Modern Wisdom - #998 - Zack Telander - Everything You Want Is On The Other Side Of Cringe

Episode Date: September 25, 2025

Zack Telander is a musician, weightlifter, coach & YouTuber. Why are we so afraid of being cringe? If being cringe online is the price of success, why don’t more people pay it? So how do you train yourself past criticism and actually do what needs to be done in your life, whether people are watching you or not? Expect to learn why getting over being cringe is the key to unlocking the things you want in life, what it actually means to be “cool”, why using irony may be an overrated conversational tool, the importance of taking pleasure in the little things in life, Zack’s reflections on what it was like running for 100-days straight, the reason the health community pushes back on GLP-1's so much, why so many grifters drive critique online, and much more… Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get 35% off your first subscription on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Get 5 Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D, and more from AG1 at https://ag1.info/modernwisdom Get a Free Sample Pack of LMNT’s most popular flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Get $100 off the best bloodwork analysis in America at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Zach Tallander, welcome on the show. It's been a while since I have been on this show. You've been busy. I have been busy, dude. I've been very busy. I just want to say also that this is a perfect representation of you and I, like the autism architects, and then like the degenerate kind of cowboy waylon Jennings.

Yeah, I'm trying to subliminally change people's music choices through what I wear as a t-shirt. I don't think it's working. I don't think anybody is listening to any of the bands. I feel like they are. I don't know. Yeah, but I'm not going to give you, I'm not going to allow you to be the only person that wears a band t-shirt in here. That's true. I got, I bought this purposefully for this episode. Oh, nice. Yes. I do love Waylon Jennings. So, sick. Everything you want is on the other side of cringe yeah so i saw actually i made this post about cringe and a lot of times people say if you want to like defeat cringe you just have to it's like a muscle you have to flex you just have to keep going for whatever it is and like learn how to take failure and it's almost

as if failure and cringe are kind of like aligned but my nuanced take was it from it was the people who are calling you cringe or like the critics like everyone has hopes and dreams everyone you know it's not like there are some people who are born and they're just like i don't want to do anything with my life ever right but the critics and the people calling you cringe essentially what they're doing is saying like oh you're pursuant of some sort of hope and dream how dare you and so at some point in their lives they had to make a decision uh i'm not going to pursue my hopes and dreams because that is quote unquote cringe which i found super interesting and so in this video i just all i said was like you know the only times that the critics or the people calling you cringe can access their

hopes and dreams is when they're sleeping so then when they wake up just make sure they keep watching you pursue yours and it's like for me that that is it adds another layer on top of what you typically hear, which is just like, keep moving, keep going, push, like fail so you can get better at failing, stuff like that. Yeah, it seems like there's something to do with earnestness and sincerity and sort of ironic speech in here. So I think when people are speaking ironically, there's a distance between you and your speech. So being sincere sort of carries a type of vulnerability with it. So you're saying, this is my position. This is something that I believe in whereas when everybody is always being ironic and I think that identifying something as

cringe is like the non-engaging way of being ironic like saying saying that's cringe is the same as the exact same as saying that's good but that's the same sentence right right and I think you have this sort of distance between your beliefs and your statements like you don't actually put your beliefs out there you make statements about stuff that's typically critical and then you have your beliefs but your beliefs are yours and nobody ever actually gets to interact with those and by not putting your beliefs on the line you can never be cringe right this is one of the uh like interesting asymmetries it's one of the reasons that i think critic or that what's called the critique sphere uh youtube uh channels have done so well because it's very difficult to do a criticism

of a critique sphere video because it's two levels of irony yeah yeah right that person didn't mean that thing they're there to take the piss you can't take the piss you can't take the piss out of someone taking the piss, unless they try to take the piss in a sincere way. But nobody ever does that. Nobody ever says, you know, this just didn't speak to me. It really didn't speak to, I didn't feel anything. It's like, oh, God, you can do a criticism of that criticism. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. Um, irony is the song of a bird who's never left its cage. I saw that quote. So what's that mean? It's basically somebody who's never gone out and done anything or, you know, they use irony as the

weapon as the song that they sing you know the people calling others cringe they use ironic they use that as like uh it's like a force field as well as a weapon to attack others but it doesn't allow you to actually move forward because you're never posing anything yeah you know what's wild though is like on social media you do find that if you engage in kind of that in an authentic way like i've been rewarded for it being like oh that's cringe or like being on the the side of the critic. I've been rewarded for it. And this is something that I'm actually super interested in

is being able to do two things at once, almost two opposite ends of the spectrum. And I wanted to talk to you about this because this happened like almost directly after having my daughter. It was, it's this idea of like, I had it. It was like gratitude maxing.

But at the same time, being dream-pilled for you. Jen's ears, right? So at the, at one end of the spectrum, you have ultimate gratitude for everything in your life. And in a certain, you know, extent that could equal being content with what you have. And then on the other side, you're not content really with anything because you have your head in the clouds. You're dreaming. You're hoping. And what I've kind of been able to do recently and what I've been, what's helped me a lot is like both. I tell myself, every day like I know what I want in in music like I know and I'm going really hard at it

harder than ever before I'm not doing this kind of like half in half out thing I'm really going hard but at the same time there are moments that I'm like super grateful for and specifically it's funny I have this picture it's like you and I went to nando's a couple weeks ago and it was just like you holding a phanta and it's like I'm super super grateful for that on so many different levels once my best friend we're having nando's two a a wonderful nectar comes out of a out of a machine when you press a button and you just get to enjoy that i mean come on how could you not be grateful for that sort of thing right another example of this charlie my daughter wasn't going down asleep not very easy uh it was just

like it was a brutal night but caroline and i got fresas which is our favorite mexican food you've had before we got it delivered we had margaritos we put on stand by me it's an american classic movie and we clinked glasses and i looked at her i go this is it right here this is amazing this is honestly if this is our base level like we're all right and i think it's really important for moments like that. To just say those words. Two things that I would say is, this rules and this is it.

And I feel like when you and I were living together, we did that quite a bit. Well, yeah, we had a little caption, which was these are the golden years. Like we're going to look back in however long when we've got tons more responsibilities and go, do you remember when we used to live on South Sixth Street? You remember?

And we'd just fuck about it in a cold plunge and we'd get up and we'd make some videos and then we ordered fucking Papa John's on the Saturday and what, like, Red Zone. That was it. Those were the golden years. And I think you're right. It's a difficult balance.

It's probably one of the most common perennial challenges that people who listen to this show bring up at the live shows that you're doing. Come and see me and Zach Live around the US and Canada. Dates are available at chris Williamson.live. That's right. One of the most common questions is basically, I want to achieve big things in my life

but my pursuit of something great makes me feel a lack in the present and that makes me miserable and I know that the present moment I've heard that the present moment is kind of all that really matters and I feel like I am borrowing I'm spending joy that could be achieved right now in order to try and cash it in at some point in the future

and I'm worried that I've kind of got my priorities wrong, but I also know that I don't want to let go of my drive and moving toward goals. It's just if I had to suggest anything, it's use your senses. That's children. That's a little bit bigger, but I would say use your senses. Like grounding and those sort of, you know, those things, right? And like, I swear to God, like my brain is just,

how are we going to make our dreams come true? All day. Every day. That's my drink, my head doing it. I'm going to push back a little bit. Yeah. How much of this is the fact that you've had a kid? How much of this is I brought a life into the world? How old now, three months? Ten weeks and three days. Okay. Give me credit. That's not far off. No, that's fair. Two and a half months. Yeah. How much of this is, I'm a new dad. I'm watching this human that I made slowly get bigger and smarter and all the rest of it. in front of me. How much of it is that? I have purpose in a way that I didn't previously, that not only am I now providing for a wife, which is relatively recent wife, a longstanding girlfriend, now even more recent child. And all of this is just, oh, this is what it was for.

Yeah. Well, I, I, well, that's good criticisms, Chris. Very astute, uh, criticisms on your, on your side there. Uh, I would say it is always been in me to kind of like be, a space cadet that focuses on like really little things so I was on a run this was while Caroline was pregnant I remember I was on a run

I even took a picture of it I saw a North American swallow tail which is one of my favorite butterflies on the side of the road and it was obviously wet so it couldn't fly so I picked it up and I put it on the fence and I took a picture of it and I was like

wow that is amazing and it's like that that took little things yeah and that took me being a weird kid that like maybe not weird is the right answer but like I love the little things like I live for the little things so to loop this back I think a lot of this is what would quite easily be castigated on the internet as being cringe that um I I think felt a little bit of shame for quite a while at taking pleasure in small things right like that that the fact that

non-grand, relatively insignificant, very normal things could give me sort of like a cozy sense of joy, that that was a comment on how small my life was. Like, oh, that's what made your day. How unimpressive, how feeble, how non-majestic must your life be that's seeing a butterfly or getting to have a really nice cold glass of Fanta or the one that I use as this example, which always works for me, if I throw my gym towel with a little hand towel I take to the gym, if I throw it and it goes into the laundry basket without touching anything from across the room. I'm like, that was fucking sick. That was sick. And I just, I think I had a lot of shame. I still do have a lot of shame around that because there's this sense that life's supposed to be very impressive. Okay. And it occurs

on a stage and then I do think that I have kind of an inner cringe critic that isn't me but is some imagined third party who's very sardonic who doesn't really earnestly engage with anything and I hear them making a comment around what I like and that causes me to not like what I like so much anymore. Yeah. I think that happens to everyone, okay? But it's like, you have to, you have to be like how, even even just like evolutionary human things, bro. If you are thirsty and you take a drink of water, you're like, oh my God, the miracle of water, right?

That feeling right there is like really crucial. and what what i for sure have seen you do like we've gone to we go to a japanese restaurant and i remember being like chris this fucking sushi is amazing make say that it's amazing or something you know what i mean we can't we can't the miracle that went through getting this unbelievable piece of fish to you're my plate what was that restaurant i was somewhere here in town soto yes yes and it was like literally from Japan 24 hours ago to our plate. I'm like, you know, it's shit like that that like you really got to just somehow be like, what is the joy that I'm feeling and why do I feel it? Like, oh, and then just reverse engineer the process that got you that feeling.

And like, you'll be like, wait, this is amazing, dude. So you're trying to remind yourself of the miracle of modernity. Of course. Yes. And yes. And like these simple pleasures that are just crazy like I pressed a button on a box that I don't know how it works and my favorite Mexican food showed up I I pressed another button on another box and I had every movie possible it sounds great but we habituate right that's exactly what of course and I but we also it's we also look past it's like how could I enjoy this when I'm when I haven't reached my goals yet you know when I find that to be the worst is when we go to watch comedy shows and it's usually me and you and I always find myself

hoping for the next comedian and that's not to say the comedians were watching a bad although some of them are but I'm always thinking oh but the next one and then the next one and then the next and then and before I know it I've nexted my way through an eight person comedy set

and then we're done that's a perfect would it be analogy for life the next what's next but I'm I mean I say all of this as if I'm some guy who just like appreciates everything in life. I wake up, my eyes go, open, and I go, what's next? Like,

that's the first thing. Like, what's next? How am I, like, in music, how am I to make this happen, you know? So it's not like it doesn't exist. You just have to, I feel like, you have to fight, like, it's two different things fighting, and you have to place your money on both. And, like, neither of them are ever going to win, and the fight's never going to stop. I think, yeah. I think there's definitely a lot of pain in the resistance. that of thinking, why can't it just be the case that I can take gratitude in the moment for the things that I love whilst also pursuing my dreams? And you probably just need to say, well, I'm not wide that way. Basically, nobody is wide that way. In my experience, the people

who are the most effective, as in, you know, successful, objectively, external metrics of success are the ones who have the most turmoil internally and that might not be true for every single person but for the most part it is and the reverse is true the ones who have the most inner peace that are the most chill, that they're most happy with themselves are the ones who aren't going to try and fill

some internal void with external accolades because the internal void isn't as big and I just in some ways you don't even get to choose I think you have to say this is kind of the way that I'm wired in to a degree yeah I am a very outfacing person or I'm a very infacing person I'm sort of peace or goals and okay given that this is the setup let's just step one stop resisting the fact that I pursue things yes yeah yeah and that I wish I had more peace so that's what I'm saying though is like you need to work the other thing concurrently

even though they might detract from each other you still can do it it's a battle you just it's like you're like a sort of goals bisexual and like uh non monogamous but that's but honestly all of these dualities that we could think of like you have to put equal chips into both i think in other news this episode is brought to you by momentus if your sleep's not dialed taking ages to not off you're waking up at random times and feeling groggy in the morning momentus's sleep packs how did i miss both of those are here to help they're not your typical knock you out supplement overloaded with melatonin, just the most evidence-based ingredients at perfect doses to help you fall asleep more quickly, stay asleep throughout the night, and wake up feeling more rested

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modern wisdom at checkout. That's L-I-V-E-M-O-M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S dot com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom, a checkout. I want to go back to that irony thing. I was watching an essay from Joe Foley unsolicited advice. It's been a on the show, fucking awesome guy. And he's got this great line. He says, to profess an honest belief in anything, especially something open to challenge is a pretty exposing thing to do in the public square. And he's talking again about his issue with ironic speech that it allows you to care less about things, or at least seem like you care less about things. And it doesn't force you to actually engage with any information earnestly, right? Ernest being the bravery to take

your emotions seriously. Right. And it is insincere. And my issue, I think, with how much ironic speech there is at the moment online and accusations of cringe. That was why that really spoke to me. The problem that I have with so many things being called out as cringe. Like, everybody's cringe radar is fucking hyperattached. The issue, the issue I have with it is that it dissuades everyone from being sincere. So I, Chris, I truly believe. that the comment section has like changed humanity permanently if because what right now this discussion between you and I if this was televised in like 1998 we would be more sincere even though we're still performative and we'd still have a filter on it we would be more

sincere and the only reason we we would is because there's no chance of anyone else kind of like coming back unless they're on the network as well all right okay I wanted the three channels that are available yes and so so bro i left a comment on something it has 65 000 likes from a fucking comment that's insane that's like you know what that says is like somebody's response to somebody who's working out their true self can be ironic it can be critical it can call it cringe it can just make as long as it's contrarian whatever just a quick little response can equal or have more value than the actual original person. Well, that's what getting ratioed is, right? Yes. Getting ratioed is somebody coming in. And it's very

rare. How many times in history has it happened where someone's got ratioed with a reply that says, this is so lovely, I'm so glad you did this, and meant it. Yeah. Right. It's never happened. It's always, it's always negative. It's always the contrary. But do you see how like that is fundamentally changes like how we can do this, how we can make this happen? It feels like there's someone watching you at all times. You're thinking to yourself, is this, I mean, everybody's goal. Everyone's goal should be to not turn into a meme. If you can thread yourself through life without trending on Twitter for becoming a meme at some point,

well, there's that thing, you know, everybody on the internet, everyone's going to be famous for 15 minutes. Fine, but just not for something that's super, super meme. So how would you advise, like, let's say there's a cringe hyper responder out there, somebody who sort of really feels the scrutiny of others' opinions maybe more than they think that they should, or so much that it's becoming restrictive and constraining to them. What would you say to that person?

Just be sure of what you want to say. Like, be sure, like, what I see a lot of times in podcasts is that people might learn very, surface level things and then they just kind of bubble off how conversations usually work just bubble off, bubble off, and all of a sudden you're now

taking a stance on something the Ukraine. Yeah. Climate change. Exactly. And you're just, the thing is like, it's not that you need to understand

that the comment section is going to exist, that the response world is going to exist. So like by kind of just bubbling off into this world, Like, you can get into some serious trouble. Okay. So understand where your domain of competence ends? Sure.

Right. Yeah. And, you know, this is, this is the, I, like, podcasting is scary. It really is because this is how, you know, we, when we get locked in this room, we can just keep talking, keep going, and we can just. Right amount of nicotine and caffeine. Just blah, blah, blah, yeah, like, I could start a business or just have to do this. And, like, you know, someone be like, these guys are idiots.

and they're teaching people or whatever I do believe you have to be able to pontificate on things you have to be able to wonder and to explore ideas with your friend but you can also get into trouble by you know and you can be cringe and all those things so for that person

that's not to say that there is no such thing as somebody who is wildly unaware of their own detachment from the world for instance Andy Elliott right very difficult to look at him. Now, maybe in the world of sales, I haven't done a deep dive,

maybe in the world of sales, he's a goat or something. It doesn't seem like that's the case. But from the outside, like a lot of that stuff, getting people up on stage to say, have you got a six pack? My wife's got a six pack. I'm indicted in a million lawsuits from the past about all of this stuff. You think you are flying very, you're like the icarus of cringe. You're flying very close to the sun. In order to be able to do that and pull it off, it's going to it's going to be really really really hard yeah even if you're squeaky clean and super legitimate and if you've got a huge fucking criminal history that's going to be hard so one thing that you said there was about people kind of getting out over their skis yeah yeah yeah um

there's this idea called the oxford manor which is the ability to play gracefully with ideas and it's letting someone i i a similar idea from eric weinstein is the accuracy budget So basically, the internet is sort of because of its eye of Sauron toward cringe, and especially toward hypocrisy or people getting things wrong. I like that eye of Sauron. That's great. Do you remember when Huberman mistweeted about percentages? He stacked up percentages over time and did a tweet about it.

He miscalculated the way that the maths worked, and he still gets that brought up now. This is a doctor who doesn't know how, supposedly the leader of the longevity movement who doesn't understand how to do a fucking percentage. That's one thing, which is supposed to be, oh, this is the tip of the iceberg and shows that he doesn't understand anything below that. The issue that I have with, the idea of an accuracy budget is

if you're never allowed to play gracefully with ideas, which is to talk in public about something that might be true or might not be true. Right. And you're given a little bit of latitude. You're given some breathing room before people say, oh, you know, that's wrong. And you go, hey, hey, hey, just let's hang on a second.

May not be an expert at this. And the line, unfortunately, is so difficult to delineate between is this person a... It's topical as well, Chris. So if this person is discussing, like, if you and I are discussing, like, our favorite sandwiches, and I get in over my skis because I start talking about meatballs and stuff, and, you know, they come from Italy or whatever. That's not a big issue. But if you're getting out over your skis and you're talking about cultural relativism or moral relativism and you start going real hard, that's when people are going to be like, hey, man, context or not, you're a fucking idiot, you know?

And that's where, like, okay, you can take the response of, what is it, post and ghost, totally. But you have to have a finger on the pulse to know what, what? and what to not talk about. Experts only, the position of only people who have credible qualifications and an illustrious history within this particular area are permitted to speak on it. Yeah, so the problem with that ultimate, I disagree with that. You know, it is a sliding scale as well because then who determines what is the determining factor on who's an expert and how far does that go.

There's a difference between. Oh, I have my doctorate. Oh, you have your doctor? Like, well, blah, blah, you know. It depends if you're Saudi Khan. Hey, hey now. There's a difference between being an expert and expertise, right? Right.

You know, you can have, you don't have a music qualification. No formal music qualification. You do have, yours is like sport, S&C, like bullshit. Not bad at music, right? Pretty good at music. Right. Could probably explain someone how to put a track together. So it's two things.

It's ideas and action. So if somebody has really good ideas and takes action a lot, that builds expertise. If somebody just has good ideas, that's completely meaningless. You could tell me what you think would make a good song over and over again. And it might be good if I went out and I did that. But if you never went out and you never did that, those ideas are meaningless. Would you, is this not sort of counted by somebody that's a coach? You say, well, you haven't won any fucking world record.

No, but he's, exactly. So the goal is he's, it's not, there's multiple different ways that a coach, a coach is, what have you done for yourself? So have you at least tried to make a journey of improvement in your own performance, whatever that is? And the answer should be yes. There's the, um, the second one is, what have you done for others? And then again, that is not actually world titles, any of that.

It's just visual representation. of improvement. So in sport of weightlifting, which I'm well versed in, if you have gotten someone's total up 20 kilos in like two years, like that's a level of expertise, okay? And then the final one would be formal or informal education. Who have you worked under? Who's mentored you? What certifications do you have in those things? And that's the trifecta right there. All of those things, like if you want to expand beyond that, it's like, okay, well, if you want certain aspects, like we can go further like that's that's the umbrella three so i think that works uh in a sporting situation so okay well give me another one what if you're talking about contribution to

ideas like somebody that comes up with novel interesting accurate insights about the world so that is awesome and and i'll the actors whoever's going to take the action can take those ideas and run with them but that doesn't make the person who gave the idea an expert no Right. Wouldn't an expert have to be some sort of practical... Well, okay, so let me say that... Imagine Alex O'Connor didn't have his degree in philosophy. Right. But came up with a really lovely description, a really lovely summary of how emotivism works.

I believe the breadth of what he's done outside of what he did in Oxford, was it, is so massive that you take away the Oxford. What if it's the first time he's ever done? The first thing ever. Yeah. And he's like, you know, someone just slaps down. Well, be prepared. I mean, you're not going to. debut single, right?

You know, that first idea happens to be a fucking. Well, what if, what if somebody who does know emotivism? What if somebody who's like an absolute G at understanding that sees it and goes, this is brilliant? Right there, I feel he is now like. So you're still having to rely on people within credibility. Because something has, it's like nothing can exist without. outside understanding of that thing. Does it have to be from people that have got credibility, though, in that way?

Or can it not just be, wow, this really improved my life? This understanding improved one million completely unqualified normie's lives. But there's your qualification right there. But that's not coming. This is my point. This is my point. That at no point in that transaction has there been an expert. So, so, yes.

This is the gatekeeping out. So then, so again, those three prongs, it probably hits, one or two of them and it doesn't hit the final one, which is good and it's good enough, but I don't think that people are going to like it. You know what I mean? Like, I do get it. I think it depends on what side of the internet you're coming from. Dude, a good idea is a good idea. I, I swear, it doesn't matter. Like, I take, if someone writes well in my, like, again, my comment section, I don't know who the fuck these people are. And if they write well and I'm just like, I don't care what they've done, who they are. That was great writing. And now I feel

better because of it. You might as well be an expert in my mind. But like this like totality of understanding and like being an expert or being qualified, like that takes a little bit more. And that's kind of a got again, another sliding scale of like how much and where. My main concern is that there is this sort of experts only approach. If you do not have the formal qualification and the illustrious history behind you. Well, can we give an example? Because I have one. Sure.

You and I talked about it all the time. Was it Eric Weinstein was on your podcast? Oh, the one that Coffeezilla brought her. Yes. Yeah, yes. You and I, okay, I really want to talk about this. I'll explain this. This is a good point.

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So you can buy it and try it for three months. If you don't like it, they'll just give you your money back so you can do it completely risk-free. And if you sign up right now, you can get a year's free supply, vitamin D3K2, 5-free AGE, travel packs and the 90-day money-back guarantee plus international shipping by going to the link in the description below or heading to drink asy1.com slash modern wisdom. That's drinkag1.com slash modern wisdom. Coffee's got his second channel, Voidzilla, and this is forever ago now, a couple years ago, I think, when it was much smaller. And Eric Weinstein commented on what do modern women want, and he said, I don't think that the Marlborough man, which was showing his age, is kind of the

classic hyper-masculine perspective that most women are looking for in a partner. And coffee took this and said, Eric Weinstein, managing director at TL Capital, PhD in pure mathematics, what the fuck do you know about what women want? Fair. Completely fair, right? If you take take the surface level perspective of experts only if you do not have credibility in your history and formal qualification and if you're getting out over your skis, interestingly, that's the same conversation

that I'll bring up the idea of an accuracy, budget and experts. Right, very right. Difference being, Eric has been married for 20 years to a woman and his daughter's 19 years old. Yeah. So perhaps he is actually slightly educated

and incentivized to re- understand. I'm on the same side as you, but I wouldn't even acknowledge the argument from the beginning, from the point of being like, what's Eric's credibility to speak on this? And then you go, well, here's his credibility. I go, who are you to question? Like, it's a conversation. It's a conversation. You said, you asked him the question. You said, what do you think the modern women want? And he's kind of like playful about it. He wasn't like, let me tell. He wasn't like red billing everyone. He was just, equivocating. Yeah. He was just. Well, it doesn't seem like they like the Marlborough Man, blah, blah, blah, blah.

He didn't even remember he said that, you know, and like, so I wouldn't even come at it and being like, well, he does have a wife and kid who's, you know, it's like, I wouldn't even go that far. I'd be like, what the fuck? He's allowed to talk about potentially what modern women want. So the problem with that argument, he's potentially allowed to talk about what modern women want. Right.

Feels very flimsy on an internet. Of course, it is super. It's, but on an internet that is hyper obsessed with. pointing out hypocrisy, cringe, people getting out over their skis. And this was why the accuracy budget thing I think is really good. And unfortunately, it'll never exist. But imagine that everybody in the world you could even have, but especially people that talk online, everybody had kind of like a bank account of some kind. And when they contribute in areas that they know well and fairly represent the truth or the best of the evidence, the best of our understanding,

and they sort of move the conversation forward in that way, or they'd sort of replay existing parts of the conversation in a way that represents them fairly. That's good. That kind of adds to the budget. What this allows them to do is to withdraw from that budget when they want to play with ideas that they're a little bit less certain about.

And what I like about this is that it doesn't dissuade people who are maybe coming in from slightly different fields, different domains, from going, huh, I just learned this thing in economics. And I actually think that that really, applies to what we're seeing in the modern dating market or I just learned this thing in AI yeah and I actually think that that really explains what's going on with China right now right right so okay yes this this is a crucial point that so many things have similarities and so many

things are analogous and this is like I hate to bring it back to the hustle culture bros they love analogies they love them it's you and I love analogies and it's like Like, but if you end up using this analogy for something, people are going to go apples to oranges, blah, blah, blah, like they're going to start freaking out on it. But, you know, it is, it's, people want to just, which foam finger am I grabbing today? Which side are you on? Like, what are you an expert in? And that's it. That's, that's the end of this whole thing.

And it's just, it is, it is flimsy to say, well, you should be allowed to talk about certain things. But then when you say the wrong thing, well, you shouldn't have talked about it. It is strange that this sort of freedom of speech crowd are one of the first to jump down people's throats if they get something slightly wrong. Well, actually... But that's also, that is the internet. It's more important to be correct,

or it's more important to correct someone than it is to be corrected, or to be correct, sorry. That's a good way to put it. Everyone wants to correct you. They don't care if you're right or wrong. This is the reason that ironic speech is protection, right? that if you're the person pointing out other people's flaws, you don't have that eye of power

and brought back onto you. The second level doesn't work. Exactly. You're like, hey, hey, hey, look, I'm here as an arbiter. Don't worry, I'm here as an arbiter of truth and I will help you to find out who the grifters and the shills are. I actually asked, I'll ask you, what is a good, what is your best definition of the word grifter?

Well, I would say. Or shill. yeah for me it's charlatan it's usually a fraud but somebody who claims to have absolute answers for things it's usually somebody who is giving you very clear and concise one size fits all answer i think that's that's usually it i think that's a good one for charlatan at least the best one that i've heard for grifter and for shill grifter somebody espousing believes that they do not truly believe themselves so like i say this thing but i don't believe it privately right that's a grifter yep and a shill is somebody who is trying to sell a product or service that they wouldn't use themselves okay would you say that a shill has

been bought by said product or something there has to be some sort of monetary exchange yeah maybe they're doing it for stick yeah i think those are great you could you could shill for the democratic party uh because it makes you look good you're not gaining monetarily but you might be gaining in terms of status. Okay. And Gryfter, I guess, Gryfter and Schill kind of interchangeable. Schill feels a bit more like about capitalism and selling shit. And Gryfter feels a bit more about ideology and ideas, but I've probably got this wrong.

Anyway, what I really like, because I tweeted this ages ago, I was like, hey, people use this word a lot. Tell me people who use this word, what is your best functioning definition of this? And I went through hundreds of replies, and they were all a fucking mess. and there was one dude that got somebody advertising or selling a product that they would not use themselves. I'm like, okay, there, we have a nice framework. And I think that's pretty good. Right, that's pretty good, yeah.

The problem that you have is because so many people on the internet are grifting and shilling, the sensitivity of everyone's radar has got turned up so much that you get pattern matched incorrectly all the time. Yeah. And then the-oh, my God. Like, it is constraining to the way that everybody behaves because you think, well, fuck. Like, if I, if I do this, if I say this thing, like, for instance, when I do the ad reads for modern wisdom, I'm always thinking, even if this is true, this sounds like something. Dude, this is like, this is like, have you ever been pulled over by a cop?

And you're, you're totally not doing anything wrong? and you're like fucking nervous that's literally how that's what this is bro it's it's uh yeah oh my god I've done this this is so funny

because this has happened to me so much like I like I do believe in this thing guys I swear to God and now that I'm arguing that I do believe in it you guys now for sure he feels like a shell okay one time Augie and I we were at this

girl's boutique opening, like she opened this boutique like clothes store in Chicago. It's since been shut, you know. Her daddy paid for it. Augie and I showed up, both wearing Hawaiian shirts, about two bottles of rosé deep. We showed up and we were just

the life of the party, you know, just, and it was, you know, this grand opening, all this stuff. We were making jokes and all this stuff. we left had a great night whatever my buddy hank calls me on the phone he goes hey what's this i hear about you and augy being gay together and i'm like you drank rosé and warth away ago and went to what are you talking about he's like yeah you know olivia was like uh you and augy were acting all gay together and i'm like i i was like now come to think of it we were acting pretty gay you know and now i'm like dude i first off i swear i'm not gay

and saying that sentence made me feel gayer. You know what I mean? So I just stopped. I was like, look, sure. You know, come to think of it, we were pretty gay on that day. And I would have suspected the same thing. But, you know, it's just this denying the thing that you know you aren't might make you, you know, more, not complicit, but like make people be not. The lady doth protest too much.

Exactly. Okay, so another one that you've been talking about recently is cool. Right. What makes something cool? What's your best sort of working model of cool and how it works? So the actionable thing about cool is like not talking. Seriously. Some of the coolest guys in Austin actually.

Don't talk. You and I are patently uncool because of how much we speak. Right. Yeah, that's true. That's it. I mean, that's, we can go down everything, but it's like I talk. talk too much. I think too much. You hear me on this podcast. I'm just babbling. Not cool. It's not cool. So I just, I don't try to be cool, you know. It's the same thing. Like, I'm in music.

I cannot. If I try to be cool, I might be cringe. You know, if I try to be something I'm not. I can't. I can't. I got to just be my authentic self. I got to talk. I got to worry about things. That is very insightful. So there was a study done very recently. I came out about a month ago about what makes someone cool. So I'm going to take you through it and you can jump in whenever you're ready. Early writing on coolness described it as emotional restraint being calm, composed and unbothered. This view rooted in the metaphor of temperature and emotion saw coolness as a sign of self-control and mastery. Nice framing, right? Not bad. They did a study of more than 5,000 people in 12 countries. Each participant was asked to evaluate non-famous people that they considered cool, not cool, and good or not good, and rate them on 15 values and personality traits, extroversion, autonomy, warmth, conscientiousness, stuff like that. Across the 12 countries, so huge range of cultures, different people's cool gets described in really similar ways. And you're talking like Africa, Western countries, Eastern countries. and what it suggests is that the meaning of cool has changed and it's a way to identify and label people

with a specific psychological profile, right? Because if it wasn't, they wouldn't converge on what cool means based on here are a bunch of different psychological profiles. So cool people are outgoing and social, so extroverted. They seek pleasure and enjoyment, so they're hedonistic. They take risks and try new things, so they're adventurous they are curious and open to new experiences open and they have influence or

charisma powerful and perhaps most of all they do things their own way autonomous so extraversion hedonism power adventurousness openness and autonomy those six things right is that comport to a certain extent i i think i think one of the openness openness autonomy do you and i talk about this i think rare just being scarce if you're two available. I mean, this was, uh, I saw a really awesome clip from one of the guys from suicide boys, awesome rap group. And he was saying, you know, we, we couldn't tell anyone in our hometown that we were good. They saw us buying menthols at the, you know, the Quick Mart on a Wednesday. So we couldn't be like, dude, listen to our music. I swear it's good. They're like, yeah, whatever, dude,

fuck off, you know. But to people in Russia, we were the suicide boys. We were cool as shit, you know. It's your, a cheeseburger in your hometown and your steak elsewhere type of thing. That is a level of cool. And it's like rarity. It's something we don't see aloofness. Yes, aloofness. So this is why you see, like, how come Denzel Washington doesn't have an Instagram?

Because if he did, it would only detract from his cool. So, you know, this is where, like, somebody at your status, like, my, start playing with cool, meaning aloofness and all that. The problem is, if it's not who you are as a person, like we said. I'm getting to that. I'm getting to that. That thing that you said before about authenticity, that bit's in here too. But I do think you're right.

I think that we talk too much, dude. Aloofness, distance, it allows people to sort of suck in speculation, and the speculation is cool. Sleep token. President, presidents an even better example. Yeah, I mean, dude, let's take it even more America. Kana here. The new chick at your school. The new chick shows up at your school. She's hot. She's cool. She's different. She's new. Then by like second semester, you're just like, yeah, oh, that's Sarah. Yeah. Fuck. Yeah. Boring. Okay. So this is, I said before that there was a difference between

cool and good, right? So they're asking, cool, not cool, good, not good. And it's interesting because you'd think, okay, are cool people good? Like, intuitively, you think, no, but why? What's the the difference between somebody who is cool and somebody who's good. So cool people were more likely to be described as extroverted hedonistic, powerful, adventurous, open and autonomous. So I think just to break that down, extroverted outgoing, very good, hedonistic. Like, yeah, I can see that too, like sort of short-term pleasures, powerful, yeah, you need to have that in order to be able to sort of enact your influence. Adventurous, yep, also true, open, adventurous and open, very much so, like doing new things, trying new things, being creative, and autonomous, doing things their own way.

So I think that makes sense. Good people, on the other hand, were more often described as conforming, traditional, secure, warm, agreeable, universalistic, conscientious, and calm. So this is like a cozy, reliable, relatively predictable, but hardworking person. And I think one of the reasons that good and cool are different, apart from the fact that there's only like,

a tiny little bit of crossover, kind of an autonomous, conscientious area, is that the problem with cool people is they're unpredictable. They're unpredictable because they're so extroverted, adventurous and open, and autonomous. Yeah, they do their own thing, yeah. How the fuck are you going to be able to predict what they're going to do next? Yeah. This is exactly why Sleep token breaks convention when it comes to, and why they're cool. They're cool because they do seem to be doing things their own way.

Well, this is marketing. this is the you know cultural industrial process through all of it is how can we make how can we popularize cool because like essentially again we say like cool is underground different rare scarce okay so how do we make that popular because that's just like the opposite we they did this with um like the hippie movement in the 60s they did this with i mean essentially if you think of nirvana like Kurt Cobain, to a certain extent, that's why he killed himself, was because, like, he was incredibly depressed about what Nirvana became. It became the exact thing that they didn't want it to be. And, like, it's a counterculture, basically popularizing a counterculture,

which could be counterculture is usually pretty cool. Well, you had a good example of this, represent George Heaton's clothing company. The Owners Club, which is that little thing left breast and then the big back print was becoming so ubiquitous and so worn across the UK that it was maybe going to go the way of Burberry. You know that Burberry was won by Chavs in the UK? Did you know this? No, I did. You know what Burberry? It's got, it's kind of like a crosshatch pattern with a sort of beige background. I don't know why. I have no idea why. But for most of sort of the 2000s to the early 2010s, Burberry was won by Chavs in the UK. And it was kind of a status symbol, presumed. I don't know where the fuck it came from. Because when you

actually think about the positioning of Burberry, it's like a classic British brand. It's trench coats, high-collar trench coats. It's very formal. But anyway, they contend onto it and ran with it. I think you have seen the same to a degree with Stone Island, except for the fact that Stone Island is actually made for football hooligans, right? It's like padded jackets and sort of crew neck jumpers and stuff. of fits the aesthetic a bit more. Burberry was a bit more interesting. Anyway, represent owners club.

And I said this to George. I was like, mate, I see a lot of people wearing owners club. Like, hooray for your bottom line, but are you concerned about overexposure? And he said, yeah, we're killing the range. You can no longer buy it starting in whatever month. He's like, it's gone. We're going to do it because there is such a thing as too much exposure if you want to be cool. And I think, right, it's interesting what you've added in here because I do think that

that that's a dimension that's missing when it comes to cool. How extraded hedonistic, powerful, adventurous, open, and autonomous. Yeah. Aloof for that. But a good question would be, we'll get back to talking in just a minute, but first, some things are built for summer. Sunburns, hot girl walks, your ex posting there, you were road trip, and now lemonade and salt.

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or heading to drinklm-n-t.com slash modern wisdom. That's drinklmn-tt.com slash modern wisdom. Why? would you rather have a cool friend or a good friend? I would much sooner have a good friend. Okay, so why is it that regularly we choose to sort of push to one side, unless we're very mindful, right, if we're a little bit more juvenile or immature,

we push to one side things that are good in place of things that are cool, like what's the allure? And there's an interesting insight here that says, coolness and goodness are related, but they're not the same thing. Your grandma might be a really good person, but that doesn't necessarily make her. cool. The distinction matters because it helps explain why we admire people for

different reasons. One attribute, only one attribute, which is being capable, right? So power on one and I think conscientiousness on the other, was seen as equally cool and good. And I think the interesting thing about being capable is that if you're unable to be

capable, you can't enact your will into the world. How can you be cool if you're at the mercy of the world? And how can you be good if you can't push back against the world? So I was like, huh, okay. That's pretty interesting. And the final bit that loops to what you said, if you want to be cool, authenticity matters.

Previous research shows that trying to be cool usually doesn't work. Trying to be cool usually doesn't work. And can cause someone to lose status in the eyes of others. With wealth, people tend to respect it more if they believe that someone worked hard to earn it. So you can think Silver Spoon versus self-made millionaire. Coolness works differently. if people think you're trying to be cool, you lose credibility.

That's because coolness is about autonomy, originality, and being unconcerned with fitting in. And the fact that so many cultures agree on what makes them on cool suggests that coolness may serve some sort of shared social function. So it's kind of adaptive in a way, right? The evolutionary-pilled side of this. The traits that make people cool may make them more likely to try new things, innovate new styles and fashions, and influence others. These individuals often push boundaries, introduce new ideas in fashion, art, politics or technology. They inspire others and help shape what's seen as modern, desirable or forward thinking. Coolness in this sense might function as a kind of cultural status marker,

a reward for being bold, open-minded, and innovative. It's not just about surface style. It's about signaling that you're actually ahead of the curve and that other people should pay attention. But the authenticity thing is a big part. And I thought that was so funny. We love people that are self-made millionaires, hate people that are trying to be cool. Yeah. Yeah. Authenticity is a wild one, isn't it? Because it's like you need status to show off that your authentic self is worthwhile looking at, at least like in content creation or whatever. Like somebody's authentic self, like no one could care about seeing it.

There's lots of people that are authentic, but don't have any status so they're not respected for their authentic. Right. It's what, you know, it's, it is an amalgamation of a bunch of things as well. There are like juggernauts in music that are like getting older. You have Beyonce, Jay-Z, Taylor Swift, and even like the weekend. Rick Beato had a big thing on this. It's like the room for Cool to come up and take over is just like it's much like we're much more corporatized with our pop artists now. And it seems it seems like that.

What are some of the last breakthrough artists? Well, it just pointed off the back of cool. in your opinion oh man well like current like current breakthrough artists i mean billy eyelish is super cool i think um but she's a juggernaut and she's been around breakthrough is not due to being cool right right i don't i don't know if i don't know red clay strays i wouldn't even say they're like i'm talking huge sure i look it's like um bob dillon was just cool dude right okay like i don't think a bob Dylan could exist now and why it's just too like the world is just too like corporate and and like like I hate I don't want to sound like a hippie on this but like the process of growing from an

independent artist to becoming a Bob Dylan is just too difficult really I would have it's too different I would have thought that the market would have just rewarded whatever the market wants that gatekeepers are that keepers are are there, but if you can say, hey, put me in a fucking spangly blue Unitar and let me do a backflip off this fucking Benson Boone sign, people are going to, people are going to like it, then they'll go that way. Or if they say, we're not going to tell you our names, let's put these masks on, they're going to go that way. It used to be like, man, I heard this band is really good. We got to go check them out. And like, it would be a record label or an A&R guy from a record label or

something to go check them out. Like, they don't have to do that anymore. They just check TikTok, see who's trending. So then now the filter is like, okay, well, who can put together the best video for that sort of potential to exist? Well, because the route to success has been sort of narrowed down through this one aperture, which is attention online, right? That's it. Like, what was the last, I don't even know what this is, the last band that came up the old way by playing live gigs with no online presence simply doesn't exist. Yeah. You mentioned, like Rachel McAdams is another good.

example of this, but Denzel Washington, two big film people that don't have Instagram. Name me the biggest band on the planet that doesn't have Instagram. Oh, wait. It doesn't exist. It doesn't exist. It can't exist. I'm sure that there's an outlier that it's going to make me my fucking hat. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But largely, the point being, promotion is the name of the game, eyes, attention. Right. That is how you grow and move through the industry. So it is, in that way, that makes sense, because if the only sort of, path to success is squeezing yourself through attention online. There are only so many ways that you can do that. The rules of the game online are more compressed than they are when you're just listening to a song and saying, do I like this thing or not? Or going to see a show live and saying, was that good or not? As opposed to, did this particular video or post

manipulate the small number of levers that work the algorithm in a manner to be able to get them to gain attention, right? So it's like taking something from 4K to 360P or full color to black and white. There's only a few ways to do it. And people can try and be innovative, like the world of brand at the moment, all of the biggest brands, Newtonic included. The photos are all like, here's a thing that's going on and oh, there's a product over there. Here's a thing that's going on. I know there's a product over there because the world of sort of front-led marketing

has kind of died. And now it's all about lifestyle marketing. It's like, what's the life that you live alongside this product? And it's just the game that you need to play. Yeah. So the typical kind of music thing is to do a performance online, you know,

and then post that. But if you have a song coming out, you can keep doing performances of your song. like pre-save here check out my new song and all this stuff already tired just saying that it's like boring you know and i've i've done a bunch of live performances on my instagram and only one or two of them have like broken through i've probably done 40 it's like countless hours of trying to like just play a song and hear listen to my stuff and like two of them have broken through so i i one time made just bullshit videos on things that i was thinking like i don't know just

nonsense for 30 days and I got 19.9 million views gained 30,000 followers not one of them had to do with music it was just me talking about life and people were like I like that blah blah you know so that window is so much easier to grab people's attention it is really difficult to

the problem that you have and it's great and congratulations for fucking crushing it on Instagram but you now need to somehow convert those people that came for the vibe into a viewer. And here's the thing, I'm not even going to try. I'm just going to say, if you guys want it, here it is. Because I can't make people do anything. You can't make anyone do anything. But, but

the few that go, they're going to be like, damn, this is really good. And I have had a lot of that. There's a line between how much are you sort of, how much are you growing whatever it is that you do we used to do this in nightlife where the cool kids from around town or the hot girls or whatever, they're the ones that you want at the launch of your new event

and you'd be befriending them and asking them if they want to go for coffee or like checking in about how their fucking football team or like whatever, like some bullshit that you don't care about to then cash in the favor that you've built up this sort of social equity that you and this person have accrued or that you feel like you've accrued with this person

by doing favors for them whatever and then you want them to bring their 15 hot girl friends this event that you've got that's launching on Friday night, a fucking Tuptop Palace in Newcastle or wherever. And that was very tip for tat. I think that it made me see a lot of marketing and sort of that side of social dynamics is very transactional. It was kind of a little bit like being a stripper, a little bit like being a stripper, like an only fan's school. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what you're doing here is basically the same thing. It's just a much longer game with no, you're not asking someone to come to the nightclub at the end of it.

And I think to sort of loop it all back to authenticity, what people can fall in love with is somebody like Dry Creek Dwayne, that wrangler guy that I had on the show about a year ago. And he is somebody who is so authentic or the Rizzler, right? The better example. We're waiting for him to come up, weren't you? The Rizsler. Why is that kid interesting? because it seems like he's being himself

and when did it get cringe when they started doing like dance videos and stuff and felt like it was contrived I want to watch this 32 BMI 12 year old I want to watch him

do goofy silly thing I don't want to see him do brand partnership yeah he's charming and funny and silly and like I'm gonna die early And I want to, like, I mean, there needs to be an intervention. Yeah, that would be sick. What an arc that would be, the Rizzler weight loss arc, getting jacked.

Did you see Serena Williams got loads of stick? Yeah, for, yeah, because of her husband. Oh, man. I mean, I don't even. She looks great. Say what you want. She looks great on his M-Pick. Fucking stacked abs and everything.

Yeah. I mean, she's got insane genetic. She's got the best genetics. Yeah. But also has always been a thicker girl. Yeah. But there's been a ton of muscle underneath that. Whatever, you know.

So then, she's black sunny webb. Yeah. So like, you take a GLP1 and you're always been a jacked person. You just have a little bit of extra body fat. You look great. But if you take a GLP one, you've never worked out a day in your life. You look terrible. Horrible.

Awful. Disgusting. Yeah. You look awful. I mean, look, that's the biggest takeaway has been that most people who have an issue with people losing weight through JLP ones are not fat. People that have actually done the work, the natural way, because they feel like they're being threatened. Right.

Like, you would think, you could imagine a different world where it was... Well, see, but this is why, this is why performance matters more than everything, you know? you can you can I know this is gonna again this is gonna like what's your 5K bro like what's your can you like go up a set of stairs without huffing and puffing can you just walk around like yeah you you took a bunch of gLP ones to lose you know 30 pounds but like are you capable

physically and the answer is no you're not so it's like I still am you know that's that's at least what people could hang their hat on who did it the right way that's true yeah well I mean performance will always have to be at the forefront of weight loss, in my opinion. That's because in order to achieve a calorie deficit without GLP-1s, you need to create the deficit through moving more as well, as opposed to just eating.

And it's likely going to be a better process and a more fulfilling process if that added movement has performance metrics attached to it. Oh, I'm lifting more weights this week or like my, you know, mile time has gone down, these sorts of things. There's something happening inside other than, just fat loss and actually a little bit of muscle loss

and actually probably a little bit of bone density losses. Yeah, I mean, the most healthy way to go about this is to just say the weight loss or looking better or feeling better is just secondary to your performance increase. Well, in that case, does this make an argument that people who are already training should be the ones that go for GLP ones the most? Maybe, sure.

Because they already understand what it is to do the things that mitigate the muscle loss and the bone density and all the rest of this stuff. I mean, yeah. I mean, the question then is like, you know, performance dancing drugs as well. It's the same thing. I'm pretty sure are GOP-1s allowed in sport?

I don't even, yeah, I don't know. I should know that. Because, like, that would be a huge game changer. You wanted to go move down a weight class? Oh, for sure. Or anything that requires lower body weight, which is like... Running.

Yeah, many different sports. Like, lower body... Like, running. a marathon, lose 10 pounds, run a marathon again. It's like going to be easier the second time. Do you know Magnus Midpo? Yes, the rock climber. Fuck me. I was watching him do the Norseman, which is this extreme triathlon. I think it's maybe a 5K swim, 140K bike ride, and then a marathon at the end of it. But the elevation chain is fucking absurd, right? And the water you jump.

into the water at four in the morning and it's in a freezing lake and wherever the fuck. Wait, I, uh, Fergus did this. Maybe the Norseman it's called. Yeah, and you can choose different paths depending on the weather. Have you seen that one? I don't think this is the same. They both suck, but like you have to, it depends on like where the clouds are because like you literally can't see it.

No, no, no, no, it's not this one. There's this one, this one, the first 160 people, uh, that get past this point, get a black t-shirt because they have to do what's called zombie hill, which is the, the steep incline at the very end and the remaining people get a white t-shirt anyway I just watched I mean that rock climber guy I've started being served his shit online he is a fucking freak

there is nothing he can't do French foreign legion selection process walked it trained for 14 days trained for 14 days to do the Norseman came in 79th out of hundreds of people that had been training for over a year and they did his V-O-2 Max

is a part of this thing via 2 max came in at 59 holy shit 50 in above his age is crazy. Yeah, because he's probably late 30s, right? Yeah. Age is a huge, huge factor for V-59.

They were like, elite is... I've got to get mind-tested, bro, because I've been chirp in my comments section, show V-O-2 max. Just show V-O-2, bitch. I mean, it's pretty base response, you know, like, what's your total was my previous one response, and now show V-O-2 is another one, too. But you haven't done your V-O-2. No, I've got to go do it. But I do think, like...

We can do it at NutraBolt. Yeah. Eric will do it. Yeah. Kind of nervous for that. I fear that I would suck a lot. Is it, so V-O-2, is that built through low-end, low-end-end-end-end-zone-2 stuff? No, no, there's different tests, but they always peak.

It always increase. In terms of building it, in terms of the work that you do to build it. Is it both your slow runs and your fast runs? Again, I'm way out of my... Accuracy budget. Yeah, give me that accuracy budget, maybe. Okay. But I would imagine it's everything.

It's like an amalgamation of stuff. But I do think that like, okay, the Nordic 4x4 thing, Norwegian 4x4, the idea of like threshold pace and then like not full recovery but like damn near full recovery and then threshold. Like it's just that threshold work. Just getting your heart going and pumping just constantly without fully maxing out. And like because once you fully max out, the session's over, you know, and I'm talking fully. full like sessions. I asked Andy Galpin about this because what I'd been doing was Threshold. So I'm right in saying threshold is like just pulling below anaerobic, right? Sure. Yeah. It's it's like not completely killing yourself so that you basically can't come back from it. Yeah. And holding the

highest average pace that you can for four minutes, three minutes off, four on three off, four on three off, four on three off. Assault bike is by far, for the people that want to try it, assault bike is by far the easiest way to do this because you don't have to start or stop anything. You don't have to get on or get off anything. You can speed up and slow down as much you want. And Rhonda Patrick, when she came on the show, said that this reversed two decades of heart aging in the study that this was done on. Two decades of that aging is done. And I think it was once a week in untrained individuals for one year, one or two years. So it's like 104, either 52 or 104 sessions. And that's the effect. But I spoke to Andy Galpin. And he was like, no, no, no, no. I want you to end

yourself as fast as possible and then try and hold on and just like spike that heart rate as high as you can and then just hold on and then he said when the second one comes along it's like you can do the same thing but it's just going to be lower and then the third one you can do the same thing and it's going to be lower it might it what what you might run into is kind of it the same thing occurs like the breadth of intensity over the course of the session might be the same you know it's going to be higher peaks yeah or you're just like you're just you're performance goes down, but you had a way high performance in that first bout. So the later bouts are worse. Before we continue, if you haven't been feeling as sharp or energized as you'd like,

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can get an additional $100 off, meaning it's only $400 to get the exact same blood panel that I use. Just go to the link in the description below or head to functionhealth.com slash modern wisdom. That's functionhealth.com. Slash Modern Wisdom. What have you learned from running for 100 days? Oh, dude, I have a great analogy for this. I was thinking about this on the way here. It's like showing up to a classroom.

So your mind is the class of kids. Let's say like 16-year-old kids. And you show up and you're the substitute teacher. Those kids are not listening. They're like, fuck you. You can't even be like, all right, guys, put your phones away. They're like, nah, fuck you, dude. That's your first run for me.

My mind was like, this is terrible. this is terrible. This is the worst thing ever. We're going to stop. And I'm like, you know what? Screw it. Like, we'll get out of class early. That was day one, you know. Day 50, you're like, phones are away. Kids are still interrupting. You're kind of able to like get out the work that needs to be done, but the kids are still

not listening. By day 100 today, which is amazing, I already did my, it's like, you can look at the kids and be like, all right, we're doing what we need to do. And everyone's like, yeah, I know. And they look up and they're like, can we? we get our phones out? You're like, no. What do you mean by the kids? What are they? It's like, that's your mind being like, this is so annoying. I really don't want to do it. It is a distinct. This is why I truly believe like when I say the word, run, go for a run or running, almost universally the response is,

oh, God, no, no way. Because when you start, your heart rate goes up, your muscles fatigue, and you want to stop. Period. You just want to. want to. If you're on a bike, you can sit and you can go a little bit slower. You know, rower you're sitting, you know, it's something distinctly about running that is just brutal in that way. And so my approach to this, and I have since, I think it's a million views, I was like, guys, I'm a running influencer now. And I call it gaslighting yourself into becoming a runner. Essentially, if we look at what running is, it's hopping from one foot to the other, just doing that so what i want you to do is as little effort as humanly possible hopping from

your left foot to your right foot and then doing that in succession really minimal effort now we're just going to lean forward a little bit and move forward i don't give a shit what your pace is i don't care at all i want you to do that for 20 minutes and like accidentally you're going to run like a mile and a half and you'll look at me you'll be i have not run over 400 meters in two decades bro i go exactly this is what it is so i started and i was just like i'm just going to see if i can hop for 40 minutes i didn't even look at how far i ran but it was always over like two and a half miles or whatever and i just kept doing that over and over again and then someone would be like hey do you want to run with me i'd be like i'm not very good but yeah and i would

go and i would die because i could try to keep up with them and it's just like you're constantly overreaching and you're coming back and i'm just so a noob i don't know what the fuck i'm doing dude like i'm i'm new to this but i had to eliminate my ego entirely there was no pace there is no zach the runner there's no gear that i have to buy there's no nothing it's just hop from one leg to the next for 40 minutes why is running taken off so much at the moment do you think i think um influence you know i i would be remiss if I said that I'm not hopping on a trend. But the reason I started was I had this idea I was taking a shit and I was like, hey, it'd be really cool to run a mile in 10 minutes and then

tomorrow try to run it in 950 and then the next day of 940. That's why I started posting and that's why I started running every day. And today is the 100th day of doing that. Not the mile thing, obviously. I gave up on that 22 days in and just continued to run and continue to post. but the reason why I think it's trending is yeah influence like just it's it looks cool the bodies are cool that are doing it and we can get into the hybrid thing too um but the reality is you're taking this aspect of fitness that everyone once you go to the gym and once you grow muscle you're like this aspect of fitness i'm genuinely not going to like the cardio aspect and it's a hugely important scientifically like it is the biggest you know you've had if you talk to

peter atia on here that's his thing too it's like uh CRF cardiorespiratory fitness is like the most important thing period um also having muscles as well and once you have muscles you're like i don't want to do this so what the runners have figured out or the people who want to run is like we have hacked our brains into like kind of like competing to get better times and to see how far we can run. And now we have this aspect of our fitness that is now taken care of because we're we're legitimizing it in our mind, if that makes sense. It's helped me for sure. I'm in the best shape that I've been in in years because I'm like, I want to see if I can get my 5K time down. And I just train the shit out of my upper body and like I normally

it feels a lot like the hybrid thing is kind of come and gone already. I'm not sure. Maybe. I think, you know... I think fewer people post about high rocks and more people post about just running. Yeah. That... It's hard to know, like, what's happening and where. Which subculture am I being exposed to on my fucking tiny corner of the internet. Yeah, yeah.

But I will say this, like, the hybrid schick that everyone loves to hate on is like, oh, so you're a shitty bodybuilder and you're a shitty runner. And it's like, I'll look at Fonz, our boy, Ian. right he's not a he's what everyone wants to look like him okay takes the shirt off everyone goes yeah that's that's pretty fucking solid right there so right there bad bodybuilder says who okay then he posts like his strava it's like eight miles at a 608 mile pace that's really good for for you know an average runner or a shitty runner as everyone says so it's like okay well that is a guy who's a gym bro who has now hacked his way into, like, getting his cardio in

and maintaining leanness. Has the fake Natty debate come for running yet? Ooh, I don't know. I don't see it. Because you can't really fake your Strava thing unless you're going to jump on a bird fucking skilbert. It would be awesome. You did 22 miles an hour for a lot of this run.

But I'm just wondering, you know, because the only anchor that I have for this is the world of bodybuilding and fitness. and the equivalent would be, well, his physique versus his physique, this particular trend, performance-enhancing drugs, age, all of this stuff. But the running community, I guess. Well, running is an Olympic sport, so there's going to be doping. Like, at the highest level, there's going to be doping.

And then at amateur levels, sure, you know. And this is how, like, Icarus started, was amateur level. doping is like huge because amateur races are huge amateurs love to go as hard as they can you know it's like they're a yuppie during the day they're just like working on the computers day trading and then they're like can't wait to post their stravas you know and go try and beat their homies in in marathon stuff they're just hyper competitive people so naturally PEDs are going to fall right into that and that's how acre started people like forget that like it was not an initially a um documentary to expose the the russian doping plan it was a documentary to see he was like i wonder if i can like

get my time to be better by getting a good supervised drugs it just so happened that rod chenkov was his supervisor who was like the lynchpin of of like russian doping yeah and it ended up being an incredible documentary because of it i love that documentary it was he was he was did a second one, right? But it wasn't like a serial. I don't know. The dude that did it went on to go and do a second one. Yeah, it's a...

I've been watching Tour de France Unchained on Netflix. And there's three seasons of this. It's basically Drive to Survive the Formula One thing, but for Tour de France. Bro, it's so fucking compelling. Like, that is... That is so hardcore what those guys do. It is unbelievable.

Yeah, isn't there like a stud right now? There's a couple of, there's a Taddy Pogaccia, who is one, and Jonas Fingerguard, who are the kind of the two guys that are trading back and forth. One of them had a really bad fall over the last 12 months and then came back. I think that was the Giro de Talia, and then didn't have a long time to turn himself around, ready for the tour, and just struggled. But, yeah, these guys are freaks. It's a sick, disgusting sport cycling. To see, the reason I really, really like it is that the protracted suffering story

is really compelling in a way that drive to survive or even Thor Bjornson just broke the deadlift record again. Super impressive, 510 kilos, just keeps going up, unbelievable. But there's no story. There's no story around the pursuit. All of the story is in the preparation of the pursuit. When you're watching Unchained, Tour de France, on Netflix, it is, like, it's so...

How about, I mean, let's go simple with it. How about the art of traveling through space and time, like on a cycle? These guys are up in, like, beautiful Italian Alps, cruising through Switzerland. Of course, it's poetic. And it's like, it's been poetic, bro. You mean that Thor sniffing fucking nose? Yeah, like just sitting like, I can't, I shouldn't move because I need to deadlift today. So I'm just going to sit and eat food and then I'm going to deadlift.

Like, yeah, it's not as romantic. Remotly as romantic. And just thinking of like, bro, 70s Tour de France racing is like the most poetic shit ever. Some guy like smoking a cigarette, like getting a bike ready for this guy is like, are you ready for the race tomorrow? Like, you know what I mean? like in somewhere in fucking Milan or whatever that is romance

we're going to race tomorrow it's a bigger race tomorrow it's the bigger race you know well it's either that I love dude this that or 2000s you want to get me fired up you want to get me fired up on shit

it's like romanticism of things that may have no romanticism around it whatsoever for instance Billy Strings do you know Billy Strings no so there's a style of guitar

it's blue grass and it's kind of flat picking so you like almost pick every note you do a lot of hammer on so you go like do-do you know and you hammer on pull off but a lot of you know

these guys would be great in metal in fact Billy Strings I think was just on a fucking metal tune which is amazing but he was talking I think it was on Theo Vaughan and he was like I did meth and I stayed up for

two three days playing guitar that was it that was all I did I don't think I went to the bathroom. I don't think I did anything but played guitar. And I was like, did this just make meth romantic? Am I just like, you know what I mean? Like, if there is a story, I'm just a story bitch.

You know what I mean? Anything. Anything like that. Like cocaine can be romanticized. Well, certainly some of the stories that you hear about that. Like when you hear Charlie Sheen, right? He's just got this new series that's coming out at the moment. I feel like I've seen clips from that.

Yeah. But he was, you know, I was banging seven gram rocks and finishing them. You're like, you're like, good story. That's cool. I mean, until your life falls apart, that's cool. Right, right. But no, you are right. There's certainly something about, it feels a little sterile now to have everything so dialed.

Yes. Yes, bro. This is like, there's a meme about, we can talk about running again. It's like, there's the like, just got into running. pretty good at running and then like the badass runner and the badass runner

is like same shoes from 1996 like shitty shorts like Cassio watch and just like some shitty hat he's like I don't know dude I just ran like a

230 marathon I don't know whatever that's romance right there we love that and it's you know to go back to the tour it's like

well we can't science everything it just always comes back to suffering which is So romantic. I'm going to put myself through hell. And then it's going to feel awful and everything's going to be telling me no. And I'm going to keep saying yes and yes. That was one of the reasons that the Kipchoga two, a breaking two thing, was awesome. But actually a little bit less awesome. For sure. Than it should have been. He had people who was drafting off of. And a Tesla in front of him that he was pacing off of and lasers on the floor. And they'd done specific genetic tests. to work out precisely the fall off

of glucose in his muscles and this is the mixture that's at this point and this is the mixture that's at this point and that's sick and it's basically It's exciting in its own way

it's treating a human like a Formula One like an engineering project to be mastered and that's really beautiful but I don't know whether you would necessarily look at Chris this is another duality

we have practicality and we have the fucking story dude and so much of this podcast and so much of what you do is like demand It demands practicality. It demands optimization.

It demands all these things. But at the end of the day, bro, the way I know you, the way that you think is it's up in the clap. Like you... It's like you feel like you're in a movie. And, you know,

things can uplift you in a way. Like, looking at your vlogs from your tour shows, those are not... That's not optimization. That's just love and... like the hero's journey and we all have to dig into that and so much of the content in everything that we're wrapped up in all the time is like here's the best way to do this here's

this this this this and it's like at the end of the day is you shut the fuck up let me just feel this story and at least believe in something that might not even even exist is that not the lure of somebody like a david goggins or a cameron haines sure sort of a blunt instrument that's kind of I don't really, I saw Truitt do the Leadville 100. Yeah. And he does this video. And he's talking about how he's got, they call drop bags maybe, or grab bags or something. It's the aid station prefabricated, this much glucose and this bar and this other stuff.

And he's, they're already made, like little pack lunches, I guess, for your run. And they're at each of the different stations or whatever. And his dad had left, Cam had left. and didn't have anything and he said yeah dad dad left the house and he didn't have any

drop bags he'll probably just go to a you know a gas station like pop in and just find like see if there's anything there that he likes to look of

and like some beef jerky and the RX bar or something yeah yeah I just thought I think that that is part of the allure but even within that

people are so quick to jump on the cringe thing right because that's yeah but results yeah but results Yeah, but results can beat the shit out of that. Fuck that off. Totally.

That's a good. That is a good point. Results are so underrated. It's crazy. As a fucking salve. Yeah. Shut the fuck up. Here's my results.

Fuck off. I mean, that's the same thing as the sleep token stuff, right? That you say, who are these fucking homos in masks? Yeah. One of these fucking theater kids doing in masks. They are theater kids. That's great. Okay.

Yeah. But results. Yeah. Come on. Same as Noah from Bad Omen's. Yeah. You go, I mean, yeah. Too aloof.

You don't talk enough. I want to see more forward-facing stuff. And you go, we break records all the time. We're like one of the biggest rock bands in the world. Do you, where do you feel like you could improve as far as, um, just where do you feel like you could improve? How about that? How about that for a question?

I'm going to flip the script on. An endless list of things. If we stay on topic then. I think I would be significantly happier and significantly better at the things that matter most to me if I cared less about the opinions of others. A lot of... Yeah, but bro, you don't realize how little you care about people's opinions because I see it. And this is a thing. This is my job is to be like...

Like, for instance, your TikTok, dude, there was a video where I'm not kidding you, there were thousands of comments. just bra fucking boar in your TikTok bro and you're like oh I forgot I had a TikTok that you don't know how little you actually care

but that's easy to do when you're there's a difference between not caring and being ignorant okay I was ignorant right that had that ever occur I mean this is a great example I'm glad you brought that up when that happened

and it's happened a lot when that one happened the first thought in my head was how silly for me to care about this furor fucking meltdown that's happened on this stupid little platform that I don't even, you know, like, how silly?

Yeah. And then immediately my next thought was, oh, that's all of them. That's all of them. That's the whole thing. But how did it have happened on my YouTube? I had it have happened in my Spotify comments. How did it have happened as a response to my email that I sent it?

Fuck, if it was in my email inbox, right? The one that I sent three minute, Sunday out from. Then I would have been, oh, oh, that, I've done gone fucking fuck myself here. So, okay, you may disagree, but, not fully, not fully. Carrying less about, or at least fearing, fearing the sort of judgment stuff. Right. Would make a big difference because I think there's lots of things that I like the idea of doing, but for fear of looking silly, for fear of criticism for fear of getting it wrong. I don't move as quickly as I should do. I take, I'm very sort of deliberate, which is good because it means that I kind of rarely fail at most

decisions that I make. Right. But it also means that I'm leaving so much on the table by going so slowly with things. And there's levels to this game, right? Like I'm comparing myself to people that move really, really fast and break shit all the time. And other people who might move more slowly, whatever, whatever. So that would be one thing, I think, sort of the opinions of others. the this is kind of associated to it but the the bravery to believe that you've sort of got the support of people even if you're not continually putting stuff in front of them so like continuing to be prodigious at like the pace that stuff goes out you know quarter of a million words written on the newsletter over the last five years and that goes out every single Monday and the pod

and all the rest of this stuff. But because there is a little bit of a hamster wheel that you get on with regards to that, which I love. A big part of the reason there's 150 episodes of year is because I want to have 150 conversations. And if I drop down to two a week, I only get 100. And that's a lot less. And that sucks. I want to have this many conversations. But you don't get to do the aloof thing. Right. At what point do you think that you will have the results that you want, that you can step back and not try less hard, but work less hard? I don't know what that means. Like, I understand that maybe means publish fewer podcasts, but that means, for me, I have to have fewer conversations. And that would, that's like a hundred a year? A hundred. I get

100. So each person's 1%. yeah that's a lot yeah that's hard that's like it for me because that's why i've got used to and so much of it's anchoring buyers you know you look at um guys that do one episode a week and that's one one week is two percent of their whole inventory for the whole year and i'm like oh my god unbelievable i do like that you're doing like these live events because that can it's the big push it's a big spike like i got to do something extra i got to push myself a little bit. So that's actually a really good point. I am a creature of routine, as you know, and that has been a huge benefit. And I think that people who don't have routine will regularly have their lunch eaten by people that do. Because there's not, there's basically nothing that you can achieve in this world that doesn't require consistency. Even the greatest one-hit wonder, like Gangnam style or whatever the fuck, I bet that guy had, spent or whoever wrote that song did not just do it out of thin air yeah the construction of that

particular fucking cultural moment sure was not just conceived of overnight and then published the next day that's not the way it works uh however if you're the sort of person who has a disposition i like routine i sort of get into this it becomes the groove that you sink into quickly becomes like a valley that you can't climb out of and you get locked into ways of operating ways of thinking. But how does that make you feel then? Like if it, if it's interrupting your, you, it's interrupting the very person you are. Do you feel like, do you feel like you're okay? You know what I mean? Do you feel like, like, do you ever feel like you're swimming in deep waters because of the amount of work that you're doing or the amount of? Sometimes. Sometimes I do. It doesn't get super

overwhelming. It hasn't gotten, the most overwhelming it was was last year. Last year was the most overwhelming. This year's been overwhelming for a different reason because I've been trying to have two jobs at once, one which is my job and the other which is fixing my health. But last year was the sort of closest I came. There's a vlog from L.A. when I do all these episodes back to back to back to back to back in the fucking car garage. And I'm in between two of these episodes. I've got my head sort of resting my eyes are resting in the heels of the palms of my hands and uh i was like yeah that guy's you're that's too much that's that's you're sort of pushing too hard but on the flip side of that this is the perennial question that we sort of started with people want to really

fucking i want to make a dent in the world i really want to make a dent in the world and i want to enjoy my time too and how do i find this balance It's a silly pursuit, though, trying to make a dent in the world, but you do it anyways. Everyone does. So Frank Zappa, there's a really interesting interview. I don't know who was asking the question. I think it might have been either like Barbara Walters or Katie Couric. They're like, how do you want to be remembered when you die? And he's like, what? I'm dead. You're talking about I don't, there's no remembering. There's no me. And he died. I mean, he like knew this was a premonition he had. And I saw it. And I saw it. I was like, oh, that's, you know, that's the reality of this whole thing. Oh, yeah. If there are, if by making a dent that sounded like leave a legacy, that is not what I meant. Yeah. I simply meant, I want to feel like I happen to life.

And that when I get to look back, I'm like, fuck, like, yeah, like I did a thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Really did a thing. And there is a mark that was left as opposed to me kind of just coasting through. All that being said, you're right with what you say about doing the live show sort of rips you out of the hamster wheel, it rips you out of that sort of regularity. It's the reason that, you know, I basically lived in New York for a month, last month and then went and did London straight from there, then I'm back, then I'm back to London

for the health conference, then I'm doing the roast of Andrew Huberman, L.A., then I'm doing Tony Robbins, then I'm back, and then we're on tour. And that's the final third of this year is just fucking trips to the UK, L.A., and tour. That's it. Yeah. So imagine you have a... theater full of people they're all bright bright eyed and ready to watch you and they're there to listen to you and you finish up and it was great you finish up and you go you guys this

experience that you had me talking to you didn't matter because my eyes are on my future and I want to make a dent in the world that's what they offer is like you could you would never say that you know we live in a digital space where you you can have a impact on people and a comment will come, a thousand comments will come, holy shit, Chris, oh my God, even, you know, but because maybe it happened so much and maybe your eyes are set on the next, what's next, what's next, these people that are coming up to you, that is, this is like the ultimate gratitude maxim that you need to work on. So low impact. This is one of things, I think that we see one of the reasons that you see create a burnout online, and it's so strange to look at whatever percentage of primary school children want to be a YouTuber or a content creator or an influencer or whatever for a job. And you are going out of your way to pick a job which has a really huge asymmetry between the level of gratitude that people think they will have before they get into it and the level of gratitude that people have when they do get into it. So there's a few.

examples like this. New Orleans, a place that is one of the most fun for me to visit, that is one of the least enjoyable that I would like to live. Pickleball, one of the most fun to play that is one of the worst to spectate, right? Things that from the outside are different, George Max got his Call of Beauty versus War thing, right? What does Call of Duty looks like? Being in a band. Being in a band from the outside looks fantastic. You're on the road, you get to have loads of fun, you're playing in front of crowds, people sing your songs, all the rest of it, from the inside. You don't have a routine, your sleep's all over the place, your health's fucked, you get to eat a square meal, and your relationship is in the toilet. Like, that's the reality of it, call of duty versus

what? One of the things that when you look at, and this is a unique category, right, because it's swallowed up so many other umbrellas of other bits of work. Musicians are also content creators and fucking news anchors are also content creators and poets, you know, it is the least in many ways the most sterile and least gratifying form of having a massive amount of impact in terms of

your positive feedback from it and that's not to say that I or anyone you anybody else that's sort of in our circle ungrateful for how fucking amazing it is that people love what we do but that for how much people love what we do the level of felt sense

is just so we did when I was doing the with James two years ago when we did our first like live tour we played to 350 people in Edmonton right and it was fucking freezing cold like actually freezing freezing cold we went outside to this porter cabin thing and there was pizza actually quite nice pizza and and warm diet sprite warm diet sprite and then I went out and I did my half hour and I came back and James did his thing. And that was so, and I remember the drum and bass DJ that came on after us, and I remember, blah, blah, blah, blah, and the same thing just is not true in the same way.

And I think that humans, the way that we're built to feel gratitude and imbibed memories and, like, encode the shit that we've experienced is much more visceral and felt and feel. In person. Yes, it's in fucking person. I have a great example of this. Do you remember meeting me at the bar? here and I was like bro some I went up uh I went up to the bartender I said do you guys have any non-alcoholic beers and they're like actually we don't I was like that's fine I'll just get a rambler he comes up and he goes I love your music this one's on the house and you showed up after it and I was like what do you mean you love my music like he's like what do you

mean what do I mean I'm like well do you follow me on Instagram he's like no dude I just saw your music on Spotify recognized you that had never happened to me before ever ever i took a picture of that rambler you showed up and i told you about it at that moment that is if that's not gratitude i don't know what is and that is a interpersonal relationship right there that is it touching reaching out and touching them and that that i say that actually i say that about the influencer thing but i have to assume that authors you know you spend all of this time writing this big tree thing. And this is forever. This is fucking hunchback of Notre Dame, it's everything, right?

And you write this big tome, and then it goes off and it gets printed, and people read it, or buy it, and you see the money, and then maybe charts or whatever, and maybe you even see sort of tweets and all of the stuff back and forth, but these people have spent hours, hours immersed in this very interactive relationship between what you put and them and their, the, the, unique thing about reading it's the only pursuit really that you can do now as a recreation that is a it's a mono pursuit so while doing it you can be doing nothing else right right even rolling Brazilian jiu jitsu you can be thinking about your fucking relationship yeah right while you're reading unless you're doing that thing where you're scanning the words and then you just

have to go back yeah that's not reading uh you can't do anything you can't do anything else so it's a really unique this person's like lived or you you with the writer the writer that's the author has lived inside of this person's fucking mind. Like some weird parasite. It's why, bro, it's why I pursue music so hard. And I love, you know, it's like the guy who does those sculptures, the sand sculptures, or not even sand sculptures, like ice sculptures, things that just go away. Beauty. People, you admire the beauty, but the fact that there's a time limit on it makes it even more beautiful.

Bonnie Blue, time limit on it. your 10 minutes are up sweetheart I got 900 to go no so like playing playing for people who don't know who I am who are like oh this is awesome in that moment

and then they just leave and never think of me again like I actually think that's amazing I think that's awesome how much less awesome would it be if that was just on shuffle on Spotify or was on the radio or was a thousand times less because they don't you don't get to see

the for those 3.5 minutes while you're playing the song you don't get to feel the positive reinforcement so yeah I think it's a huge missing component that sense of sort of positive reinforcement to the thing you got to reach out

and touch grass yeah well you got to touch grass but you have to reach out and shake hands with people you have to holy shit yeah Zach Tallander ladies and gentlemen

where should people go check out all the shit you're doing uh check out my music

it rules any streaming sites just search tellander Spotify Apple all that good

stuff uh Instagram Zach underscore Tellander and YouTube Zach Tellander

uh wait Chris I have one thing I have hit me hit me with it don't end the show it's a rhythm stick

hit me okay okay Okay, this one's going to be, get serious here for a second. Okay. Chris, so much of the good in my life has occurred because you've been in it. You've taught me lessons I couldn't teach myself. You inspired me to work harder.

You have been an incredible influence on me these five very formative years in my life. Because of you, I believe in myself. Because of you, I believe I'm smart enough to speak freely in front of audience. Because of you, I believe that I have enough talent to perform my songs for crowds I wouldn't dream of playing for. Because of you, I know what it means to have a friend. In a time in a man's life when the rubber hits the road, the friends from childhood start to peel away, the conversations between them become fewer and farer between. I expected this in my life, and then you came along. You have been my biggest fan and not because I tried to make it.

make you one, but because you believe in me. I don't care if you're a successful podcaster. I don't care if you have a million subscribers and followers. I care about you. I care about your happiness. Ultimately, I want you to win more than anything. You're my best man, the godfather and my beautiful daughter, Charlie, and you're my best friend. I love you, man.

I love you. I love you, too, bro. That's it. wrap. Thank you. Wow. What a way to finish.