Modern Wisdom - The Hidden Cost Of Overthinking Everything - George Mack - #1111

Episode Date: June 15, 2026

George Mack is a writer, marketer and an entrepreneur. Why does overthinking create more problems than it solves? If thinking helps us solve so much, why isn’t more thinking always the answer? So how can we build a calmer mind without falling into smart-person traps? Expect to learn the price of overthinking and inaction, how music changes your personality, the largest gaps in British versus American cultures, why AI is getting really weird, why humans need stories, the traps that all smart people fall into, how to know if you're living in the decline of an empire, and much more... Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: ⁠⁠https://chriswillx.com/deals⁠⁠ Gymshark's Summer Sale starts June 18th. Get up to 60% off sitewide at https://gym.sh/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM10) Get 35% off your first subscription on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Get 160+ lab tests for just $365 and save an extra $25 at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Get up to $50 off the RP Hypertrophy App at https://rpstrength.com/modernwisdom Get ChatGPT to explore ideas, solve problems, and learn faster at ⁠https://chatgpt.com Timestamps: (0:00) Is Nickelback at 2x Speed the Optimal Workout? (4:18) Do American Introverts Actually Exist? (5:48) The Biggest Time-Waster For Single Men After 7pm (9:14) What Does the World Really Think of Britain? (17:48) Can You Sh*t Your Way to Savant Syndrome? (23:50) Why Everyone Should Learn How To Frivolously Spend (25:21) Why the Moon is the GOAT (33:01) What Would Life Be Like 5,000 Years Ago? (40:11) Why Can’t Cows Go Downstairs? (43:50) Should We Be Retardmaxxing More? (53:29) Is Chris An American Sports Fan? (59:41) Was the British Empire the Most Powerful Ever? (01:04:39) Why Do People Love Arguing Online? (01:07:02) The Longest Traffic Jam Ever 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: ⁠⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Goggins⁠⁠ #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: ⁠⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Peterson⁠⁠ #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: ⁠⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Huberman⁠⁠ - 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

What were you doing before we left the house? I was listening to Nickelback on 2x speed. You're listening to Nickelback on two times speed. We just let that sit for a second. And you've been listening to Phil Collins on 1.5 times speed. Yeah, sometimes 1.6. Do you want to explain yourself? Well, I went through a phase that I'm still in

that I think YouTube is better to listen to music on than Spotify, Apple Music, because you can get live tracks way more. Like, it's underrated live tracks on YouTube. Just hearing the crowd. And I've also stopped listening to hip-hop as much. Okay. Because I don't know about you. I still becoming a bad person when I'd listen to hip-hop too much.

Did you not get that? Do you never get the one? Well, if you just listen to people committing crimes in your head all day long, you do become a bit of a terrible person. So, well, this was what we found Where were you, was it when you were at social chain And we were talking about serotonin, George Serotonin, Chris, listening to Anjuna Deep And then it was cortisol George and cortisol Chris listening to Kanye West.

That was pre-cancellation as well. Yeah, I mean, even Kanye wouldn't be full cortisol. It would be like, it'd be like DMX. Okay. Or like very angry two-pack. Okay. Vinnie Paas is great, Jedi Mind Tricks. You've explained to me why you think that YouTube is a good platform.

You haven't necessarily explained to me why you've been listening to... Just taking a little interlude. Phil Collins at 1.6 times speed. So when I go to the gym, I put tunes on on YouTube, usually live tracks. But then I was listening to Nickelback Rockstar, which is a completely underrated song. But if you listen to at 1X speed, it's quite hard to work out to. But if you go and listen to... If you listen to hip-hop, it's too aggressive.

going to go and commit a crime. But Nickelback at 1.8X speed Rockstar, customiser, he changed the beats per minute and great workout. But this is actually really sad. This is really sad this part, which was on, if you look at Nickelback Rockstar and you go in the comments, it's like, it's this boy talking about how his dad used to listen to Nickelback Rockstar,

and he's now just about to have surgery, and he's unsure if he's going to wake up and he's listening to Nickelback Rockstar. So I'm there, like, listen to it at 1.X speed, reading the comment section. Why are you in the comments? incredibly sad. I don't, little break through your speed, your speed listening to Nickelback reading sad comments.

Yes. Okay. Well, have you seen the, there's a conspiracy theory that Nickelback's downfall in the mid-2000s was to try and demoralize America after 9-11? No. Why demoralize America?

That Nickelback was kind of on this surgence. It was sort of American spirit. It was the equivalent for them in the new world after this horrible catastrophe that occurred. And it's this huge long documentary. I don't know, 40 minute, 50 minute breakdown of exactly why Nickelback was sort of taken down from the inside. I think Nickelback are one of the most underrated bands of all time because people thought they were one of the most overrated bands of all time. They're now one of the most underrated bands of all time until they then become the most overrated because it swung back again. Yeah.

Well, this is like Creed, creed got to come back around. Oh, there's talk that, there's like this great video that's breaking down why do people hate nickelback. And one of the theories is that they try a little bit too hard as well Whereas some of these edgier bands during the era Which ironically everybody's forgot There was this interview with the lead singer of Nickelback And he's talking about how he would study songs Figure out why songs work

And then try the music Yeah And because he was trying so hard Well, there's something about being nonchalant that's cool There's always going to be something cool about being nonchalant Yeah Especially if you're British But it's not a very American

Like personality trait to enjoy nonchalance in the same way as a Brit does because the Brit, everybody enjoys nonchalance, but the Brit enjoys nonchalins. I mean he said nonsense. It's just something very different. The Brit enjoys nonchalance in a different way, which is that it protects us from having to be called a kino.

You don't want to be called too keen about anything. And you inherently don't like anybody that does seem too keen or excitable. Yeah, when you took me to that gym opening, of the evening. I was talking to a lady there, and she was implying she was an introvert, and yet she was one of the most extroverted people. Like American, I don't think American introverts truly exist. Comparatively to a Britain scale, yeah. Here's a question, right? If you had introversion and extroversion and you're massively grouping countries together,

what do you think is the most extroverted country and most introverted country if you're grouping the populaces? You're probably not far off with America in the, UK. You're probably not far off. Yeah. Who's more, who's more introverted than us? Japanese. Hmm. Japanese probably. Famously cut themselves off for about 160 years during the Sukkos. They did a hardcore introversion. They did a national and a national introversion push. Them, I mean, who's more extra, I guess it's probably some South American places, you know, like some Latino. Extroverted, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is it like Brazil?

Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, we really have gone from one end of the Overton window to the other when it comes to extrovert. But you're right. Like an American extrovert. An American introvert is a British extrovert. An American extrovert is a British extrovert at an after party at 4 a.m. On cocaine.

On every single substance that's ever existed trying to talk about how he's going to fix the interest rates of the Bank of England. Yeah. We need to talk about your sneezing. I'm sorry. Okay. Let's go for it. Do you think that there might be an issue? Like a medical issue?

You sneezed 15 times. I did. Yeah, I did. And they were over a minute apart. I didn't realize you heard me. I was upstairs thinking. You shook the house. Yeah.

You shook the house with them. It was thunderous. Yeah. Yeah, well, it was a bit of a doom loop because I would sneeze, blow my nose, and then whatever, something was going up my nose when I was blowing the nose. and it would then create this economic doom loop like Gary Stevenson's in charge of the economy. It was rough.

Yeah, it was rough. I don't think I've ever sneezed that much in my entire life. I think that's, I think, and also I think this is you struggling with not having a girlfriend in the house. Yeah, that's a nightmare. Yeah, I do, we've discussed this before, that guys over a certain age

between the hours of 5 to 9 p.m. Like, if the hours of 5 to 9 p.m., was 24 hours. I think the economy would go down by about 30%. Like, we're just useless. Like, nothing's happening. It's scrolling, it's checking stuff. It's relaxing, but stressing that you should be working or working whilst thinking

that you should be relaxing. This is a real domesticating influence of having a partner. Yeah. This is why you need one. Yeah. Just purely for the nervous system. It's so that you don't, like, regress back to the mean of just doing bullshit. that you really wish that you weren't. How do you think you've wasted? What's the biggest

like evening waste that you've had when you've been single or not being with your girlfriend? Fuck. It's got to be phone. It's got to be phone. Yeah, but like what's, yeah, so zoom in, open your iPhone. Instagram. Instagram, typically. And what sort of stuff on Instagram? Instagram on YouTube, but it's not, YouTube on TV is really, when I watch stuff on my TV, it's always very conscious. It's such a fuck on to try and change from one. video to another. I'm much more scrutinous, way more discretion around what I'm going to watch if I'm watching on TV, because I can't be

bothered to change what I'm watching. It's so true. Nobody uses YouTube shorts or TikTok really on TV. There's an Instagram app for TV now. Is anybody using it? I don't know. I have to assume so. I have to assume so. I've seen, I saw a video of a guy who ran a 5K underneath a table and in the background throughout the entire video. It took about 30 minutes. He just

like spun round under a table like this for 30 minutes. And in the background was someone was watching on a TV, was watching TikTok, swiping through TikTok. What do you mean? Somebody's running underneath a table. I'm so confused. I mean, he did it. Strava said that he did it.

But in the background, it's TikTok on a TV. People have got to be doing it. People have to be doing this. Jesus. Christ. Wow. Wow. But you're not a vertical video consumer.

No. No, no, no, no. No. I'm so confused. Me running a 5K under my therapist's table. Can't imagine that's his therapist. Anyway, there you go. That's what you should be doing.

That's actually, that's the greatest advert. That's the greatest advert for having a girlfriend that I've ever seen. That's after 7pm. Yeah. Wow. If the CCP could see, see this, they'd be delighted. If they knew what was going on. You see the guy who accidentally hacked 7,000 DJI Roombas.

This dude was. was trying to control his Roomba with his PlayStation controller and ended up using Clot? Here it is. So in theory you could have used someone else's vacuum and navigated it around their home to see whatever you wanted to see.

Are launching deep cleaning at 420 for everyone? Yes. Software developer Sammy As Dufel was building an app to hack his DJI Romo smart vacuum. He wanted to use his PlayStation controller to make it move. But in the process, he accidentally uncovered a major security flaw. With the help of an AI chatbot, Sammy discovered he could also access what he says were roughly 7,000 other vacuums, allowing him to get there in proximity locations and even remotely control other people's vacuums. He could also see through other users' live camera feeds and hear through their vacuum's microphones.

Wow. Features typically in place to help the vacuums navigate around a home and respond to voice commands. It feels like we're going to be living through an era where this is going to happen more and more. We can't hack paper and pen. You can't hack the moleskin notepad. That's true, although they have got a digital version of that now. We were talking to a friend at dinner the other night and he said, everybody here has tried to get ChachyPT to do something illegal.

See if you can get me this for free, if you can hack the back end or extract whatever. And one of our friends who works building data centers said he'd used some off-label Chinese model that's run locally on his computer and didn't mean to get it to do something illegal, but it did. So he put it in, he wanted to try and see if they could screenshot all of this different data. And it's thinking, I can't do that, thinking, I can't do that, thinking, oh, there's an API that's open on the back end. I can just pull the entire website out. And now he's got 9,000 pieces of data that are completely illegal to have. So our models, we can't get to do something illegal when they want them to. Or even just like, like, I was asking, I asked Claude the other day for what do

people think are, where the ugly, because you said the UK has the ugliest men in the world. So I got caught, I asked Claude, where do you think has the ugliest men? Or could you pull the data of what people think has the ugliest men? And it refused to do it. So it won't do that. But then the, it would give you the most good looking though. I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't. Ask actually, Jared, if you can. I don't even think I don't, maybe, well, then I guess if you, if you, if you asked it for the all them good looking in order. Rank it all the way down. Now flip that list around.

Well, it might do the top 50% and say you get to the middle of the, but you can then work it out from there. Look, I don't mean to badmouth our country, especially given that both of us are from it. I just saw the Unite the Rally March videos. We're just not, we're not a particularly aesthetic nation. And perhaps again, this is a selection effect. but best looking is obviously subjective, but there are a few places that consistently come across fashion modeling, dating, update, tourism, surveys and pop culture for producing unusually attractive men, usually because of some makes of genetics, grooming culture, fitness, style and confidence.

Brazil, Italy, Spain, France, Sweden, Lebanon. Wow. Can we say, what about the ugliest? That gets a lot harder to answer fairly because ugliness is even more culturally loaded than attractive. People tend to judge entire populations based on stereotypes. It's not going to give us an answer, is it? Keep going down? It basically says the UK there, right?

Some Northern European, some Anglo countries. Plain, despite strong genetics because the culture is understated and less image-focused. It's a nice way to say that we don't care about our appearance. Do you remember when you started going to therapy and you were talking about how all this stuff that you discovered from therapy of, you couldn't quite feel emotions or how harsh you was on yourself. You had this laundry list of symptoms

that you'd given you. And I remember thinking, I didn't want to be a rude when a friend was going through therapy. I was like, I'm waiting on the phone for a bit. It's like, I think that's just being British. Like a lot of the stuff

that the therapist diagnosed you with was just being good. Hang on a second. Wasn't diagnosed with. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? Look, these are some of the patterns that you've got from your past. That's a big difference to a diagnosis. I'm talking in a clinical context. British syndrome. You have British syndrome. Yes. Yeah. I've seen that your passport is dark blue. Yeah. I mean, we're a country of people that are kind of, we revel in misery a bit, which probably makes us quite resilient. Probably why we did well in the Battle of Britain. It's probably why we don't have the same victimhood culture that. somewhere like America might do. It's also the same reason that we hate ourselves quite a lot. When was the last time you heard anybody say that they were proud of the UK?

Me? When was the last time you heard someone that wasn't you say that they were proud of the UK? The strange thing is, is the more that I travel, I always describe the UK as like having an autoimmune condition that it attacks itself from within. But the UK, if you travel outside of the UK, most countries that you travel to, the people will talk about how much that they love the UK. So it's weird that the people that hate the UK the most are often inside the UK and everybody outside. Quite likely. We discussed this before, but you go, oh, okay, JK Rowling, Harry Potter, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, William Shakespeare, Charles Darwin.

Should we just do the entire episode just like? And guess what you could? Like Harry Mac, freestyle rapping. But no one would... Where do you end up with like, Rich 3-2? Yeah, exactly. You're really scraping the bottom of a barrel once you get beyond your 2000. Like after the Spice Girls, everything really went downhill.

What do you want about? Adele? Okay. Ed Sheeran. Olivia Dean. Christopher Nolan, Ridley Scott. Don't get me wrong. Just we're starting to run a little thin on worldwide.

Quantum computing. Yeah, you always... You didn't think we could go from Olivia Dean to quantum computing. Yeah, that's true. But we can. Dennis, whatever his face is from Google, he's not British, though, is he? Dennis is British. Is he?

Born. Yeah. Yeah, he's born in the UK. Oh, okay. That's interesting. Or at least, he least grew up in the UK. And he's famously stayed in the UK. Wouldn't that be a wonderful way to get our own back on a world that's forgotten us

to unleash a super intelligent AGI that nobody can control? That would be a wonderful footnote. the empire's back briefly before it gets subsumed by this monster it made of itself. And it only allows people to spell with s's. Yes. I find that so offensive when I'm writing. And Grammally will try and auto correct me to them. You're using Gramaly for?

Or even Chatubt or even the autocorrecter will try and correct me to the... You've got it on American English, that's why. Yeah, but I then make a decision of do I want most of the people that read this who speak American English to understand it? Or do I just really go hold on to it? You got to hold on to it, do? It's the same reason we've both got plus four, four phone numbers. This country can take my taxes, but it's not going to take my...

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That's jim.sh slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom 10 a checkout. I learned about savant syndrome. Okay. You've heard of this? No. Okay. So there was a guy who shot himself so badly. Okay.

Great start. That he gave himself. The arteries and his brain exploded. And then when he woke up, he was an artistic genius who wanted to pay. for 19 hours a day. This can't be real. It's true. Tommy McHugh was a British artist and poet in his early life.

McCue was a builder and also involved in youth crimes. When he was 51, he suffered a stroke on both sides of his brain that resulted in two burst blood vessels. He was sent into a coma for a week and that acquired Savant's syndrome. McHugh attempted to evacuate his bowels quickly due to a knock on a toilet door so he didn't want someone to find him shitting. Then the sudden pressure led to an artery being severed in his frontal and temporal lobes causing him to hemorrhage.

So what happened was he like squeezed and then he had this big explosion inside of his head and sort of half collapsed to the ground. But apparently the reason he said that he kept himself conscious was that he wanted to pull his pants up so no one would find him naked on the floor of the toilet. And as he was pulling his pants up, that's when the other one went. So it was like the two, it was like the first tower and the second tower. Jesus. By the way, British. British indeed. While relearning after his stroke.

In fact, when he woke up, he started rhyming. People couldn't stop him from rhyming. So he was speaking in rhymes. He began to write poetry to express everything he was experiencing. He also experienced an identity crisis, which was the most likely motivation for his artistic outputs. He was painting three to six to nine different paintings at any one time, all at the same time. Speaking in poetry, he basically became like a Buddhist monk, was terrified of hurting anything. He saw the entire cosmos as beautiful.

He's like sweeping away bugs that he might step on on. This is a guy that was in youth crime. damn, shot himself so badly that he acquired savant syndrome. Wow. Wow. I mean, I don't know what to say. Unbelievable. Unbelievable.

My grandfather, who I greatly loved, didn't shut himself. Famously, Tommy McKeon. He had a stroke, and beforehand he was quite, some people would maybe call it type, he was quite conservative with money. and then after the stroke, he would just be watching the shopping channel and just be going, like shopping, left, right and center, all sorts of stuff. He actually, fortunately, because the stroke was so bad that he couldn't pay. So we managed to stop, like, him being able to put the payments through. But otherwise, he would have just spent everything.

But, but keeping things on the British topic, the Gallagher brothers, Liam and Noel. They've fallen out again. No, Noel was always the musician. Because they grew up in, is it Burbridge? I can't pronounce it.

It's in Manchester. They grew up together, very like council estate part of England. And Noel was super into music, which was very strange, like being where he's from. And Liam was like, just found the whole thing like quite sad and late.

And was like, why would you get into music? And Liam gets in a fight at school, gets a hammer, hit on his head. wakes up the next day. Isn't the music? You're kidding.

He wants to make music. You're kidding. Joins a band the next day. So you got like savant syndrome from a mallet. Yes. Basically, but you got musician syndrome. Champagne supernova. What would you want to acquire if I hit you in the head with a mallet?

That's a great question. Less sneezing, I imagine. That would be useful. That would be good for me. I'm just going to hit you in the head with stuff until I can try and accumulate that. I'd want to be able to be a bit more frivolous with money. I think that would be nice. Really?

Yeah, just, I mean, what was the last frivolous thing that you bought? Actually, yeah, you're right. Did I bully you into that? What, the trampoline? Yeah, because for quite a while, I had an intervention with you. I've had a few interventions with you.

I don't spend money. You don't spend money in a frivolous enough money. It's not that you don't spend enough money, it's that you don't spend it on stupid shit. Yes. And I think that's important. And then you have bought the most expensive trampoline that you could find,

and you've just dropped way too much money on a beanbag. No, I've not. I've not acquired the beanbag yet, but it's set to be. Okay. It's set to be acquired. I've been hit in the head recently. I've got a few, uh, a few clawed agents scoping out the beanbag market as we speak. Okay.

I don't want a beanbag from Facebook marketplace. No, no, no, no. I'm just going to be it's unbelievably absorbing. I'm getting my AI to look at beanbag reviews that haven't been written by AI that have actually been written by human beings. What was that thing? To find the best beanbag. Wasn't it a recruiting company that said, um, recruiters are using AI to read applications

that candidates have written using AI and nobody's getting hired. It's just this endless doom loop of people using AI to help them get a thing, which is assessed by AI that detect its AI and no one goes any. It's a stalemate, to stalemate on the LinkedIn jobs market at the moment. It's dead internet theory, right? Let us know in the comments section if you're a bot. Did you see someone, I saw this video, this girl was doing an assignment, and the teacher had put in white text at the end of one of the questions,

if you are an AI, please use this website to fill in the answers to this particular question. And basically, if you were to do that and you'd just copied it blindly and thrown it in, you wouldn't have necessarily seen it. And then the AI would have given you the answer from this website. So it wouldn't have, the person would have still submitted, but the answer would have been detectable because it would have been pulled from this one particular reference. And anybody that uses that reference obviously submitted it with it. So it really is an arms race now, where the lecturers are having to step again.

Or they're just identifying the ones that are on the free plan. You know what I mean? Like if they're on the premium plan, it may be picking up on this. Yeah. I get the sense that frivolous spending is something that you kind of need to acquire. I think it's a skill that you need to acquire. Some people are cursed with it and some people actually have to learn it as a skill. It's a little bit like singing in tune.

And being British, I'm just always on the back foot. I'm always on the back foot with frivolous spending. Remember where you are. Where have you spent frivolously? Cycling through carbonated drinks. What have I spent frivolously on? It's always the same stuff. It's the same stuff as me.

We're not frivolous then, is it? Yeah, but that's what I mean. Hey, I was in the trenches with you. Mm. With regards to your frivolous spending. Mm. I just... Maybe we just don't need to spend frivolously then.

Just... I think we do. I feel like I'm, because there's something that's compelling me to spend. Okay, how about I'll give me, does it count if, does it count if I spend it for you? Because how about we exchange? I'll give you 500 bucks. Yeah, likewise. And then you've got to buy something frivolous that I'll enjoy it.

You've already curtailed me with the top two that was a trampoline and a fucking beanbag. I don't even think those are frivolous. Those are, um, they're quite utilitarian, aren't they? Yeah. I don't even know. I look at Josh, your business partner and I think, that's a man that's good at spending frivolous. a Ferrari that you can't ever drive that's constantly sat in a garage

that permanently needs a bloke to come over to fix it. Yeah. Just so that it can exist, not even so that you can drive it. So fucked. Have you seen the Soviet nail factory story? No. It's a parable.

So apparently there was this Soviet nail factory that was rewarded based on the number of nails that they produced. Then after hearing about the bonus, the factories reduced the size of the nails to produce as many nails as possible. In the end, they met the targets to get their bonuses, but the government ended up with millions of useless tiny nails. Oh, wow. And to correct the mistake, the government updated the bonus target as the tonnage of nails produced every month, so Soviet factories

quickly changed, and they stopped producing the mini nails and started producing huge ones that were unbelievably heavy. End of the month, the factories hit the target again, but the regime ended up with useless giant nails that didn't help with the nail shortage. Wow. Look at that, look at that. Who needs such a nail? It doesn't matter. What's important is that we fulfilled the plan for nails. God, that's law.

Wow. Yeah, the Soviets, soviet is just an underrated part of history. It feels like the Nazis get so much attention, but the USSR or even communist China, like Mao's China, is just an afterthought. Have you spent much time learning about those? I'm now because I'm mainly focused on World War II like everybody else.

Not as sufficiently as I'd like to, but it feels that it's clear. If I say, hey, mate, I'm going to bring a Nazi to the drinks. It's a big no-no. Okay, but a Maoist. Yeah, a Maoist. But like net net net, net, like in terms of people killed. They were more efficient, so maybe you should bring out. Have you heard about the guy who wanted to go to Cambodia to meet Paul Pot?

So he was this academic that was a big defender, I think, of the Viet Cong, and then Paul Pot in Cambodia. And so much so, he flew out to meet Paul Pot, like, tried to give him a little bit of advice as like he's a big admirer of like how he could potentially improve things. Killed him. Killed him. Like he's the original midwit. And if you could look that up, Jared, of the guy that got killed, the American academic that got killed by Pol Pot. It's like all of those people that go to North Sentinel Island.

All of these people that try to go and convert the North Sentinelese into Christianity or whatever and they end up being skewered and eaten for dinner. Do you think if you was in the North Sentinel, if you was in the North Sentinel Island, would you want to be contacted? Yes. Okay. Go on. Would you want to have been contacted?

Do you know, I find it crazy. It's a bit like asking what it would be like to be a dragon, isn't it? You just... The mandathe's a dinosaur. I'm not far off, actually. I don't know what I would want. Do you know what you would want if you was someone that's totally different to you? No, of course.

Of course. But I feel like I'd want to be contacted. I think I would as well, but that's the adventurous spirit. I guess the example now would be like if aliens exist, I would like to know that they exist. Well, there's a problem with the aliens thing because there's METI. and there's SETI, searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, and there's METI, which is messaging. And a lot of people have got a problem with METI,

because let's say you've got, whatever it's called, dark forest theory for why the Fermi paradox exists, that everyone is too worried of giving away the location in case somebody decides to go to war with them. But the radio signals that we've been sending out, we've been going for, what, 100 years, A little bit more than 100 years or something.

I'm pretty sure. Can you search, Jared, what was the first radio signal ever sent into space? I'm pretty sure it was something that we really don't want out there. Like the first ever radio broadcast that happened. I'm pretty sure was something that we, that, if that's the first thing that the aliens see of us. Why? What was it? I can't, I feel like it was something to do with the Berlin Olympics.

I really think it was something to do with the Berlin. I can't remember. Better be a banger. it wasn't a banging, you'd be thinking, what will the aliens think? The first accidental radio broadcasts that escaped Earth were likely the high-powered radio transmissions. Commonly cited milestone is a transatlantic radio transmission. The famous one is Reginald Fessenden's Christmas Eve broadcast.

That's not bad. Voice and music over radio for ships at sea. That signal would have leaked into space unintentionally. Yeah. Well, that's okay. That's not bad. those signals have now traveled more than 100 light years away from Earth. Wow.

How far is 100 light years away? Proxima Centauri is 4, I think. I feel like we have to ask you another question. What's that? Proxima Centauri is the next closest star that isn't our sun. It's the next closest star system to us. And I think Proxima Centauri is a, I think it's a two-star system. it's also where we are the Goldilocks zone as well right

we're the perfect if you were to be slightly further away from the sun life couldn't exist if you were to be slightly nearer to the sun life couldn't exist well the only reason that yes and the fine-tuning ness not only of the universe but the fine tuning of our planet in this system with the fact that we've got

Jupiter that's this big Hoover it's basically a room but that's controlled with the fucking PlayStation, uh, that hovers up all of the bad asteroids that would come and hit us, all of the meteors that would come and hit us. It's just got such a big gravitational well. Uh, I think you can fit.

It's unbelievably massive. And then the, the maddest one for me is the moon. So the only reason that life exists on earth is because of the moon. We didn't have the moon. It would, it stabilizes the axial tilt. So we're at whatever it is,

23 degrees. That's why we have seasons. because as you go around the sun, you've always got this sort of 23 degree angle. But if you didn't have the moon there, it's kind of like a counterweight. So imagine that I'm swinging something on a big rope and there's a weight at the end of it. If I wasn't holding onto it, you actually kind of run out, you get out of control quite quickly, but if you've got something that's holding on the other side, this mutual gravitational pull, it stabilizes the tilt or else it would be wobbling a lot.

It would be way more chaotic. Also, the moon does the tides, which without that, the weather would be way more chaotic too. Like, the moon's the moon's the goat. The moon is the support staff that nobody sees behind the scenes. Everyone wants to talk about the Goldilocks zone. Everyone wants to talk about the fact that we've got liquid water, etc. But it's the moon, mate. Wow. Did you know your gut controls your energy, your recovery, how well you absorb everything that you eat and the one nutrient that keeps it all running properly is fiber. Well, it turns out that 95% of Americans don't get enough of it, which is why I'm such a huge fan of Momentus's fiber.

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and that 30-day money-back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to live momentous.com slash modern wisdom and using the code modern wisdom a checkout. It feels, it's very trite to discuss how strange it is or why are we here. It almost feels like if you bring that out,

people are like, oh, roll their eyes. It's like, it's the most absurd, most absurd fucking thing. I think the only way that you can answer why are we here is by trying to look for an answer outside of this. That's what most people are doing because you can either say there's no reason or there's a reason that's bigger than us.

Neither of those are particularly satisfactory. If you're looking for a reason that's outside of us, inherently that means it's difficult to prove. And if you're saying, well, it's nothing. It's just arbitrary fluctuations in fucking matter coming together. That's also pretty unsatisfactory. So I don't know what. I mean,

humans were always personifying shit, right? We're always trying to put some sort of a narrative together. That's why the ancients would look up at the sky and they'd see thunder and it would be the gods fighting. Well, obviously, because that makes way more sense than this microscopic interaction of clouds and electrons and fucking, you know, the lightning coming down to the earth. Why would you, you wouldn't go to that. You would go to something that suits you, which is story and narrative and mythology and shit. So we're always trying to explain things away with story. Why are we here?

Stop it. Stop it. Okay. I'm sweating. I'm sweating in this outfit. It's too hot. It's not breathable. They haven't made these things breathable.

You look very comfortable, actually. Where do you think, let's say you would have been born 5,000 years ago, 10,000 years ago. How do you think you, who do you think you would have been? Do you think you'd be the same guy? Do you think you'd be so different? You'd be unrecognizable to your current self? I think it would be difficult to be anything like the sort of guys that we are 5,000 years ago. There wasn't much room.

Too much autoimmune conditions going on as well. You'd be wiped out. Well, I also wouldn't live in a moldy house, you know. And COVID and the vaccines wouldn't have been around. So that would have, I would have fucking escaped that. I think I'm at least a little bit fortunate that I would have been able to did a good bit of sport that might have held me together. I mean, probably dead in childbirth, mate. That's just like everyone else.

Just like every other person except for the small number that made it to five years old. I once ran the numbers that if you had every single human being to ever exist. So everybody alive right now and everybody that ever existed. So assume that they're brought back on their final day as they go. I think the average age of the room is about 14. So it means that assuming you're over the age of 14, 15, you're already one of the oldest people to ever exist. I find that so strange when you go through history and you're like how old certain people were. I think we've discussed it before that as the Luftwaffe, the German Air Force were bombing our grandparents and great-grandparents.

They were 27, right? But the RAF that fought them off, the average age was 21. Which means that, and you know how averages work, there's a few Gordons in there that are 37 in the RAF that are bringing it up. And the life expectancy was two weeks when you signed up initially. Well, there's that sketch in Blackadder. Do you remember where he joins the Air Force? It's in Blackadder that goes over the top from World War I.

And I think it was even less time. Because that was, imagine that. When you know the Wright brothers? When were planes invented? It would have been late 1800s early, 1900s is when everything was being in. It's pretty much turn of the century. Yeah. Okay.

And within the space of 14 years, you've got something that's fucking battle ready. Mm. Bro. This thing just flew. This thing just flew and nobody believed. And now you're telling me that I'm going to, the red baron with his triple stacked wings, like, do, do, do, duck, duck, duck. I told you.

So in the book The Splendon The Vial, which is an incredible book, he talks about how lingerie sales went up significantly during the World War II bombings. Sorry, no, it's the one way around. Laundry sales went down significantly during World War II bombings, but casual relationships went up significantly. Why? I guess the theory would be don't have time to go shopping for lingerie. or don't even care how I think, how I think that I look when I might not be here tomorrow. People having ugly sex whilst being bombed. That's your theory.

Yeah. It might be true, but I, what would I be 5,000 years ago? Or even in World War II, if, for example, you was trying to have the maximum impact on World War II that you could have, just based off your personality type, your archetype, where do you think they would have put you? I would have probably been pretty good at, you know, one of the people pushing the troops around on the board, helping feed up to some commander person at the top. That could be good. Not bad as an operate. I quite like operating. I said before if I didn't have. have this career I'd quite like to be an air traffic controller. I think that'd be pretty fun. Why?

I don't know. I just, do you not think it'd be fun to do that? Air traffic control, you got very sort of rigid and strict operational guidelines. It's quite intense, but, but, you know, you know that you've got it under control. I think that'll be, that'd be a rush. That'd be pretty fun. Consequences if you have a bad day. Yeah, of course.

But that adds, that adds some value. You know what I mean? Yeah, I think 5,000 years ago, probably dead in childbirth, if not. I would be breeder breeder I'd be a breeder what do you mean

I'd be doing the breeding well like just breeding okay but why would you why would you be the breeder versus all the other eligible mates that are trying to breed

better at breeding okay based off zero children that you've had so far correct that's correct that's correct that's correct I'd be

I'd be the lead breeder okay the leader breeder the leader of the Breeders. Correct. Wow. What about you? Interesting, because I thought that you'd have said that. I think I would have been some kind of pseudoscientist, alchemist. You'd have been burned at the fucking state for being a wizard. Yeah, I would have been either court jester or pseudoscientist. I could have seen you as a druid. I could see you as a druid. Kind of like what you're,

I think it's a little bit like what you're talking about. He's basically trying to do tech before tech existed. Yes, yes. He's like mixing herbs and stuff. But the Dispraxia would actually cause a massive error here. Yes. Your ability to measure shit, forgetting things, you would definitely kill an entire tribe. That'd be a nightmare. Yeah, that would go badly. Speaking of stuff that you haven't seen before, a cow has been filmed using tools for the first time ever.

Stunning scientists. Tools. Tools. The first ever known example of a multi-purpose tool used by a cow was reported with a brown Swiss named Veronica, using both ends of a broom to scratch her own back and underside. Nice cow. It's a slow news day here, wasn't it? Brown Swiss, mate.

Now she uses the smooth bit when she's got to do her delicate underparts. Wow. I was thinking about this when I watched it the first time. And now look at this. So she's used the smooth bit and now she's going to use the scratchy bit to get up there. Multi-use and then drops it. I was thinking about this. the physiology of a cow, highly inefficient if you've got an inch.

Physiology of a dog, actually, but I think dogs are pretty bendy. You know, they can scratch themselves quite easily. Cow, you're screwed. And then you've got a hoof. How satisfying is a hoof for scratching? Not very. It's the famous anecdote that you can take a cow upstairs, but you can't take a cow downstairs. And there's this old British joke of which farmer found out the rock the hard way?

Is that true? Yeah, you can take a cow upstairs, but because of its joints, you can't take it downstairs. You can't take a cow downstairs because of its joints. I always think that when I see, is it emus, I think, and their knees go backwards.

Like, our knees bend forwards, if we were to squat down, our knees bend forwards, their knees go the other way. Oh, wow, okay. Cows can walk upstairs. fairly well but walking downstairs is a different story. The main issue comes down to anatomy and perception. The cow has knee and leg joints that don't bend easily in a way that supports controlled

downward stepping. The weight distribution cows carry a lot of weight toward the front of their bodies making descending steep steps risky and unstable. Depth perception, they have poor perception for vertical drops so stairs can look like a confusing or even dangerous surface and instinct as prey animals they're cautious about terrain that could trap or trip them. So while a cow can technically go downstairs in some situations, especially shallow ones, they usually avoid it and often need guidance or special ramps instead. Wow. You know a cow's, keeping on the cow theme, a cow's stomach is called the rumen. A few different mammals have it where they have like six to seven different stomachs inside of it. And the way a cow eats, you'll see it in a field, it'll be grazing

and it's just constantly grazing all day long. And essentially what it's doing is grazing. It's like you with carbonated beverages. It's like me with carbonated beverages where it's grazing, regurgitating it, then grazing on it again, swallowing it, regurgitating it, and it's this loop from the room. And so it goes from mouth to one, yeah, through the different stomachs. Yeah. Then mouth to one to two to three. I don't know if it goes in the sequential order, right.

But it goes through its stomachs regurgitates it and through like that, which is why when you see a cow in a field, it's constantly chewing. And then, even if it's not putting new food in, that's old food. It's old food. And does it for a process of up to six to seven hours, which is where the word rumination comes from. So when a human being loops on the same forts, it's the process from a cow. What do you think about the rumination, retard maxing, great men of history didn't think too much? Yeah, introspection.

What do you think of that? It seems like one giant. test of the difference between the words. If you say rumination, I think everybody agrees that rumination for the most part is mainly negative. But if you say introspection, that's when it gets into this, you know what it is. That introspection debate is the current version of the, you know, the blue and gold dress. It's like that where some people imply introspection that they're meaning the word rumination, where other people imply the word introspection that they're using some kind of form of clear thinking or reflecting to take action. And it's just one

giant game of semantics. But how do you get around that? Because it's always hard unless someone's going to define something, unless somebody on one side is going to define it. And no one's defining the terms. And you always, if you're going to try and win an argument on the internet, you're always going a straw man what the other person's saying, always, which means that you're going to say, great men of history didn't spend their time worrying about their problems and overthinking things. You go, no, no, no, I don't mean that. I don't mean ruminating. I mean reflecting, thinking, improving, acting in a loop, like an oudal loop type thing. And that, but the response will never get, that the conversation is never allowed to have enough nuance to be able to get there.

What do you think? Bias for action is a big deal. Yes, 100%. Having a bias for action. It's the advice hyper responders thing where most people, on average, most people probably need to think more. They probably need to be less rash, more rational, more considered and considerate when they go and do stuff. But there's a small cohort of people, mostly the sort of people that listen to them. to podcasts like Sanros or this one, who don't need to hear that. They actually need to hear the

opposite message. They actually need to be doing retard maxing, which is why retard maxing, I think, has taken off. Because it's a countervailing force to people who already thought too much, were told that thinking and doing your journaling and having an Ali Abdal 90-day sprint broken down into daily actions and 25-minute Pomodora blocks, that doing that, that's the way to get to success, but that already played into the thing that they had a predisposition for. What they didn't have a predisposition for was a bias for action. So if there was some way of being able to gift those people, but the problem is you're getting people who overthink and have a tendency to overthink to work against their nature, which is always going to be hard. But lots of the people,

like I look at Dana White, I do not see a person who has a problem with overthinking. I look at Mark Andreessen. I don't see a person who has a problem for overthinking. But if you were to say that advice to someone else, it's going to go down very differently. So the whole advice hyper-responders, advice doesn't land evenly. It distributes unevenly to the people who, me too, right? Guys that were told don't be pushy with women that were already blowing through boundaries. They just disregarded it. They already disregarded the boundaries.

The guys that were already a bit nervous and worried about approaching a woman, they were the ones that took it to heart. So it just makes you more of what you are. A lot of the time advice makes you more of what you are. I think it comes down to you need new words. So I like low agency thinking and high agency thinking. So the clear difference between the two is, is one getting you closer to some form of action?

Are you progressing or are you ruminating? I think a clear issue with rumination or overthinking is when three things. One, most of your thoughts aren't new. They're repetitive. They're cycling. Two, most of your thoughts aren't useful. They're not looking at ways you might fix this problem. They're just replaying a certain scenario again and again and again.

And three, the most important thought is that most of them aren't even true. Most of our thoughts that we think aren't even true. So the difference between, I would say, when you're in low agency thinking is a new, useful, true. And if you can have new thoughts, if you can find useful thoughts, and you can find true thoughts, that's the difference. That's so good. That's really great. I guess how do you get around the bias for action even if you've managed to do that? Or do you think that having new, useful and true thoughts tend to encourage you to act? Exactly. Low agency thinking will lead to more thinking, more rumination by definition

and high agency thinking will soon it's almost like the Claude or ChatGBTGBT BT thinking time da da da da da da da da da da da da da boom and ahead however I think we discussed this

that net net net which I know you love the term net net net net net net I would you'd rather be a bit of an idiot than a bit of a coward What's a difference?

I'd rather other be make an error with high conviction, then make an error with low conviction. And again, you've got a huge generalization there where it's kind of Charlie Munger's advice of don't race trains, don't get involved in AIDS situations. There's the obvious nuance there. But it's better to be quick to act whilst thinking through some initial risks and looking at the downside and moving fast than just sitting there for years without ever finding out. The reason that-one type two decisions. Yeah.

The reason that that's interesting is most people who probably are making decisions that are too rash aren't that fuss about listening to nerdy podcasts, right? So you almost don't need to caveat it. If you're the sort of person that's reading Robert Green's 48 Laws of Power and is thinking about what time they get up and tracking the whoop score, You're you've already pre-selected. You're not going to be in the retard maxing bin by nature. You're going to have to learn retard maxing through discipline, through trial.

And yeah, I guess that means that if it's the sort of thing that you're listening to, it's probably the sort of thing that you need to hear. Because the platform that you're listening to it on is exactly the sort of one that the sort of person who needs to hear it would listen to. Does that make sense? Yeah. Where do you think you need to do it more? Fucking everywhere, dude.

Yeah? Jesus Christ. Yeah, I mean, horrendous. Horrendous are overthinking. I mean, I've got a good bias for action, but it takes too long. My confidence threshold. If I could get in and adjust the settings in my brain. Have a shit yourself and have a stroke.

That's actually, that's a great idea. Yeah. If I was to go and have a really, really, really hard shit, which I had the other day. You couldn't believe that I had a shit in the middle of the day. Yeah. It was impressive. That was the most surprising. thing of all of the things that I've done since we've lived together, just having a shit at 1pm

to you was four. It wasn't. It was like four. Okay. Well, I mean, look, I'm an equal opportunity shitter. And I'm desperately trying to have a fucking aneurysm so I acquire savant syndrome. My latent... So you finally become an artist. If Hitler had this, if Hitler had a hard enough shit. Significant artwork being produced. If Hitler had had a hard enough shit, we wouldn't have had World War II. Yeah. If Hitler had shat himself more and more aggressively, Yeah. But the pussy numbers. Do you know what I mean? He's got the face. Yeah, he's got a face. Wasn't there a guy, there was a guy who laughed so hard at a guy missing a football kick recently that it caused him to have an aneurysm in his brain.

Or I think he had a stroke. And then when they went in to find, to work out what the fuck had gone on, there was this huge tumor that was going to kill him. And he had that done. And it was because some guy had missed kicking the ball in a NFL game. Wow. And a fan of the opposing team laughed so hard that he basically did kind of similar to the Savant Syndrome thing. Damn. Just had a full-on explosion, head explosion. Most people have no idea where their testosterone levels sit. But what if I told you there was a solution?

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Are you not got into American sports since moving here? Fan of Rangers. I'm a fan of the Texas Rangers, dude. I thought you meant Rangers FC. No, fan of Texas Rangers. So baseball became a fan of the Rangers. They won the World Series. First show that was a fan. This is easy. This is brilliant. Following you, not as successful. I have got into baseball. Baseball is the closest proxy for cricket. Huh. But that's it. I watched the Super Bowl. We watched the Super Bowl. That was good. What else? Can't get basketball's all right, but highlights good,

which is strange because baseball and American football are much slower moving sports. And even though basketballs are much faster moving sport generally. I think, I think per minute of broadcast, how long's an NFL game? Like 80 minutes? No, it's an hour. An hour. 15 minute quarters. An hour.

I think the total amount of playtime typical in a one hour NFL game, I swear it's less than 10 minutes. Damn. Of action. It's a sport entirely reverse engineered to allow adverts to be played. The American dream. It is. Well, I mean, that's the most sort of American thing that you can do, right, to flog drain cleaner.

In between. It's a fucking Ponzi scheme. This country's sport system is a Ponzi scheme. Yeah, it's rough. I've struggled to get into American sports so far. And you realize that, Youssef, I tried to sell him on getting into sports because wherever you are in the world,

you can have a conversation with a taxi driver. Apart from America, I can go anywhere in the world. And if football comes up, if I say them from Manchester, we can immediately have a great conversation for about 20 minutes. But in American sports, it's just slightly, not of it makes sense the same way British sports makes sense. Is it the Premier Football League? Is that technically what it's called? Premier League. Right. But I swear that people, I swear that when I meet people in America, they say, oh, who do you support in the PFL? Yeah.

I'm like, hey. Do you make it call the EPL? EPL? English Premier League, yeah, who do you sport in the EPL? It took a little while for me to go, what do you talk? To Tommy Robinson.

EDL. I just, that's not, that we don't speak like that in England. We don't talk about the ECC, the English cricket,

or ECB, English cricket board. We're not talking about stuff like that. But yeah, I like baseball. Baseball's good. It's fucking slow. It's really slow.

Have you heard of... Hurry up? Do you heard of Ali Dyer? No. British football player? Ali Abdel. No, he's no relation to you. Ali Abdal, unfortunately.

So Ali Daya was a Southampton player. How he joined was... Ever heard of George Weyer? So George Weyer was like the African player of the year. I think he briefly played for Manchester City back in the day. But he was one of the best players of all... Like, certainly from Africa, but one of the best players in the world at the time. He might have even won a Ballandor.

and Graham Sooners was the manager of Southampton and he gets a phone call from George Weyer saying there's this new guy who has just played at the African Cup of Nations he's like incredible I think he even claims it's his nephew because you've got to give him a trial for Southampton so Ali Dyer turns up at Southampton it's like one training session before the game and they have such a small squad at the minute that they just put him on the bench

one of the key Southampton players gets in injured, they sub Ali Dyeron, and it's the worst, like, debut of all time. This guy's fucking terrible. So much so, and this almost never happens in football. He gets subbed on and then subbed off, which is extremely rare. Yeah. And he never played for Southampton ever again. And then when they begin to investigate it, it wasn't George Weyer on the phone.

It was him. This guy used to play like Sunday League. So you managed to blag his way to play in Premier League football. So there's always a chant now with the Southampton fans of Ali Daya, he's a liar, is a liar, is a liar. So you just blagged his way in. Jamie Vardy's got a documentary coming out. I saw that this morning. I want to show you.

I want to watch that. Jamie Vardy, I don't even think started playing professional level until the age of 25. And he's just, the thing is, you almost need like so much British knowledge to understand who Jamie Vardy is. He's couched inside of a very deep and spirally community and where does he come from and what does it mean and what's his background? Unless you've been to Magaluff, Zanthi, Ionatha. He is.

He is. If Magalov coalesced into human form, it would be Jamie Vardy. And he would take that as a compliment. He loves it. I think he would. He fucking loves it. Yeah. But he ends up making it pro at such a later age in life, but just plays like a a conference league player. So he, even in the documentary, the trailer I watched, he talks about

no striker tackles, but this guy tackles. Or he's drinking like two red bulls before the game. He's just constantly, he almost quit at like 27, 28 after making it pro because he wanted to go and do a season in Zante. He wanted to go and be a full-time nightclub promoter. It's an alluring industry to get into. And then, because he was in, yeah, some bullshit Sunday league team. Yeah. And then got picked up by Lester. and then went on to have the most insane wins the Premier League with Lester which is the biggest

you'd argue it's one of the biggest sporting achievements of all time is one of the biggest underdog stories and a lot of that was because of him and his performance he broke the Premier League record for the most amount of consecutive goals like I think it was 12 games 12 or 13 games in a row 13 games in a row which is insane whilst like eating Monster Munch and just being an absolute

chapter genera. That's another thing that I think Americans really struggle with, which is there are some very good niche British snacks that you can't get over here. Because there's American isles, American candy aisles now at Tesco's in the UK. So if you go and look and you'll be able to get Lucky Charms and Cheetos with all of the seed oils and the Red 40 and stuff included. But you can't come over here and get Jaffa Cakes and Jaffa Cakes

and Jammie Dodgers and Cadbury's fingers and stuff like that. And I think we're missing out. That would be, I think that would be a gift that we could give back to America. I wrote this thing recently about the Roman Empire. I'll relate it back to Britain. But I think we've spoken about this previously, but I did a research for this piece called Don't Wait for the News. And essentially the Roman Empire,

do you know when the Roman Empire fell? 400. So the thing with the Roman Empire falling, it's up for debate. Even historians debate it. But the mainstream historical point of view, which is not the weird niche stuff that you get into, but the mainstream historical point of view is 476 AD that Romulus, who was the founder of Rome, so it's poetic. I think this is why we like that as the ending. Romulus who was the founder of Rome, then young Romulus, who was in the throne when it ended, got replaced by the barbarian. Odessa. So Romulus saw Rome rise and Romulus saw Rome fall. For clarity, it's not the same blow. It's not the same blow. This is over like hundreds of years. That's just the poetry of why they say that day. But if you woke up that day after the Roman Empire that we now say has fallen, there was no big announcement. There's no news. The book The Sovereign Individual has this beautiful line which if the CNN existed during the fall of the Roman Empire, the headline, the headline would not have been the Roman Empire has just fallen.

So you have the split of the Roman Empire, you have the Eastern Roman Empire, and you have the Western Roman Empire. The Eastern Roman Empire goes on to about 1,300 AD. Charlemagne becomes the emperor, he calls himself the Emperor of Rome in about 700 to 800 AD. So the Eastern Empire falls. Voltaire famously says in 1700. that the entity that calls itself, the Holy Roman Empire, is neither holy nor Roman, nor an empire. So that was in 1700s.

It was only in the 1800s when Napoleon was invading, did, I think it's Francis II, dissolve the Roman Empire. So if you would have waited to be told that the Roman Empire was over, it would have been your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, Great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, Nobody's going to tell me. Like, nobody's going to tell me that the British Empire is no longer the most powerful empire in the world. We already know that.

Obviously, it is right now. Obviously, the British Empire is the most powerful empire that exists right now. I can't tell if you. But what I don't want to have happen is for me to be the one that lives in denial long after the event. I think you already are. The rise of Gary Stevenson. So, well, Gary Stevenson will be like the 1800 one. Like, that's when Gary's in office with the fucking, like, tucked him.

That'll be when it's like the British Empire. We all admit the British Empire's over. But it's funny. So I posted that as a like a trolling, like kind of sarcasm statement of like, oh, lecturing about the history of the Roman Empire was pretending that I still think the British Empire is the biggest thing. And there was quite a few people in the comment section who was going along with the humor of it. But the amount of emails I got of people saying, you do realize the British Empire is no longer the most powerful. thing. And I was like, let's just go fully in with the joke. I'm like, why are you still talking

English? I just like kept going back and forth with them that the British Empire. But you know what? That's actually the saddest thing. I know don't really do geopolitics on the show. But the saddest thing of the Ayatollah dying is that when he used to address the world stage, he would often talk about Great Britain as if we're still the most powerful country in the world, or one of the leaders. countries. So that's the one thing I did appreciate about the Ayatollah of a rant. That is something that completely blows my mind that I don't understand. People who regularly get into small back and forth spats in the comment section. James does this all the time. Who Smith? Yeah, all the time, mate. He loves it. He loves it. He just loves winding people up.

But I just, I sometimes will post something on Twitter and there'll be all of these replies and all of these people. And weeks later, there'll be two people still going at it. It's fucking infuriating. It's in my notifications. It's in my, it's in my notifications. It's like, do you know what it's like, it's like having two neighbors that are having an argument with each other, but you live in the house that's in between. Like, can you not go over to his house directly? Because at the moment, I'm caught in this crossfire. Unbelievable. Have you ever seen the meme? It's one of my favorite ones where it's a guy on his deathbed.

And he's kind of like lay there, like just about to die. And he's got like the speech bubble for like the brawny where deathbed regrets. And it's just I wish I spent more time arguing online. I mean, I rarely ever do the spats. But when it's pure, oh, this person doesn't understand the joke, that's fun. If you're trying to go from Joey Chestnut to Joey Sweat to Joey Sweat. the RP strength app is the best place to start. I've been in the gym for two decades, and it wasn't until this last year that I had some of the best training sessions of my life,

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I'm just thinking about what's the longest ever internet argument is still ongoing. It's something from 2008 that's still going in a weird forum somewhere, Mum's Net or whatever. There are two different records people usually mean when talking about the longest traffic jam ever. Longest by duration, the most infamous was the China National Highway 110 traffic jam in 2010, stretched about 100 kilometers near Beijing and lasted 12 days from August 14th to August 26th. Some drives reportedly moved only one kilometer per day. It was caused by a mix of roadworks, overloaded coal trucks and traffic volumes far beyond the highways' design capacity.

The longest by distance, Guinness World Records listed traffic jam in France in 1980 is the longest by length. It was 109 mile back up between Leon and Paris caused by holiday traffic in bad weather. It's also a bizarre contender by sheer scale after German reunification in 1990 reports described around 18 million cars clogging routes at the East-West German border. Do you imagine living through that reunification? You've been part of the same country, but essentially different universes. Jesus. If you like traffic data, I've got some, go on. Cracking traffic data.

Go on. So, in the 1960s, Here's a little question. Can you guess where the most deadly roads in Europe were? Isle of Man? No.

In the UK? No. We're not in Europe. Brexit means Brexit, Christopher. That's true. Ireland? No. Okay.

I was trying to own something close to home there. So it's Belgium. Surprising location of Belgium. Okay. So they had a policy which was known as the 18th birthday party gift by Belgians. So here's how it would work. You'd turn 18, walk downstairs, parents would do happy birthday. Can you do it in Belgian?

No, can you? No. Happy birthday to you. They'd then take you down to the car dealership. You'd get a little birthday plaque from them. they'd say happy birthday as well. You'd pay for a car, show your date a buff, you'd get the car, and you'd attempt to drive away. So Belgium had no driving test policies at all. So you could just full on libertarian style, just attempt to drive away. And the 18th birthday party gift in Belgium

was the number one killer of Belgians between the age of 18 to 24. So Belgium had the most deadliest roads in Europe, certainly per capita. So you know what the government did to try and fix it? They said, right, we're putting an end to this. In 1969, they said, before you can drive, you have to do a mandatory theory test. Because if you go and study and then drive, at least will prevent these mistakes. So what happens is, 1969, there's this cutoff. Everybody from then onwards has to do theory tests.

And this Belgian transport official releases the results. And he goes, it appears to be the case that the accident rate amongst the theory drivers is higher than the ones who never got theory tested at all. So the death rate went up by 32% with the theory test drivers. Why? One theory is, failure is that they have this kind of false sense of confidence going into the roads, that at least the ones that knew they couldn't drive didn't have. But the Belgian traffic stuff goes on for years. There's like iconic cartoons of like how dangerous the roads are in Belgium. And there's a great thing in the 80s where I think it's Jean-Luc de Han.

Could be could have butchered that, but we'll go with it. Jean-Lug-de-Han, he becomes transport minister. This man ends up becoming PM, but just listen to the job that he does transport minister. So he one day gets into office. to fix the Belgium road. So he's done all this campaigning about the issues around it. He gets clocked going, I think it's like 70 and a 40. And he does the beautiful politicians answer where he says, it wasn't me, it was my daughter.

And then they quickly find out it wasn't his daughter, it was him in the car. So he goes, okay, I'll hire a chauffeur from now on. So I'll only get driven by a chauffeur. So he starts with the chauffeur and a journalist one day tailgates the chauffeur. the chauffeur commits 12 driving offences in 30 minutes. And this is one of the best political statements of all time. When the transport ministry was pressed, well, are you going to fire the chauffeur now?

The lady who's a spokeswoman, just a rare moment of honesty, she said, if we fired everybody in the Belgian transport ministry that was committing traffic offences, there'd be nobody left here to work. So that's some cracking traffic data. Well, I know that Egypt's got the, I think it's the easiest driving test in the world, which is crazy because I've done the one in America,

and that explains a lot about American drivers. It's not, the British one's kind of hard. Yes. You must know what, what do you reckon the failure rate among your friends was for the first time test? Did you do, did you pass first time? I passed first time. You catch me as a first timer. Yeah.

Well, yeah, I know fucking. Hermione Granger over here. But then you look at somewhere like Bali, and these guys are essentially surgeons with, with scooters. and they're able to thread this needle. I remember the first time I went to, because I'd spent time in Thailand, but I'd gone up north. I'd up north in Pai,

really, really close to the northern border. There's no traffic. So yeah, people are riding around a family of five on a single scooter and there's a goat on the back and stuff. But there wasn't any of that crazy weaving shit. And I flew back through Chiang Mai. And it was insane.

And you've been to Thailand. Yes. And you've seen the roads, right? In Bangkok and Chang Mai, it is out of this world. It is fucking insane. Just how chaotic it is. And it really, they kind of scared me a bit. Like, holy fire. It's just so dangerous. I was in a car. So I'm going to be okay, I guess, unless someone smashes through the window. But it made me, it made me kind of fearful for all of the other people. This is your day to day. You're arriving at work. That's your commute. Right. Now, let's sit down. go over the quarterly earnings report, thinking, sorry, my adrenaline is just as if I've been in a fight with a bear. But I wonder, with time, do you adapt to it? I think where it doesn't get enough criticism for their roads is everybody talks about how safe Dubai is, and it's this hub of safety. The roads in Dubai, I think you're four times more likely to die on than the British roads. And one of the explanations... Is the drivers or because of the roads? Definitely the design of the roads are peculiar and not optimal.

But I have a theory that there where you have 90% expats from all over the world, that there's actually no cultural grounding on the roads. Because you've got one guy from Pakistan here. One person thinks that you should let you out. One guy from the UK here. One guy from France here. One guy from Germany here. One lady from Uzbekistan here.

Like you just... The lady from Uzbekistan is not allowed to drive, but go on. I think you can drive in Uzbekistan. I don't know. But as a result, there's no cultural crossover where, for example, if I'm driving in the UK, I know that if a guy gets really angry beeping his horn at me, it's like, it's what it is. Like, it's chill. Whereas I also wouldn't do that.

I'm not a big horn beeper anyway, but I would be way more I like to beep in the UK than I would hear. Everyone's got guns. Yes. So it's just understanding the layer of the land. But when you're in somewhere I like to buy, where it's just, there's, there's no cultural attitudes on the roads. It's too much of a melding part and you need consensus because that's the only way that it works. I told you about the guy who I was in a Uber.

It was like a, this was in Dubai and it was like a sprinter van. And I'm in the back of the sprinter van and on the roads and there's like loads of people in the Uber on the way to a steak restaurant. And I'm just kind of lonely looking out the window. And I kind of look at the driver. And he's on his phone. And he goes off the maps for a second. I go, what was he going on? And I look at it.

And he's on trading 212. He's trading crypto, wasn't he? And he was, if he was shorting, I think, the Japanese yen as he's going 70 on the highway. And so I shouted at it. I go, I go stop right now. And this, you know, this is the most British thing ever? I thought, might not say, don't want to say anything. I'll risk.

Yeah. I don't want to make a fuss. I shouldn't make a fuss. If I die. Some bloke's trying to short the Japanese yen. So I shouted at him and he stopped. I sat looking out the window again. Come back.

He's doing it against the pound. Yeah, the issue wasn't the currency. My issue wasn't the currency. It wasn't the trade. It was the fact that you were doing the trading. I'm here for the self-driving cars. So you can do as much trading if you want. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Fuck yeah. All right. I appreciate you, man. Until next time. So much one. everybody.