ignore insights from other people and come up from first principles exclusively with ones of my own, you're going to get 10% of 1% of the insights. So as long as I'm citing other people and then bringing into my life and thinking, how does this work for me and how might this work for the audience? I don't understand why that would be something bad, but you know, the, he just quotes are the people's stuff.

Something tells me this question maybe came from social media because like from Instagram or from Twitter, lots of clips get repurposed and by design, the best quotes are the ones that go the most viral. So I guess it does sound like I'm like a jukebox for other people's quotes. But if you actually listen to an entire lesson, entire episode, I'm probably not doing that. I'm trying my best to not only come up with my own ideas

and then meme them so that other people quote me and then I win. But more than that, to actually try and fold them into a broader conversation. So I don't know about the sayings and riddles. I'm not sure that that bit was me, but anyway, I appreciate the comment. Thanks, Sean. Rachel Devacheli, how can I date you? Get on Ryre. I don't know. Karenna7. What would you say is the mission statement of your podcast?

So from the very beginning it was understand yourself and the world around you and the reason for that was I didn't. I didn't understand myself. I couldn't work out why I believed the things that I did, why I compromised my insights, why I folded at the first sign of social pressure, why other people behaved the way that they did, why they liked the things that they did. I didn't understand myself. I didn't understand the world.

And doing that is hard. And I really hope that this podcast helps. And that's kind of it. And the reason that I like that is a statement. I didn't go to some branding agency. This isn't part of some like, you know, it's not written on a wall somewhere above a door. This isn't something that we've tried to synthesize down. What's the actual goal of the podcast? It's just a sentence that I kept having come up to me when I was thinking about what I

wanted to achieve. And given that the show is just an outgrowth of me, that's kind of what it is. And I said this in the last episode, my obligation is only ever to my own curiosity. So guess what? Right now I'm thinking a lot about emotions. So all of you are along for the ride

and we're gonna learn about emotions. And if emotions aren't for you, that's cool. Maybe you need to pick and choose your episodes over the next couple of months. And then, oh, Chris is on AI and I'm an AI guy. And it's like, all right, cool. Like fucking into AI you go. Um, but I'll follow my curiosity.

The single thread that has held all of it together is understanding myself and the world around you. And, uh, I hope that that's something that's useful. Ryan O'Uyannai, how do you handle it when you strongly disagree on a subject with the person you are interviewing? When was the last time I really strongly disagreed? I really strongly disagreed with Abigail Shrier, I think on a good chunk of her stuff. And that was a really interesting challenge for me.

I'll break the fourth wall a little bit. I don't like doing this too much because it kind of feels a bit icky and like it's contrived and it's not, but it'll be maybe useful for me to explain kind of what I was going through. Let's say that I ask someone a question. There's a couple of moments during that episode with Abigail where I ask her a couple of questions that are like a bit pointed and probably difficult,

slightly difficult to deal with, you know, stuff to do with stats or the replicability of certain studies and things like that. And if she struggles or if the guest, if any guest struggles for a while, five seconds or maybe 10 seconds, you know, they're sort of floundering, trying to find what it is and they're not too sure

or the silence or whatever, I want to step in and save that. I want to sort of grab a life boy and throw that in to pull them out because I want the conversation to flow nicely and I want them to have fun and I want it to be engaging. And I don't, unlike a Destiny or a Shapiro or whatever, I don't take joy in disagreement in that way.

So I will tend to try and like hit some like pull an ejector seat button to, you know, blow out the roof of some awkward exchange. But on the Abigail episode, I really tried hard to sort of just sit with that discomfort, that right. Okay. Well, I let her get herself out of this or, you know, with anybody, the Eric Weinstein episode that we had a couple of months ago or, you know, with anybody, the Eric Weinstein episode that we had a couple of months ago, where, you know, I fundamentally disagree with his idea about

gender and sex. And I think that he's wrong. So I need needed to learn to sit with that discomfort and how do I handle it? And this is again, trying to make it more tactical for someone who is a bit of a people pleaser like me. Knowing that it's not the end of the world. I'm being curious about what that sensation feels like as it comes up. Okay. So I feel kind of this, it's like, I want to lean forward and it's kind of, it's,

it's a bit of a ringing in my ears and I kind of get hot in my throat and I feel this desire to sort of lurch forward and pull the person back in like that's kind of how it feels, I guess, emotionally. Isn't that interesting? Isn't it interesting that that's the emotion? Why am I feeling that? And where's that coming from? And how can I play with that?

And is it as bad as I'm making it out? Like, is it actually that uncomfortable for me to feel that thing? Or maybe it's a little bit more, oh, it's not as scary. As you start to crack it open and feel it as it comes up and not shy away from it and not treat it like it's something that's scary, it seems to be, the curiosity seems to be a really good salve for stuff that you're not happy about.

And this works for, at least so far I've found it works for fear and it works for anxiety as well. Here's an emotion that I don't enjoy. It arises inside of me as opposed to even using the meditation strategy of like noting that it's there, releasing and allowing you go, okay, well let's just sit with this for a moment, not obsess over it, but like, isn't that interesting? Why am I feeling that? And where's that coming from? And what might that mean? And is it as scary as I think? And all of these questions, that curiosity helps you to kind of,

you're not hiding, you're not intellectualizing in the same way as before, but you're not getting swept away by the emotion too. So sitting with the curiosity, realizing that it's not your job to save somebody else when you're having a difficult conversation with them, that you can just ask a question and just sit and just leave it.

Those are two things. But again, this is like massive work in progress and I'm still very much a white belt when it comes to the disagreeability side. Oliver S, congrats on 2 million. Thank you. The exponential growth is remarkable and well-deserved. Thank you again.

Now modern wisdom has grown to this extent. How has the guest selection process changed? I assume it has become easier to attract the guests you'd like. Here's to 3 million. Cheers Oliver. Yeah, it has become easier in some ways. It's become easy to get access to most of the guests that I want.

There's not really many people now. Nah, that's a lie. That's a lie. There's like, I can get up to sort of double A level and then triple A level is still, you need an intro, they need to like you already and be aware of the work that you do. It's not actually that easy to get the best, best,

best guests in the world on the show. So that's still difficult. One of the problems, I guess, that's interesting is there's way more people that want to come on. And if you can't get every person that you want, or if you can only get a very small number interesting is there's way more people that want to come on. And the, if you can't get every person that you want, uh, or if you can only get a very small number of the people that you want, then most of the choice simply comes from availability. Like what is offered to you is what you take. Whereas now I actually need to say,

no, to, you know, a few hundred people a week who reach out to come on the show. And if we had an outright guest booking process, it would probably be way more. And then even for the guests that I'm bringing on, I have way more people that I want to speak to than time that I can speak to them in. So I need to triage down, okay, well, this is someone that I want to talk to, but do I want to talk to them so that they make up one 150th of the show's inventory this year. Because that's what it is.

I get 150 spots every year to speak to people. And I have 2000 people that I want to talk to every single year. So how am I, where does this person rank? Where does this evolutionary psychologist rank with this futurist rank with this strength and conditioning coach? And I need and how many of these have we done before and what am I interested in at the moment? So it's great, but a wealth of options isn't always easy to deal with.

So I'm, I'm really enjoying it. You know, I have a great network of people that send me amazing unknown, like legends of communication and research. And that's great. That's one of the best things I've got. The network of people that send me people that I should speak to is outstanding, but it can be difficult to make choices sometimes.

Good luck, Wolf. Do you ever think you'll slow down on the episodes? Three week is incredible, but how sustainable? I get it's been sustainable thus far, but do you have an end goal slash exit strategy? Yeah, it is a lot. Um, I would be lying if, uh, I said that it wasn't a lot. And this is one of the other things, you know, to just round out some more criticisms we got about the stray Vista stuff.

We worked so hard, man. Like I've done three episodes a week for four years and I've done this show for six and we're not owned by a network. No one helps us with our production. It is all homegrown talent. Every single person that works for us has been recruited by us, is managed by us. Really me. I like that. I like the fact that we didn't get bought out by some huge media company.

And that makes me feel proud that I've done it. That being said, you pay for that freedom. You pay for the liberation and the independence you've got with Workload. It is sustainable at the moment, but I need to make some changes. I need to get more help. I found myself ignoring my inbox and even my like texts and stuff from friends, not ignoring them, but feeling exhausted

when it comes to replying to people. And I don't want, that's not the energy I want to go into my friendships with, let alone, you know, like business transactions or guests and stuff. I want to turn up my friendships with, let alone, you know, like business transactions or guests and stuff. I want to turn up and be just full of, even in my correspondence, I want to be excited to speak to them as opposed to having it feel like a labor. But you know, to do whatever it is, 750 episodes, think about how many emails, let's say it takes five to 10 emails for each guest to come on.

And then for every five guests that come on one or two don't. So it's like 5,000 emails, just about that one thing. And then all of the stuff to do with sponsors and all of the stuff to do with production and all of the, it's a lot. Um, if I can get myself to the stage where I'm not as involved operationally, I could do three a week forever. I would love to do four a week actually, because that would give me another spot that I could speak to, you know, 2000 people down to 150 a year, I could actually

owe it to 200 people a year, like that's another 50 people I can speak to, which would be great. Um, but the main reason that I'm not doing that is because of the lift. It's how, uh, operationally, how heavy it is. So, uh, no exit goal and goal exit strategy thing. I just want to keep having conversations with people that interest me. That's it. I do need to make it a bit more, less painful behind the scenes, but for now we're holding on. Main man Mick, when we getting Modern Wisdom merch? Good question, Main Man Mick. And I have had a unmitigated nightmare having that happen.

We got ourselves to the final round, kickoff call, with this company, with a mostly female, mostly West Coast, mostly liberal design team. And they had all of the production that we needed, they had the supply chain that we needed, they had amazing designers, they worked with other big creators and we got to the kickoff call and there was a mutiny among the team and they said he's a, I don't know what it was, something bigot, misogynist, xenophobe, I'm not sure, he's had people like, pick your bad people of choice,

Eric Weinstein, Jordan Peterson, whatever, on the show, if you make us do designs for him, we're walking out. Like, that was surprising. Finding out that I am so far beyond the pale, me, Mr. 20 episodes of Life Hacks, performative autism, and how to go to sleep quicker on a nighttime. That was a surprise.

So we got set back by that. That was something that threw a bit of a spanner in the works. Hopefully soon, but we have other priorities. Kind of been thinking about like a community thing, but Discord always seems to just descend into kind of shit posting and low investment content, like a low, low investment engagement. Um, so I kind of don't really like the idea of that, but I also know that one of the things I wanted, like what's so many of the questions that we get so many of the,

the conversations that people have when they send the Q and A's in is like, how do I meet the people that are like me? Um, I'm struggling because I feel alone. I'm in this self-development journey and no one else I live near is going through it as well I would love to make something like that. So that kind of seems like more of a priority But then merch is easy. Like how do you make it? I don't know how you make a community. Anyway Modern wisdom merch will happen soon. It would have happened quicker, but chicks in The Bay Area don't like me apparently. Oxymoron always, is it a good idea to start a new podcast now with so much competition? I understand where the question is coming from, but I think it is a flawed perspective.

You are not starting a podcast to be better than everybody else. If your goal is to start a podcast so that you can win, you've already lost because the likelihood of you winning by whatever, like to get to my level or above is very, it's very unlikely that you're going to do that. And even more unlikely now than it was in 2018 when I started mine. But if you start a podcast because you want to have conversations with people that you're interested in and to use it as a personal growth vehicle, then it Um, but if you start a podcast because you want to have conversations with people that you're interested in and to use it as a personal growth vehicle, then it doesn't matter if it wins because you're going to be having so much fun and developing so much that you

won't care. And that was what I did. I had no idea. It was a side project while I was running nightclubs and I just loved it so much that I didn't stop the same as the first question, right? The motivation is what gets you started and the routine is what keeps you going. That's how it ended up. So I think it's a great idea to start a podcast.

If you're interested in starting a podcast, if you're interested in having a big media company that's going to win and make you a little money and then you get to go on Rogan or whatever, that's a high risk strategy. You're going to have to roll a very rare set of dices to make that happen. But if you just want to have fun and learn some stuff, then yes, start one right now. Rebecca Teva, what's a belief slash pattern you're done with, but struggled to let it go. That is a great question. Oh, I have so many. Um, what's one, it's publicly acceptable.

Uh, I have a pattern that other people's emotional states are my responsibility. And this maybe relates to what I just said about being in a conversation where it gets a little bit awkward. You know, if I say a thing and that causes the other person to feel a degree of discomfort, I feel like I've wronged them or like I've done something bad that I now need to step in and fix. And my capacity to make myself the bad guy in any situation is like reality bending. It's always me that's a bad guy. It's always my responsibility. Can I actually hear the genesis of this idea if you go back and listen to the Jocker Willink

episode and I basically asked him, he's the extreme ownership guy, right? You know, it might not be your fault, but it's still your responsibility. And I didn't know it at the time, but I was asking the question for myself. He just like, it came, the question came up. I didn't know I was asking it for me. Uh, and I said, is there such a thing as taking too much responsibility? And I can't quite remember what he said, but I don't think it was a satisfactory answer to me because I feel like I do.

And I feel like a good few of my friends do as well, that there's things that we have no right to be responsible for. This isn't our responsibility or my responsibility. And yet I'll find a way to make it mine. I'll find a way for me to be culpable for something which I wasn't culpable for. Like I ask a difficult question to a guest. You've come onto a podcast that's almost exclusively placid and really nice. And I've done my research and you know, it's going to be a great conversation

and all the rest of it. And then like there's one fence for you to get over that's not even got barbed wire on it. And like that's my compulsion. And then in my personal life as well, you know, it's oh God, if I say something that makes a friend feel uncomfortable, I didn't just castigate myself for days about, well, you're such an awful person. How could you have been so tone deaf? Why didn't you castigate myself for days about, oh, you're such an awful person. How could you have been so tone deaf?

Why didn't you think about that? So that's this pattern. And it all sort of ties into a bigger network of people pleasing and this sort of lack of safety around making other people feel uncomfortable because of my uncertainty around whether or not I've got reassurance and sort of security in the group and all the rest of it. So there's a two minute brain dump on some stuff I'm thinking about.

ToninDM, how do you balance wanting to improve upon your faults whilst also leaving room to be human? Perennial question. And I mean, this, you know, I asked Sam Harris, this, this was one of the most common questions that we got on the live tour that I did last year, uh, this balance between being and becoming on wanting more and to maximize your time on this planet and to leave it all on the field of play and to crush and high performance and go, go, go and optimize. And I am going to achieve my goals one time in 10. I'm going to have a perfect day one time in seven.

I am not the master of my own destiny. I am not the master of even my own mind or my own actions. And yet I love agency and yet I want to be intentional. But I also know that when I fall short, I don't want to castigate myself. Like this is the perennial question I think for, you know, self-improvers like, like yourself and maybe lots of the people that are listening and certainly me and it's difficult, it's a challenge. That's the first thing like respect this.

This is not a small thing. Okay. This is a large challenge. It is the question that most people doing personal growth have to get through. Some things that you can do that have worked for me from a tactical challenge, it is the question that most people doing personal growth have to get through. Some things that you can do that have worked for me from a tactical perspective to not just do the wishy-washy like pithy quote thing. Tactical stuff.

I have post-it notes around the house. One of them is on my bathroom mirror, which I usually look at on a morning and a night. One of them says, what went well today? And while I'm brushing my teeth for two minutes on an evening time, I think about all of the stuff that went well today. Because you're going to focus on the stuff that went wrong. You focus on it the second it happened, you're going to keep thinking about it. And for two minutes while I'm brushing my teeth, Zzzzzz, worrying away staring at this post-it note, just thinking like, I really, I like that that morning walk was really beautiful because it was raining and there was no one else out

and it was really, I'm really glad that I went out, even though it was raining, I went out for a morning walk. And that's something that, that I should was really beautiful because it was raining and there was no one else out and it was really, I'm really glad that I went out, even though it was raining, I went out for a morning walk. And that's something that I should be proud. I had a great conversation with my trainer and I, you know, I really sort of sat and listened to him in between sets and, and you know, like I gave, I thought I really gave him an interesting piece of insight around that thing. Like that's great. And that helps you to ameliorate this desire for more, more, more, because it

reminds you what you've already gotten, what you've already done. I think celebrating your successes is another amazing way to do this. You know, the 2 million thing, they're going to the Rangers game to get them, watch them get fist fucked by the Astros. Um, that was great. I'm not going to forget that we got balloons and we got barbecue and we went on a bus and we listened to like amazing music and I was with my friends.

I'm not going to forget that. So that I think that celebrating your wins basically is what both of those come to both in the micro and in the macro. That's a really good salve that seems to work really well for me. But dude, it's hard. You want everything out of life and you want to allow yourself to enjoy the things that you've gotten out of life. It's tough balance.

R-Raw damn it. Last time, last time at TupTup. So TupTup Palace is a nightclub in Newcastle upon Tyne where I used to work. We still run, we, my old company that my great business partner, ex-business partner still does run. We run the Friday night there, Paradiso. And when was the last time I was there? I mean, dude, I've spent, I must have spent

300 nights in that venue. I hosted with my top off, dancing around, pouring vodka into people's mouths for three or four years in my early twenties. Uh, and then we ran a ton, a ton of events there as well. Probably. I guess three years ago, probably like November, 2021 would have been around about then just before I came out to, would it be in 2020? No, 20 November 2021 would have been around about then I would have worked a Friday and I would

have not known that it would have been my last time there, but it was Noah J. Renfro, favorite player on the Texas Rangers, Adolas Garcia, man. I mean, the guy is a walking Dominican man mountain home run machine and I love him. And I will give myself to him if so asked. Chris Cavalaris, what have you done in extremely low moments of life to catapult yourself out of them? Great question. And I hope that you're not going through one,

but if you are, I've been through some low periods that what makes them so sort of shameful, at least my low mood periods, whether there was nothing ostensibly wrong with my life, I didn't have any catastrophe, I wasn't going through grief, I wasn't in poverty. I hadn't just lost a family member or got out of a relationship. You know, it was just the weight of existence. And it was some stuff looking back, it was poor sleep and wake cycle. Cause I was working late so much and it was an externalized sense of sort

of validation and self-worth on the world and a bunch of other things. But at the time it was like, there's nothing wrong with you. And there wasn't, compare yourself to like fucking anybody that's got like real serious problems that wasn't anything. And yet I felt terrible. So the first thing that I did that I tried to do was realize that my shame and my guilt around feeling low, like who are you to feel low? There is nothing wrong with you.

Look at how broken you are. Look at how feeble, look at how vulnerable and weak and fragile you are to feel this bad about nothing. I had to get rid of that. And that was hard. That was 50% of the battle was the story I told myself about how atrocious of a human I was, how lame I was for being broken by something that was basically nothing. So that was the first thing. Second thing was it has to start with action.

It can't, you cannot get yourself out of a low mood by thinking like trying to think your way out of overthinking is like trying to sniff your way out of a cocaine addiction. And for me, it was always when I managed to get myself out of bed, you know, and it's, this sounds so stupid, but I've written about this before, like putting one leg on the floor of bed was like climbing to the top of Everest. Like I just don't want to get out of bed. I don't want to move. I don't want to go anywhere. I don't want to see anyone.

I don't have to do anything. It's like, right. Okay. Well, what are the component parts of me moving? Okay. So covers need to come off the bed and And I need to put one leg out. And then I need to sort of turn myself around. I need to put another leg out. And it was painstaking step by step to overcome. And again, all the while going, you're so stupid. Look at how silly this is. You don't even have anything wrong with you. Like, how, how, how, how is

it so hard for you to go and go for a fucking walk? Accepting the fact that this is today's battle. Some days the battle may be a back squat of 500 pounds for three reps. Other days it may be getting out of bed. Today's battle is getting out of bed and water, walk, good night's sleep, gym session, call with a friend. Those were the five things that I always went to. And I think that 90% of problems can be fixed by doing that problem being sleep is one of the fundamental, uh, sort of bases of this because it's so much impact your

mood and if you fuck your sleep and wake cycle, and if you start napping during the day and eating shit food, you don't want to train, you don't want to go for a walk. You can't be bothered to speak to your friend and everything's ruined. So for me, get up, get out of bed, get a glass of water, have a shower, go for a walk. Anyone can go for a walk and you can do it. Doesn't matter whether it's fucking freezing cold, boiling hot, whatever. Go for a walk. That's a good place to start.

And, uh, from there you just start to slowly build up, build up, build up. And then when you've got a little bit more distance, it's a point that's doing it at the time when you've got a bit more distance, look back and think, okay, what were the things that I did in the couple of days of the couple of weeks leading up to that period of low mood? When was my last period of low mood before that? Or what are the other periods that I can recall? And where are these things the same?

Oh, every time that I work too much and every time I don't sleep enough and every time that I eat bad food, if I keep doing that for more than about two weeks, I end up feeling like that. Okay, well, if I can stop seeding that mood, I don't need to find a way to get out of it on the other side of it. Maybe the issue isn't that I'm broken mentally. Maybe it's just that I'm sensitive to my inputs and therefore if I change my inputs, I don't need to be worried about what happens on the other end of it. So there's some stuff.

Jess Pia 12, can you start a dating app so all your unreasonably reasonable subs can meet? God, could you imagine that? What a super race the modern wisdom fan base would be made of. Chris Williamson promotes eugenicist cult polycule. But I don't know, I'm genuinely thinking about the whole community thing. So maybe I could do that. But I mean, it would be, it would be chaos in there, wouldn't it?

Maybe I'll put it on the pile. Sir Brickson Cole 72018, where's your go-to place for finding research papers? This is a fucking cool question. I like it. So psych,ych.org. Fucking awesome. Like just fantastic breakdowns of stuff. Where else do I go?

Cypost, P-S-Y-P-O-S-T.com.org. They have a mailing list. Cypost freaks. Actually just go to Cypost. This is obviously only for psychology stuff. I would say 20% of the stuff that I talk about on the show comes from sidepost. Um, a lot of different sub stacks, uh, like aggregators, Adam Mastriani, uh, Rob Henderson, Gwenda Bogle, Scott Alexander, Mary Harrington, Louise

Perry, Freya India, Constantine sometimes. And then where else? Psychology Today, also great. Twitter, good. But do you remember when you were, maybe not for everyone, but I was kind of like big into music, I still am, but really big into music when I was sort of 14 to 21. And I would just go down rabbit hole after rabbit hole after rabbit hole of who does this band? Oh, who's that singer that's featured on this one band song and who's he a band of? And oh, he used to be, and you just end up, you know, branching off and finding total hidden gems that you loved and no one else knew about. So it's kind of like getting those bases that I've

talked about, Cypo, Psych, et cetera, Psychology Today, good substacks. And then once you're in there just following those through and you just come upon awesome insights. So, and that's one of my favorite things to do. Fredo the wheelchair guy. Can you explain all the red pill, black pill, white pill analogies that you constantly use so I can understand what you mean when you use them. Thanks. Of course, I'm probably going to get this wrong, but this is the way that I mean them. Red pill appears to be supposed to be seeing the world as it is. So it is understanding intersexual dynamics, understanding that men are going to be disposable, understanding that women are going to be protected. Black

pill is what they say is the actual truth, which is it's just genetics, bro. It's only how you look. And ultimately you are a genetic dead end if you're not a five out of 10 or above. This is all in the dating context and then I'll come back around. White pill, there isn't one in dating.

When it comes to culture, being red-pilled is being based. It's seeing the world for what it is. Being black-pilled is being nihilistic and basically having no hope for the future and being white-pilled is being based. It's seeing the world for what it is. Being black-pilled is being nihilistic and basically having no hope for the future and being white-pilled is being hopeful. So I'm like a card-carrying member of the white-pilled community when it comes to the culture stuff. Morgan ZHH. Hey Chris, how can someone make friends without being needy? That's a cool question because neediness is kind of a bit of a turnoff, and you can be the most interesting,

cool person in the world, but if your demeanor is needy, there is something about that that seems too keen. You know what it's like. Like you meet someone for the first time and they're just a little bit over enthusiastic or whatever. And I don't know why it is. I should do some research, but I don't know why it is that we have such an aversion to people that are, that are a little bit more needy,

even if it just comes across in enthusiasm and there's something alluring about aloofness. I guess it's like mystique, you know, Oh, like you fill in the gaps in their personality with your own speculation and your speculation often tends to be better than what their actual personality is, which is kind of funny. And yet when someone sort of shows more of themselves to you, which is actually quite an admirable trait, just kind of icky about that. Again I'm trying to, you know, fact check myself in real time as this happens, I try to feel feelings. I would say one good way tactically to do this would be find a thing that

encapsulates the friendship. So let's say pickleball, you will bond with people quite quickly at pickleball, but it's not about the bonding, it's about the pickleball, you will bond with people quite quickly at pickleball, but it's not about the bonding, it's about the pickleball thing. So the neediness kind of gets forgotten or even the enthusiasm or the desire to make friends, like you have this big buffer, which is the experience that you're going through, or you're doing an improv class, or you're doing yoga or you watercolor painting or whatever it is. Like you're there for a thing and the friendships come along alongside that.

And the advantage you have of doing that is that you preselect people like you, presuming that you have selected a hobby, which is like the sort of hobby that you would like. The other people that are there are also gonna be like the sort of person that you would like to be friends with because they've chosen the same fucking hobby. But it is rough.

And again, this is why I'm thinking about this community thing, I don't really know. I even know what it is, but so many people at the live shows were like, how do I find more people like the 500 or a thousand people that are in this room? Like, I don't really know. Um, but like Reddit's not the place to go for it. Uh, and it's not that you need more online friends, presumably it's that you need more friends in real life.

I would say find, find a hobby you need more friends in real life. I would say find a hobby, find a bunch of different hobbies. Like over the, try one hobby a month for the next six months and just go to improv and pickleball and CrossFit and yoga and watercolour painting and, and whatever fucking sound design and do it in a class, make sure it's in a class. And while you're there, just anyone want to go for a beer afterward and that's it and you'll find making friends pretty easy, I think. Nice dee heeks.

Is really everything women's fault? Divorce, crime, brackets, single mothers, decline of births, high body counts. If one out of three young men have no sex, why don't they improve themselves, but just complain and accuse women? Interesting questions and fair points. I think, um, is, is really everything women's fault divorce? Um, I think it's more divorces are initiated by women, but that doesn't say anything about whether or not they should have initiated the divorce. You know, if their partner is being unfaithful or being abusive or whatever.

Crime, single mothers, well, absentee father is a different way to frame single mother and, you know, one puts the onus onto the mother's choice and the other puts the onus onto the father's behavior. Decline of births, I do think that that is at least in part, probably more on women. Um, high body counts is a really interesting one, uh, because obviously the only way that women can have high body counts is if there is a man for them to sleep with, unless we're counting all of the like lesbian relationships of flings that women go through.

So that's a really interesting one because that's one to one, right? I suppose divorce is one to one, but the marriage is one to one, but the divorce stat isn't, uh, I don't think women, everything is women's fault. I hope that that's not what the show comes to crime. I'm hoping this is a hypothetical as opposed to an accusation. Uh, I certainly don't think that's the case. Um, you know, the crime downstream from single mothers is a very interesting point to make too, that it is a huge deal.

And the framing of, I think the better framing is single parent households. Um, but when we say that, what we're really meaning is single mother households, I have no idea what the stats are, but I would guess less than 10% of single parent households, a single father, maybe even like less than. 3% a single father households with the mother being absent. The decline of births, I think, can be laid mostly at the feet of female education and like industrialization as you give women specifically more choices.

This is not for me to say whether it's good or bad, but this just seems to be where the data sort of lies. As you give women more opportunities in life, as you have society becoming more egalitarian, more industrialized women becoming better educated, especially if you fold birth control on top of that birth rates decline, they have other things to do with their life, you know, rather than just being mothers. And, uh, that means that you get below replacement rate. You only get below replacement rate in certain cohorts though.

So, you know, like the Mormons and fundamental religious groups and the Amish aren't suffering with this. If one third of young men have no sex, why don't they improve themselves, but just complain and accuse women? Well, you know, this is a point I think I've made a bunch of times, which is you can either as a guy sort of rail against female nature or predisposition or choices or current culture or whatever, and try and sort of claw down the clouds from the sky, or you can try and do something that gets you up above them.

And I think that it's a two-way street. I think that there are certainly inflated desires, inflated standards that women have now for partners as socioeconomically women are rising up through their own dominance hierarchy and competence hierarchy. And that's great for them. More education, more money. But the guys that are kind of being forgotten about, uh, well, if they're struggling, do we not want to kind of help them? Yes, we probably do. Would that help them improve themselves?

Yeah, absolutely. But, you know, in the mid 1900s, when we had campaigns that were for maligned or underserviced groups, none of those, well, some of them, but not by anyone that was emotionally intelligent and rational, they weren't pushed back against. It's like, hey, this is a group that's falling behind. We should do something to help them. I don't really see the same sort of initiatives. No one is saying, why aren't we getting young guys to go to university more?

Why aren't we getting young boys to achieve better in school? All that happens is autism and ADHD diagnoses and proclamations about how great it is that this percentage of women who came this high in the class or went to an Ivy league school or became a CEO this year. So I think that the reason that men are struggling to improve themselves is that they feel like the deck is stacked against them. I also think that it's a pointless exercise to complain about women's preferences, especially when you have your own preferences. This is a massive asymmetry. Guys will say women that are hypergamous and choose to date up and

across for socioeconomically more successful men than them, that's unfair. And they should learn what their true value is and they should stop it. We'll also say, I want data woman that's older than me. So hang on. So you have a preference as a guy for youth, which is a proxy for fertility. That's your preference. But a woman who has a preference for socioeconomic success

that shouldn't be their preference. They shouldn't, that's something that they shouldn't do. So I agree. I think, you know, as with all of these things, it's a two way street. It does take two to tango and it takes two to make the decision about whether or not you're going to tango and. Guys have it good in some ways and awful in others, way worse than women. And women have it good in some ways and way worse than men in others.

And at the moment there is a zero sum view of empathy, which is if we give even an inch to women, that's us taking sympathy away from deserving men. Or if we give even an inch to men, that's us taking sympathy away from deserving women. It's like, can we not fucking chew gum and walk at the same time? Is that not something that we can do? And I hope that we can. And I really try.

I'm really, really trying. Brought Freya Rindhia on. Had this great conversation about how women are struggling and the Gen Z girls' mental health. Comments from people saying like, um, you know, with all of the men today, like this is disgusting conversation to have. Do you not know how many people are, men are killing themselves and suicide? I'm like, bro, we did like 30 episodes on this and you bring it up once about the other side of the fence.

And that's a huge, a huge big deal. And ignoring the plight of men, zero some view of empathy and it's stupid. But those people aren't really a part of this audience because you're all unreasonably reasonable. Ray, Ray, a la con, what type of cheese would you give to fascinate a woman? Oh, that's a great question. You can fascinate a woman with cheese. If you don't follow me on Instagram, you won't know,

but you can fascinate a woman with cheese. I think a nice soft cheese would go down well. I don't know whether I'm allowed to use a cracker as well, but I think a nice soft cheese on a good quality salted cracker. And you leave that out, I think, soft cheese on a good quality salted cracker. And you leave that out, I think, outside of the front door overnight and you come back and there's a woman there. I think that's how it works.

Mason Peatling 5947, how many hours slash which podcasts do you listen to? Had times the last few years when I've had a complete unplugged from podcasts when my idle time just isn't there, wanted to know if it's the same for you. So yeah, for sure. If I'm super busy, uh, the only shows that I listened to a shows that I need to, to prep for, uh, episodes that I'm doing.

So, uh, I haven't, I've only just started driving again since coming out to us and I've single-handedly kept Uber liquid, um, the amount of journeys that I've taken and now I'm back in the car. I'm always listening to podcasts, you know, 10 minutes to the gym, 15 minutes to go to the shops, whatever. And I'm like just chipping away. But I realized that when I didn't have that, I'd be doing other stuff on my phone that wasn't listening to podcasts.

Cause I wasn't, you know, hands weren't distracted and eyes weren't on the road. Um, so yes, for sure. If idle time is down, my sort of leisure listening for podcasting drops to, uh, how many hours a week, uh, including prep for the show, it'll be a lot. And I listened quite quick as well. So total content consumed maybe between 20 and 30 hours, probably of content, I would guess, maybe more, uh, actually probably almost certainly more because of like YouTube videos and stuff that I'll watch in between.

But for leisure time, it absolutely is up and down with the wind based on how busy I am. And I wouldn't worry, you know, like one of the advantages I think of evergreen conversations, at least that I hope, like they're my favorite kinds of podcasts, ones that I can go back to and listen to even years later, is that it doesn't matter if you're busy for a while, that just gives you a bigger backlog of things to select from, from your favorite shows.

So it's kind of cool in that way. Fabulin7039, will you ever do a podcast with Lex Friedman? Yes, I will. He is busy and plugged into robots and, and worried about Ukraine. And I think having a bit of a rough, at least he tweeted saying he's having a bit of a rough time a little while ago. I'll get him eventually and it'll be cool.

I don't know. I don't think he's guessed it in at least two or three years now. So yeah, maybe I can tempt him back out of the, back out of his hovel. We'll see. Ted Wunderlich, 2941. If you had to create a dating app, what would it feature that other dating apps currently

don't? Super easy, super dangerous video messaging. So I would have the first message that both people send to each other have to be a less than 60 second selfie video message because you would learn so much about that other person's and obviously this is a little bit rough if you're nervous on camera but you would learn so much about that person's mannerisms and the way that they actually look and Their voice and their intonation and what they're interested in and I think it would just speed up the pace of matching and unmatching so much. I've stolen this by the way from Jeffrey Miller.

But video, 60 seconds, talk about whatever you want. Maybe use the other person's profile. Maybe you could even have it so that you got to see their profile information. You press the record button and you know, their profile information is kind of at the bottom of the screen is almost like cues or questions that you could scroll up and down of while you were recording the video. I think that that would speed up online dating so much more quickly. That's my billion dollar idea after Newtonic. Sky Lord Slay, where do you see yourself in 10 years?

I suck with long-term plans, dude. Like I have never been good at them. And I always felt embarrassed because productivity culture was what I came upon. And you're supposed to have your 25 year epigraph broken down into five year marathons and then one year sprints and 90 day segments and blah, blah. I just never, I'm never able to plan more than a few years out. I know that I want a family. I know that I can't wait to become a dad. And I know that, uh, I would like to do that before I'm 36, sorry, 46, which would be in 10 years time.

Um, with a family having fun. Like, am I in America still? Maybe. Our mom and dad out here with me too. Maybe. Am I in America still? Maybe. Are mum and dad out here with me too? Maybe. Am I still doing the podcast? I hope so. Just having fun. Emotionally aligned and aware and comfortable in my own skin

and happy and paying it forward to someone that isn't just me or fantastic strangers that I care about a lot, but strangers nonetheless on the internet. Me Immortals podcast, what gets you excited for the rest of the year? That's a good question. So we've actually kind of got a bit of downtime from a cinema perspective at the moment, like the big shoots that we do, we have done one cinema episode every Monday since August, which is berserk. It was supposed to be, when we first started it, we did the first year that we did cinema stuff, we did five, four, five, five episodes. Then we've done 25 in the last six months. So a little bit of downtime from the cinema stuff, starting to write the book is going to be fun and cool.

Newtonic also fun and cool. I flew out to the Flavour House and we did a ton of flavour testing. I drank six cans in a day, then I had 50 shots of it in a day. That's cool. Like that's firing me up because that's new and different. And to be honest, I'm really kind of excited to travel a little bit more and to dig into therapy.

I'm finding it fascinating to learn more about myself and it's adding another dimension to the way that I see myself and the world and the things that I learn and hopefully the show too. So I'm pretty excited about all of those things. I know they're not necessarily all that magnificent. But yeah, like the inner work is something I'm actually really looking forward to. Simon Tauhler, when is Layne Norton coming on the podcast?

Among many things, ask him about Deadlift Sumo. Layne and me have been speaking. He will be coming on soon. He does Deadlift Sumo, which I'm pretty sure is cheating, but it's okay. He does that cool thing with chalk, where he sort of throws it down on the floor. So it's fine.

Coughful Stone Micro Dairy. Was Nutonic always a drink? Plans for other products. Yeah, we never intended it. We never thought about it being like a powder or pills or anything like that. The whole point was that you would enjoy the experience of doing it. Taking pills is never fun. It's never been fun for anyone. Even the best pill taker in the world is, is not enjoying it. And, uh, we always wanted it to be this. And I'm very, very proud of it.

I'm very proud of what we've achieved and plans for the product. There are other things that the team are talking to us about. I am a curmudgeon when it comes to adding in new skews and new lines. I would much sooner just dominate one niche then Spread ourselves too thinly, but there are huge opportunities to do that and that's also exciting the product development I get really excited about that and positioning and brand and stuff We'll see I want to we haven't got any stock in America for like the third time in six months since we launched, we sold out again. We need to fix that.

We need to get more stock. And the reason we don't get it is because we keep on predicting, projecting like 2X growth from last time and then it's 4X and it's sold out in three weeks. So plans for the products will come after we've got this product back in stock. Scott Matthew one, have you ever considered a round table style debate podcast, three or four guests? Yes, I have. We were talking very closely about doing this. About six months ago, maybe a bit longer. And I wanted to call it Uncommon Conversations. So it's still be Modern Wisdom, like Modern Wisdom Cinema, wisdom cinema, but uncommon conversations. And I wanted to have three other people plus me that you would never see in a room together.

So Andrew Huberman, Jordan Peterson, and Mark Normand. And you think what the living hell happens when those three people like Mark, Jocker Willink with Shane Gillis and Peter Atiyah. What happens then? Like that's what I want to know. So we did consider it. I wanted to shoot it in a really beautiful way, like our cinema stuff.

That makes it so expensive because for every guest that you have, you have all of these different intersecting angles in order to be able to get the shots that you need. Then you have the wide, then you have the lighting and all the rest of it. So actually that may be a third one, VR on location and then round table. I would be interested in doing that. My favorite group size to go out with is two people, me and another.

And I think the show reflects that even when there's, but you may have noticed this, there'll be books that have got co-authors. Mo Gaudat, Gaudat, Gaudat, he's coming on the show soon and he's coauthored this book with somebody else. But I don't want to speak to two people. I want to speak to one person and I, I select one author typically from coauthored books. It's been a long time since I had two people on the show at the same time. I just prefer that one-on-one dynamic. It gets kind of messy. And I, I'm always thinking in the back of my mind, do I need to like specifically

ask a question to one person because maybe they haven't spoken so much and there's a coordination problem and it's harder for scheduling. So one-on-one is my, my goal, but maybe we'll see if I, we might trial some of those uncommon conversations this year. Con McCloskey tactics to meet quality male friends in your early thirties. Lots of reasons to make some sort of community thing coming through here. It's the same, it's the same thing that I said earlier on, which is get habits and go to places that

have guys like the sort of guys that you want to be friends with at. So if you're into fitness, go to a CrossFit gym, go to play pickleball, go to do soul cycle or Barry's or whatever it is. If you're into cycling, join a cycling club or a run, I think this is why run clubs have actually, um, proliferated so much that it's a glorified social club masquerading as a workout and, uh, that would help. I don't know about mixers and conventions and stuff like that. It seems to me that the coolest people, like the real quality people that you

want to find are people who have stuff in their life and want friends alongside it. If you go to purpose built cocktail mixes and stuff, all of the stuff at South by Southwest, except for like the cool private in by only stuff, all of the networking events are all weird because everyone's there for the purpose of making friends, which completely details how you become friends. You bond over a thing and you become friends about that. You don't become friends because you're there to become friends. So I think inhabit places that have people like the sorts of people that

you want to be friends with. That's the way to do it. Kez Duran. I'm a woman and realized, that's good, and realized recently that my role models are all men. Do endocrine differences matter? That is a fantastic insight. I don't think so at all. I do think that we have a dearth of female role models at the moment. Mel Robbins, someone that I've started getting into, she's great, but you're working much harder to find people that are role models, I think,

for both men and women, if you're looking at women. I don't think that the life of a degenerate content creator, self-promoter seems to lend itself to the female system as well as it does for men. It doesn't seem to allure or sort of seduce women in the same way. So no, I don't think that it matters at all. I do think that it would be great if we had more, if we had a few more sort of female role models, because that would mean I could bring them on the podcast. But no, I don't think that it matters at all. I think that you can learn an awful lot,

but maybe keep on learning from all of the guys and then become a female one yourself. Pasilba, why has nine full-length episodes disappeared, at least on YouTube? Hmm, they shouldn't have done. So that's worrying. 1% of the library has gone. Please message someone, go on the contact form

on the website and tell us which episodes you think are missing. They shouldn't have. We didn't, unless someone on the team has made a really, really large, huge error, uh, they shouldn't have done. IPGI. What were the improvements and optimizations you made in the past year that led to such amazing growth? Uh, don't know whether you mean public growth or personal growth.

I'm going to guess you mean public growth. Improvements and optimizations. Yeah. I'm going to guess you mean like channel growth. Um, what did we do? I think it's just compounding dude. Like I've been having the same kinds of conversations for six years. Thumbnails have got a bit better. Titles have got a little bit better. having the same kinds of conversations for six years.

Thumbnails have got a bit better. Titles have got a little bit better. Uh, we got rid of intros, which was, I guess, a kind of a ballsy move. Um, I know that Rogan's done it for forever without the intros, but, um, you know, there's this big trend toward coming up or like on this episode or whatever. And I just kind of got it in my head. I was like, I think that, I think it might be bullshit, or at least I don't think it adds anything. And we tested it and people seem to like it, which is cool.

It's like nice to have your ideas, shocker. It's nice to have your ideas validated by the market. That was good. So more consistent clips, uh, high quality guests, but even when I'm talking high quality guests, that doesn't mean big name guests, at least 50 guests last year, you probably never heard of maybe more, maybe half the guests. I said, you never heard of before, uh, a huge number of them had never done podcasts before ever. Uh, I think it's just compounding.

And I think it's faith from the audience as well. All right. If Chris says that this person's worth listening to, I'll give it a crack. And that's cool. When you've built up enough goodwill where you go, I don't really, I didn't sound like a conversation about therapy for kids doesn't really sound like it would be that interesting to me, but you know, I've got faith that Chris maybe knows what he's talking about.

So we'll, we'll give it a, Oh, I really enjoyed that. So that's momentum, momentum and consistency. I think is, we're just reaping the whirlwind that we saw a long time ago. Nicholas Affencamp, Offencamp. Would love to hear you reflect on the first few years of creating into the void. What kept you going in the months slash years when the audience was small and growth was slow? What I said at the very beginning, man, I would have done this.

I did do this when no one listened because I enjoyed it because I loved the conversations that I was having and I found the guests compelling and I was learning about myself and the world around me and I would have done it if no one listened and I would have kept doing it if no one listened and I would have kept doing it if no one listened. If this channel was still 20,000 people, we would still be making content because I did it when no one listened because I didn't care about the growth. So this is why the niche down, dominate a niche, broaden out from there, subjugate your own interests in place of what works on the algorithm. It is fundamentally a broken method for advising content creators. Make what you are interested in and it will come across.

I am interested in the things that I talk about, so I don't need to motivate myself to have the conversations or to do the reading or to research or to think about the guest or whatever. And that will also mean that if growth slows or stops or it doesn't start for ages, you don't mind because you're doing something that you would happily do in any case. Creating into the void sucks, but if you keep going and if you keep enjoying the things

that you're talking about, people will start to recognize eventually because that's the blue ocean. The blue ocean is following your instincts. eventually, because that's the blue ocean. The blue ocean is following your instincts. The oversaturated awfulness is reverse engineering what the algorithm wants and what does the audience want the audience want to care about and nope, no thank you. It's not going to work and you're going to hate it. Daniel Hussey, how come you don't post your video to Spotify? Currently only audio will, will post videos to Spotify in the future.

Love the show, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, look, it's a, we get asked this a lot. To be honest, it's kind of like a technical thing on our side because of the way that we run ads and because of the way that we dynamically insert stuff and because of the way that we upload for YouTube and some of the aspect ratios that we use for YouTube and the amount of time that we would need

to get stuff up in order for it to be processed. It's kind of just messy. It really has surprised me how much people have seen Spotify podcasting as an audio first platform now thinking that when Rogan started his deal on Spotify, no one even thought twice about video on Spotify. And now there's a lot of people that request it. If we did it, it would be a huge lift operationally. And remember what I was saying earlier that like any large lift is basically a large lift for Chris. Any large lift for the organization is a large lift for me. We very well may come around to it at some point. There needs to be some more tech that's brought in on the back end on Spotify

to be able to make it work the way that I want it to. Megaphone, which is the hosting platform that Spotify acquired that we use. It's just not quite there, but we're not far off and it's phenomenal. It's the best in the business, but there's a couple of things that I'd love. And then we would need to fix the operation to make it easier. So we'll see. Bradshaw, congrats.

I've been a listener since day one. Thank you. Have you considered diving into and learning more about religious practices as a devout Catholic? I love what you do and the aims you've incorporated into your life in daily practice. I see a strong correlation. Congrats again. Thank you. Yeah, I love what you do and the aims you've incorporated into your life and daily practice. I see a strong correlation. Congrats again.

Thank you. Um, yeah, I mean, I, like I say, I went, I spent Easter Sunday morning, uh, in Bible church and watching a rock band kind of, uh, which was really cool. And yeah, I, I, I, I would learn more. I have to say I was kind of switched off, you know, the kind of old, stuffy, puritanical approach to religion that I saw when I was growing up in the northeast of the UK. It wasn't very alluring, didn't sound wholesome or reassuring or faithful or any of those things that you want really from a good religion. And yet now I've grown up a little bit, it seems a little bit different. And I also understand

that this is like the classic podcast bro arc of going from rational, extreme rationalist to religious fundamentalist. Don't think I'm there, but I would be interested in learning more about it. And I certainly think that there's a lot of wisdom I've probably dispensed and maybe a lot of people have as well, dispensed at my peril and probably at my disadvantage too, by getting rid of, not listening to basically split tested wisdom from a ton of different traditions over a few thousand years. So yeah, maybe.

Jed Davies, for young people, how do you strike the balance of living a disciplined, healthy lifestyle, food, exercise, sleep, making money, friends, whilst also enjoying your youth? Where is the balance and how do you not let the anxiety of perfection stand between you and who you can be? Great question. So the perils of over optimization, like something that I think about an awful lot, really what is the point of doing all of this sacrifice and monk mode and working hard if it's not in service

of going out and actually living your life, especially when you're younger, when you can actually deal with the hangovers or, you know, you can mend the broken bone or, you know, you can afford to waste the time or risk the money because you don't have the dependencies or the responsibilities or the family or whatever it might be. It's a balance. It's a delicate blend of the two. I certainly think that treating

things in moderation is important. So, you know, you need to have a basis of good sleep, good food, good exercise, good friends. And then you can go and do a period of I'm going to go traveling and this is going to be my block where I'm just going to think about having fun. I'm not going to think about making money. I'm not going to think about personal growth. And then you can come back really going to go monk mode and I'm going to work on my, my fitness because I need to get, I'm going to grow some muscle mass because I know that once I get past 40, 45, it's going to be really hard for me to grow it.

And I want to found a boat and then I'm going to go and do a party holiday. And I'm going to go and sniff my head off in Ibiza for, for a week. And then I'm going to come back and I'm going to do the thing like periodizing to me seems to be the best way to do it. Because what you want to do is basically have a, you know, a perfect uniform distribution of fun and hard work at the appropriate ratio that you need smattered across your entire week. But that's really tough to do like to do it and the micro is hard but to do it to periodize it in the macro is quite easy. You're going to do three months that's why the six months sober thing

worked for me. It's like it's hard for me to go I'm going to drink four times a year and I will just choose when it's right or whatever. If you say I'm going to go sober for six months and then I'm going to try drinking and see how I feel about it, that's something that I can do. Uh, so I think periodizing is good. I think absolutely the perils of overoptimization, the fact that your fears about not being perfect will kill you more quickly than your imperfections itself, something that you need to know, something that you need to be very cautious of. Um, also you're going to get where you're going to go, whether

you're anxious about it or not. Like if you're listening, if you're an hour and 50 minutes into this podcast, you are so far out ahead of most people's level of inquisitiveness and attention and focus and drive that one bad night of sleep, because you went out to watch a comedy show or because it's a friend's birthday or one piece of chocolate cake at a wedding, is not the beginning of the end for you. You are distorting reality around yourself. And I don't think that you need to worry. I'll be too anxious about that. But it's something that I find myself.

I left a party last night. I left a party last night at 9.30 because I had training this morning. I'm like, should I stay at this party? It's the eclipse day. It's like, you know, it's a once in a lifetime thing. It's like, well, everything's a once in a lifetime thing. But I'd been there for like eight hours.

So that felt like it was enough. And it's permanently something that you just, that challenge, that debate that you have with yourself, I think is perennial. And I don't think it's going to go away. And I think just like, all right, I feel like that and just going for that. I feel like I'm going to try,

I really want to train hard in the morning. And sure enough, I had an awesome session today. Brilliant. I don't regret it. I could have stayed and if I'd felt like I should stay, it's like, ah, I'm going to have a dog shit session tomorrow. All right, cool. I don't regret it. And this is where me and my one ring to rule them all feelings and emotions.

What do you feel? How can you follow that? Is it true? If it's true, follow it. Be good. All right. I'm going to love you and leave you. Really appreciate you. Two million subs. How crazy. Lots of episodes coming out. Lots more cinema stuff. Huge guests.

Ferris, Borland, Atiya. Gary Vee. If you've got this far, you can learn about Gary Vee as well. Not on a video wall, but Gary Vee's coming on. What else? That's it. Bye, Newtonic. newtonic.com slash modern wisdom. All right. Love you.