The Joe Rogan Experience - #1851 - Chris Williamson

Episode Date: August 2, 2022

Chris Williamson is a YouTuber, club promoter, and host of the "Modern Wisdom" podcast. https://chriswillx.com/modernwisdom/

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day! Hi Chris. Hi man, how are you? How are you doing? Good, thank you. Very nice to meet you, man.

I've really enjoyed your stuff online. Thank you, I appreciate that. You're a very good listener. You are one of the best listeners. You're really good at that. Because you're really good at knowing when to talk and when not to talk. That is a skill, and that is a rare sign of social intelligence. So I was looking forward to meeting you.

Thank you. I appreciate that, man. You've been a big inspiration, so it's nice to hear that. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Appreciate that too. We were talking about when someone's funny and when they're funny and not funny and why, and I don't know. There's some people that I know that weren't funny for a long time, and then they became funny and not funny and why and I don't know like I've met this there's some people that I know that weren't funny for a long time and then they

became funny like comics that were like they're starting out and they just maybe they were kind of okay I mean I think maybe you have if you have a spark like a little ha just a spark you could turn that into a flame but if you don't have the spark if there's no there's there, you're never funny ever. You're fucked. Well, that's different to training. Like we were saying, you can be the skinniest or fattest guy or girl, the right training program and some good macros. You're fixed. You will definitely get stronger. You will definitely get fitter, particularly like cardiovascular. Cardiovascular fitness is 100% achievable. All you have to,

as long as you don't have have some sort of a problem physically, some sort of an ailment, you could definitely get better cardio. Is it true about comics needing a messed up childhood, or that's a performance enhancer, that they say the pain that they've gone through in the past is something that helps them to be funny when they grow up? There's something there. There's something there. I think it's being ignored. I think it's being ignored. I think when you're ignored as a child, kids figure out a way to get attention, and so they act out. And then in acting out, if you act out in a particular way, you get laughs,

and then you lean towards that. I didn't have a funny family. My family's not funny at all. No one's funny. My mom's not funny. My stepdad's not funny Like no one's funny. Like my mom's not funny. My dad's not, my stepdad's not funny. No one's funny. You know, it's like just for me, it was, I guess it was just having a weird childhood, moving around a lot, always having to make new friends. And so just figured out what was funny about certain things. And you ended up managing to get it right.

Yeah. But again, it's fucking lucky man Either you're funny or not like I I got into comedy because my friend Steve who I'm still good friends with to this day Steve Graham told me I should do comedy Because I would make him laugh and I was like dude you you are laughing because you like me Other people are just gonna think I'm an asshole. This is not a comedy. I feel like it is a skill. I feel like it's a skill that people can develop. But yeah, if you've got the wrong spark, I mean, everyone's seen that comedian that's trying, really, really trying.

And there's just something not there. And then it's the same, I guess, if you look at absolute elite athletes, the best of the best of the best, it's not just the hard work. It's not just the training. It's not just the skills that they've developed. There's something else there as well. Yeah, yeah. But then you get someone who has just the training. It's not just the skills that they've developed. There's something else there as well. Yeah, yeah.

But then you get someone who has all the things, and that's how you get a Michael Jordan. You get someone who has physical talent, genetic gifts, the mind for it, discipline, consistent work ethic, and then you get greatness. But also mental illness. You need to be like like michael jordan with all due respect uh is considered you know absolutely one of the greatest if not the greatest basketball player of all time but is kind of mentally ill he's obsessed with winning to the point where he's an asshole but that asshole like he'll tell you like you just don't want to win enough

and he's right he's right like he apparently like you beat him in a game of pool he won't fucking talk to you for weeks like he's just a nut but that i've met people like that before like they have to win at everything they have to win at fucking playing fucking parcheese they have to win they're just winners. They just like, they're obsessed with that goal of winning. This is why jealousy is such a stupid emotion to have, I think, because you never know the price that that person pays for the skills that you really admire about them. So a good example of this would be Tiger Woods. You know much about his childhood? I know a little bit about the coaching. Jamie's a giant fan. He's, he's, Jamie's a big golfer.

know a little bit about the coaching jamie's a giant fan he's he's jamie's a big golfer yeah so tiger when he was growing up you know he was i think at one and a half two years old he was already with a golf club and then when did he go on that saturday night program jamie and he ended up doing some putt on he was three years old three years old when he did that right but his father was racially abusing him on golf courses calling him him the N-word, saying that, yeah, here it is. Whoa, that's him at three years old? Which show is this? Jimmy Stewart and Bob Hope. Mike Douglas.

Bob Hope and Jimmy Stewart. This is crazy. Wow. What a little cutie. Look at him. Girl, how old is this? How old are you, Tiger? Two.

Two? No fucking way. Oh, my God. Have you read Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers? Yes. Well, that is an amazing example of that. Having a golf club in your hand at two years old, having a father who's maniacal and obsessed and forcing you to do this, and then getting all that time in as your body is learning and developing.

So the thing about Tiger that was interesting with his father is he would push him incredibly hard, say, these white people are never going to accept you on this course. And he had a safe word, the same way that you would do during rough sex. It was called the e-word and his dad would say to him if it's getting too much if it's ever too much just tell me just say the e-word and everything will stop and tiger never once said it wow the e-word was enough wow so he would with him so that tiger would get better and he told him look i love you but i'm doing this to make you better. And if it's too much. Roll the clock forward now. So talking about the price that people pay to be the person that you admire, everyone would look at Tiger Woods narrowly bound, like, I want to be as good of a golfer as Tiger Woods. And you go, yeah, okay. But do you want the childhood? Do you want to

spend nearly half a decade out of the sport with injury because of how hard you've pushed yourself? Do you want to struggle with self-worth to the point where you basically can't have a long-term marriage? Don't you be chased down the driveway with your wife in a golf club? He fell asleep at the wheel. He broke both of his legs not long ago. He's been on antipsychotics. Like that is the price that you pay to have that degree of greatness.

It's a onesie, right? It's not an outfit that you can pick little different bits about you don't get to choose one element of someone and say i want that it's like no no no all of these externalities all of the things that you really don't want they came along for the ride as well and that's why jealousy overall like do you want to take the whole outfit because you can't just have the one thing jealousy Jealousy is kind of dumb. Well, jealousy is dumb because it doesn't serve you any purpose. It's that, what is that old expression that it's the only, it poisons the vessel that's holding it? How does that expression go?

There's some expression like that. Like that, it doesn't work. Like jealousy doesn't work. Like jealousy doesn't work for you and it doesn't harm the person you're jealous of. It doesn't do anything. It just creates this bad feeling. And it's a necessary feeling in human evolution because it forces people to compete for breeding. It forces people to compete for resources. And it makes people work harder in some ways, but it's not self-serving. You can have that feeling of admiration and of respect for someone's ability and inspiration, like looking at someone's accomplishments and avoid the jealousy part. But you have to treat it like it's a personal weakness. You have to treat it like that thing inside of you that looks at someone and wants to diminish their accomplishments and wants to look at their accomplishments in an inaccurate light because it serves you, doesn't serve you. In fact, it lies to you and it makes you feel like you're better than you are.

So you won't work as hard and you won't accomplish as much if you give into jealousy but instead if you look at someone even if you don't particularly like that person's personality or what you know what they stand for if you can look at what they've done even as someone that you like really despise you can find something in them and say that is like you can find admirable things about donald trump one of the things you can find about him is the way he like brushes off criticism. It's like, wah, wah. He just like keeps going. Like they were, in the beginning of the presidential campaign, coming at him with every fucking

thing in the world. And the guy would get out there in front of all his people, he's like, I'm the best, I've always been the best, no one loves the Bible more than me. And he was able to do that in a way that, you know, a lot of people, I mean, maybe he has a psychotic belief in himself. Maybe he's like literally on drugs. But whatever it is, it's admirable that the guy got through four years in the White House and doesn't look like he fucking aged a day. in the White House and doesn't look like he fucking aged a day. Biden looked like he's aged a hundred years in just the first year and a half. I mean, he's so fucking old now. He was old running for president, but he looks older because of the pressure and the stress of the White House. It's kind of admirable that Donald Trump didn't do that.

So you can find things, even in people that you think are problematic human beings, you can find things in what they do. And if there's someone that's in your line of work, and that person is achieving great success, there is a human tendency, a natural human tendency, to be jealous of that person. But instead, be inspired. But you have to make that choice, and you have to recognize that jealousy is 100% a weakness on your part. And it's a matter of self-auditing. You have to be able to audit yourself and say, where is this feeling coming from? Why am I feeling shitty?

Like, what is this weirdness? Oh, this is jealousy. Oh, that's a weakness. I have to parse that out. This is one of the big differences I've found between the U.S. and the U.K. since moving here. So I've been in Austin for four and a half months or something now. One of the biggest differences is that in the U.S., as far as I can see, people really want to celebrate you when you're doing well. Yes.

Yeah, well, I think collectively they do. There's got to be a lot of individuals that don't. But collectively, overall, I think there's more of a tendency to celebrate people here. I have some friends from the UK and they have similar feelings. Like when they came over to America, they're like, wow, it's crazy. Like you're doing well. People congratulate here. Whereas in the UK they try to keep you down.

Yeah, very much a scarcity mentality. Tall poppy syndrome is a huge deal in the UK. And Australia as well, right? Yeah, very much so. I don't know what it is. I wonder whether it's because population density is so much higher. We're water locked, so everything kind of feels a bit more insular. There's less stuff to do because the climate restricts us. It's always cold and dark and wet, which means seasonal affective disorder. There's a bunch of different ways. But culturally,

the end result is that people just aren't that supportive. And if you start to deviate when you're young and do something a little bit different, it gets beaten out of you very quickly because the British ability for satire is born out of this fact that there's constant piss-taking happening. And although satire is fantastic, it's not that great at encouraging people to go and do different things and be adventurous. So when you roll the clock forward, what you have is British people have very much got their feet on the ground, probably too much.

They probably don't believe that they actually have a capacity that they can go and do things. Now, the converse, I think, in America might be a little bit true. For all that America's a cis, heteronormative, patriarchal superstructure that's misogynistically keeping everyone down, when kids grow up, the American dream still very much is a real deal, I think. And people are told that they can have blue sky vision and helicopter thinking and be whatever they want to be. The problem you have is when those people grow up and become adults and the world doesn't deliver them the thing that they were promised, they feel a delta between where they are and where they could be. They go, hang on a second. I was told that I was going to get the blue sky and the white picket fence and the blah, blah.

Especially in a generation now that is the first one ever that's doing worse than its parents. That's going to cause a lot of people to look around and go, there's something wrong here. Structurally, there's something wrong. That's interesting. Do you think when they say that this generation is doing worse than its parents, obviously that is collectively, right? So how are they looking at that and how are they making that distinction that this generation is doing worse? Is it they're doing worse financially? Is it doing worse in terms of their ability to buy a home? I think that will be two of the major factors, right? The fact that it's real living wages have stayed static since the middle of the 1970s, something like that.

And getting onto the property market at the moment is pretty difficult. But more than that as well, a lot of the things that we used to have, the traditions that we used to have for people, guys and girls, the roles that they used to take have been outsourced to the state. So if you think about the protector provider role that men typically would have had, you don't need that so much when you've got a robust legal system and you've got a government that's going to look after people in case they fall through the cracks, you've got social safety nets and things like that here and there. I think that what happens is people end up feeling wistless and existentially lonely. So not only are they materially less effective, they're unable to get as much money, they're unable to find a house as easily, but then existentially the role that they have,

something that makes them feel innate and of themselves, that doesn't feel like it's helping either. That's interesting. So you think the robust legal system and social safety nets somehow make people listless. I don't think the robust legal system is that robust. I don't think the safety systems, the safety nets that are in place, I don't think they're that effective. I don't think that people have as much faith in them as maybe you think. I know in the UK you have a much faith in them as maybe you think. I know in the UK you have a better system in terms of like health care.

People don't have to worry nearly as much about getting ill, about getting injured. I'm a big fan of having some kind of social health care system. And I think people in this country, particularly conservative people, are very concerned with the idea of socialism in any form. But I feel like socialism exists already in many forms that we accept, like the fire department, right? That's clearly like a socialist idea. Like we all pay into it and it serves everyone. We need it. We all accept it, and we agree to it. Public education, similar. It sucks. It's pretty shitty and ineffective depending, of course, upon the neighborhood that you live in. And, you know, some neighborhoods have good public systems of education.

But in terms of, like, a social safety net, like, it's not that good like in america i don't think in that i think in the worst case scenario it it's it's the worst worst worry is that a social safety net encourages people to not be ambitious and encourages people to sort like that's what people were concerned with when it came to things like universal basic income, right? They were concerned that it was going to alleviate people's ambition. And on the best case scenario side, what I was, I was like looking at it with rose colored glasses. I was like, maybe it'll encourage people to go out and do something they actually want to do for a living and having their basic needs

taken care of like food and shelter, like maybe that will give them whatever extra motivation they need to go out and do a thing that they really want to do, whether it's create music or become a painter or whatever the fuck it is. Do you think that's the way that people are going to lean? I think you have to have that in you, unfortunately. I know people that are just not fucking ambitious. They're just lazy. And if they didn't have any social safety net, maybe they would develop some discipline.

But if there is a social safety net, they don't. And the thing that you were talking about earlier, there is a problem with generations that feel entitled. And they're given this attitude. There's this attitude. There's a sort of overwhelming idea that the government is responsible for you in a certain way. And if you're not doing well, the government has fucked you over. The government, it's your fault. And then people start looking to people that have a lot.

They start looking to billionaires. And they're like, we need to tax them. We need to tax these billionaires. There's people out there that are calling for a 90% tax of billionaires, which I always feel like is at the very least what they're trying to do. Some of them for sure are just putting on a show. They're just saying that because they want their constituents to go, yeah, they're fighting for us. They're fighting for the working class. Are they? I'm not sure they are. I think they're bullshitting. And I think that capitalism is a game. And whenever you're going to have a game, you're going to have people that are weekend players that go out there and put a little bit of effort into, and they're kind of okay at

basketball. And then you're going to have Michael Jordan. And you don't get a Michael Jordan without massive amounts of effort and time. And that's the same thing with capitalism. If it's a game, if we're all agreeing, like even if you're a waiter, right, you're waiting on tables, you do a good job, they give you tips. That's tips in America. We get tips for waiters when they do a good job. Because they don't get paid, that's why. Yeah, it's sneaky. I to adapt very very quickly to that yeah it's sneaky thing oh you're right because you're not used to giving tips not at well 10 maybe ish right i did that in a strip club in austin and the waitress turned the thing around and said let's try this again slid it back across the table to me at a strip club did you feel intimidated uh Uh. Being bossed around? It was kind of hot.

It was kind of hot. Oh, she was hot. I understand. So, yeah, I don't agree with that. But there is a thing there in terms of I don't agree with people getting paid less than minimum wage and relying on tips. I think that's a fucked up way to run a business. You know, I think it's way better if you got paid a living wage and then people could tip you on top of that. If they say, Hey, she was a really good waitress. Like I, she needs, she deserves more like, and then tip on top of that. One of the big differences between the UK and America, I think as well as the way that the

homeless show up. So in the UK, I've been a club promoter for 15 years, right? At 2am in the morning, the only people that are out are club promoters, the people that are going to our parties and homeless people. And the way that they act, their demeanor, the fact that the US has so much more sketchy, aggressive, talking to themselves, shuffling along the street, there'll be much more forthcoming. And I think a big part of that is the fact that you don't have a way to sweep up people that should be in mental health care. You know, if you are someone that falls through the cracks in one way or another, becomes homeless, that means you're less likely to get a job, less likely to get a job, no medical insurance. That means that if you do have any underlying problems, they're not going to be looked after because you're not going to pay

for it. Maybe you turn to drugs that makes the mental health problems worse. and it just becomes a spiral. And whereas in the UK, step one or two of that, you're going to get picked up by the National Health Service and taken away. Yeah, well, that is ideal. If it's good mental health service, that's ideal. And that's what they used to have in America. They used to have mental health institutions that would take people off the streets. But somewhere, was it in the Reagan administration? Jamie, I know we've looked this up before, right? We've gone into this. There were some sweeping acts in the Reagan administration that just literally released people from mental health institutions

that couldn't take care of themselves, and these people were pretty fucked up, and so those folks wind up on the street. Jocko told me the number of beds per capita that we have in the UK versus the US is wildly different. It's like one per 100,000 people or something over here, which is just way, way, way less apparently than you need. What is the UK? Way more. I don't know. But, I mean, pretty much anywhere we'll be able to take somebody in.

Someone that's in A&E, if somebody's having a fit, if somebody's having a schizophrenic attack. What is A&E? Accident and emergency. And that's at every single different hospital. There will be somewhere that someone could get rolled into. Yeah, well, schizophrenia, I think it affects 1% of the population. So look at the United States, that's 3 million people. That's crazy.

That's a lot of people. And you look at the number of homeless people that we have and the number of people. That's crazy. That's a lot of people, you know, and you look at the number of homeless people that we have and the number of people that really need help. It's not good. It's not a good way to run a society. And there's this idea that these people need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Like that is a fucking really dumb way of looking at it. And it makes a problem for everybody else. So when you look at what's happening in Los Angeles, this sort of attitude that we need to respect homeless people and let them just fucking camp out whenever they want, it's destroyed real estate prices.

It's forced people to move out. It's made people feel very unsafe. And it's not helping the homeless people. It's not helping them at all. You just let them fucking put up their tents at the beach. Now you have just people that don't want to go to the beach. So all the surrounding businesses lose revenue because people don't feel comfortable going there anymore. I mean, I'm sure you've seen what it looks like on the beach in Southern California. It's fucking crazy.

My friend Bridget drove through Venice and she sent me a video from her phone and I was like, this is insane. It was like a mile of tents. And I think they've cleaned up some places and not cleaned up others. The real, the dirty spot is downtown and that's the place. Skid Row? Yeah. I mean, it is madness. If you've never been there before, when you, I, I first went there, this was a problem in the early 2000s this had nothing to do with covid i was there in 2003 or 4 or something like that we're filming fear factor down there and i went through skid row and i was like holy shit i couldn't even believe it i'm like why is this not front page news this is literally like multiple city blocks filled with people just laying around on the street

shuffling around and going into these hospitals and and and you know not hospitals uh shelters to get food and then coming back on the street like they were they were they moved people to these areas like there was a a documentary on that um what was that hotel, Jamie, where that woman drowned in one of the water tanks? Oh, shit. I saw the documentary about that. Yeah. It was kind of a sneaky documentary, right? Because the documentary made it look.

All about that elevator thing. Yeah. But really the Cecil Hotel? Yeah. Yeah. So the Cecil Hotel is like in the heart of this area. And the documentary was sort of highlighting how all these people got duped when they're coming from other countries. And they're coming into America.

Oh, we'll stay downtown. You think, oh, downtown's lovely. Downtown Los Angeles is a fucking shithole. Like a horrible shithole. It's so much worse than like say like downtown Austin. Beautiful. Lovely. Nice buildings.

Great restaurants. Downtown Chicago. Great place to be. Downtown LA is horrible. Nobody wants to go there. I saw a listing for a property in Portland that is being sold with squatters in it. That's hilarious. So it says in the description below it, be warned, this is being sold with current squatters tenanted in there. The price reflects the current state of the insights.

What's the price? Free? Basically. I didn't say on the advert, but it is wild. He's selling property. It's such a headache that you can't get rid of these people. The police are not coming in to give you any assistance. Anybody want some free tenants that aren't paying?

Yeah, well, Portland's the worst. They're the worst because their own mayor bought into it, hook, line, and sinker. And he was out there with Antifa, and he was trying to talk to them. They were like, you fucking need to resign. He's like, I am the most liberal mayor in all of the country. And he is. And then after a while, I mean, he was at the front of the line

for defund the police. He was talking about, like, we need social workers to handle problems, not police officers. And he was buying into all that shit until they beat him down. They got to a point where they lit his apartment building on fire. They broke the windows of the front lobby of his building and tossed Molotov cocktails through and shit. And so then he started calling for them to be arrested. of the front lobby of his building and tossed Molotov cocktails through and shit. And so then he started calling for them to be arrested. And then he started calling for individuals to be arrested.

And he's tried to turn it around, his idea. But he was faced with the reality of these progressive liberal choices where you look at things through the lens of ideology rather than the lens of objective assessment of reality so the thing is an absurd ideological belief is less about the actual facts and it's basically a show of fealty to your side it's like you're waving a flag saying i am a part of this and the more absurd the belief the greater the show of fealty, right? If you're saying, I will put to one side facts, reason, what my own brain is telling me, everything that reality is putting back to me. And what I'm going to do instead is I'm going to believe the ideology because that's why. It's a threat display to your opponents.

It's a show of loyalty to the side that you're on. But the problem with that is, at the moment, all of these groups are bound together over the mutual distaste of an out group, not the mutual love of an in group, which makes them inherently fragile. So what everybody's doing is they're constantly circling the outside looking for someone that they can shave off. Who's the next person that is just not quite

right that we can get rid of? I don't know whether you saw during Pride Month that there was white gay privilege is now a thing. So white gay people have to like bow down to gay people of color. Correct. Yeah. So you have to recognize that if you're gay, but you're also not another oppressed group that you're kind of not that gay. I actually mentioned this to Douglas and Douglas said that because he's white and conservative and gay he's basically straight again he's an honorary straight his gay card had been rescinded that's amazing but yeah that's what they're looking for they're

constantly looking on the outside who can we shave off it's the pew it's called a purity spiral right yeah constantly trying and everybody said that how long ago were people saying this sort of stuff about the fact that intersectionality inevitably leads to one person that is the most oppressed in the entire world, and they're the only person that's allowed to speak? And as soon as you see white gay privilege, you think, well, that's what that is. That is an intersecting hierarchy of grievance. And if you're only gay gay you're basically not anything anymore that's amazing isn't it it really is wild it's wild i mean that's what's happening to women in sports right women and women have always been protected right we've thought of that women being

oppressed whether it's uh you know income inequality or it's the glass ceiling in the workplace or it's like we've thought like hey We've recognized there's an inequality with women, but you know where there's a bigger inequality Trans women so trans women Trump women so even if trans women have a physical advantage in sports We still let them compete because they are women. And to recognize them. Ideologically disadvantaged. Yes. It's to open them up to violence. Did you see that woman from Berkeley? Was it Berkeley?

Yeah. She was a law professor and she was testifying in front of Congress and they were asking her questions. And it was this guy, Josh Howley, who's like a senator. And he said that he thought, like she said, do you think that men can get pregnant? And he said, no. And she said, I just want to recognize that what you're saying is transphobic and it opens up trans people to violence, which is one of the things that they love to do.

It's not whether or not you disagree with something. If you disagree with the ideology, then you're opening people up to violence, which is wild to say. Well, first off, there's something about the tenor that that lady spoke with. I don't know what I don't know how to kind of condescending. It's smug. It's condescending. She's laughing partway through.

She's laughing during the things you say. Yeah. Which makes me feel like it's a little bit of a lop for them. It's almost like a little bit of a game. Which makes me feel like it's a little bit of a LARP for them. It's almost like a little bit of a game. Did you see a guy in the UK was arrested for sharing a swastika that was made up of the LGBT flag this weekend? What?

So a guy called Lawrence Fox. Was he trying to like repurpose the swastika? No, so it's not a very good, Jamie, you might even be able to get this. So it doesn't look anything like a swastika. It's like just four things that are all turned around. So Lawrence Fox, the guy that created the Reclaim Party in the UK, ran for the mayor of London, I think, a little while ago. Maybe he ran for office. And he, at the start of Pride Month,

decided to put together a pride flag that's all the way around and put it as new profile pic. This guy, Colin O'Brady, who was a decorated military veteran, I think, shared it at some point. The police said to him that he had to accept an 80-pound fine and go to a re-education. There it is. That's a swastika? Well, that's as close as you can get, apparently. What?

You can see that way. It's in the middle. It kind of looks like it. Oh, that's crazy. I wasn't even seeing that. Oh my god how did I not see that. Isn't that wild that I didn't see that? That is so funny because that is really like a little optical illusion thing because it is a swastika that's wild so I didn't see that.

Well why didn't they just do it where it's like that way that way that way that way like where both of them are turned these upper right corner and a lower left corner are turned sideways you'd have to speak to the designer i'm not sure so anyway how did i didn't see that that's what's so crazy like i looked at that and i'm just looking at the flags as in their entirety but then i now i clearly see it that's crazy so yeah that's a swastika. He he shares this right and I mean you've also got you've also got news articles at the moment saying Military veteran jailed or arrested for gay swastika Headlines so anyway the police arrived and they say are they contacted him and they said um 80 pound fine and you have to go to a re-education course.

Oh, camp. So he said, no, I don't want to do this. And they said, okay, well, we're going to come and arrest you. So he asked for a time when they were going to come around. And he got Lawrence, the guy that made it, and also has a huge social media following online, got him to be there. So Lawrence live streamed it as it was happening. And as the police are there, he's live-streaming this thing, and there's a clip that's 30 seconds from the middle of it,

which has gone super, super viral online. It's had like 3 million plays over the weekend. And they ask the police officer why it is. That's the guy there that made it. Right. Why am I being arrested? And he said, well, obviously it's because your post has caused somebody social anxiety. Social anxiety?

Yep. Wow. Because we have these hate speech laws, non-crime hate incidents. I think they're logged as in the UK. And yeah, somebody- Non-crime? Non-crime hate incidents. So microaggression managed by bureaucracy. Well, you remember that guy that got told, we have to check your thinking because he liked a post that was seen as problematic. What was, is that in the uk as well yeah correct who was that somebody miller so it was the guy that was actually there he was an ex-police officer also a lawyer understands the law very very closely he got arrested along with the colin o'brady guy the only guy that didn't get arrested is the guy that made it who's also happened to be there the two people one of them

for obstructing arrest because he was, you're not following this rule. Can you please show me your Section 35 of the whatever, whatever act? None of this is, you haven't reached the threshold for arrest and blah, blah, blah. So he got arrested. Wow. And then the dude that shared the post got arrested. So he got arrested for reading the correct law to the officers. Saying that he was obstructing arrest.

What did they, okay, wow. Yeah, England's not, that he was obstructing arrest. What did they... Okay. Wow. Yeah, England's not... That's not good, man. Well, I mean, it's a trade, right? It's either guns in the US, good for protection, not good for shootings, or freedom of speech in the US, but in the UK, no guns, no mass shootings, but a lot of hate crime incidents, a lot of people being arrested for doing dumb stuff.

But can't you have freedom of speech in the UK and not have all the guns? Yeah. It seems like they're not mutually exclusive. Very correct. Yeah. I don't know, man. I mean, the UK is just it's an interesting place at the moment. We definitely have imported a lot of the culture war that you've got going on over here.

Yeah. of the culture war that you've got going on over here. Yeah. But I don't think that the UK has quite the same amount of capture that the US has. People are still very spit and sawdust. Everything in the UK, you and Constantine and Francis said this to you last week, it's very much a class-based system, right?

You don't get outside of your lane. Yes. With regards to your class. Yeah. And I think a big part of that is we've just had longer to establish what different schools mean, what different areas that you live in mean. I mean, dude, we've got trees in the UK that are older than your country. Oh yeah. Well, we have trees here that are older than our country too.

Good point. In all fairness. Very good point. Yeah. They've been passed on, they're inherited. My point being that people know where their station is and they're told not to get outside of it. And I think that because of that, that's the focus. Now, it's more surreptitious. It's maybe even a little bit more restrictive in some ways. But it means that we haven't been quite so captured by the new stuff. That, I think, is interesting when you have a country that is established and has been around for, I mean, England's a thousand years old plus, right? I mean, if you really go back to and look at other countries as well, there's many other countries that have these class systems.

Like China is probably the best example. China is 4,000 plus years old, which is wild when you really think about how young America is and the way China is completely locked down and the way the government has absolute control over their population in terms of what they spend money on, how they spend money, what they get to see on social media, what they get to see on the internet, what they get to say. I mean, even in terms of their most respected population, they're billionaires and super successful entrepreneurs. If they speak out against the government, they either get eliminated, they vanish. There's people that are like high-profile billionaires that have gone missing.

No one knows them. Jack Ma from Alibaba. He came back. Yeah, and then the tennis lady, she came back as well. Did she come back? She made a statement. Posted a photo with a wall of fluffy toys behind her,

which is just very bizarre. But yeah, that happened. But they could have the same photo of you with those walls of fluffy toys behind you and it doesn't mean it's real. Ah, interesting. With CGI and... Do you think they've deep faked her?

They easily could have. I don't know what the latest is if she's been spotted out and about. I want to see someone get deepfaked for tennis. If you can deepfake a tennis player. Cloned Rafael Nadal. Yeah, you can't deepfake them actually playing, but you most certainly can deepfake them talking or standing there. The Chinese government's Weibo account posted,

prepare for war, yesterday. Whoa. 600,000 likes when I checked last night. This is yesterday afternoon or today. Biden's got a call and also Nancy Pelosi is going to Taiwan. Yeah. So the prepare for war was the official government account on Weibo, which is the like WhatsApp social media app. Jesus Christ.

That is terrifying to me. You know, that was the concern that a lot of people had about the response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, that the Chinese government was going to be watching how the United States handled that and planning accordingly. And one of the things the Chinese government saw was that we've instituted certain sanctions in place to penalize Russia. And that the Chinese economy and the Chinese government was going to look at that and make provisions and make plans. Because that's how we may be penalized in future. So here's a question for you. Do you think that the US government will have played four degree chess with the restrictions that they placed on Russia when they invaded the Ukraine,

knowing that China would be watching to keep some other sorts of restrictions and plans in place that they might be able to use and pull out of their pocket if they invade Taiwan? I would think that if the government was competent, that that's what they would do. I do not have any evidence whatsoever that the government's incompetent or that the government is competent. Rather, when I see Kamala Harris on TV saying my pronouns are she, her, I'm the lady in the blue dress i'm wearing a blue dress like what the fuck is that like that if that's not ideological capture that that way of talking and behaving that's the wokest of the woke signaling because that's what people do because the idea is that like you're you're stating your pronouns. She's also wearing a mask, which is preposterous.

And then she, like, aren't you tested? Isn't everyone tested? Okay, you're all negative. So what the fuck are you wearing masks for? They test them every day. Signaling, signaling, signaling. Total signaling. And then also you're looking, you don't want to be ableist.

So you want to signal to all of your people that are colorblind that I'm wearing a blue dress i think it's blind rather than colorblind oh is it maybe uh well i mean try explaining the color blue to a blind person the u.s is in a recession at the moment but it's not allowed to be called a recession well the government's trying to not call it a recession but it's wikipedia article got changed you see really this? Oh, dude. No. They redefined recession? Yep. So recession used to be two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. Right.

Not anymore? Not on Wikipedia. When was this? Jamie, get the Wikipedia-y thing up because this is wild. How long ago did they change it? This weekend. Oh, God. Well, I saw it got locked because people were fucking with it is what I read,

but I don't know how much of that was. But this is the definition when you type in Google, which is the same thing. So a period of temporary economic decline during which trade and industrial activity are reduced, generally identified by a fall in GDP in two successive quarters. So in Google, it's still the same. In Wikipedia, let's look at what it says. Recession is a business cycle contraction where there's a general decline in economic activity. Recessions generally occur when there is a widespread drop in spending or an adverse

demand shock. This may be triggered by various events such as financial crisis, an external trade shock, an adverse supply shock. Bursting. Okay, here it is. A recession is defined by the National Bureau of Economic Research as a significant decline in economic activity spread across the market lasting more than a few months. Normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale retail sales. In the UK, it's defined as that. In the UK, it's defined as a negative economic growth for two consecutive quarters. That got changed.

So that's what's changed, that the United States used to define it as two consecutive quarters and now we don't anymore. And people have pulled it up on the archive. So a bunch of advisors, economic advisors, have got quotes of them saying what a recession is, especially when Donald Trump was in office, there is a recession that's coming. It's negative GDP growth for two consecutive quarters. Right. And then this weekend, people are asking them, are we in a recession? Because the second quarter economics just came out and it's 0.9 decline again. Have you seen the White House press secretary define the economy as being strong and the best economy we've had in over a decade? Have you seen her do that?

No. It's hilarious. It's like the wildest gaslighting because she's doing all of these political hand maneuvers that people do you know those moves that people do with their hands when they're talking and they're trying to display like confidence and control and there's like it's it's literally like political pantomiming it's weird to watch and political tai chi yeah it's weird to watch because it's like slight of hand it's like it's very bizarre you think they've been trained in that some neuro some neuro linguistic programming if you put your hands here when you're saying this sort of a thing Blah blah blah. I don't know if they're

There's clearly an indication that that's what you would do if you were trained, but I think it's more mimicking It's mimicking like the great Presidents and the great politicians who have done these very specific things. Like Bill Clinton famously used to do this thing with his fingers where he'd take his thumb and do this and do that. So it's not aggressive and violent because you can't really hit someone with this. But if you were doing this, it'd be a problem. That's problematic.

That's angry, right? With the pointing the finger. The fist is a sign of violence. But this thing is this weird, like a mushy. So the bizarre thing about the recession situation is the fact that it doesn't matter what you call it, right? You can call it fucking paradise if you want, but it's still shit. Right. Like all of the criteria of what's happening. Yes. Indicates a recession.

Yes. Like all of the criteria of what's happening indicates a recession. And the reason, obviously, is that you've got midterms coming up and you need to make sure that is in a recession is not something that can be thrown at the Democrats. Yes. Right. It's a protectionist strategy. Yes. So don't use that word. Well, it's not. It's not because it's not defined in that way.

Right. That's not the accepted definition. Right. It was until very, very, very recently. That's wild. Well, that's gaslighting. And just that alone, you know, is people would think that it's trivial because they are talking about this economic downturn. But it's not trivial because we've always used that term recession.

not trivial because we've always used that term recession. And we've always used that term to define whether or not the economic policies that are currently in place and whether or not the management and the government has done a good job of making sure that the economy stays in a good place. They definitely haven't done that. So in order to escape that sort of distinction, they're literally changing the definition, which is terrible. And it should be pushed back against in a big way. It should be something that people get angry about. Like, hey, you're fucking with definitions in order to pretend that you're doing a good job. Well, the reason that you attach a sequence of letters to something, right, is to represent what that thing is. You don't change reality by changing what those words actually mean.

Right. But if you can't control the economy, you might as well just control by changing what those words actually mean. Right. But if you can't control the economy, you might as well just control the language and hope for the best. God, what a bunch of weasels. Dude, it's wild. But again, this is, I think, because everybody's opinions and their words now are what everyone's judged on, not their deeds, right? We used to be judged on our deeds because they were the things with the most obvious. But now, because social media is one of the primary forms of communication, people are judged on their opinions and their words far more. And what that means is that your opinion is

actually, and the language specifically that you use, it's way more important than actually what's happening in the world. And if that's the case, what it means is that language should be the focus. Why wouldn't I lexically try and do some Brazilian jiu-jitsu to fuck around with this? A little bit of semantic fuckery. Why not? Well, because that's going to actually change the thing that most people are taking notice of. And also, there's a concept called two-step flow theory. And what it says is that there are precious few original thinkers in the world.

And because most people feel like they have to have an opinion on everything, because that's the world that we live in at the moment, but very few people can be bothered to do original thought and do the research. People just take on the opinion of whoever their favorite thought leader is. So you could basically argue that the culture war is largely two armies of NPCs being ventriloquized by a handful of actual thinkers above them. That's a great way to look at it. And that is kind of what's going on with a great majority of people or a large number of people. I don't know if it's a majority, but it's enough to make noise. It's enough to show you that there's a real problem with ideologies and with tribalism, because that's what people gravitate towards. They gravitate towards a group of people that they feel like they can fit into, and then they

can adopt those patterns of thinking and those thoughts. And instead of coming up with their own opinions, they form this sort of conglomeration of other people's opinions, and then they fiercely defend them. And you see that a lot on Twitter. And you see a lot of ideological capture on Twitter. And you see a lot of people, there's people that I'm friends with, that I follow, that I go to their thing. And all day long, they're just tweeting about politics. And they're tweeting about the Democrats and defending the Democrats and attacking the Republicans. And it's really weird because it's some sort of a strange distraction because to a person, every one of those people that I'm talking about has a disappointing career.

Every one of them. Every one of them is pretty fucking unsuccessful in their chosen craft. What do you think that's? Is that because they're spending too much time on Twitter or is it something that's deep seated below that? Are they focusing too much on status games? Are they unable to prioritize what actually matters? I think when their life is not going well and their, their chosen career is not going well, they concentrate on other things to distract them instead of focusing on the very thing itself.

And they think that they're justified in doing that because those things are really important. It's really important to stop the GOP. It's really important to do that. It's not so important that, you know, I sell out at the fucking chuckle hut this weekend. What's really, what's really important. It's not important that my jokes are good. It's not important that the audience comes and laughs and has a great time. No, what's really important is that I tweet bad things about Republicans and defend Kamala Harris. There's kind of a compensatory control thing going on here, right? The fact that they feel like they don't have as much control over perhaps their main pursuit in their life. Yeah.

But they do have control over their Twitter. Sure. I mean, that's why Karens are almost always fat. They don't have control over their bodies so yelling at other people there's there's something to that there's something to like the most complainy bitchy people that are really shitty that don't have a good never in shape no they're they're not comfortable with their own skin and they're they're generally speaking they're not doing well they're not doing well at the other

aspects of their life. I bet their relationships are probably a mess. Their friendships are probably all fucked up. You know, they probably owe taxes. They're a mess. Why do you think it is that people are so concerned about politics at the moment? Well, Donald Trump broke a lot of people. He broke a lot of people's ability to objectively look at the other side as just having a different perspective on things. Instead of that, it became you're evil. We're good, you're evil. It got down to a really binary view of the way the world works.

You're either with us or you're against us. world works. You're either with us or you're against us. He was such a problem in that he's so confrontational and he causes so many arguments and he attacks his enemies. Even while he was the president, he was doing this. So it became this thing where it ramped up the resistance and ramped up aggression to the point where people like putting hashtag resistance, the resistance in their Twitter posts about him. It's like I think people haven't they haven't recovered from that. They haven't like no one that no one has put forth any like and especially no one that's progressive has put forth any realistic argument for why that's bad for you, why that's bad for your thinking, why that's bad for even the group that you support. You're encouraging the other side to attack you. You're encouraging this sort of divide

that I think America is stricken with at the moment. And it's not to say that there's not negative things about the Republicans, and there most certainly aren't, but there's negative things about the Democrats too. And I think that aligning yourself with a particular party is always going to be a problem because some people feel like they can't talk about things that are not aligned with their party's values. Like maybe they're a person who is very progressive, but they're also a free speech absolutist. And then they see people getting censored and they see like the Hunter Biden story getting censored by Twitter. And they see certain stories not making their way into the news because the actual results, the actual facts and statistics that points to this argument are problematic to their ideology.

And so they either ignore them or they push against them. You run into these ideologically captured people, and it's very hard for people to break free because then you run the risk of being attacked by your own community. And when you have this very binary perspective on politics and social issues, whenever you deviate in any way, shape, or form, you run the risk of being attacked, particularly right now because, again, people are so divided. And I really think this started, it's always been the case, but from 2016 on, it became much more aggressive.

In 2012, people stopped voting for the love of the side that they had and started voting for distaste of the other. So up until then, people that were Democrats were voting because they liked the Democrats. After that time, both Republicans and Democrats were basically doing a protest vote. How much do you hate the opposition versus how much do you love yourself? And it was more about, I am not that than I am this. And it goes back to that fragile hatred of an out-group, not mutual love of an in-group thing from before, right? You're constantly looking for who can we shave off? Who can we get rid of? But I mean, why politics? Because I can't remember a time, mostly because I had my head up my ass, but I can't remember a time when the news wasn had my head up my ass, but I can't remember a time

when the news wasn't talking about politics. But I know that there was one, you know, when it was other sorts of stories, but everything now seems to be so captured. And any, do you remember, was it Nicki Minaj who became co-opted by the Republicans briefly when she was like vaccine skeptical a few years ago?

Yeah. Yeah. And it's like anything, any opportunity to co-opt somebody in to become a political football that we can click about. Yeah. Happened with you. Same thing with you as well. Yeah. You know, I just wonder why everything is seen through the same frame of politics now.

Like, was it Trump? Was that the thing? Yeah. That's a big part of it. But it's also, it's a very easy attack vector. It's very effective. If you can just point to someone having some sort of heterodox perspective that is problematic, you can attack them based on, you know, wrong thing. This is wrong thing. It's Orwell. It's like really what it is. It's like you've decided this person instead of saying, what is she saying? Oh, she's saying her friend's

ball swole up, like, which is kind of hilarious. You know, she was talking about the vaccine and her friend had some bad reaction. His balls swole up, which is apparently rare, but does happen to some people. But, you know, the way they looked at it was like, you shouldn't be talking about this. You shouldn't be saying this because you're contributing to vaccine hesitancy. And this is vaccine misinformation. And you're a bad person. And she was like, fuck you.

She pushed back hard, which I thought was amazing. Based menage for a couple of weeks. Yeah, man. She went hard at it. And so whenever that happens, then there becomes a problem, right? Here's another problem. Then people get captured by the Republican Party. And then they start talking about that. And then they start saying, you know what? Fuck that. I'm a Republican now. I'm red-pilled. And then they just join another

group. They just join this other group that supports them. And one of the things that's really interesting about the Republicans during this time is that whenever anybody does step out of favor with the Democrats, the Republicans endorse them and take them in. They've done that with me. And I'd like to thank you for that, Fox News. I love you too. They've been super supportive of me.

I appreciate it. But look, the things that they're supportive of are things that we tend to agree with. I don't believe in this sort of one size fits all government mandated, you know, healthcare remedy for a pandemic when there's other ways to address it. There's other ways. I think people should have autonomy about their body the same way I think that a woman has a right to choose. You know, it's like my body, my choice, except when it comes to this one thing, this vaccine that I want you to take no matter what, or I'm not going to let you work and you can't travel. But that's problematic because you're now showing that you don't hold the wholesale

opinion of the Republicans. Also, it was problematic because I was right, because I didn't get vaccinated. I got over it very quickly. It turns out I had it. Yeah, you turned out to say you had it. You didn't even know. Yeah, we gave you a antibody test today. Yeah.

Well, the new variant for a person like yourself who's fit and healthy is not that much of a problem. Obviously, that's a blanket statement, and I'm generalizing because some people have a harder go of it than others. But that's based on how your immune system is reacting, and there's a lot of variables to that, right? How your immune system is reacting. And there's a lot of variables to that, right? It could be it caught you when you were really run down and not doing well. Or maybe you had another issue already, like flu rona. You know about flu rona? What's that?

It's people catch COVID and the flu at the same time. Yeah, my wife got that. And it was because she was doing a lot of stuff and traveling. And she got run down. And she caught the rona while she had the flu and it was you know nailed yeah she got it and it wasn't the worst thing it was you know like a flu but it was uh enough that i i could see like my wife is very healthy and fit and for her to get it like that it indicates that there's you know some, it depends on like what is going on with your body at the time.

And there's times where your immune system is robust and strong, where you've been working out a lot and drinking a lot of water and taking a lot of vitamins and taking care of your mental health and your immune system is powerful. And then there's other times where, you know, maybe there's a death in the family and maybe maybe you lost your job, and maybe you haven't been sleeping, and maybe you have some mental health issues, and then you're worn out, and then you catch it, and it's really bad. And they'll say, well, that's because the disease is really bad. Well, it's really bad for you given that set of circumstances. And the idea that you just need to get boosted no matter what. This is nonsense.

you just need to get boosted no matter what. This is nonsense. One size fits all healthcare policies are stupid because they don't address the fact that there's a wide range of different human beings in this country. It's a wide range of reactions.

Like children, for example. The idea that all children need to be vaccinated is crazy. My children, and I'm not talking about other diseases. I think they should be vaccinated for other diseases. But for COVID, it's not a problem for healthy children. They get through it like that. I've seen it firsthand with my children.

I've seen it firsthand with many of my friends' children. They got COVID and it was almost nothing. You know, my one kid had a fucking headache for a day and that's it. And she never had a cough. She was laughing that she got to stay home from school. You know, I mean, it was nothing. But you're not supposed to hold that view. You're not supposed to be accurate, pro-gun, vaccine skeptical. I'm not vaccine skeptical. I'm propaganda skeptical. Propaganda skeptical. And I'm also skeptical of the fact that pharmaceutical companies have extraordinary amounts of money and influence. And we have always thought of them as being deceptive.

And there's a lot of evidence that points to the fact that they have misled people on the dangers, misled people on the results of their trials. misled people on the results of their trials. They have hidden trials that showed negative results and highlighted trials that were clearly biased. And that's always been the case. We've always known that. There's a shit ton of evidence, whether it's the release of Vioxx. There's many different drugs that they've been fined for

in the terms of billions of dollars. So it's not that I'm a vaccine skeptic. There's many different drugs that they've been fined for in the terms of billions of dollars. So it's not that I'm a vaccine skeptic. I'm a skeptic of undue influence of massive corporations. And they have done this forever. We know this. The fucking opioid epidemic is 100% caused by people who lied about whether or not these fucking things are addictive These are the same people that are pushing all these other pharmaceutical remedies because they make Ungodly amounts of money. Do you see dope sick? I did not see dope sick. It's amazing

So good and from someone that wasn't familiar with that We have a very different way of in the UK people are under prescribed rather than over prescribed right because it's subsidized right uh but yeah that was terrifying another thing that i was looking at was psychedelic capitalism so companies at the moment big pharma are realizing that down the line the psychedelic world and drugs may be opened up they may be legalized therapeutically and perhaps even recreationally. So a bunch of companies now are trying to synthesize patentable, ownable versions of drugs. So they're going in and looking at MDMA and LSD

and psilocybin and stuff like that. Now, typically what happens is a drug gets created and then over time it becomes generic, right? It just gets opened up and anybody can pretty much make it. What you have here is the opposite things happening. The opposite. So you have the existence of a generic off-brand label drug.

And now companies, big pharma companies are seeing down the line. There's a company called Compass, I think, is one of the big ones. They're looking down the line and they're thinking, we can own some of this. We can somehow profit from this. So they're future-proofing themselves by trying to create drugs, synthesize them. That's fascinating because the result, it's going to be interesting to see if they do that, what the results are. Because psychedelic drugs, one of the things that they do encourage is they encourage compassion and dissolving of the ego and they encourage community and they encourage love this is these are obviously mass generalizations and there's people who view

psychedelics who have escaped all of those positive benefits right we know that they become gurus and self-obsessed and you know there's there's it's not like foolproof but i think the in general the result of psychedelics is a more loving cohesive society and i think that's good so maybe we can have some sort of a brand of capitalism that encourages psychedelic uses because it's profitable and then because of that that, and through that, people can abandon a lot of their aggressive tendencies and a lot of their ideas that are not suitable to a loving community. Because you're going to align for once something which is good for society with something that is good for the company. Yeah. And maybe these companies in profiting off of these psychedelics

would start to invest in community centers and start to invest in rebuilding neighborhoods and rebuilding fucked up cities. Why would they do that? They would do that because they're looking at their overall image. If you're making insane amounts of money profiting off of psychedelics and you're using these psychedelics as well you might feel i would feel that i had some sort of an obligation to enhance the community that was serving me dude if everybody in the company is on psychedelics i don't i don't know how much he's going to get done i don't know if this is ever going to make it to market i don't know there's a lot of people that are using psychedelics in big tech, and they're using them in microdosing.

And it's changing their perspectives. It's changing the way they interact with the market. And their dog and the mirrors and everything else. Depends upon dosage. Yeah. Yeah. It depends upon dosage. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, to get back to what you were talking about, about embracing views, like being pro-Second Amendment, but also being pro-choice. Yep. These things are supposed to – you're supposed to not have that. You're supposed to be able to join a group, and that group is – you've got, oh, I've got all my ducks in a line here What do I what do I think about this? Oh that let me consult the document. Yeah, what I think about open borders Oh, yeah, I'm for it. I think I'm I'm liberal Yeah, you know you look at this and you you you realize that like there's some things on this side that I don't agree with And there's some things on that side that I agree with and then you realize like oh, wait a minute

I'm just a person. I'm a person with my own ideas on things. And I'm not a Republican. I'm not a Democrat. I'm a human. And I resist these notions that I have to be classified in this very fucking clear and specific box. The problem is, if I know one of your views, and from it, I can accurately predict everything else that you believe, you're not a serious thinker. You've just adopted somebody else's ideology and you've plugged it in. I think this is one of the reasons why whenever I see people online that always talk about the same stuff, you know, it's like an old leather pair of shoes. You can almost feel where it's going to go. You know what the opinion is going to be.

Something new has happened. The recession news about Wikipedia or whatever has happened. And you can tell what where it's going to go. You know what the opinion is going to be. Something new has happened. The recession news about Wikipedia or whatever has happened. And you can tell what the take is going to be. You're never surprised. Yeah. That means that they're not a serious thinker. Yeah. Or it means, you know, they're ideologically captured, at least in that specific topic. You know, like the abortion topic is what I call, it's a very human issue. And what I mean by that is it's very messy.

It's not like a math problem. When you look at abortion, abortion in this country and abortion rights in this country, and that's what it is. I mean, you call it reproductive rights, but it's really abortion. You're talking about when life has been conceived, right? It is the potential to become a human being. At what point in time are you comfortable with terminating that? And who do you think should be allowed to say whether or not another individual, not you, not your partner, but another person, when they get pregnant, when should they be allowed

to have an abortion? And Texas has this crazy law. It's like six weeks, which is fucking insane. Because six weeks in, a lot of women don't even know they're pregnant. And then it's seven weeks, and now it's against the law. So now you have to travel to get an abortion. You could be two weeks late for your period. Yes. I mean, fucking wild. That's wild to me. And it doesn't make any sense. And it's mostly based on religious beliefs, I think.

We don't have a Christian right in the UK, which is one element that's very different. It's very, very interesting. It's amazing that no one's come along and built one. Yeah, I guess. Perhaps. Because it seems like they could get a lot of people built one. Yeah, I guess. Because it seems like they could get a lot of people with that. Well, you've got them over here.

But yeah, I think. Yeah, we've got a lot of them over here. It's interesting thinking about the way that the abortion debate comes about. I got asked on a Q&A recently, what opinion do you hold that most of your audience would disagree with? do you hold that most of your audience would disagree with? And I said that both sides of the abortion debate feel to me like a kind of righteous side. Like I really find it difficult to work out. Like when I hear a Shapiro going like really, really good on the pro-life thing, I'm like, fucking hell, like that sounds kind of compelling. And then when I hear someone that's completely talking about the pro-choice in a really, really good way, I find, fucking hell, that's really compelling. And maybe that's just that I haven't done the work to

get myself to a sufficiently robust position to make one call or the other. But I think it's what you said earlier on. This isn't a maths problem. It's a very, very messy issue. And it comes down basically to sort of morality and a felt sense of what is right for a lot of people. They can post-talk it as much as they want. They can say, well, actually, we know that the cluster of cells and this level of survivorship and blah, blah, blah. You go, it's a moral issue. It's mostly a moral issue. It's how do you feel about this?

Yes. And now you're trying to verbalize it. Yes. And I think from my own personal perspective, my thought on it is first and foremost, I am not a woman. I am incapable of getting pregnant and I don't think that I don't think I'm a woman but even if I was a woman I'm pretty sure I can't get pregnant

so I might become a woman but I can never get pregnant at least in terms of like what science has figured out now like if medical science comes up with some new innovation and I can become a woman and get pregnant I actually read something where they were talking about taking trans women and transplanting uterus in trans women. And that this was at least theorized. Where'd you get a uterus from? Another woman. Donation?

Yes. Someone doesn't want a uterus. She gives it to you. He. Steve. Yeah., she gives it to you. He? Steve. Yeah, you. You can say you. No, he gives it to you.

Presumably, if you're getting rid of your uterus and it's still working, it's because you might be going through transition as well. No, it could be a woman that doesn't want her uterus. Just giving it away? Yeah, she doesn't like it. Like a yard sale? Yeah, like, I don't like my left hand. You want it? I mean, there are people people that do you know that there's there's people that um i forget what the term for it is but they feel like they should be handicapped and they're not

i know that there's a trans autistic movement at the moment which are people who aren't autistic but identify as autistic oh that's hilarious for first time ever, I felt like someone was using my culture as a costume. Are you autistic? I don't know. I just feel like, I feel like 5% autism is like a competitive advantage now. Oh yeah, for sure. That's what you want. You just want, you know, the salt bae, you want that much, just a sprinkling of it.

Right. You want to microdose Adderall. Microdosing autism. Good outcomes from first five years of uterus transplants. What? Is this into men? Okay. Hold on a second.

But this is women. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What? Okay. But this is problematic first of all because they're saying women. I was looking it up this way. No, no, no. You just go back. Go back. Uterine transplants in trans women. Eth was looking it up this way. No, no, no. You just go back. Go back.

Uterine transplants in trans women. Ethicists sound in. Like right there. Click on that. I had something. I was trying to find newer stuff. Oh, okay. But let's just like see what this is. But this is May of 2022. Uterine transplants are not new. The first successful uterine transplant was done

in Sweden in 2013. America boasted its first successful uterine transplant three years later at Baylor. But these were cis women born without a functioning uterus. Now an Indian doctor is proposing uterine transplantation for trans women. This is what I was talking about. The reaction in the bioethics community is mixed. Oh, you think? I was trying to see if there was a result to this.

I want to find the people that are in support of it. Like, yeah. Well, it's not just a uterus. It's not like a garage or a garage, as you'd say. It's not just like having a garage. It's not just, oh, let's just park your car in here and it'll be fine. You can have my garage.

I can have your garage. It's like, there's more than just the vehicle that you park it in. Right. Hormone cascades and a whole bunch of other stuff someone got really uh criticized online a little while ago for replying to elon musk's problem about um underpopulation and population collapse that test you babies will fix everything it's like well it's the mother's heartbeat it's all of the the ways that you interact that the baby interacts

in utero with the mother it's not just it's not simply just like a vitamin pill that you could take or a particular solution that you could leave this fetus in and then you get a child nine months later. Yeah, who knows what happens if we actually develop a full child outside of a human body. I mean, a real test tube baby where there's some sort of an artificial environment and then they all turn out to be sociopaths. They have no connection with other human beings, so they didn't develop a connection with their mother while they're in the womb. It could be wild.

Or, excuse me, it could be a father in the womb because men can get pregnant now. I learned about the adaptive reason for psychopaths being in society. So you'd think like it's about 0.1% to 1% of people are psychopathic, right? And then you can filter that down to the ones that have got sufficient motivation to actually go and do something that's a bit wild. But I was asking this guy, the researcher, and I was saying, look, what is it? How do psychopaths even exist? Why do they exist? I can't understand why they're adaptive. I know that you can be effective over short periods as a psychopath, but over long

periods of time, it doesn't end up being very good for society. And I thought it would have been bred out. He said, yeah, you're right. Except for the fact that over the entire size of a population, a few psychopaths actually make sense. If you're a raiding party, a Viking raiding party that needs to go over and fuck everybody up in Lindisfarne, which is near to where I lived in the UK, you want some psychopaths. You don't want them to come back with PTSD. You want them to go over over and fuck everybody up in Lindisfarne, which is near to where I lived in the UK. You want some psychopaths. You don't want them to come back with PTSD. You want them to go over there, burn everything down, rape the women, pillage, come back with gold and supplies and grain and whatever else they take and not care about it. You actually on

an individual level, psychopathy might not be fantastic for the people around them, but in a tribe it's actually quite adaptive and quite useful. It's like a a weapon like a very specific sort of weapon that you can use yeah break glass in case of war yes yes in case of raiding party it makes sense that it would be sort of a legacy thing that exists in the human population that we've had it because it was very beneficial thousands of years ago the difference is differences now that you're not going to get pulled up as much for being a psychopath because you can move from town to town. If it was a Dunbar number of 100 or 150 or something in your tribe previously,

what are you going to do, go to the next tribe? Maybe that would have happened. I don't know. Perhaps you could move from one tribe to another tribe. It seems pretty unlikely. You'd probably just get killed. But if you fuck over people one too many times, this is the reason that socially we're so careful of status.

It's one of the reasons why we are concerned about public speaking because one of the few times you would have done that is when your status would have been in high focus and people might have said, if this goes badly, they're going to drop down or maybe you were defending yourself against the tribe of some kind. If you're not able to move on, that would make psychopathy more difficult to manage and more likely to be punished, I think. But now you can just go from town to town to town within a city,

go from suburb to suburb, change your name, not use your social media profile anymore. I think that psychopathy, people that are actively being psychopaths are significantly easier now to hide in amongst society. That makes sense. It also makes sense that psychopathy would have been more common because it would have been more useful when you're constantly in tribal war. Correct. Yeah. It depends on how you deploy it. So it's interesting.

Psychopathy, to be a clinically diagnosed psychopath, you actually have to have committed criminal acts. to be a clinically diagnosed psychopath, you actually have to have committed criminal acts. So you can't be, because of the way that the current psychopathic checklist is called, I think you have to be 28 out of 40 in the UK or 30 out of 40 in the US. The US has got a higher threshold for psychopaths, which is kind of funny.

And there was this guy, this researcher, who was researching psychopaths. And what you see is a particular area of the brain is downregulated, right? So you don't see as much activity. When you see stuff like death or images that would cause you to have empathy. So he decides that he's going to study a bunch of psychopaths, many of whom I think are actually in prison, because you have to commit a criminal act. And then he needs a control group.

So the control group is going to be you're a professor. You've got students. Use the students. And he was running out of people to put in the control group. I mean, he even used himself as one of the people. So anyway, he's running through this control group and having a look at all of the people that are in it. And he notices this person's got no activation when they're going through. And he goes, holy shit, this is the brain of a psychopath in the control group.

I found a psychopath in here. I need to go and contact them. It turned out to be him. Turned out to be the professor himself. He discovered that he was a psychopath whilst doing a study on psychopaths. And then he said, actually, you know what? It all makes sense now. Because when people come around to my house and they're eating my food,

I think, who the fuck are all of these people in my house eating my food? Why are they here? And they interviewed his kids. They asked his kids. And they said, what is it like? You know, is there anything unique about dad? Well, yeah, dad, he doesn't smile that much around us. And he's not very warm and he's not very loving and blah, blah, blah. But the point being that you can have

the biological determinants of being a psychopath and it not manifest. This was a fully functioning guy, wife, kids, career, didn't smile much. Wasn't happy when people ate his food, but like broadly fine. But he had essentially the same raw materials as the person that was murdering Jay. So what was, what's the determination? How do they, what are they looking for when they find out that he's a... A whole big long checklist. It might even be available online. I'm not sure, but big long checklist of things that you need to go through a bunch of questions that you answer and they go through this diagnosis. But in order to breach the threshold of clinically being diagnosed as a psychopath, you have to have used it to commit crimes. So this meant that although this particular professor

had all of the raw ingredients and it looked like he was psychopathic by the, what is it? The DNS? What's that thing? The Diagnostic Statistical Manual, DSM. The DSM wouldn't have categorized him as a psychopath. Very interesting. That is very interesting. So this guy, did they contact his spouse? Well, I think it was him doing the study, right?

So I guess he contacted his spouse. Did he ask his spouse, like, what's wrong with me? Fuck knows. Why do you like me? Perhaps. But then you also have to think the fact that psychopaths tend to be pretty effective in the world, right? So someone that has very outgoing traits, they're super self-assured, you know, you have narcissism as well. As long as it's not vulnerable narcissism, there's two types, grandiose narcissism and vulnerable narcissism. What's the difference?

So grandiose narcissists are the ones who genuinely believe that they are better than everybody else. They are constantly proving this to everyone. Vulnerable narcissists manifest their narcissism in a similar way, but it's to try and hide the fact that deep down they don't believe that they're anything. So both types of narcissism will manifest in a similar sort of way. Both of them will be out there, but one person is desperately seeking approval and needs people to tell them that they've done well. And the other one doesn't, they're just going to continue believing no matter what reality brings to them.

Now, the vulnerable narcissists are actually really dangerous. And the reason for that is that if the world doesn't give to them that which they think, they're going to get very, very angry and aggressive because that taps into something that maybe they're fearful about that's deep down. That makes sense. That makes sense where a lot of people who have a distorted perception of where they should be in the world are angry at others who are doing well. And if someone takes them down, if somebody was to take the piss out of them,

the grandiose narcissist, it would just be water off a duck's back. Like Trump. Yep. Yeah, definitely grandiose narcissist, right? He's not got vulnerable narcissism in him. Someone that's a vulnerable narcissist, everybody knows that friend that just can't not bring up the most recent brilliant thing they've done.

But they know that if they poke them a little bit too hard, that it would really, really hurt. That's the vulnerable narcissist. Yeah. Interesting. So when this study is done on psychopaths and they're looking for these traits, are they able to do some sort of a scan of the mind? Is there like an fMRI or something like that? Yeah, and they're looking for brain activation in particular areas that respond to imagery, I think, that people are being shown. And the imagery is stuff like war images, dead bodies, stuff that should cause empathy to come through. Because I think a lack

of empathy is one of the main insights, one of the main causes or determinants, sorry, that... It's interesting. Is there a difference between desensitization, which is something that absolutely has happened with people being able to access horrific images and videos and stories online. Because your access to horrific images is so much greater than at any time in human history. However, for the most part, our physical interaction with horrific imagery is down way more than it ever was. Like during times of war and during times of famine and in the past when things were way more brutal in history. But our access to images, like there's a certain argument that video games and violent films and all these things have desensitized us to imagery. So everyone's maybe become a little bit more psychopathic in that way. Sensitized us to imagery so everyone's maybe become a little bit more psychopathic in that way right because like what do you if you're studying?

a person's Reaction a thing it's not like you're taking them to a rape scene It's not like you're taking them like hey, we're gonna watch this guy get murdered come with me We're gonna be like not as visceral right you're not gonna be right there like how do you react when you're like? Are there levels to this like if someone was stabbing someone right in front of you, would you not care at all? Or would you just not care if you saw a video? Yeah. The threshold is different. The threshold is always, but I mean, this is the problem with any lab study, right? Anytime that you want to try and talk about arousal response or all of that, it's, it's in a lab. So there's a conversation analysis is a, another type of science that's done. And Right, right. something like that. And then they record that session, they go away and they transcribe it. Difference being that you're able to get things out of a non-lab setting that you couldn't get

in a lab setting. There's always going to be an impact, right? An unnatural impact. And yeah, you might be right. I mean, perhaps there are people that are totally fine looking at the images and not being there in front of the situation itself. Yeah, I would really worry about that analysis today because I do think that people are so much more comfortable with seeing horrific things today and particularly things that are not quite real, like violent video games. Like if you play Grand Theft Auto, you could beat someone to death with a crowbar. It's a part of a game that's been played by millions of people. There's a lot of weirdness to that. There's a lot of weirdness to that.

There's a lot of weirdness to getting accustomed to semi-realistic imagery that is not... If you saw it in real life, it would be horrific. But you're laughing at beating someone to death with a crowbar. You steal their car and shoot them. How much crossover is there between what we do in video games and how we see the real world? I mean, this is like the billion-dollar question, right? Just how much impact is there of violent video games on the way that people show up in day-to-day life? I think it might entirely depend on the resolve of your personality and how you've been raised.

and how you've been raised. I think if you're a person that doesn't get a lot of interaction with human beings, maybe have negative interactions with family members and parents, and you seek escape through these violent video games, and you play these violent video games, and the imagery is stimulating and exciting, violent video games and the imagery is stimulating and exciting and you get feelings of victory and of satisfaction by achieving these goals, which include shooting people. Yeah. That could be a problem.

Like, say a person like yourself, like a fully formed adult human being, nice guy, I'm sure video games are not going to turn you into a psycho. But if you're being raised on the internet and you're on fucking 4chan all day looking at people getting shot in the face and then you go and play violent video games and then you don't have any interaction with loving people there's I mean there's people like that that the vast majority of the human interaction is through a screen to a faceless person somewhere else. And you're just getting data in terms of like text from posts and

articles and you're reading, you're laughing at horrible memes, and then you're playing violent video games. Like you are in some way, I don't know what the equation is for nature versus nurture, but I would imagine that there's some impact that all of that stuff has on your overall being. The question is like, what is that? What's that number? Have you had a look at behavioral genetics much? So it's how heritable a lot of the traits that we have, especially psychologically are. So there's this guy called Robert Plowman. He did the biggest twin study ever in history. It was every twin born

between, I think, 1991 and 1994 in the UK. He invited them to be a part of this study. It's something like 60,000 pairs of twins that he did. And what he was trying to do was he was trying to tease apart the difference between nature and nurture. How much of what we are is because of our genetics and how much of what we are is because of our environment. And the only way that you can really do this is with identical twins. And what you can do is identical twins that get put up for adoption, you get to use the same genetics, but you split test what happens in terms of the environment.

And dude, the number, the amount of impact that our genes have on us is absolutely terrifying. Pretty much 50% of everything that you are psychologically is because of your genes. 50? 50%. Wow. So if your father's a psychopath and your mother's a psychopath. Oh, psychopathy may be even more heritable. I mean, so everyone would accept the fact that height is pretty heritable, right? I think it's about 0.9, so 90% is the correlation between you and your parents. Weight is, I want to say 50%. There'll be a chart that we could get on the internet of how heritable Robert Plowman's work says everything is.

But stuff like depression, alcoholism, all of this stuff is super, super highly heritable. And people don't like this because in a world that's a meritocracy, you want to believe that you can be anything that you dream to be. If the people that are successes are worthy of their successes, then what does that mean the people who fail are? Well, they're worthy of their failures. But this genetic research would suggest that there's a lot of restrictions that get placed on people before they actually end up even stepping onto the field of play. And that makes people feel very uncomfortable. It's just around the corner from talking about eugenics. It's just around the corner of talking about determinism, that there's racial differences in IQ, all of this sort of stuff. It's in the same region as some pretty touchy subjects that nobody wants to go close to.

But when you're talking about psychopathy, a lot of that is coming through. Yeah, maybe it's activated in the environment, but a lot of this needs to be triggered in the parents. And you go, well, that's a difficult situation to work out who's morally responsible. Is the psychopath morally responsible? Well, how responsible? Yeah, that determinism argument,

the version of, or the argument rather, of free will versus determinism is, when it's's very compelling when you get down to the bottom of it and you really start thinking about like, are you, how much free will do you really have? And what, what does that mean? You, are you a combination of all of your life experiences plus your genetics? Or are you an individual with choices that you can make in the moment right now? Do the right thing. Like, is that possible? Like, who are you? Are you, are you, are you a person or are you a conglomeration of ideas and thoughts and genetics and how much will and how much control do you have over the things you say and the things you do? I spiraled one of my friends into a deep depression after I sent him the clip of Sam Harris talking about that on this podcast. He didn't leave the house for two weeks. It's like, well, if everything's determined, then it doesn't matter. It kind of does. I think Sam makes a very compelling argument, but I do think there's something to external pressures

that you get from the community that affect your choices because you say and do things that people think are either a problem or are negative or have some sort of a negative effect on others. And so you realize that people don't like that. And then it shifts the way you think and behave in the future. And then when faced with a similar situation, you then, instead of relying upon this accumulation of data and genetics, you also take into account, into consideration, the thoughts and feelings of others. And that is a version of free will, because then you decide, you know what, I think I'm thinking about this wrong. And I think my natural, I'm compelled to act in this way. But I think maybe I should lean more towards that.

And maybe I should try to do the right thing. And that's free will. It definitely makes people I think, believing that you've got that impact, it definitely makes them feel more empathic right if nothing if nothing matters then you're only two steps away from fatalism or nihilism right that doesn't seem like a very good way so i mean you could say that learning about determinisms and information hazard right that if you learn about it it may cause you to be less caring to be less diligent less conscientious with the things that you do it It was interesting thinking about the role model thing that we said earlier on. A lot of the time, or at least where I grew up in the northeast of the UK,

there's not a massive amount. There weren't many people that were like the people that I wanted to be. And I realized that I didn't have any role models or many that were fantastic for me to be around. But having a negative role model, so someone that you know that you definitely don't want to be like, I actually think is maybe just as useful. It's if you don't have anybody around you that you want to be like, and you do have people around you that you like, I don't want

to have his relationship with his father, his type of way that he shows up for his kids, the financial setup that this person's got in their life, that person's body image, that person's relationship with their diet, all of that stuff. Those are all flags that you can plant in the ground. They're going to say, okay, I'm not going to be this. I'm not going to be this. I'm not going to be this. And avoiding ruin is probably more useful than actually trying to achieve success. Like people can get themselves out of the game a lot more easily than they can get to the top and if you end up with a criminal record or dying in a car crash because you were drunk driving or getting a girl pregnant when you're both too young to support the baby like all of these things are huge problems and the downside of that is much worse than the upside of being more inspired so I

just felt like looking at negative role models is potentially a useful way to go about things like that yeah I think that's why a lot of people who are very successful came from a horrible environment like looking at negative role models is potentially a useful way to go about things like that. Yeah, I think that's why a lot of people who are very successful came from a horrible environment. Like they realized that's not how I want to be. That's a big factor with alcoholics children. The children of alcoholics either become alcoholics themselves or really have a great disdain for alcohol. Yeah, but if you grew up on an island, the genetic predisposition for alcoholism is pretty high. But if you grew up on an island that had no alcohol on it, you wouldn't be an alcoholic.

So everything isn't fully determined by your genes, right? The environment plays a role. I did a gig once on this place called Block Island. And Block Island, I think, find out where Block Island is. I think it's off Rhode Island somewhere. But, I mean, I don't know if the audience that I had was indicative of the rest of the population of this island,

but there wasn't a lot. Yeah, yeah, okay, Rhode Island. There's not a lot to do on this island. And I think it's mostly like fishermen or people who, you know, I don't know, but I've never encountered a more stupefyingly drunk audience in my life. They weren't just drunk. I mean, they were fucking obliterated and it was the whole crowd.

And it was me and this guy, Scott Scott that I was doing this gig with. And I remember we went back to the place where we're staying afterwards. And we're like, never again. We're never doing this gig again. This is the worst gig ever. We have to tell everybody. Is there a right amount of drunk that the crowd needs to be? No.

No, they could be completely sober and have a good time. I mean, alcohol is obviously a social lubricant. And it helps a little bit for people to, you know, loosen up and have a good time. I mean, alcohol is obviously a social lubricant and it helps a little bit for people to loosen up and have some fun. But I go to shows all the time where I'm sober and I'm laughing. You don't have to be drunk. You don't have to be intoxicated in any way, but being stupefied. And these people were just... Larry. It wasn't one of them. it wasn't one of them. It wasn't 10 of them. It was all of them.

I've never encountered an audience like that where everyone was shit-faced. There was no, like, there's got to be a table that I could turn to with a rational group of people that are just out having a good time going, what the fuck is going on? There was no people like that there. Everyone was just, and keep drinking. They they kept drinking and it was just so depressing and i was just thinking imagine growing up and being stuck on this island maybe it's better now people i don't know block island maybe you got it going to go going on now you pulled it off got your shit together but when i was there in like 1989 it was horrific i mean it was fucking horrific and we we couldn't believe it i forget how we got there probably like a ferry or something but i remember like coming back

we were just going i'm never fucking going back there again because it's like you there was not there was no there was no humor there was nothing you could say it didn't matter what you said these people were obliterated i mean the whole audience was obliterated just i remember this lady like yelling out scott when he was on stage she was just like and i looked over and like the people that were with her were like barely recognizing she was that drunk and they were just splastered talking about funny stuff have you seen the new peter adverts about how meat can get in the way of your love life no jamie please yeah please it's gonna get in the way of your love life so goodness definitely don't eat meat then uh these adverts are some of the funniest

things that i've seen on the internet it's a new campaign. It says it was from 2017. Is this... Meat will get in the way of your love life? Yeah, it says meat interrupts your sex life. Yeah, that's it. It might be 2017.

Oh, is it from... Is this it? Yeah. Okay, let's see. There's a cow in the middle? Oh. First of all, that guy has problems anyway

with his fucking man bun. Look at him. Easy. I got one. Doesn't look like that, though. Shave it off. That silly fella. Yeah, scroll down, Jamie. What's it saying? There should be some more. So yeah, they put them on the side

of the road. How does it interrupt your sex life? There's one with a pig there. Meat and dairy clog your arteries and can lead to erectile dysfunction that's not really true none of that's true go a little bit further down I think there's one that looks like two guys have had their mind blown by a chicken there it is

meat interrupts your sex life two guys that have had a threesome with a chicken and it looks like they've blown their mind I don't think that's what they're saying I think the chicken is keeping them from fucking each other that's what it's saying that somehow or another chicken is bad for your fucking each other. That's what it's saying. That somehow or another chicken is bad for your sex life.

Tell that to 95% of the world who eats meat. It's probably more than that. I think it's like 97. Women see men who are omnivores as more attractive than men that are vegetarian as well. Is that true? A bunch of studies on it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They see men.

What about vegetarian women? There's a lot of vegetarian women and vegan women that are disgusted by people who eat meat. Perhaps, but that means that you've reduced down your dating pool, right? As a vegetarian man, you're at a disadvantage to all of the omnivore women. Right. But perhaps an advantage to the vegan and vegetarian women. Potentially a high price to pay, though, just to get laid. To not have meat again. Well, unless it works for you.

I think for some people, that's what they want. Well, unless it works for you. I think for some people that's what they want. I mean, I'm a strong believer in biological diversity. And I think there's many people that thrive on a vegetarian diet. They don't seem to have a problem with it at all. They seem happy and healthy. Have you ever tried it? I did a vegetarian diet for six months because I was trying to maintain a ridiculously low weight. And it didn't work. It didn't work well for me. But also I should say that I was 19 or 18. And so I probably wasn't doing it right. But I was just eating vegetables.

I would go to like, I'd buy Chinese food and I'd get like Buddha's Delight and I'd get all vegetables. And I wasn't eating any meat at all. What was your performance like changes? I was just a little like lack, lack of energy, like listless. It was just like, didn't feel good. Just didn't. But again, I'm not saying that you can't thrive on a vegetarian diet. I'm just giving my own personal experience with how I did it. I don't think I did it well, you know, but when I started eating meat again, I, there's like a period, like I won the Massachusetts state championships in Taekwondo four years in a row. And the first year I won it at 140 pounds and I wasn't 140 pounds. I was probably like 150 something. And I drained myself to get down to 140 in order to compete

and it was you had to weigh in the day of the matches and I won but I was very tired I was I was drained and I won by knockout in two of the fights and it was very lucky that I did because I probably didn't have enough energy to fight like hard for you know all the rounds and then um the next year so between that year and um there was a few competitions before you know the state and national championships and so i said you know i'm having a really hard time maintaining this this weight and in getting down this way it was so brutal for the state championships i'm gonna try to do something. So I tried a vegetarian diet and then I did it for six months and it wasn't good. I didn't make, I didn't make gains in terms of like my technique and my, my ability. I just felt like I was stuck. And so my instructor said, why don't you think about going up and wait, just give it a try. And so then I started

eating meat like crazy and I gained 10 pounds like almost immediately. Like within two months I was 10 pounds heavier and much better. Same condition? I was faster, I was stronger and I was winning in much more spectacular fashion. Like I was going into tournaments and just destroying people. Like I had like really came into my own after I quit my vegetarian diet. But again, I don't think I was doing it right. I think I was going into tournaments and just destroying people. I really came into my own after I quit my vegetarian diet. But again, I don't think I was doing it right. I think I was weakening myself. I mean, I think if I was supplementing with hemp protein

and making sure that I got my B12 in order, then I was taking supplements and doing it the correct way and getting my blood work done and making sure that my levels were all good. I wasn't doing that. Much less education about it back then. Much worse. Supplementation in terms of helping people to do that. Yes.

Yeah, much less. I remember I went to a nutritionist to try to talk to her about it. She was telling me I should eat cereal. She's like, have a bowl of cereal. I go, what about sugar? She's like, well, you'll burn that off. You're very athletic. I was like, that is a terrible nutritionist. How hard is it? The Jake

Pol fight's just been canceled. You see that? Yeah. And that's been canceled because his opponent couldn't lose 16 pounds. Allegedly. Most likely that was canceled for numerous reasons. That may have been one of them, but the allegations that i'm hearing are that they sold so few tickets that it would be a real problem in terms of like financially to even break even because they what dana white said that he had heard they had only sold a million dollars worth of tickets if you want to turn the lights on in madison square garden it costs a half a million dollars you you have to sell a lot of fucking tickets if you want to make some money in Madison Square Garden.

And if you want to make money on pay-per-view, there's a threshold. Like, say, up until like 100,000 buys, depending on what the deal is, you might not make any money. And then after 100,000 buys, then you start making money. And who the fuck wanted to see that fight? I didn't want to see it.

Nobody wanted to see that fight, except Jake Paul's family and his friends and his fans. I think, and Brockman's family and friends and fans. But I think that if he had fought someone who was either a ranked opponent or someone with a big name. Jake Paul is obviously very popular and people and he's very talented like he knocked out Tyron Woodley who's one of the greatest welterweight champions in the history of the UFC I mean obviously Tyron Woodley's on a boxer his background was in wrestling but we're still talking about elite combat sports athlete and Jake Paul flat lined him with one punch he's legit I'm believe, and I've watched him hit mitts.

I've watched him work out. I've watched him spar. I think he's legit. I think he could be a legit pro boxer. And I also think that if he wasn't Jake Paul and you watched his performance, like the way he knocked out Tyron Woodley, if he was just an up-and-coming boxing contender, I would say that guy's a fucking killer.

Keep an eye on him. The way he knocked out Tyron Woodley is serious. I would tell everybody, have you seen this guy Jake Paul? He's the shit. He's real. He's a fucking, that Nate Robinson guy that he knocked out, the way, it's not just that he knocked out an NBA player, that's no big deal. It's the way he

did it. He knocked him out like a stone cold killer. He knew exactly what he was doing. He slid away, cracked him with a right hand and dropped him. He's real. He's got real talent. You know, the Ben Askren knockout, it's not impressive to knock out Ben Askren because Ben Askren is just an elite wrestler. He also had a hip replacement before that and kind of probably barely trained striking for that fight. It doesn't have like this deep background in striking where he became, where he was like a really dangerous opponent. But the way he did it, he's cracking him at one punch and flatlining him. Like that's, he's legit. Jake Paul is legit talented, but you got to have a fucking dance partner.

And even though Rahman is a Hasim Rahman's son and you know, there's, there's legacy to that. And he's like 12 and one as a professional, he lost his last fight, but he's son, and there's legacy to that, and he's like 12-1 as a professional. He lost his last fight, but he's still 12-1 as a professional as far as credentials go. He's bigger than Jake Paul, and they wanted him to be at 200 pounds, so he's supposed to weigh in at no more than 205, and he was like 215, and that's why they're canceling the fight. and he was like 215 and that's why they're canceling the fight.

Maybe, maybe, or maybe the interest in this fight was a lot less than they had anticipated. He was supposed to be fighting Tommy Fury. Yeah. Tommy Fury who's, you know... Second time that Tommy's pulled out. Yeah.

No, it can be because of originally an injury, I think back in last year and then this time it was something to do with immigration problems. But in the last two fights that Jake's had three people have pulled out yeah well it's because he's fucking good he's good man he's it's he run you run a real risk of getting knocked the fuck out if you fight Jake Paul and he's got nothing to lose as well right you run a real risk of getting knocked the fuck out by Jake Paul and that like, because of the way he acts and behaves and cause it's so

funny the way he acts, like what he's done is really kind of amazing. Cause he's like created this persona that's like easily mocked, but you can't mock his fucking skills. So like these guys can mock him and talk on kinds of crazy shit. But when you get in the ring with them, that fucking dude can fight. He can fight. Like I'm a combat sports expert, right? I literally do that for a living. I'm a martial arts expert. I will tell you without doubt that fucking dude can fight.

He can fight. There's an interesting question coming up now, especially to do with boxing, that it's the sweet science and it was kind of held in very unique prestige. There's a question about how late can you start and still become absolutely great uh who's the guy that fought uh tyson fury for the deontay wilder he started super late right i want to say 17 18 yeah i think older than that i think he started when he was 21 okay he won a bronze medal in medal in the Olympics after a year and a half of training. You need to understand what kind of special talent Deontay Wilder has. He's got what, you know, what Teddy Atlas calls an eraser for right hand. Forget all the mistakes he makes,

he can just erase it, boom, with one right hand. And he almost knocked out Tyson Fury. I mean, he fucked him up. And it's one of the reasons why Tyson Fury wants to retire. Because that fight, he was concussed after that fight. And he was hurting for a long time. Because Deontay Wilder cracked him on two moments in that fight and dropped him and had him in really bad trouble. And look, Tyson Fury is an animal and a warrior. And he got up and he won that fight. He won by spectacular knockout. But a lot of people would have went night-night that day a lot of people most people There's a question to be asked here of how late can you start? You know depends on the individual? Because some people just have an inherent ability to learn athletic pursuits. They just they just they have

Just a better Understanding of their body they have a better understanding of their body. They have a better relationship with movement for whatever reason. And you can say that it's important to have traditional martial arts or boxing training early on. And for the most part, that's correct. But there's a lot of things that people do, whether it's just fucking around with their friends or whether it's other sorts of athletic pursuits that can enhance your ability to learn boxing and can enhance your ability to learn MMA. But to be the best of the best,

I think there's a real good argument that you need to start early because Tyson Fury obviously started early Deontay Wilder didn't but also Tyson Fury's six foot nine I mean the physical gifts that he have that he has are undeniable and the guy's mind I mean he's he's a fucking animal like when he goes in there when he was talking to Deontay Wilder and they were doing the uh the pre-fight instructions he's looking at me he, you're a fucking bitch. You're a bitch. You're a bitch. And he was saying that to him. And you could see Deontay Wilder going, what have I got myself into?

Like that was, I think, for the third fight. What, he'd already knocked him out in the second fight. And he fucked him up in the third fight too. Built different, man. Yep. And it's also the environment he grew up in. You know, obviously he's a gypsy. He calls himself the Gypsy King.

You know, it's like you're around people that are fighting all the time. There's a long history of bare-knuckle boxing in the gypsy community. I mean, they're tough fucking people. Jake Paul called out Canelo Alvarez as well. That's hilarious. That's a death sentence. Yeah. Yeah.

But also, Jake Paul's 200 pounds. Canelo Alvarez really should have never fought at 175 pounds, which is when he fought Dimitri Bivol. He lost the title at 175 because Bivol is an elite, legit world champion at 175. And a lot of people feel like that's why he avoided the rematch with Bivol. And that's, he's's going down to super middleweight to fight Triple G. Because if he fought again, Bivol would have his number. Because Bivol had him in real trouble in moments of that fight, where he had him up against the ropes, he was absorbing punches. You know, there's another guy at 175 who's even more terrifying, and they were talking about setting

up a fight with him and Canelo. His name is Arthur Bitterbeev. And Bitterbeev is the only boxer currently that's a world champion that has a 100% knockout ratio. He's 18 or 19 and 0 with 19 knockouts. And he fucks everybody up. And they were talking about setting up a fight with him and Canelo Alvarez. There's a reason why there's weight classes. You know, Canelo Alvarez fought Floyd Mayweather at 152 pounds. Mayweather made him go down to 152 to weaken him, right?

He really was fighting at 154. And then he goes up to 60, wins titles there, wins titles at 68, he beats Sergey Kovalev at 175, but Sergey was on the decline. He was going down in his career. But Bivol's not on the decline. Bivol kicked his ass. Just how good is Vasily Lomachenko? Very good.

Very good. But he's 130 pounds. Watching him from the outside, it's such an impressive style of fighting. It seems so flowy, beautiful technique, footwork, moving in and moving out. Genuinely, he does seem like a ghost. Is he that good? Oh, for sure. Yeah, he's one of the best alive.

He's just pursuing big money fights at a weight class that it's not his natural weight class. Like when he fought Teofimo Lopez, he fought Lopez at 135. Now, Lopez is a big 135. He drops weight to get down to 35, whereas Lomachenko really should be a champion at 130. And I think he started off his career at 26. So he's like going up in weight class to fight these bigger power punchers, and it's having an effect on him. And also I think he went into that fight with compromised shoulders. There was something wrong with his shoulder, and he wound up getting an operation on it after the fight. But his footwork was because his father, who's his trainer,

told him to take two years off of boxing and just concentrate on Ukrainian traditional dance. Did you know this? No way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And through dance, he developed this ability to move his feet in a way that, you know, footwork is everything. It's a job.

I mean, punching someone in the face is everything, but footwork is next to that. It's so important because it puts you in positions. If you watch, pull up Lomachenko highlights, Vasily Lomachenko. When you look at his highlights, what he does is he'll stand in front of someone, he'll hit them, and then he does this step to the side, hits them here, and then spins them around and hits them at a different angle. It's all his footwork. His footwork is spectacular. I mean, he's always in a position to catch people. Like his movement, like look at this, look at that, look at how he's moved to the right and he's off to the side.

Look how he did that. It's fucking incredible. Who moves like that? His footwork is the best in boxing. But that's not being taught through boxing. Well, it's being taught through Ukrainian dance and the movement that he developed plus boxing. Honed through boxing. Yes.

I mean, his ability to move his feet is paramount. It's huge in terms of the impact that it's had on his success. But also, he's an elite boxer on top of that. There's so many things about him that make him special. He's a microsecond ahead of every opponent, right? He's not there to be hit, man. It's like he knows where they're going before they know where they're going and he steps off and look at that look how he sets

up he i mean he moves off to either side equally effectively too so if a guy throws a right hand he's moving off to the left if a guy throws a left hand he's moving off to the right i mean it's just special and there's no single punches here either this is three four five six seven combinations yeah it's spectacular he's amazing but like you know when you look at how he started off his career and the guys he was fighting and the size of them in comparison to like tiafema lopez the guy who he lost to last it's a giant difference in size and that is uh that has a huge impact because there's a lot of things he can't do when he was standing in front of lopez every punch that lopez threw in threw at him had disastrous consequences lopez is a ruthless power puncher because of the size difference

yeah it's just a big and also lopez super fucking talented on his own and lopez rose to the occasion and lopez beat his ass but there was moments in that fight where he was putting it on lopez like particularly the 11th round where he poured it on you know because he was like realizing he was behind in the scorecards is that typical for fighters then in boxing they started a weight fight and then they go up and up and up and up it depends my favorite one of my favorite boxers Of all time is Marvin Hagler and he was 160 his entire career never went anywhere stayed at 160 dominated everybody He's like come to me. You guys are welterweights you want to fight come to me light heavyweights

You want to fight me come to me come down here? This is much I'm the king and he was he was a king for a long fucking time at 160 I'm gonna guess that that's how people accumulate tons and tons and tons of titles though by moving up through weight categories and that's just as they grow as athletes as they accumulate more muscle mass generally with training age and also steroids yeah a lot of those guys that are going up in weight class like when you see a guy and he's a world champion like eight. Yes. Like he probably had a little bit of help. You think he's got some assistance?

100%. Yeah, yeah. There's always been a lot of shenanigans in terms of boxing and the use of supplementation. Yeah. Well, it depends on whether or not Hunter Biden's special powder is being thrown in there as well.

Well, that's not going to help you unless you're Aaron Pryor. Aaron Pryor was the only guy who his trainer gave him something in between rounds. And he went out to stop Alexis Arguello. He stopped him after his trainer said to his trainer, who's banned from boxing now for not just this. His trainer was Panama Lewis, who's a famous sort of sketchy character in the world of boxing. But he said, give me that bottle. No, the other one that I mixed.

And he says this in between. See if you can find that. And then he gives Aaron Pryor what's most likely cocaine, and Aaron Pryor goes out and fucks Alexis Arguello up in the next round and stops him. You're kidding me. No, no, no. Watch this. Let me see it, Jamie.

Yeah, give me the other bottle, the one I mixed. So he's having a really tough fight with Alexis Arguello, who is an absolute killer. And so he's giving him the other bottle. So he gives him the other bottle, and Keith comes out. Woo! Having a great time. Yeah. I mean, it was a really good.

Look, to be clear, Aaron Pryor was a really, really talented boxer on top of this. But that has always been a point of contention. Like, what happened to him? How did he rebound like that? And what happened to him how did he rebound like that and what was in that bottle that he said he mixed some of the devil's dandruff that's what it was and to add on to this they go back to right there you see that what you were just showing that's the beginning of the end and to to add on to that aaron pryor went on to have a serious drug problem in his life and that real battle with cocaine afterwards and

i'm pretty sure he died recently oh shit yeah but he had a uh a real problem with cocaine afterwards and so it wasn't a secret like look at this fuck he's pouring it on him i mean and this is after hey yeah there it is incredible my god ref come on well they let him go because it's Alexis Arguello but he stopped him shit son yeah what do you think about masculinity in the modern world there's something I've been thinking about a lot recently I got young guys that follow the show and sort of ask a lot of questions to do with that obviously we're talking earlier on about the fact that it's kind of it's a strange time at the moment culturally for men and women especially with how criticized it is of what a man and a woman means yeah but in terms of

masculinity at the moment it feels like there isn't a very firm place very much for men to stand on you know a lot of the traditional roles that they would have had have kind of gone away patriarchal superstructure was something that was bad, and then lumped in with that was masculine values as well. And that's kind of been thrown out. I mean, do you think that this is something that's going to swing back around? It depends on the circles you hang out in. And, you know, I mean, masculinity...

It's always going to be something that women are attracted to. This is why it's bullshit. Like, what women say they want in a mate versus what they actually want in a mate, what they want is Jason Momoa. That's what they want. They want a masculine man who's also a nice guy. All right, that's what they'd like. Who's also a nice guy, right? That's what they'd like. They don't want some super femme like Guy who's you know only eating bean sprouts and he weighs 110 pounds. It's not what women want

They you know, they'll they'll tell you they want that but they don't what they don't want is all the shitty things that go along With it, you know They don't want misogyny. They don't want abuse. They don't want all those awful things that come with it. They don't want people that have a genuine disdain for women. But traditionally, masculinity was always like having a respect for women, having respect for your mother, having respect, being a protector and a provider. That has kind of gone away in the eyes of a lot of people, unfortunately, that those positive aspects of what we consider to be masculine characteristics, those positive aspects are no longer considered when you're throwing out the baby with the bath water. Correct. That's exactly what I would have said. The fact that there was a lot of things that were bad, there were men that needed to be called to account for certain things but unfortunately lumped in with that was the firm place that men got to stand that was actually beneficial right interestingly you'll notice that masculinity became very in vogue in the ukraine when russia invaded oh yeah and when men were

considered as uh conscripts that needed to go into the into the army there was no question about what constituted a man or a woman when they got to the border, about who was going to leave and who was going to stay. Yeah, they actually didn't let trans women leave. They were like, no, no, no, you're a man and you have to fight. Grab a gun. Yeah, like, whoa.

Yeah, well, I mean, the masculinity thing, I just find very, very interesting because it's strange for men at the moment to try and find a firm place to stand I think yeah what is it that I'm supposed to genuinely be proud of that's a part of me right am I supposed to be a protector and a provider or is that part of the patriarchal superstructure which is keeping everybody down well the question remains like what are you protecting and people from well the problem is you're protecting people from other men like i had an argument with a guy once he was trying to say he was trying to uh

argue this really ridiculous point about rape and he said do you know that most of the victims of rape are men and i said yeah but you know who's raping him other men you fucking idiot it's not like is that true groups of cheerleaders are running around raping football players is that true yeah it is but it's prison oh they're skewing the statistics yeah yeah i mean it's men raping men in prison yeah yeah or men uh raping boys you know men raping people that are you know weaker than them that happen to be men. Yeah, it is a fact. But it's also a lot of rape is underreported, right? Like it's hard to know.

It's hard to know from the masculine side like how many men have been raped that are underreported and how many women who have been raped that are underreported and also women that are sexually assaulted by other women, which is also real. that are sexually assaulted by other women, which is also real. It's like what is, you know, the unfortunate thing is that people with power over other people have always exerted that power over people. And so when you're saying that a man is a protector, okay, but who are you protecting them from? You're protecting them from other men. That highlights the problem, right?

The problem is the men, right? It's not, it's very rare that you're protecting women from other women. It's more common that you're protecting them from other men. Yeah, I think when you're thinking about what it is that men are supposed to do in the modern world, and yeah, the protector provider role is up against other people that are coming in, but the status element of this is why I think universal basic income is such a strange option because people are inevitably going to start competing with each other. You have to have an element of competition. You want to keep up with the Joneses, but if everybody's flattened down that status hierarchy because earning has now been competed to the same,

the exact same level, what are you going to compete on now? Right, but that's not real because universal basic income is not a lot of money. It just covers your needs. And then people are going to earn on top of that? I think so. What about if you roll it forward to the point where automation comes in and takes out everybody's jobs? Think about into the medium to sort of far future, if most people's jobs end up being automated and no one's got anything left. What about then? That's Andrew Yang's perspective, is that we're going to need a universal basic income because automation is going to take away all the truck drivers and factory workers, and there's going to be a lot of jobs that are just gone. And we're going to have to figure out a way to not have society collapse. And one of the ways

is to institute a universal basic income. Well, people start competing on crazy things. So I had this guy on the show, Will Storr, who spoke about the status game. And he was looking at how status comes about in loads of different areas, ancestrally and in the modern world. And he found that there's this tribe where the men, they compete. Oh, is that coffee? Yeah, you want some? Amazing. Thank you.

Where men compete based on who can grow the biggest yam. So they have yams. That's what is the most important element for determining the male hierarchy. Who's got the biggest yam? And these guys grow things to be so big that multiple people need to carry it. It comes over in a huge wheelbarrow. That's what they're focusing their status on. So humans will find ways to compete with each other, especially when it comes to getting a mate. Right. That makes sense, kind of, if you're in an area where you're farming and the size of the vegetables

is, you know, that means, like, how many people are going to eat? Perhaps, but I don't think that these are for eating. This is kind of just a random display. Right, but I think it's perhaps a legacy thing, you know, left over. It says here that they would give their big yam to their worst enemy to make him obligated to grow an even larger one to have a status fall when he was unable to do so

what what country is this papa new guinea the oh well that place is a real problem you know papa new guinea is the place where they have the semen warriors what the fuck is that where they have the semen warriors. What the fuck is that? Papua New Guinea, that is the most egregious version of toxic masculinity that we've ever established. They take young boys when they're like six and seven years old, and they take them away from their families, and men essentially rape them.

And in their culture, they believe that the children need sperm in their body from grown men in order for them to grow and mature and so they call like they they go with what they call an anal father and this older man repeatedly has sex both oral and anal with these young boys and then it becomes a part of the culture and then the as they grow older they do the same thing they take them away from their mother when they're like six years old seven years old why is it sperm wars sperm warriors to become a man here and in essence a, these young men are taught how to detach themselves from their mothers and the women around them as a means of showing that they can live without them and prove their masculinity.

The six-stage process of affirming one's manhood can take anywhere from 10 to 15 years until these young men father a child. Much of the initiation and training is characterized by what some have deemed to be highly erotic and sexual. In the first stage is a sharp stick of cane is inserted deeply in the young boy's nostrils until he bleeds profusely. The young boys are also introduced to older warriors who are told that bachelors are going to copulate with them to make them grow. are going to copulate with them to make them grow. Throughout much of the sixth stage, the act of having the stick of cane inserted into the nostrils and the performance of fellatio are integral to the process of becoming a man. While the former practice is often derided by many as inhumane, and the latter is often referred to as homosexual behavior, the Sambia's understanding and purpose behind these two processes

differs from our conventional understanding. Oh, how woke. So scroll up here. While much of it view the practice of inserting the cane stick in the nostrils being inhumane because of the obvious infliction of pain and injury to the body, for the Sambia it's a symbol of strength and his ability to sustain pain, which is indeed a requirement of a warrior. Additionally, the act of performing fellatio and the act of ingesting semen

is seen as an integral part of manhood because boys are unable to mature into men unless they ingest semen, and they adhere to the notion that all men have, in quotes, eaten the penis. Eaten the penis. Yeah. According to Sambia belief, the semen of a man possesses the masculine spirit which young boys would be able to attain

through the ingestion of semen. Yeah, it's fucking crazy. Well, you've had Michael Easter on the show, right? The Comfort Crisis. Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I love his insight there, the fact that we don't have rites of passage anymore

and that these are big deals. It's something that marks a transition. I think we can avoid that one. You don't want it's something that marks a transition i think we can avoid that one you don't want that one no no i think we should avoid that one okay fair enough okay well if you right that that sounds like you're not being open to other cultures joe you're right like perhaps you should be thinking about eating the penis a little bit more perhaps but yeah i think the the lack of uh rituals and routines that get people to go through yeah something a rite of passage think about what it is when people go into the army you know you're bonding together over brotherhood i learned this the other day on the show about how men bond by doing things and it makes sense that men would bond by doing

things because that's what they would have gone out ancestrally we're going to take down that mammoth me you jamie grab spear go get my man right that would be what we would do but interestingly it also creates a reason for why men's friendships are a little bit more shallow because if you were to die while we were out on the hunt and then i spend the next three months weeping at your death that means I'm pretty useless men need to be able to cycle through friends more so it seems like men have broader social circles but much more shallow really women have tighter social circles that are more deep I don't think that's true because the brotherhood that men have that they form in combat and the the brotherhood that men have when they're a part of combat sports teams and people that do very, very difficult things together, that's an intense bond.

That's a brothership. That's a family thing. That's a love bond. It's very deep and some would say deeper than most female relationships than most females have with each other yeah perhaps but they're bonding over doing a thing there which is i think the important element that they've got going on they're doing something it's almost a simulacrum of war right when you're being a fighter so all the warriors who are actually doing war yeah they're bonding over that. And they have to rely on each other.

When you're talking about people in elite combat sports teams, like the SEAL teams, things along those lines, not combat sports, I mean combat teams, those guys are fucking tight with each other. In a way that is,

you don't see that much in female relationships because they have to rely on each other. They have to have their backs. And they also know that that person has gone through buds. They've gone through this insane, difficult, weeding out process of weak minds and people that will quit. Those guys are different. But that's a rite of passage, right? Yes.

That's people that have gone through something where they've proven their worth and value. And also their self-esteem is based on that, that they have gone through this thing and they know who they are. They have accomplished this thing and they've passed through this test. It certifies that the people that are around you are worthy of being around you. Yes, yes. And you can trust them and count on them. And you value them very, very highly. And I don't think those are shallow relationships at all.

I would agree. I would agree. I think this is on average, again. But one of the issues that you have here is this chasm of comfortable complacency that a lot of people are caught in at the moment. So I learned about this idea called the region beta paradox, right? So the region beta paradox, imagine that if you were to go a mile or less, you would walk it. And if you were to go more than a mile, you would drive it. Paradoxically, you would go two miles quicker than you would go one mile.

So that means that sometimes worse situations can be better than better situations. And this is an issue when if you only decide to act after you cross a certain threshold of badness or whatever, you can end up being stuck in region beta. So, for instance, the friend that should leave his job really, really needs to leave his job. But it's just about passable. His boss isn't that much of a dick. Maybe the benefits are okay or whatever. Or the person that's in a relationship with someone that they really don't want to stay with and it's not that brilliant, but it's not that bad. They don't abuse them. Everything's okay. The person that stays in an apartment,

that's got some mold on the ceiling, but it's not too much mold and whatever. All of these people would be better off if their situations were worse because it would galvanize them into actually doing something. You understand what I mean? You can get stuck in this chasm of comfortable complacency that sits somewhere in the middle. If things are good, great, no problem. If things are bad, great, activation energy to go and make them good. If things are just about passable, you end up being comfortably numb. Oh yeah. Yeah. That's not good. So what does someone do when they're in that? Did they have to have high expectations and high standards so that even like for a guy like yourself who now makes a living independently, if you had to have a job and you had to be working around some boss who's kind of a dick and and took credit for your work and wasn't, you know, happy with your performance,

who was always like nitpicking and fucking with you and and, know you know how it works in office environments and i've not had a boss for 15 years but yes congratulations thank you man so it's perfect situation because if you did have to go to that that place where a large percentage of the population is in on a daily basis but bosses suck a lot of people have bosses yes a lot of people are in those really suppressive office environments. We're dealing with office politics and egomaniac bosses. That sucks. If you had to go back to that now, it would be horrendous.

But if you were conditioned to it, if it was a normal part of your life, it was just, hey, this part, hey, look, I like playing softball on the weekends with my friends and I love my family. I'll deal with it. I can handle it. But you're like suppressed all day long. You're just feeling like shit. And because things aren't that bad,

the activation energy isn't there to kick yourself out of it. Yeah, you're upper middle class. You got a nice house. It's dangerous. You know, this is the way that people are being sedated into a life that they really don't want to lead. It's so dangerous, man. It really, really is. And I don't know what the answer is. I mean, what don't want to lead. It's so dangerous, man. It really, really is.

And I don't know what the answer is. I mean, what do you want to say? Do you want to say that you need to make your life actively worse so that you're going to be more excited, so that you're going to have the activation energy to kick yourself out of the bottom? I mean, think about the things that a lot of people do to make themselves feel better.

Actively going out of your way to sit in a hot, circular, wooden chasm, right? Or going and putting yourself in 39 degree water. What are you doing? Because the world has become so comfortable, we're having to go out of our way to actively seek discomfort. We inject it into our lives. We artificially inseminate it into our lives without training and hot and cold and meditation and all of the other things that we do, reading, doing deep work, all of those stuff. Without that, if you didn't actively go and seek it, you could easily just breeze through life, right? I guess, but I think you'd be overwhelmed by anxiety. Oh, for sure.

But that's where a lot of people are. Yes. Yes. And unfortunately, people don't recognize that, that that's why that stuff exists. And people that I care about, that I've tried to talk to, don't recognize that. And I think sometimes when I give advice to people that I care about, my personality is so overwhelming and I'm so crazy with what I do that it's like people, they're like, I don't want to do that. Does it map across onto other people?

Well, it just seems like it's too, for some people it's attractive and they go, I want to do that too. You seem pretty fucking happy despite all the stress you're under. How are you doing that? And I'll tell people that because I create my own bullshit and my own bullshit's way harder than whatever I'm facing in the world. And that's how I mitigate the stress of success and pressure and criticism and all that stuff. Like I do to myself way worse than they're ever going to do to me. So that's, that's how I mitigate it. Also, I calm my body. I calm my body through, I calm my mind through calming my body and I calm my body through work. I make it work. And I make myself do things that are very uncomfortable that I don't want to do. And by

doing that, I developed this strength and perseverance. And some people hear that and like, I don't even want to do that. I don't want to take a fucking nap. You're exhausting me. I'm like, I'm not you. I don't want to do that. And they just like, it takes them away from that. And I'm like, you don't even have to do that. Just go for a fucking walk every day. It sounds like it's easy to do, but you're just going to, when that walk comes and look your clock, oh, it's eight o'clock. Time to go for that walk.

You're like, I don't want to walk. I was just about to play video games. I don't want to walk. I'd rather like read emails. I don't want to walk. I'd rather like read emails. I don't want to walk. I'd rather like scroll through TikTok. But if you just force yourself to go for that fucking walk every day, you will develop mental perseverance. You will develop some tenacity. You'll develop the ability to force yourself into work.

It doesn't have to be grueling. It just has to be a thing that you have to do. This is the problem, I think, of how mimetic we are and where the culture is and what people are told about what life is supposed to be like. And it's a massive advantage that podcasters have that there is a direct source from an individual who has managed to get themselves to somewhere that's worthy of having an audience to speak to these people and say, look, maybe the local community and the values and the norms that they've given you aren't all that's out there. This is a different way that you could live life. So this is, I guess, kind of what happened to me toward the end of my 20s. So I went to uni and I became a club promoter, started running nightclubs, and it was very successful and I guess had achieved success

in the way that modern culture might tell you that you're supposed to. So being a club promoter, constantly being around lots of women and always having money and everybody knew who you were and there was status and acclaim and all this stuff. But then it felt like I was thirsty for something and I didn't know what I was supposed to drink. There was something I thought like, is this really all that life's got to offer me? Standing on the front door of a nightclub and getting people drunk on one pound Jager bombs. Not that that's nothing. I on the front door of a nightclub and getting people drunk on one pound Jager bombs. Not that that's nothing. I loved the business that I ran. I had a great

time doing it, but it felt like there needed to be something more. And I went on reality TV, a blue tick on Twitter and free charcoal toothpaste and all of that stuff, right? Like I got that, did the full thing and then came off and thought, is this really all that I've got to offer the world? And the problem was that I'd taken the rules of what life is supposed to be, of how you're supposed to enjoy yourself, of what is supposed to be valued, that it's supposed to be weekend warrior. It's all about the girls that you're sleeping with or the money that you're earning or how many people know you. And it turned out like I'd reached the top of that tree. I'd completed that game, right? And it wasn't fulfilling to me

It hadn't answered any of the questions that I had deep down It really, really hadn't So I started asking different questions I said, well, look, if I've done everything that I'm supposed to do In terms of social norms from a working class guy, the northeast of the UK What are you supposed to do? You're supposed to go out and do all this stuff. And then I went and did the Champions League World Cup final, which is going on Love Island, one of the biggest reality TV shows in the UK.

And that still didn't satisfy. Okay, like there's something wrong with that. So I started consuming stuff like this is a great time 2016 17. This is the advent of Jordan Peterson, you with conversations with people like Sam Harris, Alain de Botton from the School of Life, massive influences. Because for the first time, I was being told as a young guy that there are different things that you can value. Stuff like truth, right? Virtue, integrity, honesty, doing something that's hard and worthwhile, not just doing something for its effect. I think for a long time, I'd judged the value of my work based on how other people interpreted it. So I'd outsourced my sense

of self-worth to everybody else. I was playing a role, right? And it's kind of like, I didn't feel love. I only ever felt praise. One of the reasons for that is because the thing that I was doing was just me playing a role. Like I wasn't being Chris Hemsworth. I was being Thor. I wasn't being gladiator, right? I was being Russell Crowe. And it took a long time for me to deprogram all of that. It took me a very, very long time. And from the outside, you go, well, it's a guy that's got the club stuff and he's doing modeling and reality tv and things like that and from my side it was so vapid and hollow and there was nothing there for me there was nothing there that i wanted at the end of that that really really mattered and then i started the podcast modern wisdom like four and a half years ago because i wanted to speak to people

that might have the answers like hang on if i'm getting this from listening to other people's conversations maybe if i get to sit down with other people that I think are interesting or useful or have insights, perhaps that'll move me a little bit closer to where I'm supposed to be. And over time, four and a half years and 500 conversations, more than 500 conversations or whatever, every single time there's just like a little 1% that just moves you a little 1%. Here's an insight. Here's little 1%. Here's an insight. Here's an insight. Here's an insight. Here's something that comes up during a conversation. Here's some discomfort about,

you mentioned about listening earlier on. I always want you to interrupt. If I didn't speak on a show, if there was silence ever, I would presume that it's because I wasn't interesting or the guest wasn't interested in me or maybe the audience would think that I was stupid or whatever. It's always outsourcing my sense of self-worth

to what other people were thinking about me. And that was a byproduct of how I'd lived most of my 20s. And it took a long time for me to deprogram that, to think, okay, find somewhere firmer for you to stand. I think that's why I brought up the masculinity thing earlier on as well. So I'm like, look, I can feel very comfortable in myself chasing something that I want to do. My intellectual curiosity, right? Finding people that I resonate with, having conversations that I really care about,

about how to engineer human DNA so that it can survive space flight because there's tons of radiation. Never going to use it, right? Probably not going to get to go to space. Probably not going to re-engineer my DNA. Fucking fascinating. I want to know about that. And every single time that I leaned into something that I wanted to do a little bit more,

it reminded me of the direction that I was going in. And that was the drink that I was thirsty for. You know, the first time that I got a message that says, hey man, just wanted to let you know I listened to the show and like I'm a rugby player from the Northwest of the UK and I don't really have anyone around me that understands me but dude when I when I listen to you and your friends talking it feels like I've someone gets me feels like I'm in the room with you and I was like holy shit there was this guy came up to me at body power which is like a fitness expert it's like the Arnold classic or

whatever fitness exposition and it's all of us with our tops off lifting weights and fucking about and doing stuff this is a while ago now and he came up and i'm trying to be the you know super masculine weightlifty guy still just doing his thing this guy came up and he said hey man i just wanted to have a conversation with you this uh this podcast that you did it made me realize that i hadn't really dealt with the death of my father and this guy breaks down in front of me and said, I was lost. I was alone. My wife and me didn't have a connection and blah, blah, blah. And basically this one insight that he got from a conversation changed it and he's weeping. And then I start weeping. I'm like, fuck sake, I'm supposed to be like the super testosterone guy that's, you know, the Love Island-y thing and the blue tick and all of this stuff and then continual interactions like that made me realize that all of the bravado and all of the front

that i'd put up and all of the who did you sleep with last week or what's the girl that knows your name or how many followers you've got on instagram they were hollow but there's so many people that are chasing that there's so many people who see that as their primary source of value. And other people's heads are a wretched place for your self-worth to live. Absolutely wretched. You're constantly taking your sense of self-worth as an abstraction of what other people think about you. And it took, you know, it's still an ongoing process, but it took four and a half years of constantly speaking to people three times a week, every single week, having a conversation, researching, looking at whatever it is that they might have that would help me a little bit. And it's been such a huge change and dispensing

with those previous values has been a big deal for me. Well, it's a beautiful thing that comes with the conversations. It comes with this inadvertent education that you get from podcasts. You know, having these conversations with these people and absorbing, like I love that you said, like maybe it's like 1% with each conversation or 1% with each profound conversation.

I always use the analogy, it's like you're making a mountain with layers of paint. Like every day you paint another layer. And it's like slowly but surely over time. And for me, it's somewhere around, I mean, it's like 1,800 episodes, but there's also a bunch of other ones that are like MMA episodes and doing other people's podcasts. And through these conversations, you do develop a better sense of what's authentic. And I think what you're really selling, what you in particular are selling is authenticity, right? These are genuinely things you're interested in and you've

found some things that you thought you were supposed to be interested in, but they ultimately proved to be hollow and not satisfying. And one of the things about pursuing status, like look at the car he's driving and look at the watch he's wearing and look at the girl he's with, that's unattainable to many people. So it seems like it's valuable, but then you attained it and then you realize oh this is not valuable this is just difficult to get and there's a difference there's a big difference with what's valuable is something that fulfills you intellectually emotionally spiritually lovingly right like having a great relationship with someone is very valuable and it's hard to achieve. It's hard to be worthy of having a great relationship. It's hard to be worthy of having a

great friend. And to be a great friend is very valuable. And to be friends with people that are intellectually stimulating is so valuable. The people that are around you, the people that you can have conversations with you that ignite a curiosity and change your perspective. And a person whose point of view and ideas are, they're enriching to you. They literally are fuel for your own curiosity and fuel for your own perspective. And you could admire that person's thoughts and take some of what they've said and apply it to your own life. And we're doing that. You and I are both doing that. And we're doing that through conversations that affect, you know, who knows how many people out there.

Who knows how many people have listened to your conversations with people and developed a newfound perspective, developed a different way of looking at their own life that is now serving them and helping them get out of whatever unsatisfying, shallow life that they're living and move towards something that's more aligned with who they want to be and who they can be. And they realize it through you and through you saying these things that you had all those things, all the trappings of fame and success, what people look at because they're so hard. It's so hard. It's so hard to be wealthy. It's so hard to drive a very nice car. It's very difficult. So when people see a person who's done it, they say, oh, I want to be like

him. And you can either be that guy that flaunts that all the time and has that all over Instagram with a bunch of girls in bikinis hanging on you. Or you can be the guy who says, you know what, I did that and it wasn't anything special. And now I realize that this was all just a flaw in my own way of living and thinking. And I'm much more in line with what seems to be natural and healthy and I'm growing and learning and I'm more more successful in that way than I ever would be just like showing diamond jewelry and big houses and all that stupid shit. Dude I love the insight that it's not valuable it It's just difficult to attain. And the difficulty in

attaining it is a proxy. It masquerades as value. So Naval has a quote that says, it is far easier to achieve your material desires than to renounce them. And I do think that there is an element of that, that we can say this, right? And lots of people consume lots and lots of content online and you can tell someone look this is what the top of the mountain looks like or this is what further up the mountain than you are looks like and yet they still need to trudge all the way up there get up there have a look for themselves and go shit you're right yeah that guy you remember that guy that i listened to five years ago he was right so there's an element of not futility,

but I feel like a lot of people still need to learn this firsthand. You know, how do you have consumed the right amount of stuff online? You could have, I could have front loaded a lot of the lessons and mistakes that I needed to make. I'm not needed to do them myself. I would have just been able to go. Yeah. You need to figure it out yourself. It can help your journey by learning from other people's mistakes, just like we were talking about learning from alcoholics, never being an alcoholic. But there's a certain amount of mistakes that you have to make. Yes.

There's a certain amount of really stupid decisions that you have to feel the pain of those failures. It's valuable. It's good. It's good for you. But it's also good to hear someone say it. Yes. So that when someone else comes along and they start on the path maybe that you were

on and then they run into you having conversations about the shallowness of these pursuits and then they realize in their own life maybe without having to go all the way to the top. Yeah. Maybe they just make a couple of steps up and they go hey i see where this is going yeah this is fruitless it's not it's not worthwhile and i understand that the reason that culture and wisdom previously existed was that you would take on what other people said was valuable because for the most part it was something that was valuable right cultural mimetic evolution meant that the stuff that stuck about, like, don't put your hand in that fire, don't go to that cave

over the far side, like, that was useful information. But now, because we've got so much luxury to lop our way through the world in comfort and convenience, people are being told to value things that genuinely aren't that valuable. And yeah, there's a big part of it that young people need to learn. You do not need to chase down the things that your local area is telling you that you need to. And this is what I think you create online. You know, the people that you consume, the people that you read, the people that you listen to, they become your new community. They become the new good influence that you always wanted. And this is why people have such an affinity with the stuff that you always wanted and this is why people have

such an affinity with the stuff that they consume and this is why the the the fans and the audience is so compelled and so bought in because it very much is like a it's a friendship right between you and the person that you're consuming they are are an advisor. They are somebody that's helping to direct you in a particular way. Yeah. But you also can get stuck in the wrong way. The things that you consume online can lead you into these echo chambers. And the path that you travel, you could run into a bunch of people that are also stuck and you feed off of each other.

And if you have negative friends and if you have negative interactions online, and one of the problems with social media in general is that you're absorbing like what you would call like a very condensed version, like Avi Levinowitz calls it processed information. Like processed food is bad for you. Processed information is bad for you as well. And this sort of constant interaction with people in a shallow way online and also antagonistic interactions with people, which is a large part of what the algorithms of both Twitter and Facebook

and a lot of these places, unfortunately, because of our nature, they enforce. Because it's not really the algorithms. The algorithms just support what you're interested in. And if you're interested in arguing about abortion, you can argue all day long because it'll direct those things towards you because those are the things you seek to interact with. But if you're just interested in sports cars and watches and fucking, you know, watching rugby, that will be your algorithm. It'll be all that. It's really like what you choose to interact with. For the vast majority of people, the thing they choose to interact with more often than not is things that upset them. And a lot of that is because they're unsatisfied with their own life.

Their actual life, the people that they interact with, the thing they choose to do for a living, the way they exist in the community of actual human beings that they are around on a daily basis is not good. They don't like it. It's unsatisfying. It's unhappy. not good. They don't like it. It's unsatisfying. It's unhappy. And then they get into these fucking, these groups online and they find conflict in that and they avoid the problems that they need to resolve in their real life and just try to resolve these sort of external situations in these weird Twitter gangs. It gives you a simulacrum of a community, right?

But I mean, I guess so does every online community. The difference is, is this one genuinely valuable to you? Yes. Is this something that's actually making your life better? And that's the problem, that the distinction between the two is very, very difficult to work out because you have all of the trappings, right? The one, this is belonging. It's a shared sense of ideals.

It's all of this stuff on both sides. Yeah. But if it's not directed towards something which is genuinely virtuous, I mean, you see this. I'm not sure, are you familiar with MGTOW? Have you heard of that? Men Going Their Own Way?

So there's a bunch of groups within the manosphere, right? Which is men trying to work- The manosphere?phere, right? Which is men trying to work. The manosphere? Manosphere, yeah. So men trying to work out what to do online. And I resonate with this because I was somebody that got to the end of his 20s and was fucking clueless. I mean, I still might be a man child now at 34, but my point being that I'm less of an idiot than I was back then. So there's a whole bunch of different groups.

Red pill, black pill, MGTOW, incels, all of this stuff. And what they're trying to do is they're all different flavors of people trying to work out how the world works. And men going their own way are people that have been scorned by women usually or having difficulty with women and have now renounced them entirely. We don't need them. I'm not going to be involved with them anymore. Men going their own way. don't need them. I'm not going to be involved with them anymore. Men going their own way. A lot of them are people who maybe were previously married. They're tangential to men's rights, which is you may be familiar with. They're kind of like justice for guys who don't have access to their kids after

divorce and stuff like that. And what's happening here is they've got the simulacrum of a community. In fact, they have a community. But some of these areas, especially the black pill forums for guys can be a pretty bad place to be in it. They discouraged something called ascending, which is going from where they are to now being something more to actually getting into a relationship with a girl that would be seen as, um, betraying basically the ideology of the group. And I understand as a guy that was looking for conversations, it's fortunate that I fell upon School of Life and Jordan Peterson conversations with you as opposed to that community because both of them would have given me the same sort of influence, the same kind of

satisfaction, but long-term would have given me incredibly different outcomes. incredibly different outcomes. Yeah, that whenever someone's discouraging people from loving relationships or engaging in happy, loving relationships or the idea that that's impossible or that you should stick with us and you shouldn't go off on your own and find a woman that you're compatible with and that you enjoy being with. That's a ridiculous community. That's not good for you. That's not that's like no better than saying don't have good male friends. That's a ridiculous community. That's not good for you. That's like no better than saying don't have good male friends. That's no better than don't have a good relationship with your children. It's stupid. Like, good relationships are great.

It's a part of what we're doing. We don't exist in a vacuum. No one is happy on their own. People like to think of themselves as individuals. I'm a rugged individualist. Okay, I'm a loner. Are you really? Like, there's a reason

why the worst punishment they can give you in prison is solitary confinement. We need each other. We are a super organism. We're just trapped in this idea that we are uniquely individual on our own. And if your group that you associate with is saying, don't associate with the opposite sex, give up on them. Don't have a loving, happy relationship. That's just because saying don't associate with the opposite sex give up on them don't have a loving happy relationship that's just because they don't think it's a it's attainable to them that's that's the same thing as saying you should never have a nice car because i can't get one you should never have a nice house because i can't i can't afford one it's not there's no different so there's this concept called the inner citadel by asaya berlin And what he says is when the world outside of us has denied that which we truly want,

we retreat into ourselves, into a kind of walled off garden to protect ourselves from the fearful ills of the world. My buddy gave a great example of this where he said, you can imagine that you've injured your leg, right? And you can try to treat the leg. But if you can't, then you chop the leg off and announce that the desire for legs is misguided and must be subdued. And you see this everywhere, right? How many people do you know that have got into a polyamorous relationship and said that monogamy isn't ancestrally compatible fundamentally because they struggle to hold down a relationship that works well?

Or you see this with the body positivity movement, saying that weight has no genuine bearing on health and that we need to be much more accepting. Basically, being fat is just as healthy as being normal sized, good BMI, and that the world needs to change your views because they struggle to lose weight. Or criminals that have turned to a life of crime and say that jobs are for suckers because they struggle to hold down a job. These are all their inner citadels. They're constantly retreating.

Basically, if you can't win at a game then you change the rules and announce that you never wanted to win in any case yes if you cannot get what you want you must teach yourself to want what you can get yes yes the body positivity is a great example too because they actually get angry at women that lose weight like adele adele i was going to bring her up yeah it's perfect example because she's gorgeous now it's crazy yeah that beautiful like healthy woman was trapped inside an overeater and she figured it out and she but you're no longer part of the tribe exactly not only that but they're angry at her she's betrayed them i mean they said that about lizzo too they don't want her to lose weight're angry at her. She's betrayed them. I mean, they said that about Lizzo, too.

They don't want her to lose weight. Like, angry at her for trying. She's like a pretty big girl as well, right? Probably be healthy for her to lose some weight. But you're no longer able to make me feel more comfortable about the life choices that I've made. Yes. If you lose them. They don't identify with them anymore.

You know, they think that person is another now. Well, you're just another beautiful, healthy, sexy, thin woman. And I don't like you anymore. You're cast out of the kingdom. Purity spiral. Yeah. Bonded together over the mutual hatred of an out group, not the mutual love of an in group. They never loved Adele. They loved the fact that Adele wasn't what they hate. Right. Right. Well, she was also an amazing example of an incredibly talented woman who was also obese. Crushing it despite the fact,

or in spite of the fact. So yeah, I mean, that's, but how is it that the person that's overweight and is an inspiration to people is an inspiration for as long as they stay that way, but losing the weight isn't even more inspirational? Right, right. Because it throws into harsh reflect

the fact that they haven't done that bit. They're also not Adele the singer, but they knew that they never could be. Adele did the weight loss thing that fundamentally everybody knows that they could achieve. And this is the problem with the Black Pill. As an example, I had to go. What is Black Pill? So Black Pill is men who consider themselves evolutionarily and with regards to women basically lost causes. They would say that they are never going to have a relationship with a woman and they bond together

over their mutual despondency at this fact. And the problem that you have with the Black Pill community is that it's this ascending thing, which would be moving from that to a functioning man that may have interactions with women. I had this lady, Nama Cates, on the show, and she did a ton of research into incel culture and stuff. And within these forums, if any of the guys were to say, she told me if any of the guys were to hint at ascending, that they would be pushed out of the group. And I went, oh, so if they got a girl's phone number, for instance, or something like that, and she says, whoa, whoa, whoa, way less than that. If they went into the starbucks and the cashier

was female and her eyes lingered on them for more than they thought that they should have done and they posted that in the group they would be pushed out and it's for the same reason it's the same reason that adele is a a bad example yeah because it gives them hope for as long as there is no hope that anybody could do the thing lose the weight weight, that means that you have an excuse. What? Adele hasn't done it. I don't need to do it. Right. No one else within the particular community has ascended and found that they're able to get in a relationship with a woman or be attractive to a woman or have a conversation with a woman.

Therefore, I don't have to. But the delta is felt. They say that true hell is when the person that you are meets the person you could have been. Ooh. Ooh, I like oh oh i like that i like that yeah caffeine's kicking in that's good though that's that that is really what it is it's like this understanding that you fucked up and that you've committed to this ideology you committed to this lifestyle these these choices that you make this rigid pattern of behavior that is ultimately not serving you. And you realize the flaw in it, that you could have been something greater. And then you see someone who has done it, who's gotten better and is healthier.

And you realize like, oh no, what have I done? There's two types of responses to that, right? One of the responses would be, I want yeah that's inspiring the other response to it would be that is a betrayal that's a betrayal of the group and the tighter the ideological group or the tighter the identity around that particular group that that person's come from the more it feels like a betrayal this is why tribalism is so dangerous man as soon as you decide you know you were saying earlier on about uh right and, Democrat and Republican are kind of stupid ideas. Because as soon as you do that, you agree to adopt wholesale all of the views of the group. And as soon as you begin to deviate, that's seen as a lack of commitment by your side and a chink in your armor by the other side. So it doesn't allow you to be a person. It doesn't allow you to fit into the very unique shape that your life is supposed to take. You're supposed to put on the onesie.

But you're also highlighting two options. There's one option that makes you feel terrible for your own choices and you feel angry and you don't want to associate with that person who has changed and grown. to associate with that person who has changed and grown. And then the other option is for you to be inspired and to do that and become like that person and look at that as a motivation. But you also can realize that just because you fucked up and you've made this bad choice, you've run into the person that you could have been. It doesn't mean you can't change paths. It doesn't mean you can't course correct. The problem is people don't like course correcting because it requires them to admit that they've been on a bad path and they've

fucked up. But course correcting is beautiful. It's important. It's important. It's a part of growth. It's very valuable to be able to understand that oh my god even though i've like lived 12 years as a mormon and i've committed to polyamorous marriages and all this that's not good like i this is a it was written by a con man joseph smith was 14 when he wrote this shit fuck you know like you can get past bad decisions but you just have to admit that there are bad decisions. You have to admit that they're not self-serving. They're not beneficial.

And that ultimately there is other ways to go about living your life that would probably be better. So change. This loops in with the importance of how people attach themselves to their opinions that we were talking about earlier on. So the fact that a big bunch of people on the Internet and in the real world feel terrified to admit that they're wrong. If we are judged by our opinions, not our deeds, then admitting the fact that you have a wrong opinion is tantamount to destruction. It's destruction of the ego. People that can't admit that they're wrong are at the biggest competitive disadvantage in the modern world of anybody else, as far as I can see. You need to be able to admit that you're wrong. One of the problems of playing a persona, which I was doing for a very long time, this big name on campus guy in front of a club,

like, hi, mate, bye, mate, how are you, mate, blah, blah, blah, was that the persona was contrived. I was always thinking about who is it that I'm supposed to be? What would Joe want me to say right now for me to get the response from Joe that I actually wanted? Right. And what that means is, when someone asked me my opinion,

I didn't actually have a truth. I had a sequence of roles, like a bunch of different algorithms or scripts that I'd run, like a chat bot or something. And I'd be like, okay, if this, then all of the people I've spoken to that are kind of similar to Joe, therefore I will come out with this answer, and maybe that'll have the response that I want. But I wouldn't admit, I struggled to admit that I was wrong,

because that would be admitting that all of the models that I'd created were ineffective somehow. Whereas the version where you're much more humble and you realize, look, I'm a flawed, terrible creature that is constantly still trying to get things right. And I am open to, in fact, I'm seeking being wrong as much as possible. The more that I can be wrong, the more that I'm going to identify

all of the different pitfalls that are going to go across. That's what you need to be looking for. And if you can't admit that you're wrong, if you can't get used to the discomfort of holding an opinion, feeling someone push up against it, feeling you notice it arise inside of yourself, right? You go, oh, shit. That sounds compelling.

That sounds like I might have had a blind spot here. Yeah. And if you're not able to accept that to come through, you are at a huge disadvantage. Yes, you certainly are. And it's also, there's this, this idea that your thoughts are you, right? So when you're, you keep saying I was wrong, you're wrong, but really the ideas are wrong. Like adopting ideas as a part of you, like saying saying these are my opinions and I will defend them to the death is the most ridiculous thing.

Because ideas, you can have a thought that is incorrect and you're still the exact same person. Yep. You just got to be able to understand that that was an incorrect thought and then you have to back engineer it and figure like why did I have that thought? Why was I misinformed? Was I biased?

Did I look at it in a shallow way? Did I not do a deep dive into the subject? What was causing me to have these opinions that were incorrect? But people defend opinions as if they're defending their liver, like they're defending a part of their body. And that's silly because you are not your thoughts. You're not your opinions. You are you. And you have various opinions and various thoughts that bounce around

your head all throughout the day. But if you don't base them on absolute reality and truth and honesty, you're fucked. Because then you're never going to be able to grow. You're never going to be able to, you're going to defend things that are untenable. You're going to defend ridiculous ideas, because you think you're supposed to do that, because other people do that. And they never admit they're wrong. They're like politicians, right? Politicians never admit they're wrong. And that's a part of the flaw of that system. It's a part of the reason why people don't trust them. It's scary to see online how few people are prepared to admit that they're wrong.

I think a big part of this is that if you are to admit that you're wrong, it's maybe a dangerous cascade downstream. Well, if you said that you were wrong about that, then what else are you wrong about on the internet? And admitting that you're wrong, as far as I can see, is one of the best signals that somebody could put across because you go, oh, this person isn't preoccupied with the ideology or with committing to previous opinions that they've already had. What they are concerned with is the truth. Yes. Updating the operating system. Yeah. And what your business is and my business as well, that's so valuable. If you're one of those people that can't admit you're wrong or can't address a problem that you have created in your mind,

adhering to a very specific thought process when it proves to be inaccurate, ineffective, unproductive, you're going to project that to all these other people. And then they're not going to listen to you anymore. They're not going to want to hear you because they know that you're full of shit. They know that you or you have a weak structure in terms of the way you address things. Some people are very, very good at playing that persona, though. Some people have buried the person so deep down that they've been subsumed by the persona itself. You know, there are people online that I think are playing roles. People that have made entire careers out of playing roles.

And everybody knows, everybody knows deep down that this person's still doing a grift or still doing a shill of some kind. Yeah, there's definitely some people like that. But I don't think they ever develop the sort of rabid following that you have or that I have. I think that's where it comes from. I think the authenticity that you're selling is very, very, very valuable because it's real. And authenticity is not something you can fake. You either have it or you don't. And the only way that you can exhibit it is through clear conversation, like real thoughts expressed in an honest and articulate way,

where you're saying these things and you're consistent with it. So people go, oh, this is really how Chris thinks. Oh, I see how he's thinking. I see how he's working through this. I identify with that. This is beneficial to me because I also seek truth. And I'm also seeking to try to figure out what's right and what's wrong and what serves me. And what serves other people.

And how I can sort of like live life in a more compatible and cohesive and satisfying way. This is one of the problems I think of a lot of people not having someone that they can have a genuine deep conversation with on a regular basis. I try and prescribe to as many people as possible to do a fake podcast. So to just put your phone down, put your phone down with a friend once a week, it can be the same friend or a different friend and just press record simply because it means that there's an external, how would you say, a record of what was said. Yeah. And just have a conversation. Phones are away except for the one that's recording on the table, half an hour, once a week. That's a great piece of advice. And the reason for that is what I loved about having conversations where I was going to be

held to a rigorous standard is that if there were any breaks in my thinking over time, that would be called out. Hang on a second. You said three months ago that this was an opinion, and now you've said the opposite thing, or this doesn't, you're constantly being fact-checked. It means that you have to be incredibly rigorous with your thinking. You need to be precise with your speech, all of this stuff. And that for me has been one of the biggest growths that I've seen over the last four and a half years. I've really zeroed in on what it is that I believe. And you can't hold up a persona for three hours, four hours, however long the conversation goes on for. You can't do that. And even just a half hour conversation you have with your friends once per week, get it on record. And then, okay, go back and have another, anything,

whatever it is that you want to talk about. Do that. Because so few people are able to have deep conversations that are uninterrupted by their phones, by other people, by responsibilities. And yet it's for me, it feels like therapy. It feels like a mental workout. And even if you are doing it with your friends, we've managed to make a career out of being the most stupid person in the room for the most part. You bring on somebody that is an expert in the industry and you've read the book and you're now trying to hold ground with this person and you go, okay, like, here we go. I'm going to have to amp up my evolutionary psychology understanding or my Jungian archetypes or whatever the fuck it is

that I'm talking about today. But even just on a small scale with somebody else, I think having that half hour conversation is, is really, really valuable. I think that's great advice. And I think having that half hour conversation is really, really valuable. I think that's great advice. And I think that I have inadvertently found that out through doing podcasts. Because when I first started doing podcasts, it was just me fucking around with my friends and having conversations and just being just having just for fun. It was just for fun. started interviewing people and having conversations with people like, you know, Graham Hancock and talking about ancient civilizations and Randall Carlson talking about asteroidal impacts and the effect on society and whether or not there's been a restart of civilization. And then you talk to people that are experts in evolution and rocketry and genetic engineering. And, you know, through that process, you develop this understanding of the world that I don't think you'd get any other way.

You're never going to have an environment in today's day and age where you sit for three hours with no phones and just look at each other and have a conversation. And that's what we do on a daily basis and i think that's a an incredible opportunity to grow and learn and also to address your own thoughts and you're not just addressing them you're you're exhibiting them to the whole world you're putting them on display this this is how i feel about things and people will go you're a fucking idiot or oh my god i learned from you and and and through that you grow and learn And it's not something that is traditionally valued or taught as a form of education, of a form of being able to understand how you think about things by recording them and then releasing them to the world so that, you know, the scrutiny of 100,000 people comes down on whatever shit idea you have. Yes. And how stupid and how ignorant you were and how there was inconsistencies beforehand. Yeah.

Yeah. But I mean, you can create a community of people around you in that way by curating the content that you consume. Right. Yes. content that you consume, right? This is one of the things, a lot of the time, audiences, especially at the stage that I'm at now, which is still getting feedback from the audience, and it's not so unbelievably massive that I can't get any sort of kickback. The audience has a role, I think, with helping creators to create the sort of content that is good and to also encourage them to think better in a more rigorous way. A lot of the time, the audience may have something genuinely valuable to contribute to what someone's thinking or saying, but the way that they put it across is just in this reactionary,

lots of exclamation marks, you got this wrong or whatever. If I get an email or a DM from somebody or whatever, that's really well thought out. And they, hey, man, I listened to such and such an episode with this person on DNA, and you said this, here's a couple of things I think you should really check out. Here's an article or a news story, and this is where I think that you're a little bit off the mark. I'll read that. What I won't read is someone just flying off the handle about a complete reactionary. Now, audiences have the opportunity to craft the direction of the people that they listen to by contributing in a well-meaning way. Like if you

genuinely care about the creators that you listen to, you can help them be better. If you think this person is pretty close to the best thing that I can listen to online, help. You can contribute to their direction, but what they won't listen they're going to switch off if you just have some outlandish sweary exclamation mark capital letters comment they're not going to listen to that right you have to think about what is causing what what it selects for in the people that are in the youtube comments right there is something that it selects when we don't know what that is. Maybe it's anger. Maybe it's outrage. There's certainly a particular type of personality that is always being selected for in that. So if you want to separate yourself out from that,

you actually need to do something that shows that you've taken more time, more care, more consideration. You can think about it that way. But the way I think about it is that each individual person that's commenting is on a different stage of their own journey. And if you're at the stage of your own journey where something you disagree with, you have to insult that person, add homonyms and swears and fuck you and you fucking idiot. And you're at a very early stage of this idea of exchanging information. And you don't have to communicate that way. And some people, when they see someone's idea that they disagree with, they just want to insult that person and diminish that person and demean that person. And it's a very ineffective way of getting your ideas across. You might think

that you're damaging that person and then in so doing, you're propping up your own ideas. But what you're really doing is you're exposing this bitter, angry, unhappy version of yourself. There are many people that I disagree with. But the way I try to engage with those people is by saying, I don't think that's correct. And I don't feel the same way because of this. And this is why. And I try to never attack people. I try to never insult people.

Unless they're so fucking preposterous, I think, that it's necessary to get a little bit out there like CNN anchors and shit like that because they're propagandists and I think that ultimately they're doing some danger in the way they communicate in some ways but most of the time when I talk about things I try to talk about things in a way where I look at their side. I steel man them. I look at their perspective and I try to see why do they have these opinions? Why have they formed this? Why have they been captured by this very particular ideology? Why do they support this? Why are they vote blue no matter who? Why are they Trumpers to know, Trumpers to the bitter end? Like, what is causing that? And I try to put myself in their thought process. How much was that the case before you

started the show? Very little. Really? Very little. Before the show, I was like, fuck him. He's a moron. Fuck this idiot. You know, I learned how to do that from doing the podcast. I learned how to do that initially from gauging the reaction other people had to my conversations. But after a while, the volume of comments was just too much. Correct. That's what I'm feeling a little bit now as well. Yeah, you're going to get there. It's impossible. And you're probably going to, after this show, it's going to be rough.

It's just, you just can't do it. And also there's a reality of being a human being that the negative comments stand out more than the positive ones and if you read the negative ones

and you internalize them it's damaging. It's not good for you and it's not necessary. I got a story about the negativity bias that Malice taught me about a couple of weeks ago.

Me and Malice were supposed to go to Russia and do you remember we mentioned it a couple of times? He was going to go to Russia and we were going to vlog it and stuff and then COVID

and then war. So we are still planning on doing that. He told me about the Brighton Hotel attack. I think it was 1983 or 1987. So Margaret Thatcher, right, is going to a hotel

for a conservative party conference. And this is when the IRA, Ireland terrorist group, they had a big problem with what was going on in the UK. So they set a long time delay bomb to go off in this hotel. And there's tons of conservative party members that are there. Mrs. Thatcher's there. She actually ends up being in the bathroom when it goes off. Had she been in her main room, there would have been shards of glass everywhere, but she probably wouldn't have been killed, but would have definitely at least been damaged, right? And afterward, she puts a statement out saying,

we will not be deterred, we are not to be pushed around, and blah, blah, blah. The IRA puts a statement out, and they say, Mrs. Thatcher, today you were lucky. The thing is, you have to be lucky every day. We only have to get lucky once. So that is the fact that life has to win every day and death only has to win once. That's the reason why the negativity bias exists.

But that story, you have to be lucky every day. We only have to be lucky once. That's a Deontay Wilder one-punch philosophy because he only has to catch you once. The eraser. Yeah, the eraser. The eraser, man. But that's the thing.

And I think that realizing just how easy it is to change, how easy it is to change the things that you think, the way that you behave, the way that you behave, the norms that you follow. This quote from Aristotle, he says, if a man knows not where he goes, no wind is favorable. It's like, if you haven't considered what it is that you want to want in life, basically, you're just the cleverest rat in the room, right? Your desires are determined by the confused chemical signals of your body and the way you've dealt with past trauma and social norms and paths of least resistance. All of these things. That's what's determining your behavior right now.

If you haven't lived a consciously designed life. And the main thing that I've learned is that, look, life doesn't have to be lived by default. You can design it and go out of your way to assess, OK, what's underneath this stone? Oh, fucking hell, that's really ugly. I would rather not look at that. And then you give it a bit of a clean, right? You sort of clean it away and you go, okay, right. Let's have a go again. For every 20 stones that you turn over to have a look and do some introspective work, 19 of them are disgusting and have something terrifying that sits underneath. Yeah. Maybe one of them's good. And you go, actually, do you know what it is? My curiosity, I really like that. Or my empathy, I really like that. Right. Most of them's good you actually do you know what it is my curiosity i really like that or my empathy i really like that right most of them are desires that other people have given to you

the things that you don't actually want to do for yourself and that's why it's scary work it's scary work to admit that you're wrong it's scary work to look at assessing why i do the things that i do there's also the burden of having to make a living, right? And that requires so much of your day. Think about the amount of time that if we were talking about before that most people who are living, there's a large percentage of people that are listening to this right now that are living their life, doing something for a living that they don't want to do. And it's not enjoyable and it's burdensome. Well, that's eight hours a day plus commuting. That is most of your day. So most of your day is spent in an undesirable way. So because of that, it leaves very little time to course

correct. The more you develop responsibilities, whether it's a family that you have to support or whether it's a mortgage you have to pay off or a car loan or whatever it is, the more of those things you accumulate, the more difficult it is to course correct. And that's very, very important for people to understand is that the further you go down this path, like you might have this job and it might suck, but then the boss pulls you into the office and goes, hey, Mike, we're going to give you a new responsibility, a new raise, but we're going to require more hours. You know, it's a 10% bump in pay, but I want you to understand that, you know, this is, you're going to have to do a lot of overtime.

You're going to have to do a lot. And you start thinking, well, I'm moving up. But you're not. Deeper into the trench you go. Yes. Yes. That's so important to understand is that the amount of time, like the amount of focus, the amount of hours your mind is spent doing something you don't want to do, that's not going to fucking change

unless you make it change. You're going to have to do something about that. And the more you commit to that and the more time spent doing that, the harder it's going to be to make those changes. And you're going to start to cope. Yes. Outside of that. That's where these kinds of conversations are so valuable because you have done some things you don't want to do anymore and you used to do them. And I have been the same way. And most people

are that way. We're not born into this job. This is not something that was bestowed upon us by someone else. We've, we've, we crafted it. We figured it out. And through step-by step by step you go back and listen to my early podcasts they're fucking terrible you know like if you went back and watched my early podcasts and said one day this is going to be the biggest podcast in the known world like the fuck are you talking about this is horse shit exactly and that's why it's out there

still I like the fact that they're out there yeah me too I love the fact that it's still there but another thing to consider is the fact that if people are succeeding even, in a job that they hate, think about how good you could be if it was something that you really, really cared about. Right. Think about how amazing you could be if you pursued something that you genuinely had existential simpatico with. Right. As opposed to something that you detest.

Yeah. Or just not that fussed about. If you're in the chasm of competent, of, uh, comfortable complacency, just how good could you be if this was something that you loved? Yeah.

Holy fuck. It's just so hard for people to course correct. And it's so hard for people to have like sort of a top down objective view of where they're going and what they're doing and how they're thinking and whether or not they like it. Most of the time, people need some sort of a catastrophic event, some sort of a near-death experience or a life-changing event or a breakup or being fired or a psychedelic experience, like something that just blows the paradigm completely into a million pieces and you're forced to look at it again. That's falling out of the bottom of the region beta paradox, right? You go through the bottom and you bounce out of there, right? That's

what you're looking to do. But I think that when you think about how locked in to people's lives they are and concerns about making changes. I'm 34 now. I moved to America when I was 33, right? 33 years old. That would have been, you know, past the time when you're supposed to have responsibilities. Now, yeah, I didn't have any restrictions or whatever to be able to come out here in terms of family and kids and stuff like that. But still, moving to a new country on your own at 33 is something that most people would have been, that's a little bit of an odd decision to make, perhaps. There are opportunities and there are people that reach out

that have made huge changes in their lives. I'm sure you've seen them as well. Way, way, way into late life. There is no trench that's been dug so deep that you can't get yourself out of it. But it is easier the earlier that you do it. That's way easier. That's just a sad fact that if you're able to nip something in the bud

before it becomes too entrenched, before you have too many responsibilities that make it harder because you've got to keep on grinding at the shitty job that you don't like, while you've got to side hustle, while you've got to raise the kids, while you've got to pay the mortgage, while you've got to do all of the rest of the things in the adulting, it would be easier. But it's never going to be too late. It's never too late. If you're alive, you can get better. If you're alive right now, you can improve your condition.

You can improve your situation, and it starts with improving the way you think. That's the most important thing. The way you think of things, the way you address things, you've got to change that. And you've got to look at things objectively, and you've got to change that. And you got to look at things objectively and you got to be brutally honest with yourself. And the more you bullshit yourself, the more it's going to be difficult. You're, you're, you're literally throwing weights

on your back and making it harder to move forward. Yeah. It's because people's opinions are so highly, highly held as the most important thing that they do. That's the concern, though. The fact that in order to say that I've been wrong, it feels like destruction. But it's not true. Your opinions are just a thing that you're bouncing around in your head. And you can't think of them as your lungs or your bones or your eyeballs. It's not. This is another Sam Harris thing, right? Where he says, what are you going to think next? You don't know.

You don't know what you're going to think next. Right, right, right. Right? So, okay. So does that mean that you're in control of your thoughts? Well, you kind of are, but you're also kind of not. Right. And if there was somebody that was walking down the street saying things

and you couldn't predict what they were going to say next, would you trust what that person says? Probably not. And you can't predict what's coming up next. Your thoughts are no more of a part of you than the weather is to the sky, right? The weather flows through the sky and you know that the sky is there above it, but the weather is just a current state. It's not the sky. It's just a part of it. But you do develop momentum from thinking in a specific way, whether it's good momentum or bad momentum. You can get good momentum by choosing good paths in life, by course correcting, by adding beneficial and healthy activities to your life. And you grow and change because of that.

You know, I've talked to so many people that have started doing yoga and they're like, oh my God, it's changed my life. It changed the way I think about things, changed the way I interact with people. But by forcing yourself to do a thing, you now develop momentum and that can be applied to all sorts of different aspects of your life. And also by finding something that you deeply enjoy and that becomes satisfying to you, you enrich your overall experience on earth. And that in turn enriches the way you communicate with others. It can enhance your relationships. It can enhance your job performance. It just changes your choices because you have less frustration. We're rolling the clock forward as well, thinking about how you could impact other people.

What would the world be like if you showed up 1% better? Okay. Who would that impact? How far would the ripples go? You know, listening to your show was a big part of the reason why I started mine. Then 500 episodes later, Modern Wisdom's got me out to America and it's done all that. And how many people has that impacted? And then how many people have they impacted? So there's kind of a, almost a compulsion or a necessity for people to do what only they can do.

So I learned about Salvador Dali and just how weird that guy was. So Salvador Dali, his parents, about 10 months or 11 months before he was born had a kid called Salvador and it died, died very shortly after being born. And they very quickly got pregnant again and called the new son Salvador. And they were adamant that he was a reincarnation of the baby that had died. I mean, that's where you've started. Okay. That's where you began. And then he used to throw himself down the stairs as a child because he was a masochist. He used to enjoy the pain of being thrown down stairs.

He once got locked in a deep-sea diving suit while he was giving a talk, and he had to be wrenched out of it mid-talk because he was suffocating. Do you know about what he did with his wife? No, I don't know anything about Salvador Dali. He's fucking amazing. Other than his mustache.

Yes, serious facial hair. So he fell in love. He was facial hair so he fell in love he was married and he fell in love with another woman who was also married and he was adamant that she was his muse that she was almost divine heavenly and she left her uh husband he left his wife he immediately bought her i finished that coffee sorry mate oh no worries that's it let's get more coffee now we're good man um he was adamant that she was his muse he bought her a castle and immediately started treating her like royalty oh boy so he used to send a formal request to go and see her his wife in the castle that he bought her he used to treat her like royalty and she would have to

accept it like by royal decree or something. My point being that Salvador Dali was an incredibly odd human. And as brilliant as he was, Michelangelo didn't do Dali. Right. Da Vinci didn't do Dali. If Salvador Dali had been anything short

of his truest self, the world would have been fundamentally less. That work would not have come out. Had he have tried to be his version of Leonardo da Vinci or his version of Michelangelo, the world would have been robbed of Dali's work. So you are this very unique combination of genetics and experience and past traumas and social norms and your funny lisp and the fact that one foot's slightly bigger than the other, all of that combined together gives you the opportunity to have a very unique offering to the world. And it is incredibly difficult to compete with someone who's being themselves.

How am I going to be a better Joe Rogan than Joe Rogan is? The best that I can hope for is being the second best Joe Rogan in the world if I decide to do that. So if you decide to lean into the thing that only you can do, that is where your competitive advantage lies. And that doesn't mean that you can't progress forward. That doesn't mean that you can't enhance yourself and develop new skills. But I do think that there's something to do with embracing the uniqueness that you have that will allow you to direct yourself towards something that is more fulfilling, that's more in line with you, that is competitively more effective. Socially, people are going to resonate with you. We don't love people for how much they're like other people, right?

No one's ever fallen in love with someone and said, you know what it is? I just love the fact that I can accurately predict all of their opinions without having heard their thought on something beforehand. I just adore how predictable she is. No. No. It's because of how unique they are. Yeah. The same thing goes for competitiveness in a job market.

Like, we want people who have unique skills that cannot be matched by anybody else. And then if you think, well, I want 7.8 billion people on the planet all being the very best version of themselves what is it that only you can do and you can break because i've got people that can already do what they're doing if you try and do what they're doing then what's it like they've already got that do the thing that only you can do the thing is what you're saying by leaning into yourself and and saying what is it about you that is unique that only you can offer the world? Some people don't feel like there's anything that is unique about them that they can offer the world

because they haven't done anything that shows them that. And one of the things about difficult pursuits, whether it's with Salvador Dali, it's art, whether with me it's probably martial arts and some other things and stand-up comedy and podcasting. And through doing difficult things, difficult things, they establish your human potential. And by going through these things, you'd gain more confidence and more of an understanding of your thought process and where you err and where you do well and what lessons that you can take from that and be a little bit better next time. And the accumulation

of all this data is what makes you understand what is unique about you and who you are. But But that's why I think difficult pursuits are so important for humans. I think we live in this shell of a body that has this ancient primate DNA that is all about problem solving and survival. It's about figuring out where the threats are. It's about recognizing your enemies. It's about accumulating resources and food and about your DNA carrying on. Well, most of those problems have kind of been solved by civilized society. So in order to examine your own unique human potential, you have to have a pursuit, whatever that pursuit is, whether it's golf like Tiger Woods, whatever it is, basketball like Michael Jordan, whatever it is,

you've got to find a thing. And through that thing, you learn about yourself, whether it's yoga, whether it's writing. There's a way that you can interface with difficult, complex problems that you will gain insight into how you operate and how your mind plays tricks on you and how accomplishing things is deeply rewarding and how learning how to be a more empathetic and kind friend is also rewarding and about when you recognize that in other people it's inspiring

all those things you got to get through something in life to acquire them and it bleeds into those other areas right yeah the single pursuit becomes the vector that everything else comes from right it's a gateway drug or the pebble at the top of an avalanche the first step is the hardest one though and i think that that was what I was stuck at for a very long time. You know, I knew that there was something wrong. I didn't know what, and I didn't really know how to fix it either. And that is, that's the, the first step being the most difficult in terms of starting that momentum. You know, you look at, it takes 10 years to become an overnight success that you all of the people that you admire are just the end result of hundreds of thousands of tiny little interactions and iterations on doing a lot of different things.

The way that they show up for their friends, the fact that they turn up on time, all of that stuff, the tiny, tiny, tiny little things. And then that is how you look at somebody that's incredibly impressive. But trying to reverse engineer the impressiveness without thinking that, okay, what is the thing that I can do today, the tiny little action that I can take that will move me slightly closer toward my goal, even if I don't know what the goal is. So a lot of the time, I think people have a problem that perfectionism is procrastination masquerading as quality control, right? So they decide I'm not going to do a thing until I know exactly the direction I'm going to go in. And that means that no step is useful until I know the end goal that

I'm going to get to. But what they don't understand is that any commitment that you make is a step in the right direction. Anything that you decide that you're going to commit yourself to, Peterson's got one of these rules where he says, commit yourself to one thing as hard as you can and see what happens. Right. Like just write a blog post once a day for two months, see what happens. Right. Even if blogging turns out you suck at it and you hate it and it doesn't end up getting any traction and it gives you no sense of joy or whatever, what you've learned there is that you can do a thing

every single day for two months. That is a really fucking valuable lesson. It's a vehicle for developing your human potential. Yes, yes, that's exactly what it is. And the more that you can lean into just committing to doing stuff, right? Far more people than realize it just need to commit to doing a thing. Just do a thing.

Yes. That's it. Anything. It doesn't matter. Especially if you don't know what to do because anything is better than no thing. But one of the problems you've got is that people can be anything that they want, but they can't be everything that they want. You have to pick a small, narrow window of stuff that you're going to compete on. Right?

You can't be the leanest person in the gym whilst starting a new business, whilst going out every single night and socializing, trying to find your partner, whilst starting a podcast and a blog and a bunch of other things. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. You can be anything you want. It can't be everything that you want. You have to pick what is the highest point of contribution that I can go to. And then over time, you gradually, gradually refine those down. Now, sometimes you can find things that are kind of mutually beneficial. So let's say that you end up being good at podcasting, which is conversation.

You also end up like commentary is kind of conversation and comedy is kind of conversation. Okay. So these things kind of intermingle and the audience and selling shows and blah, blah, blah. So sometimes stuff overlaps, but more often than not, it diverges, right? If you want to be a great businessman and make as much money asges, right? If you want to be a great businessman and make as much money as possible, you're going to have to sacrifice time with your kids. If you want to be the best dad that you can, you're probably not going to be able to earn as much money quite as much as you could do usually. So these things are mutually exclusive. It's an idea Oliver Berkman has where he says, decide in advance what you want to suck at. Because a lot

of the time, we believe that we can do anything that we want to do, be anything that we want to suck at because a lot of the time we believe that we can do anything that we want to do be anything that we want to be and as soon as we start to commit to one thing we feel the pain of the stuff that we've started to let fall away i used to be in condition now that i'm focused on my family i've noticed that i'm getting a little bit out of shape even though i train i know that i'm still doing stuff as much as i can but but I'm just, I can't go to the gym as much as I could when I was 25, right? And I had no girlfriend and no family. But if you've committed in advance

to wanting to be the best father that you can be, you know downstream from that, okay, what are the things that I'm going to have to suck at in advance? My body condition's probably going to take a little bit of a hit. Maybe I'm not going to be able to see the boys on a weekend quite so much,

but I'm prepared to suck at that because these are the things that I genuinely value. I want to be the best father that I can be. I want to be whatever it might be. But we feel the pain of that as it falls away. We feel the pain, and that's what stops us from making progress because you can be anything you want. You can't be everything. And as soon as you start trying to spread yourself out,

and remember as well, this is something else. I wonder whether you had this. A lot of the things that I do, I've always presumed they're going to last forever. So if I'm going to be into training in the gym now, I forget that it's just periodization. I can focus on training for the next six months. And then after that, once I've locked in a good routine, or I've built up this particular thing, after that, it's going to be something else. And after that, it's going to be something else. I always presume that what I did, that what's happening now is just going to continue to stretch out into the future forever. And this means that good things feel like they're going to last forever. And then inevitably they end up disappointing you because they're not going to.

And bad things feel like they're going to last forever, which makes you despondent. But realizing that whatever it is that you're doing now is only going to last for a little while, right? You're going to have this particular training style. You're going to have this little project. And then what else are you going to add in after that? Well, you don't know. But not just feeling like the now is everything that there is and that things are going to change over time and that you're going to iterate. I think that's quite an important realization.

change over time and that could go into iterate, I think that's quite an important realization. I try to just enjoy what I'm doing while I'm doing it. And I don't think too much about whether or not I'm going to be able to do something forever. I just think, am I doing it now? Am I enjoying it now? Great. Let's do it again tomorrow. And if there comes a reason why I can't do things anymore, like I had to give up on video games because I'm too obsessive. There's a few things in my life where I've had to go, okay, this is not a good thing. Let me stop that. But generally, I just try to find things that I enjoy doing and do them as much as I can. But that's why I don't understand when people say I'm bored. Oh, I'm bored. Like I could live a hundred lives simultaneously. If there was a hundred versions of me, I'd have a hundred different occupations.

I would try to be a professional pool player. I'd try to be a professional chess player. I'd be a professional fighter. I would try to be a fucking singer. I would find things. I am endlessly fascinated by things. Things to do, things to learn from, things, pursuits. And I think that if you could find things that resonate with your particular personality,

just enjoy them and treat them as what they are. What they are is they're sort of a replacement for all the things that gave you human rewards, the human reward systems that are built into our primate DNA. You need those. You can't just go through life just showing up, eating, sleeping, and going to sleep. You're going to get depressed. Your organism, the human organism, needs problem solving. It needs complex problems. It needs stress.

It needs some sort of difficult thing that you have to overcome. And through that, you relax. You can't just have happiness all day. Like, oh, I just want to be happy. That's not real. You have to face discomfort for you to appreciate happiness. If you live in Southern California, one of the things you realize is like the sun doesn't feel good anymore. You know, it's there every fucking day.

I went on a hunting trip once with my friend Brian and my friend Steve. We went to Alaska and we were in Prince Edward Island. And it's like the rainiest place in all of North America. It rained every fucking day we were there. It was pouring rain. Sounds like England. But it was way worse. I mean and it's like the rainiest place in all of North America. It rained every fucking day we were there. It was pouring rain. Sounds like England. But it was way worse. I mean, it's crazy.

It's like constant rain, and we're sleeping in tents, right? So you think, oh, well, I'll get in a tent, it'll be dry. Uh-uh. There's moisture inside the tent. You see moisture droplets, like in the air when you turn your headlamp on at night. You see, like, mist, like moisture mist because everything is moist. Your sleeping bag's wet. Your clothes are wet. You never dry off. When I got back home, I called my friend Steve because I was in the car. I was like, dude,

I've never been happier. The sun is shining on my face. I feel so happy. It's amazing because my happiness was greatly enhanced by the fact that I was miserable for seven days. Like you don't get one without the other. You don't get true happiness. Some of the most depressed people I've ever met live in LA and they're in the sun every fucking day. And the people that live in places where it rains all the time, when the sun comes out, they're in ecstasy. They're having fun. They're laughing. They're at the park. You don't just be happy all the time. And people seek these pharmaceutical interventions that are going to step in and change your brain

chemistry and make you happy. And like, yeah, maybe. I mean, I don't know what's going on in your head. Or it might be that you need more physical struggle. You need more exercise. And they've proven that physical exercise, in particular cardiovascular exercise, is just as effective as SSRIs, if not more effective on most people. Dude, it's so strange thinking back to my 20s because I always thought that I was a depressive person. Like that was, I was really bad. I would get burned out at work. I would spend days in bed.

I'd feel ashamed about the fact that ostensibly there was nothing wrong with me. Right. So there was laid on. Ashamed. Ashamed. Yeah. Laid on top of the fact that I was sad and didn't want people that I was, we had 500 people that worked for us at this events company and we were supposed to be the party guys and we were supposed to be the ones on the front door

that was G-ing everyone up, and we've got this DJ, and we've got these cool people, and this is the night. Aspirational, inspirational, outgoing, gregarious, extroverted people. And I couldn't get myself out of bed. I was like, holy fuck, how embarrassing is it that I, the person that's supposed to be in charge of this, can't bring himself to go to the kitchen to get himself a glass of water. And I looked at what was happening. I was going to bed

at 4am two to three nights a week. Right. Dude, the first stable sleep and wake pattern I ever had was COVID as an adult. Really? First time I ever went to bed and woke up at the same time consistently since the age of 18 when I lived at home with my parents, was COVID. How much better did you feel? It's indescribable. It's indescribable, the difference, because of my sleep and wake pattern. And then that allowed me to really sink into building up a great morning routine. I already had a good morning routine.

I was meditating a lot and doing stuff. But it was at changeable times, and my mood was always all over the place. And obviously, if you're sleeping late, that means that diet is kind of hard to really dial in. And then over time you start to see, holy fuck, the momentum that you can build up when things are consistent, sustainable, replicable. It's the difference is so profound that I can't put words on it and that's what you see that's that one percent each conversation each day each little time that you do something each interaction the fact that you turn up early the fact that you tell the truth as opposed to telling a lie

every single one of those are mountain built and layers of paint yes every single time man and that's how it felt to me, making a pivot, committing myself to doing something that I really cared about, committing myself to saying that I was wrong when I'm wrong, committing myself to telling the truth, even though it's inconvenient, all of those little interactions. And it's that first step, I think, that a lot of people get stuck on. I just want that momentum to begin. I want to push myself down that hill. Yes. Chris, let's end with that.

I love it. I really enjoyed this conversation. I think we could have a hundred more. And I really appreciate what you're doing. I really appreciate how you communicate and the way you express yourself. It's awesome. Your podcast is great. So please tell people how to get that.

Tell people where it is. Modern Wisdom, you can search on Spotify, obviously, and Apple Podcasts, YouTube, wherever else you need to search. Just Modern Wisdom is there. And dude, I appreciate the hell out of you. Big inspiration. Big reason why I started the show.

I'd love to have you on whenever you're free. Thank you. I'd love to do that too. Thank you. And tell people your social media too so they can get a hold of you there. At ChrisWillX on Twitter and Instagram and everywhere else that you go.

Okay. Beautiful. We did it. you go. Okay, beautiful. We did it. Thank you. Bye, everybody. Peace.