#850 - 2.75M Q&A - Women’s Value, Loneliness & Bernie Sanders
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Hello everybody, welcome back to the show. My guest today is me. I hit 2.75 million subscribers on YouTube and to celebrate asked for questions from YouTube community and Twitter and Instagram. So here is another two hours of me trying to get through as many as possible. Expect to learn whether I'll bring Bernie Sanders on the

podcast, what I think about women's value to the world, why my forearms are this size, how to deal with loneliness, whether I'll release merch, why I'm still a big emo kid, my advice for people going through a tough time, and much more. This episode is brought to you by Shop

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Me.

What's happening people? Welcome back to the show. It is a 2.75 million subscriber Q&A episode and I'm in a brand new studio. For the people that are listening, you're not going to be able to see it, but this is my new studio finally finished in all its glory. And I think it looks absolutely beautiful. I can show you here. Look at this. There's a London telephone box and a London bridge here.

and see and hear and speak no evil statues. And I've got a thinking man thinking and a guy Atlas holding up the world and

Little dinosaur skull, a secret little Easter egg of a hand climbing up. And I love it. I love the colors. I think it looks, it's perfect. It's our brand. It's the teal, it's the orange. The lighting's amazing. So yeah, my director of photography made me a present for 2.75 million subscribers. Anyway, I asked for questions on Twitter and Instagram and YouTube, and there were lots. So let's get into it.

Jim Cooper, I love your podcast, Chris. I'm sure you're not misogynistic, but the statement women's value to the world in many ways lies in their beauty and youth comes across quite sexist and reductive to me.

Yes, swing and a miss by me there using some imprecise language around a sensitive topic. I think the response here was a bit surprising because I must have brought up this exact cliche in 30 or 50 videos in the past that men have historically been valued for their ability to provide status and resources, while historically women have had a premium placed on their age and their looks. I've never said that it's optimal or

or desirable, but I would say that it's pretty reasonable as a historical assessment of how society has judged men and women. I mean, even now in the modern world, there's entire industries dedicated to serving these cliches, cosmetic surgery and makeup and hair extensions and apps that airbrush your wrinkles away are all playing into this need for beautification and youth. The same as luxury car rental garages and online trading courses and

pick up artist body language masterminds for men to enhance status and resources. The point that I was trying to make was about male body image issues that society has typically emphasized the importance of beauty and youth in women. For men, stereotypically, it's been less important. And yet, men are on track to overtake women in rates of body dysmorphia within a few decades. I think a

It's an interesting pivot that men historically haven't been valued as much for their looks. And that now seems to be changing. And just because I talk about something doesn't mean that I support it. Analysis is not justification. What I wanted to do was identify those previous stereotypes and then highlight this new world in contrast. And it seems like that came across well.

as me reinforcing the stereotype as legitimate. And I get the sense that this is one of the problems with the audience growing so quickly, because I think that I can just use imprecise, throwaway shorthand references to tons of previous conversations, like I used to when the show was smaller, and everyone would understand my broader point. But the show is

probably half a million people bigger than the last time that this point got brought up. So a ton of viewers have no context. But then if I go through an in-depth reintroduction of each reference every time that I bring it up, that's going to get clunky and repetitive and arduous and patronize everyone like you never learn anything. So yeah, I'm going to have to work on that. Hopefully

That clears everything up and glad to hear that I'm not a misogynist. Shopgun Orphan, congrats on all your well-deserved success. I discovered your pod in 2021 and you've quickly become my favorite person to listen to. Thank you. When are we getting t-shirts and other merch? Please take my money.

Yeah, I've been wearing this three-eyed skull t-shirt thing on some training vlogs, and we've got one with Modern Wisdom across the front. I think we made maybe 20 of those, and it was just for me and Dean and a couple of the guys behind the scenes. I would consider doing it, but I'm not a particularly good sort of seller of my own stuff, but

I need to work on that. But soon, I guess, if I can find a way to do it without detracting from the million other things that I've got to do. But it's nice to know that you like the designs. They're pretty cool. I really like them. Lucas, I'm currently watching your Olympia prep vlog with Chris. What's going on with the autoimmune stuff? I hope everything works.

It's going well. Yeah, I kept this quiet. I have kept this quiet all year. I've been fighting with some health stuff. I think I've hinted at it a little bit. And to be honest, it's kind of, it's coming out of me without me meaning to. I talk to friends and it's the thing that's on my mind. It's been rough. It's been like by far the hardest year that I've had. And then I've been trying to keep the show on top of it. And I'm seeing a lot of

threat and anxiety and my resilience is lower pretty much everywhere. So I think I'm going to do a sort of fully dedicated episode or maybe even a series of episodes to talking about the stuff that I've been going through, gut dysbiosis, like anti-parasitic treatments,

molds environmental molds uh ebv like a pretty big list of things that apparently are not super uncommon for immigrants that first move to america because the environment and the food and a lot of the other stuff is unfamiliar and then maybe get some specialists on because it's a really big deal and the brain fog and the mood and the energy has been uh it's been tough so i want to try and use it as a

learning experience in one form or another. Everything is moving forward as best I can. I'm trying to not dwell on it and compensate where I can. Also, this is the most my dog ate my homework excuse ever, but I've made more speech errors in the last...

six months or nine months this year than I ever have. I would have never made that imprecision error with regards to women historically having taken most of their value, dot, dot, dot. I would have never done that.

in the past. I would have never, I accidentally called Ed Witten, Ed Dutton on the episode with Eric Weinstein. I know this might sound like a little thing, but for me, somebody who is usually pretty sort of 100% perfect on speech, Ed Dutton is this guy, he's like a spicy race and IQ researcher. Ed Witten is a theoretical physicist. I

Like I just wouldn't have made that error and it keeps on happening. I'm forgetting people's names. I was looking at a dog that I know unbelievably well and just looked at it and didn't know its name. I'll talk about it fully toward the end of the year. And also, you know, again, we're being transparent. Why not? It's been odd not talking about it and then feeling like I've got this

huge thing that's going on behind the scenes and then how do I is it even that big of a deal you guys are here to just learn stuff and and and be entertained and educated like why should I burden you with something that's burdening me but then also you kind of the truth will set you free anyway it's been I've been thinking about it a lot and once I compile my thoughts in a brain that's full of mold I'll um I'll talk to you more about it and maybe it'll be helpful and useful to anybody that's going through stuff con air why are your forearms so massive it's

Yeah, I, this has been coming up more. I think it's because I've been doing more, uh, training vlogs. Uh, I guess I do have like pretty big forearms, but, um, I honestly, it's just straight up genetics. It's like, I've never done direct. The first piece of direct forearm training I've ever done was with Mike Isra tell on a podcast or the training blog, uh,

Three weeks ago. It's the first time I've ever trained them. So it's like that guy that's got massive calves. You go, dude, what do you do for training your calves? He's like, have good parents. I don't know, have parents with big calves. So they just are. Maybe it's a tumor of some kind. And maybe this is what's causing all of the fucking brain fog. Maybe it's just filled with mold and autoimmune problems. I'm not sure.

Z Griffith 23, what's your relationship with caffeine slash nicotine and do you build in intentional breaks? Good question. So for those of you who don't know, I did 500 days without caffeine a couple of years ago, which was significantly harder than a thousand days without alcohol, which I did the year before, finishing the year before. And

Still now, my favorite way to consume caffeine, this includes Nutonic, is to try and do it every other day. Sometimes when you can't because you've got a bunch of days back to back where you really need it or you have multiple nights of bad sleep. But honestly, my best use case is just one day on, one day off. If you have it today, you can't have it tomorrow. And if you had it yesterday, you can't have it today. That's it as a rule. And it means that it keeps your tolerance nice and flat.

I was taught not that long ago that I think it takes nine days of cold turkey from caffeine to fully reset your baseline, that adenosine system sensitivity. That was from Menno Henselman's, so blame him if it's not true. But you would be surprised at how quickly that sensitivity comes back. Nicotine, I'm not using. I haven't used that all that much. Knickknacks are nice, but

I'm stimulated enough, frankly, from like new tonic and just coffee as it is. So I don't really need any more. Vikram Wupadrasta. Advice for subhumans below six foot in the current dating market. I guess that makes me subhuman. I'm five, ten and a half, five eleven.

I don't know, man. Like I see guys who are not that tall crushing it with girls all the time. And I do think that the internet makes way more of a meme out of height for guys than it is now. There's a girl that trains in the gym with me who is 6'2".

she's got like an actual tall girl problem that she doesn't want to date a guy that's shorter than her. And if you're six two as a woman and you want to wear heels at your wedding, uh, you're looking at professional athletes. Like that's a, you know, that's a high bar literally. Um, I don't think you need specific advice for subhumans below six foot in the current dating market. Uh, it's the same as it's always been like be nice, be as attractive and well presented as possible. Be emotionally aware, present some status, uh,

Don't be a dickhead. That seems to work. Alberto Nicule, your podcast stands out as the best looking one on YouTube and the production quality is truly impressive. Thank you. I'm curious, why do you invest so much into the visual aspect, especially since many listeners may not pay attention to it? Is it a personal goal for you or do you find it rewarding in other ways, either financially or personally? Good question. So I don't know. I like beautiful things just

because I like looking at nice things. I think there's utility in beauty and there's so many complaints about the modern world being sterile and transactional and people are just mailing it in, whether it's in music or in architecture or in art or in movies and doing the bare minimum to get by or kind of feeding this chicken soup Instagram story bullshit to you. And

I don't know. I want a body of work that I look back on and think, that was beautiful. That was amazing. That was impressive. We really pushed the limits. I don't know. It's funny.

The show sometimes gets criticized for how, like, why are you going to all of this effort? It's all style and no substance. Like, bro, there is the first year's episodes had no video at all. And then after that, it was 300 episodes of me on Skype, literally at 720p. I'm doing it. People have complaints for lazy content creators. And then if you try and do something beautiful, they've got complaints too. So I think the lesson there is that you can't really

appease or satisfy anybody or everybody. Financially, it is a stupid idea. It is a house deposit every single time that we decide to do one of these big sets of shoots. It is an obscene cost, the single largest cost this entire year, larger than all of the staff that work for me, larger than any of the production fees, larger than anything.

is the cinema shoots. That's it. Rental houses, insurance, location. So I don't know. I hope for the people that like beautiful things, this is a place that you can come. And I like beautiful things. So hopefully for those that enjoy it, it's there for you as well. And for the people who aren't that fussed, you can just listen to it on Spotify or Apple podcasts. Ryan J. Chris, what's your daily nutrition plan?

All right, I don't want to be that guy, but as part of this autoimmune recovery stuff, I'm fully carnivore at the moment. Technically, I'm meat and fruit. So carnivore was like the hipster's keto, and then meat and fruit was like the hipster's hipster's carnivore. So I'm now that guy. I'm now a combination of Jordan Peterson and Paul Saladino,

and the liver king. And I don't want to become an evangelist, which is why I've not brought it up because it's like cliche to be the guy that starts doing meat and fruit and won't shut up about it. But that's my current nutrition plan. And I will come back to you in a couple of months and tell you what I think of it. City Bumpkin, will you ever get circumcised? These questions. I feel like adult circumcision is a really extreme thing.

a very extreme procedure to go through without a reason. I don't know whether that's now a sort of a trend thing, like when people used to, guys used to get the top of their ears pierced or nose rings or whatever. I do know a guy who got into a relationship with a Jewish woman and then before marrying her, after he'd asked the father whether he could,

he had to, I think, convert or transition, whatever it's called, to become Jewish. And part of that was adult circumcision, which is wild. So I fear that I'm going to remain Team Foreskin. Nick Kurtapal, do you ever feel lonely? Yeah, I did a lot in my 20s. You know, there was a

a note that I put in my phone, my diary once that I was, I just had a low mood and I didn't really understand why. And I was trying to work out what was going on. And I just put, I think I'm lonely and wrote that in my phone. And, uh, it's got better since I've moved to America, which is, I guess, strange that you become less lonely when you move away from home, but I still do. It's weird. This sort of transition thing with,

the micro niche degenerate fame thing with the show and detention and, and, and not really knowing how to deal with that. And then feeling ashamed about like, why would I, why should I even complain about this? Like what a bourgeois luxury to be whining about and then thinking, well, that's not a very sort of, um, delicate way to deal with yourself. You're not treating yourself like a friend that you're responsible for helping there. So it's like,

infinite regress of feeling guilty or ashamed or sad that you're guilty or annoyed that you're ashamed. But yeah, you forget when you move to a country that speaks the same language as you, but that you're not from, that you're still an immigrant. And you wouldn't notice it the same if you were in Thailand or Russia or France or Argentina. But if you move to a country where

you speak the same language that they do natively, but you're not from there. It kind of creeps up on you, the fact that you're culturally displaced. And yeah, I do. It's been an interesting year of learning stuff and I'm working hard at trying to beat that. Krannick, since you did an episode with B Shapiro, why not showcase the opposite perspective? And how do you feel about the 2024 election?

Yeah, I don't know who the opposite perspective to Ben would be. I'm bringing on Crystal Ball from Crystal and Saga. She's the left-leaning host from that show. Anna Kasparian from The Young Turks, I think, will be on next week. Trying to get Bernie Sanders on, been trying to get that guy on for ages, but difficult to get a hold of, perhaps unsurprisingly. And I'm bringing on

I kind of get the sense that the rebalancing of right versus left is a little bit hard to do because there isn't really a left-leaning equivalent of Ben. I mean, Brian Klass has been on the show ardently anti-Trump and definitely from the left. Even Nate Silver is from the left. Ryan Holiday's been on this year. Scott Galloway's been on. Destiny's been on. A Democratic candidate for president, Dean Phillips, was on earlier this year. So...

I've been trying to sort of do showcasing the opposite perspective throughout the year, but I know it seems like people from the right sort of carry more weight somehow for this. So offsetting it, rebalancing the force can be a bit difficult. How do I feel about the 2024 election? It is a fucking car crash.

The way that the candidates have been going at each other, the way that the press has covered it, like the current sentiment in America is, it's like meme universe. If South Park made an election year, this is what it would feel like. Kamala Harris goes on call her daddy. Trump gets shot once and another assassination attempt. And then like, oh, it's been so, it's wild. So yeah,

How I feel about it is it makes for great TV, but I'm glad that I'm in Texas where there's lots of room and I feel a bit safe down here. And actually, I'm going to be in Australia when the election happens, which is probably the best place on the planet to be. The original Crash 007. Do you have an inner monologue? Oh, yeah.

I've heard that some people don't, some percentage of people don't. Let me see if chat GPT, what percentage of people do not have an inner monologue? Studies suggest that 25 to 50% of people do not experience a constant inner monologue. This means instead of hearing a voice in their head narrating their thoughts, they might process information in more visual, abstract or sensory ways. Prevalence depends varying on how the concept is defined and measuring different studies.

Wow. I have no idea what it's like to not have an inner monologue because my brain is singing fucking barbershop with each other. Yeah, it's been one of the biggest tasks that I've tried to do to make the voice inside of my head, my friend, to find like 25 to 50% of people. It's just silence in there. I don't know. What are you doing? What are you thinking about? I don't know. But yes, I do. And you should be kinder.

Oliver, two different questions. One, asking for a friend, what is a good response to someone who uses the word luck to put down one's achievements? Number two, what is your connection with music? I notice you wear Bring Me the Horizon and Parkway clothes. Have you always been into metal? Got any favorites? I'll answer number two first. This is Architects. This is an Architects t-shirt. Yeah, I was an emo kid.

throughout all of my teens and just never gave it up listening to a lot of sleep token and neck deep bring me still now crushes parkway misery signals uh bare tooths new album is phenomenal um polaris i've just got into them outstanding so that's what i listen to uh when i'm training deep house usually when i'm in the car or driving in a bit of country at other times and that's like my three car garage metal deep house fuck boy country music

Asking for a friend, what is a good response to someone who uses the word luck to put down one's achievements? It seems strange to me that the harder I work, the luckier I get. I've always loved that quote. BHZV1MN. Hey Chris, congrats. It is inspiring to see someone hit the J curve in real time. Thank you. Question, how do I deal with the fear of not having people around me

when I have finally made it. I'm in an important phase of my life. My relationship is probably going to come to an end because of my tunnel vision on my goals. There's this small voice in my head that acknowledges the possibility that I may never truly find the people I would love to share my success with. I have sacrificed many friendships too. I know I have what it takes, but what if I end up alone? I am 20. P.S. I was used to being alone until I improved myself and then found some people, but now it appears as if I'm at another revamp point in my life. So

I think this lonely chapter thing that I keep harping on about is just such an unseen problem that a lot of people face. And it was certainly an area that I struggled with.

The analogy that I use for, I think what you're describing is if you imagine personal growth or growing as a person as kind of like being a rocket ship taking off from earth and you're moving at a particular velocity and there's other people around you and some are ahead of you and some are behind you and some took off at the same time and you're moving along. But if you start to overtake other people, you end up leaving them behind. And this isn't a value judgment about who's better or who's worse or the people that grow more intrinsic, valuable, whatever it's.

simply that the language that you use to communicate to these people and the things that you've got going on in your life and the type of challenges that you're facing are

at the altitude that you are at, if you're just trying to work on your meditation practice for the first time ever and are learning about how the GTD method for productivity works, that's different to somebody who is balls deep in emotional regulation and has been to two years of therapy. The challenges that they're facing are just fundamentally different because the altitudes have changed.

So one of the problems that you have is if you're a very quick moving velocity as a rocket taking off, you're going to, like you said, you found people after you improved yourself and now it looks like you're going to break through another time.

that's something difficult that you're going to have to let go of. It feels like survivorship bias, like people that come back from war and they don't feel like they should have survived and they actually have. And you're leaving behind a group of people that maybe you grew up with or you became friends with or you became friends with at a really important formative point in your life. And it's tough. So I think it's just a...

It's a price of doing business, cost of entry to growing quickly. And it sounds like you have tunnel vision on your goals. You know that you want to achieve big things, but I don't mean to be patronizing.

bro you're 20 and you have there are lots of people very far ahead of you that you can end up settling at their altitude with just take time it sounds like you're thinking about things that are maybe beyond your age so just have a little bit of faith that you're going to be able to bring this into land uh with a group of people that will care and when you find them it'll be so worthwhile because they'll have gone through the same things too and you'll be able to resonate trantha

dig 9833. I suck so hard at saying these usernames. Tell us more about your childhood and how you overcame bullying and became confident. Deep questions today. So the became confident thing, I think is a, probably a misnomer. Competent, like I'm good at doing some stuff, but especially this year, I've just been riven with

uncertainty and low self-esteem and have kept going, which maybe is good for people who don't feel like they have much self-esteem or confidence to hear that even if you don't believe that you can do it, you can still end up doing it. But yeah, the became confident thing is at least based on recent experience, not fantastically backed up. In terms of childhood and how I overcame bullying, I don't know, like...

you just get through stuff. It was rough. Childhood, especially teenagers, wasn't super fun. Being a social outcast, it was never real aggressive, awful physical bullying over and over again. There was some elements that were pretty atrocious, but I don't know, you're just a kid. You're made of rubber and magic and you just sort of bounce through things or at least

I kind of did, even if I was unhappy. And it's only in retrospect that you can see kind of how wrong things were or how rough stuff was. The overcoming the bullying thing, I don't know, I got rid of that chip on my shoulder maybe about five years ago, you know, that I was doing things to prove other people that had doubted me or had mistreated me or bullied me or whatever wrong. That was something that I overcame, I think,

largely just through achieving lots of things that I never thought I would. After a while, you have to sort of admit to yourself that the fuel you're using is toxic. And if you're still being driven by that kid in year nine when you were 13 that called you that name or whatever, you're giving that person an awful lot of power over you, somebody that you hate or don't like. And also it's not allowing you to get to any peace. Like you're never going to be peaceful. So yeah, childhood was...

It makes back. I played lots of sports. I spent a lot of time on my own in solitude and it came out of it in one piece or at least in pieces that were together, should I say. And then in adult life, you spend some people kind of arrive all put together and then some people kind of have to put themselves back together. And I was the latter and still largely I'm doing it. But I know, hey, here I am still going.

Lorenzo Pietrapiana4707, fucking hell. What should you do if you realize that you're striving for success is only a compensatory mechanism for past trauma or an inferiority complex? There are a lot of people just being seen by these questions. It's a bit more somber of a movement.

mood today, both from the questions and maybe from me. I know why I am. I wonder if the questions are maybe because we're going into Christmas or autumn or something like that. People are starting to reflect on the year. They're feeling a little bit more melancholy. I don't know. Or maybe I'm getting it totally wrong and that's like an unfair assumption. What should you do if you realize that your striving for success is only a compensatory mechanism for past trauma or an inferiority complex?

I think a lot of people it is. I think many people are trying to prove to the world that they are valuable in a way that in the past they felt worthless. And the inferiority complex of, "If only I can become sufficiently impressive, then maybe the world will love me. Maybe if I create this grand cathedral of accomplishments and accolade and status and money,

someone will pat me on the back and tell me that I'm good enough. I think maybe that's most high performers. Maybe that's most successful people in the world. And that's sad. I think it's an ironic realization that many of the people that we admire the most have the least admirable internal mental states that you literally wouldn't trade the life that you think is dog shit for the one that you think is amazing.

if you got to spend five minutes inside of that person's head. So what should you do if you realize that you're striving for success is only the compensatory mechanism? Well, you've seen through the first illusion, right? You understand why that motivation is there and you can continue playing that game and trying to fill internal voids with external accolades or...

You can try and assess why that's the case. If it was me, I would do a good bit of internal work. I would maybe speak to a CBT person or do some therapy or some hypnosis. I would journal and I would try and work out, okay, why do I think that I need to be successful in order for the world to love me? Why do I need to strive in order to create this grand important thing in order to feel like I am sufficient?

I need to offer the world something in order for it to love me back. Why do I feel like that needs to be the case? And is that true? Is that true? Why do I love other people? Or what are the reasons? Why do I choose to be around the people that I choose to be around? Is it because of their success, their striving, how impressive they are? Or is it that they're funny and caring and hold space for me and are kind or gentle or reassuring or...

enjoyable or energizing or whatever. For the most part, I've asked myself this question too, or a similar one. And for the most part, the people that I love to be around, it's got fuck all to do with their accomplishments. Literally some of my best friends, the ones that are happy and not striving and are not looking for this success, like endlessly filling this hole, like the cookie monster, just eating new achievements. Look inside and work out why you think that success is

something that you need to do uh what are you compensating for what are your past traumas what's your inferiority complex and then decide whether or not you want to actually keep trying to be successful because you're not choosing to be successful you're being compelled to be successful it's a compulsion uh and i don't think that that's necessarily what you want to have in life you don't want to be forced to do anything you want to choose to do the things that you want to do

Justin Dunkley, 1848. Been a pleasure to feel as if we are a part of your journey since I found you almost two years ago. Thank you. My question would be, from your perspective, what do you think the future of Britain is for younger generations growing up? And what would you suggest to be, what would be your suggestion? What would your suggestion be to someone who wants to leave for a better life?

Love you, man. You're a true inspiration to so many. And seeing a fellow Brit shine the way in such a fashion makes me driven for more. I cannot read today, apparently. Ah, what do I think the future of Britain is for younger generations growing up? What would be my suggestion for someone who wants to leave for a better life? I mean, if you want to leave, you've got to leave. There is no way to rework that game. Um,

I tried for a very long time to impact British culture. We had a few thousand people that worked for the events company between the ages of 18 and 24, personally coached maybe hundreds of young people. They went on to do amazing things. But unfortunately, as anybody in the UK knows,

trying to find other people that are positive, positive some, have agency, are interested in trying to make change to themselves and to encourage other people to make change as well.

it's a rarity. So first off, realize that if you're able to grow in that country, it's a very impressive, it's like lifting a weight on Jupiter or something, that it is harder than typical to break out from the mold because the tall poppy syndrome, the cutting down and the sort of mockery that everybody encounters, or at least everybody that I know,

is a big weight. It's a drag. So the future for younger generations growing up, I mean, the UK had the second highest number of millionaires leaving in the world in 2024. China was number one with 15,000. The UK was number two with about 10,000. But China's population, it's basically...

I think the UK is 3% of the population of China, and yet it's 66% of the number of millionaires leaving. And China's a literal communist dictatorship. So I would love to see it change. I tried for a decade and a half to have impact on it, but I don't know. I'm yet to be proven otherwise, but hopefully I'm wrong.

Jay LeBron 777 impressive as fuck thank you okay question any dream guests you'd love to have but feel they may slightly be out of reach for now any names you'd be able to drop tons uh Ryan Reynolds would adore to speak to Ryan Reynolds I think he's super cool guy I think it'd be really fun to talk to uh Larry and Sergei from uh Google would be great Zuckerberg Bezos um

Who else is like really, really out of reach? I'd like to have a chat with Beyonce. I think she'd be really interesting to speak to, to work out what it's like to be that famous. Or like a Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber. I mean, Justin Bieber at the moment with all of this P. Diddy stuff. Speak to P. Diddy.

Him and Sam Bankman Freed side by side in a jail cell. We could do a three-way conversation. That'd be interesting. Yeah, I don't know, man. There's so many. It's just an endless list of people. I was trying to get Bernie Sanders on for ages. That was interesting. But yeah, we're coming up to episode 1,000, and I really want to do something phenomenal for that period. Maybe 999, 1,000, and 1,001. Just...

absolutely sort of break open all of the expectations. So I've set an expectation. We'll see. I'm trying to do something cool for that. Matt tell 0999, you mentioned in a prior video that you have tinnitus. Many of us do, and it would be helpful to hear your comments on the subject and how you've dealt with some of the annoyances that it brings. Yeah, I guess this is one of the reasons why I didn't bring up the health stuff before that

so many people deal with challenges that it feels like another necessity for me to sort of make comments and talk about it. And the problem with that is I'm still going through it. I'm still trying to recover. And like, it's slow, really slow and tough. And then trying to talk about your experience of dealing with a thing while you're still going through it. Like, I just don't want to be a Debbie Downer to you guys. I don't like...

feeling like I'm not on top of my game or like I'm, you know, talking about all of this bullshit that I'm dealing with. But on the topic of tinnitus, it sucks. For the people that don't know, it's just like a permanent loud ringing in your ears. It specifically happens when there's lower volume. So the reason that it happens, I went to go and see, of course, I went to go and see an ear specialist. The reason that it happens is your brain, when it can't detect frequencies,

It tries to fill in the gaps, kind of like how the optical blind spot is filled in in post-processing by your brain. This is not too dissimilar, but for hearing, and it just creates this quite loud buzzing noise. And especially at times when you want it to be quiet, like when it's silent on a night and you're trying to go to sleep, it is awful. And it's, for me, brought on by inflammation. It's brought on by my brain not being very happy,

And yeah, anybody that lives with this chronically, which currently I am, but like, you know, for your entire life, not just for nine months. Fuck, like it's so bad. It's so permanent. It's like the hearing equivalent of chronic pain.

It always reminds you that you're there. And the weird feedback loop is the more that you think about it, the louder it gets. And it reacts to cortisol, which means that if you think about it and it gets louder, you get more stressed because you can hear it more, which means cortisol goes up, which means it gets louder. It's vicious. So yeah, I'm sorry that you're dealing with that. And yeah, I've never heard anybody talk about it. I've never heard anyone talk about it. And then this year, I've just been swimming in it and it sucks. So sorry.

Poncho Yohanez. Chris Willex. What's it like being friends with Alex Hormozy? It's pretty cool. It's intermittent. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he's busy and so am I. So it really is like speed messaging memes and stuff to each other and then not speaking to each other for a month and then doing it again. And then sometimes it's more frequent. He's cool. He's a good counterbalance to...

feeling like a bitch and in the right doses for me he is a good influence zander journey what is the true definition of work-life balance for you not the guy to ask bro not this year uh i have been so far on the work end of work-life balance uh much to the anger of the people around me that keep on telling me that i need to sleep or chill out more um the true meaning of it i think is

finding a way to not just live life in service of work, that a lot of the time we do things that are relaxation because we think that it's going to allow us to then go harder when we get back to work. I'm not convinced that putting every single ounce of your identity into a single pursuit, your work, is the best way to live. I think hedging your identity across multiple things. Yeah, you care about your...

company or whatever but also you're a friend and you're a part-time pickleball player and you like crossfit and you're into 80s jazz and you're a father and a husband you know like you're all of these other things as well and i think that like the true definition of work-life balance is having enough life that you don't think about work-life balance um

The ancient Greek word for work was not at leisure. There's a definition, not at leisure. So work was seen as an aberration and leisure was seen as the set point. And it seems now in the modern world that this has been turned upside down and leisure is not at work. Life is not at work. So yeah, work-life balance should be that you have enough life to not have to worry about work-life balance. Anti-break-even. Tell us your simple hack on body language.

I am not convinced I have a hack on body language. I was told by lots of people that watch some of the vlogs that I stand very still and I reflected on that. And I think what's happened is because I spent 10,000 hours in my twenties stood on the front door of a nightclub, I got very used to standing very still with my hands, three positions, okay? Like this in front of me, like that behind me,

like this on my hips or in our hands in pockets, I guess three or four positions. And I can just stand there not moving for hours. I get, I know a trained guard dog or something, but instead I'm looking for people's stamps on their hands or VIP bands or something like that. I have no hack for body language. I, I'm not even sure that it's a thing. Um,

mirroring and holding masculine frame and all of that stuff. I'm sure there's better and worse ways to sit being crunched over. I think if you're sat upright and you're looking around and you're awake, that's usually a good start. RedHH7FD, if you could give one piece of advice to the young version of you, what would you give? It's the same one, the same one all the time, which is fearless. I think a lot of

my life both now and in the past is driven by fear uh worry anxiety vigilance being concerned that things are going to go wrong or that you've done wrong this sense i've had for a long time that someone's mad at me and i don't know why so fearing less i think about that would be

a good place for me to start. And one of the interesting things that you realize with this question, what advice would you give a young person of you, a younger version of you, is that if you ask yourself that question and you get somewhere close to an accurate answer of it, that thing that you wish that you could tell a younger version of you is almost always the single most important thing that you need to tell the current version of you. I'm yet to hear an answer that

where the person has totally sanitized themselves from the issue that that thing would have fixed. So think about what you would tell yourself 10 years ago and then apply it to your life right now. Yeah. CJ Wolf ST1QI. Do you think it's humanly possible for you to get through a podcast without saying downstream?

Well, definitely not now. I don't know whether I've said downstream yet so far, but now you've made me fucking say it. So I can't use this as an example. Do I say it that much? Do I say downstream all the time? I might do. Now I'm worried that I say it fucking every other sentence. I'm going to try at some point soon, CJ, CJ Wolf. But you've thrown me a curveball by making me say it today. So not this time.

Smoking Groove, does any part of you miss the nightlife scene? Do you know what it is? I've been reflecting on it more recently and I do miss like the memories. I miss working with the boys, building something. I miss the interplay of the team of staff that we had, you know, 10 to 20 managers that were very, very, very tight. And then 200 to 300 staff every year.

I loved it. I really did. And in retrospect, it's sort of one of those things where you can only realize how beautiful it was with a bit more perspective. I certainly miss working with my business partner, Darren. I'm just a phenomenal, shrewd, like savage of a business person who...

uh you could drop him you know like one of those uh throw me to the wolves and i'll come back the leader of the pack it's like throw him into any industry and he'll fix so much of the operations so i certainly miss working with him and uh it is fun but i do not miss the late nights and the drunk people and the loud music and uh fair play the club promoters that keep it going into your late 30s i mean i salute you

Jake, are you red-pilled? If not, how many steps removed from red pill are you? I don't know how to answer that question. The red pill fucking hates me. The Manosphere absolutely does not take me as one of their own. I have never identified myself as those things. I seem to sit in this amazing sort of balance where people on the left or people that are sort of more ardently feminist, like fourth wave feminism,

see me as a misogynist and then people on the right or people that are red pilled in the manosphere see me as a cuck. So I'm like, I I'm ideologically spit roasted by either side of this. I don't know. Um, no, I, I don't, I, if red pilled means understand evolutionary psychology and mating dynamics. Yes. Uh, if it means anything else, I don't think so.

Gancor, can I get a VIP for Riverside, mate? People won't get this reference. I wonder how many people in the audience will get this reference. Maybe less than 0.1 of a percent. Riverside was one of the big events that we ran for half a decade. We did maybe...

quarter of a million entries more probably through that venue uh on a saturday and uh i ran the vip along with the rest of the event so um yes you can certainly if it's still open i i will see you there on saturday sagacity sweet science why don't you challenge your guests

I'm trying. I tried with Nate Silver. I tried with Shapiro. I tried really hard with Callie Means. I thought that was me giving it a really, really good crack. I tried with the therapist lady where my mold brain doesn't want to let me remember her fucking, what was she called? Bad therapy, Abigail Schreier.

It's a skill set that I'm building up. I'm working hard at sitting with discomfort. I did one thing that I was pretty proud of on the Will Tennyson episode, which was he was telling this story. He was getting emotional. And you want to step in to stop the thing from happening. You want to fix the other person. And I have a compulsion where I feel like other people's emotional states are my responsibility.

So as a people call that people pleasing or whatever, you could call that just being a good person. I don't know pathology or like charity, but sitting with the discomfort of emotion is something that I'm really learning. I learned it first from the Theo von episode that he did with Sean Strickland, which is just amazing.

sitting with that giving him space and then telling him what i thought which was i was sorry that he'd gone through it that was i thought that was really i was happy that i did that and i was proud of the way it went um when it comes to pushing back against ideas and all the rest of it i do i think i'm trying harder but there is uh always more to be done

Adam, who was your toughest guest and what would you have done differently between Mr. Dawkins? Great interview, by the way. Well, I mean, it feels like you're begging the question a little bit there. Dawkins wasn't an easy one. Firstly, homeboy's 80. Secondly, he's kind of disagreeable in any case. Thirdly, we basically had the same conversation the night before. So thank you for enjoying it. But that was a tough one. Prematurely blowing my load in front of

1,200 Richard Dawkins fans, and then 16 hours later, sitting down to be like, right, I've shown all of my cards. Do I have any more cards? Do you have anything else that I can talk about without going over the old stuff? That was a bit of a battle. Rahul, when's the next episode with Mr. Hormozi coming out? He was just on. He's been on twice this year and was twice last year. So I think he's...

He's benched. He's chilling out for the time being. Some point, probably first half of next year, he'll be back. Peyton Belodue. Did you have a backup plan or was it all or nothing for the podcast? So it happened in stages that when I first started the podcast, I was still running Voodoo, my events company. I was still modeling. Was I DJing? I'd stopped DJing.

But I had a lot of different things going on. I had my properties in the UK and was just learning about me. So I was living perfectly comfortably. But then the move to America, that was all or nothing. And I never really spoke about it at the time how much of a risk it was. I guess I never also thought about it.

all that much that I just knew that I was happier out here. So I wanted to just go and it kind of didn't really care what I was risking, but I'm so risk averse for the people out there that are just terrified of taking risks. Like I'm here with you. Uh, but I reached whatever unbelievably high threshold I needed in order to be able to convince me that I should, uh, actually commit to this decision, uh,

Yeah, if I'd come out here and the podcast had gone wrong, or if it does go wrong still, it's not like I've reached escape velocity with finances or status or business, anything like that. I still need to work every single day in order to keep this thing going. And if it doesn't work, I'm going to have to go back to the UK with my tail between my legs looking like a right knob. So yeah, it was when I pulled the pin...

I exited my last company. I couldn't go back. Couldn't be like, oh, hey, would you mind having me back in the company that I just left? I don't know what I would have done. I don't know what I will do if that happens. So fingers crossed it doesn't.

Check 82. Hey, Chris, I've been watching you since the beginning and I'm so proud of your accomplishments. Thank you. Can you give an update on your experience in therapy? I'm a male therapist in training and I'm a happy, positive figure in the men's space is talking about therapy. It makes my blood boil watching some amazing friends struggle through their life in their 30s and 40s and feeling so low. We have a crisis on our hands. Thank you for promoting mental health on your channel. Keep it real, bro. Thank you. I appreciate that. Um...

So I did therapy twice a week for around about the last year, maybe with travel and stuff about nine months. And I've actually stopped now. I've taken a little break for a while, partly because again, this is how it's like the talking about the health thing fucking just falls out of you. The only way that you can

say it is to be truthful i need more time per week to focus on the stuff that i need to do in order to be able to recover uh which is like ivs uh sauna sessions fucking charcoal like

tablet shower bullshit after you go in the sauna. It's complex. There's a lot of shit that I need to do in order to be able to get my health back. So I had to sacrifice something. Something had to break. And I was taking two hours to get to and from therapy twice a week. So it was four hours a week at the perfect time at the end of one of my days, two of my days. So I stopped. My experience with therapy was I learned more about myself in therapy in the space of

nine months, then in five years of meditation. That's not to say that either are better or worse, but from a self-knowledge, self-understanding standpoint, it is phenomenal. It's like inviting somebody into your house and you've lived in this house your entire life and they start walking around pointing out rooms that you didn't realize were there. Like, what's that door? Where does that door lead to? You go, what?

holy fuck, like I didn't even... And you open it and there's all of this stuff in there. You go, holy shit. And then you realize that the back of the kitchen that you didn't know about leads to this corridor that you've just found out about. And that leads into this and everything starts to connect and make sense. And yeah, it's an iron stake of perspective sort of stabbed through the middle of a lot of your assumptions about yourself. It's very good, but it's rough. It's not easy because you can't hide away from

The things that you use bravado or momentum, self-deception, ignorance, willful ignorance to just cover over. You can't smooth things over in that way. It just, there is really nowhere to hide if you're doing it right. So good, but to be used with caution would be my advice. Benrose2329, what's been your favorite books that you've read this year?

Okay, this is an easy one. Fucking hell. So what have I really enjoyed? Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Berkman. That's his new one that just came out. And I got to read that early. And then he came on the show. And I fucking love that man. He's so great. Meditations for Mortals. Highly recommended. You read it once a day for four weeks. So there's like 28 small chapters. And it's fantastic. So that's one.

um i read seven eves again which is just this outstanding sci-fi book i went through a period where when i was feeling sad on a night time i was comforting myself with chick novels so i read the housemaid uh that's actually pretty good uh uh andrew michael ladies or alex michael ladies book um the silent patient also really great good twist at the end um

started trying to read verity by colleen hoover and it's just loads of sex scenes so i bailed out of that um what else have i read that i've really enjoyed the anxious generation by jonathan height was good um ted mckenna's spiritual enlightenment now uh is just so fantastic every time that i i think about the path that you're on from an enlightenment perspective and spirituality it's a

like the most objective look that I've ever had, the least woo esoteric look at just what enlightenment is from a person who seems pretty fucking enlightened. I've read some other stuff on Night Times as well that I can't remember. I'll come back to you. Niallberry202, who are your favorite bodybuilders past and present? Would love to see some of the 90s, early 2000s legends on the pod. Love your recent vlogs, man. Unbelievable work ethic. Thank you.

Uh, favorite bodybuilders. I mean, Ronnie is an absolute legend. It kind of makes me sad to see him now. You know, it's this guy that used to be just this man mountain behemoth. And now he's got to kind of gently walk himself from bench to leg press. It's, I mean, the guy still just seems so fucking positive, which is amazing. Um, Dorian legend. Uh, he was a little bit before my time. Who else? Like,

It would be interesting to see where some of the old animal athletes are, like Branch Warren. I think he, didn't he fall off a horse and hurt himself? Branch Warren would be awesome to speak to. I know that a bunch of the guys listen to the pod. Ben Pakulski in particular has reached out. It'd be cool to speak to him because he's pivoted. Everyone's gone in different directions, spirituality or business or something else. But yeah, there's some.

Techie8036, "Legend, last time you told me about how you fixed your back problems. This time, please be kind enough to give us the detailed start to finish of how you increased your testosterone."

All right. Yeah. So I talked about this last year. I worked with Maric Health and now working with Function and they are blood testing companies. I think the first thing is that you need to work out what's going on inside of your body. So you need to get your bloods done. You can't fix any of it. People talking about just like randomly increasing their testosterone levels and they have no idea what their testosterone is. So certainly for me,

playing around with like FSH and LSH and what's your sex hormone binding globulin you don't just get to sort of throw a one-size-fits-all hammer at the problem you can do that and it'll probably reliably give you results but there's lighter more precise ways to do it all of that being said I'm not convinced that I'm the best person to talk about increasing testosterone because this year with all of the stuff that I've been going through that has been a big problem so I'm

I think the only reason I've held on to any good condition is because of training a lot consistently. Uh, but one of the problems that comes along with like chronic inflammation and autoimmune, uh, is it's not fantastic for testosterone, cortisol and testosterone are not friends. So, uh, this year has been again, a, uh, a difficult one. I don't mean to be a fucking such a Debbie downer today, but the alternative is that I just don't tell you what's been going on. And, uh,

Yeah, I'm not, I don't want to do that. Geneva Arthur 8747, been listening since early 2020, my number one podcast ever since. Thank you. I'm a 51 year old mum of three and I've learned so much from you and your guests, which has helped me in this phase of my parenting journey with grown kids aged 16 to 23 currently. Your podcast isn't meant to be a parenting podcast, but I'm a better mother due in part to so much of what you've shared. Wow. Thank you.

One question, when will you finally get a golden retriever puppy? I need a dog. I feel like all of my whining and all of my bitching about things are hard and I'm tired and my brain doesn't work would basically be fixed if I had a nice little golden just here. So maybe that's the answer to all of these questions. That being said, I do get to hang around with a

new dog called Monroe. He's beautiful and I get to see him relatively frequently at the house. So I've got a little bit, I'm slowly inching myself toward that, but given that I can't look after myself right now, puppy might be a bit of a big ask, but soon. Radicus Finch, what do you do in those times where even though you know you're doing the work and making the right choices for your future, you have that nagging sense of what if this is it for me and there is no more?

What right do I have to expect anything more for myself? It's hard sometimes not to feel like Will in Fresh Prince asking, what if I never get my life together? Semi-related note, thought on Beartooth's surface, as a positive metal album, it very much feels like if Modern Wisdom was a record. I mean, first off, the Beartooth thing is phenomenal and...

I what's the new song attention my god so good so yes everybody should go and listen to bare tooth the surface especially the track attn on that um what do you do in the times when even though you know you're working hard enough you have this nagging sense of what if this is it for me and there is no more I don't know man I think expanding your time horizon here is pretty important um

It's hard because of the people that you listen to. If you're listening to podcasts like this and reading introspective books and doing journaling and self-work and all the rest of it, your comparison group is so skewed. You are comparing yourself with the smartest, most introspective, most balanced people in the world. And you're watching all of these YouTubes and podcasts and reading these books and trying these practices and comparing

You're comparing yourself to perhaps literally the number one person in whatever this domain is that you're trying to get better in. And you're permanently going to be in their shadow. You have posited an ideal. And by design, you're going to begin comparing yourself to that ideal. Guess what? You're going to fall short. I think if you expand your time horizon and you start to look over months and years rather than days and weeks,

you will begin to see that what feels like no more progress and that this is all that there is for you, that you actually have been making consistent progress throughout that. And the alternative is stopping trying to get better. What I think it is very much is a fear, this fear that this might be it, that things might not get better. But one of the ways that you can guarantee that things will not get better is to stop working at them.

There are very few problems in life that a little bit more attention won't help with. That doesn't mean work harder always. Attention can result in you actually needing to take a little bit of a foot off the gas, but it's paying attention, right? And paying attention also includes expanding your time horizon and realizing, God, look at where I was two years ago and look at where I am now. And you have every right to whine that...

things aren't coming as quickly as you would like and that the required pace of progress that you need in order to stay motivated is not where it's at. So motivation is waning. That's fine. That's okay. But fuck me, you've got here. Like you've done an hour and 20 minutes into listening to me harp on about introspection and lonely chapter and health problems. And you are learning things from people, not me.

other people who are able to change your entire life. And I really, really feel like just being less hard on yourself and not fearing that things aren't going to come your way. I'm pretty much adamant that the outcomes that you are supposed to get in life are the ones that you're going to get. And over a long enough time horizon, people usually end up getting what they deserve. And that for somebody that asks these kinds of questions, I think will be exactly what you want.

Joe Sheard, do any episodes stand out as ones that underachieved in viewership compared to the value it provided? Conversely, did any do really well that you didn't think was your best work? That's interesting. It's hard with the best work thing because I can be surprised by the performance. It's like underachieved in viewership. Uh,

do really well that wasn't your best work. What creates viewership and best work is not the same thing. So really, really great episodes often don't do lots of plays, but that's not what drives the viewership in any case. So for instance, Tulsi Gabbard came on earlier this year and destroyed the internet, 6 million, 7 million plays. Was pretty surprised by that. In

Great episode. Interesting. I thought that she was an engaging speaker. But Oliver Berkman, which is one of my top 10 episodes this year, awesome. So cool. Exactly why I started this show, this sort of precise, self-deprecating view of the human condition and productivity and life and what it's all about.

I knew that that was never going to do huge plays, but that did really well. Like it didn't underachieve in viewership, but as far as I'm concerned, it provided all of the value that I wanted to. So yeah, the Oliver Berkman one, I wish I could gift that to everybody that listens. It's so fantastic. And Tulsi would be two where I'm like, wow, that came out of nowhere. And then the Eric one, Eric's popular, but fuck me, that last episode just went to the moon.

Cold Tome 5. Sort the new merch design. Any updates? I really probably should just get my act together and get this sorted, but I've said, I mean, people have been asking for this for like two and a half million subs. So I probably just should stop staving things off and actually get around to it. LaloBarber83. Have you ever considered updating a list of 100 books you must read? Yeah, I should do that too. That's a little bit,

old now that being said there's i believe in those books and i believed in those books when i wrote that list and even if i was to update it i'm not it's not like i would swap out all 100 because there are 100 books that you should read before you die maybe 30 would change or 50 would change perhaps but there's some like the almanac of naval ravikant's not going anywhere essentialism by greg mccune's not going anywhere red rising's not going anywhere um i know that's not a bad shout uh

I'll consider it. And if I can make it better, and if I disagree with more than 30% of it, I'll consider doing it. Carpe Diem GG1HG. What would you say to a young man who is very lonely that looks up to you as an idol? I'm sorry that you're very lonely, and I know how it feels. And I hope that this show provides some solace, like a little, I don't know, oasis of...

comfort, and some compatriots, even if they're virtual and on the other side of the internet, and a community of people who actually are into this stuff as well. It does feel, I remember from listening to Peterson in 2016 or Sam Harris or whatever it is, if you're living in buttfuck nowhere, nobody around you that seems to be interested in the stuff that you're interested in can be a very isolating experience.

experience. And it can kind of actually be even more isolating because you know that somewhere out there, there's people that are interested in the things that you're interested in, but they're not here. And the fact that you know that they're there almost makes it feel like more your fault, more real or something. But I'm sorry, man. I hope that I get to see you at one of the live shows or that you find your tribe. I

Promise that there are people out there that are interested in the stuff that you're interested in and you're worthy of finding them.

Ethan0056. Hey Chris, congrats. Love the show. How to deal with the lonely chapter and loneliness while pursuing your goals. I've been working toward my goals for the past few years, but I lost all my friends this year. I'm quite young and struggle to find meaningful friendships and relationships. How to find meaningful friendships and relationships while pursuing your goals and coming up. Really appreciate you. Again, congrats. I'm definitely seeing a...

trend here, this sort of lonely chapter, loneliness. I'm growing, my friends are falling behind and not coming with me. And I have to make this odd trade between wanting to change myself and wanting to be accepted. And there's this tension. And then I feel this guilt about leaving them behind. I'm young and struggle to find meaningful relationships and friendships. Being honest, dude, when you're young, meaningful friendships and relationships are

are hard to find. So don't see that as a personal curse that is endemic. It is built into the age that you are at, which is one that's young. It takes most people a long time to actually start to really care about the meaning that they put into their friendships. And I didn't really think about that until I was 27, 28. So much of it, especially with my industry, was transactional, it was transient, it was...

friendships of fortune and convenience. So half take it as a compliment for the fact that you're young but have progressed quickly. Half take it as not a personal curse, but an accepted problem that any mindful, introspective, thoughtful person has to deal with. And then

Take solace in the fact that there's so many other people. So I keep itching this fucking mustache, which needs to go. It needs to come off. Um, take solace in the fact that you're not the only person that's asked this question. How many other people, three other people, five of the people from, I know there's like 2000 questions every time that we do this and then they get, they get stripped down. Uh,

so many other people are dealing with this as well so it's not just you and the challenge that you're facing is not one that only you have to go through and everybody that wants to get to the other side of it and is where you are has to go through this you have to go through it so go through it dylan birch congrats bro i've listened to hundreds of hours of your podcast thank you what's one

What's one, the number one productivity tip you can think of, and if possible, the scientific backing slash reasoning for it. Thanks so much. Keep it up. Scientific productivity tip is a little bit difficult. Certainly from a learning perspective, memory is repeated recall, not repeated exposure is the best tagline. You're going to have to recall that a number of times if you want to be able to learn it. But

The way that the memory system works is not by seeing a thing a lot of times. So if you were to read a page once and then try and recall what was on the page, you will remember way more than if you read that page 10 times. It is all about repeated recall, not repeated exposure. Secondly, I guess...

There's a nice breakdown of procrastination. You can sort of break it out into a series of steps. Like, do I know what I need to do next? Do I know how I need to do that thing? It kind of helps you to overcome a lot of the time. At least for me, the science of procrastination seems to suggest that most of the time when you're not doing a thing, you don't know what you're supposed to do. So it's an ill-defined next step. And if you do know what to do, you don't know how to do it. So if you get over those two things, typically procrastination

procrastination tends to fall away, at least for me when I'm being my gold standard self. John Omler.

I'm really curious about when and how you got into metalcore. Not to judge your book by its cover, but I wouldn't expect someone with your background in the nightclub scene to enjoy that particular genre. Also, thanks for turning me on to Sleep Token. I can't get enough of Take Me Back to Eden. Fuck yeah. That's what I'm here for. This entire podcast is me just trying to slowly get people to listen to Sleep Token. Yeah, I guess I've been wearing metal shirts on the show more because...

I can finally dress myself and decided that I was going to dress like 14-year-old me dreamed he could have dressed, which is to have a ton of different metal band t-shirts. I've got in... I was listening to this music when I was 13, 14, 14-ish. 14, 15 was when I first started getting into it. And then especially throughout college and all throughout uni. I mean, I went through the full gamut from job for a cowboy to...

Avenged Sevenfold to Every Time I Die to Bullet for My Valentine to Atreyu and then Bring Me and you know and then sort of phased up into now what this slightly more melodic slightly more mature sound is the Polaris's of the world the Sleep Tokens Bill Murray um that

I know it's, it's, I love it. I love it. I'm never going to stop listening to it. So I'm, I'm glad. And Polaris's album from last year, highly, highly, highly recommended. Get it on. Zion S45. What were you like as a teenager? Uh, pretty uncool. I think, um, pretty, uh, socially inept, not exactly a charmer. Um,

and like not worldly, it was very unworldly. Didn't really understand how the world worked at all. I really wish, I don't know, there's no, I think there's zero video of me from when I was a kid. I have no idea where that would have even come from.

I really wish that I could show the difference between then and now. You know, like people bring up videos of Sneaker or whatever, and he's 13, and they compare it with his red pill arc and his fucking Islam arc. Unfortunately, because I was 13, like 20 years ago, that wasn't around. Pretty uncool, and spending a lot of time on my own.

Harlan Sanchez. I read the Red Rising trilogy and the Kingfiller Chronicle books because you recommended them along with Tim Ferriss, I think. They were great recommendations. Fuck yeah. Got any more? Seven Eves. Dude, love Seven Eves. Read it at least three times now. I think that's fantastic. The Forgotten Highlander by Alistair Urquhart. Also great. That's real life nonfiction. What am I reading at the moment? Lexicon I've got.

I went through my chick novel phase earlier this year when I was feeling sad about myself. I can't remember the rest of this. I don't think I've done a massive amount of reading from that side. I read Tax-topia, which was pretty cool. But Red Rising and Kingfella Chronicles are just outstanding. I read The Narrow Road Between Desires, which is...

the new novella that Patrick Rothfuss wrote. I tried to get into a bunch of other stuff, but I've swung and missed a few times this year with nonfiction. Josh Taft, YouTube, do you ever worry about talking about things you are not well versed in? And how do you overcome that fear of saying something wrong? Well, as the first question for today highlighted, I

do sometimes say things wrong, especially if my brain isn't working correctly. Do I worry about talking things I'm not well-versed in? I think you can usually get away with that if you identify that you're not an expert. The internet doesn't have a particularly good forgiveness mechanism for people playing with ideas. And this is Eric Weinstein's idea of an accuracy budget that...

If you restrict only experts to speak on the things that they are experts in, nobody else is allowed to talk about or play around with ideas outside of their tight domain of competence or whatever. What you end up with is a situation where no one can ever play with ideas in the way that precisely sort of cross-domain learning is supposed to work. So I don't know, I'm trying to

I'm purposefully trying to get out over my skis and come up with new ideas. I came up with this thing to do with Ozempic a little while ago, and I really enjoyed this evolutionary psychology perspective on why thin people seem to be very critical of widespread Ozempic use. And my theory was that...

people who were able to easily get thin reduced down the status associated with being thin previously it was something that was difficult to achieve and required willpower now it just requires a an injection once a week oversimplification obviously uh see now i'm having a caveat everything in case i've fucking put my foot in there again um

That I thought was an interesting take. Is it right? Probably not, but I like playing with it. And I tried to caveat within that post, which was I actually used the word bro-signed theory. So...

Talking about stuff that you're not well versed in, just state up top, look, I've got no idea what I'm talking about, but here's a notion that you should consider. I think you can usually get away with that. How do I overcome the fear of saying something wrong? Be around people who are forgiving of your ideas. Like you want to be around people who are like, yeah, that's interesting. I think it's total bullshit. That's not a bad take. That's the perfect environment to be in. Quote Brainiac2593.

How to deal with the guilt of ghosting all your friends and acquaintances. I'm an introvert, but for the last 10 years, tried to be more extroverted, accepting invitations to gatherings and giving much of my time and energy to help friends. Since the last six months, been extremely recluse from everyone as I recover from burnout and work on my business, feel like a fake who manipulated them through a performance of kindness, not through, though not malice. Yeah, that's a difficult one. Anything you necessarily need to ghost them? My advice here would be to just say, hey,

I'm really working hard on my business. I'm fucking dealing with burnout. I'd love to catch up at some point in future. The fact that you're an introvert who for a full decade managed to be more extroverted and overcome it suggests to me that you have a lot of capacity and at the moment, maybe you just need a bit of time to recover. So

I would just tell them, like, be truthful. Hey, I'm working on some stuff on my own. Would love to catch up, but I just need a little bit of space. I've had to do that this year. Like, it's been really bad. I'm an hour and a half deep into this. I can talk as much as I want. I've had to do something not too dissimilar this year, although it wasn't because I made myself more extroverted. One of the...

really sort of unenjoyable challenges of some of the health stuff I've gone through is it impacts your mood and your extroversion and your bravery as well, sort of your courage to go out and do things and your desire to be around people. So I've ignored texts or not replied to text for ages because I was embarrassed to say that I don't want to come out or can't come out or

I didn't just feel too rough or, or I dunno, just, I didn't wanna see people. I didn't wanna hang about and I, I wanted still keep the show going and I wanna, you know, keep this momentum and keep learning and, and doing all the rest of this stuff and something had to give. And a lot, to be honest, this year, a lot of that was social engagements and, and spending time with friends. So a lot of friendships have had to drop. Um, and a lot of the time with that, I just had to say, Hey man, like I'd love to hang, but I'm just, I'm sort of going through it at the moment. So,

Like I'll loop back to you when things are better. And most people, well, everybody actually was like, fuck dude, like, I'm so sorry to hear that. If there's anything I can do to help, let me know. So for the friends that I didn't get around to replying to, I'm sorry. And for the friends that,

I hope that everything gets better. I appreciate you. And I think that your friends would say something not too dissimilar as well. Nobody wants to force their friend out who's got fucking burnout and is recovering from it and is building a business. Like what to entertain them, like to roll you out like some dancing monkey. Those aren't friends. Puan Kiswan. How did you deal with loneliness in school? Yeah, really...

digging into my fucking past traumas here, aren't we? Um, how did I deal with loneliness in school? To be honest, I just don't think I knew that I was lonely. I mean, I was, I was alone all the time. All I did was be alone. I was alone in my room playing. I was alone in the schoolyard. I was alone in lessons. I was alone walking home. Uh, so I

I played sports, which was good because sports force you onto a team. And I was good at sports, which was also great because people kind of want you around, even if you're socially kind of useless. If you're useful in a sporting environment, you're functional, people keep you around. So that was good. I guess I made myself useful. And I wonder whether that's a lesson that kind of followed me a little bit into...

adulthood which is in order for the world to love you you need to be useful or competent or impressive or whatever and that goes back to one of the questions from before which is how many people striving in success is very tied to this need for validation uh this sort of compensatory mechanism i dealt with it by not knowing that it was a problem and uh

Yeah, I think in many ways it makes you very robust as an adult because you're so used to being on your own. You don't, oh, moving to a new country and not knowing a single person, fine. I'm gonna know more people more quickly than I did for the half decade that I was in school. Yeah, it's weird. Kids are resilient, man. It seems like the more that I learn about parenting styles and stuff, unless you do something really, really atrocious to your kid,

For the most part, they end up coming out pretty fine, or at least I did after a lot of work. That's not to say... See, now I'm caveating again in case I fucking get in trouble from the internet and it gets clipped. Not saying...

that you can neglect your child and that's an optimal way to raise them. What I am saying is that parents who are concerned about not being perfect or about their children going through difficult things, I think that they are more resilient than we all give them credit for. And if we look back at our own childhoods, what we realize is that we dealt with stuff that we were very, very... We wouldn't want our kids to go through, and yet we came out not totally shattered into pieces, maybe just a little bit fractured.

Realistic management. How do you stay grounded with all the demands of your newfound success? The grounded thing, to be honest, is pretty easy. I'm not around many people. I don't have a particularly big ego, much to the perhaps surprise of people that don't know me well. But no, I've never struggled with ego. I think being so self-critical, it's weird.

low self-esteem or low confidence is a good proxy for humbleness. Like it does keep you humble. How can you ever get too big for your boots when you don't ever believe that you're worthy of the things that you've done? So it's like, it's certainly not optimal, but functionally it ends up doing not too different of a service. One of the more difficult things has been working out whether people want to be sort of in your life or around you

because they like you as a person or because they think i know that there's some status to be associated with hanging around with you which even that like what am i a fucking rapper with like some month like montage what's it called entourage of people see mold brain uh this entourage of people around me um i don't think that i have this i don't know

orbiters, blast radius paradise thing that would inflate my ego to that point. And also, I still work with most of the people that I did. Each new member of staff, I don't think anybody's joined and left. Mormon Ben assistant who joined four years ago is still with us. Dean that was with me six and a half years ago is still with me. And each different person that comes along that I hang around with, they keep my feet on the ground. They definitely don't sort of believe any fucking hype.

Only the paranoid survive 4-4-4. Congrats, Chris. Any new dating advice? Have you been having any luck finding a woman with similar interests and depths to their consciousness? Maybe I'm simply looking in all the wrong places. Have you been having any luck finding a woman with similar interests or depths to their consciousness? This is going to be a fucking hard question for me to answer, isn't it? Personally, not.

been a massive priority. Uh, just trying to hold my life together this year has been a full-time job. So any new dating advice, finding a woman with similar interests and depths to their consciousness. If you are the sort of person that cares about the way that somebody else thinks, I think allowing, allowing yourself to not, at least as a guy,

allowing yourself to not be distracted by pretty girls is a really, really good idea because there are so many times where there will be a hot, pretty girl that you think, wow, like, you know, maybe this is exactly perfect. And then you realize that you don't have anything in common. I'm sure that it has to be the same for girls as well. Some bloke that they go on a date with, they're like, you're really handsome and we have nothing in common.

And I am kind of losing brain cells by talking to you. You just need to cut and run from those. I think I know that it's seductive and I know that they look pretty and I know they smell nice and I know that they like flick their hair in a cute way or whatever, but they're not for you. They're for someone, but it's not for you. So, um, like,

have the courage of your standards in that area. Now, if you start to get yourself into the realm of, well, they need to be...

PhD level or above and they need to be this BMI and they need to have this boob size and they need to be this age and all the rest of it. You're starting to set very high bars but what it sounds like is that you're struggling to find similar interests, steps to consciousness. Okay, optimize for that. Don't optimize for the other stuff. If you start optimizing for the other stuff you will sacrifice these and maybe you'll come across a unicorn and they've got absolutely everything but

Don't get distracted by pretty girls and pretty guys when you're looking for people with similar interests and deep consciousnesses. That's my advice. Eduardo Munoz Oficial. What is the best way to manage the painful cost of being exceptional? I mean, how can you follow through with your purpose and goals, taking the necessary actions to achieve them and not doing what everyone else does when the only proof you have that you're doing the right thing is entrepreneurship and self-improvement content on YouTube?

This is the other side of the lonely chapter. So part of it is the social side. And the other part of it is the uncertainty that the actions you are taking are going to lead to positive outcomes at the end of your life. I mean, I don't have a title for my book. And the amount of people that bring up this lonely chapter thing is wild. The lonely chapter for a book is

kind of sounds a bit miserable, but it's definitely resonating with people. So I don't know, maybe I should do a more deep dive on it. But yes, you're doing all of this stuff. You're learning all of these fucking productivity techniques and you're watching these YouTube videos and you're listening to these podcasts and you're taking these online courses and you've got Skillshare and you've got Readwise and you're doing spaced repetition and morning routine and you have no idea if it's going to work. But the thing is, no one has any idea if it's going to work.

That is a painful cost of trying to do things with no promise that they're going to succeed. If you knew that it was going to work, there would be no risk in doing it because it would be certain. So everybody has to deal with this. This is the thing. This is why I use this term personal curse. It was what I wrote for myself. You're not...

You haven't been given this bespoke, idiosyncratic challenge that only you have to face. This is what every person who gets from a place that they are to a place that they want to be has to go through because you need to try things with no promise that they are going to work.

There's no confirmation of glory or success or accolade or prestige or anything on the other side. None of it at all. You're just... And it's not even like you're David Goggins with broken legs running a fucking Navy SEAL hell week. It's mundane, daily, just uncertainty and ambient malaise as you're reading another book on meditation and you're sitting down with your eyes closed listening to Sam Harris tell you to fucking listen to your breath.

You don't know that it's going to work, but that is the challenge. The challenge is no certainty. That's the way it is. And the painful cost of being exceptional is getting through that uncertainty. Mungkai941, how scared should I be of mold? Ah, yeah. Okay. So this was, I guess, another element of the litany of health problems I've had this year. Much of it

at least in part, was brought on by the past house that I was in, the previous studio, which is why we're in a new studio, which isn't killing me, hooray. I don't want to put the shits up everybody because so many houses, especially what's called subtropical temperatures, will have mold. For loads of people, it's not a problem. So how scared should you be of mold?

For loads of people, not at all. But for some people, for people who have a disposition for autoimmune problems or for other people who work themselves quite hard and are maybe running their immune system a little bit ragged, I'd get your house tested. And if you are tired no matter how long you sleep and if you are dealing with brain fog and if you feel like your mood is never up,

no matter what you do, that happiness is something that is a heavy lift naturally when it shouldn't be and it wasn't previously, I would get your house tested for mold and I would get an immune marker test done. There's a number that you can get done quite easily and I would check what's going on in your blood. So...

For many people, it's totally not an issue if you've got mold in your house. But for some people, it's just get out. Don't try and remediate it. Just leave your house. Kwin9292, when you have an academic like Eric Weinstein on the pod and he's branching out in all different directions, hitting topics and concepts you might not understand or heard of, do you then go back over the interview and take a deeper dive into these things to educate yourself further? If so, how do you do it? Do you make a note and then

Take a deeper dive into reading and watching the docs. Love the show. Let's go 3 million. Thank you. I have done some of that, especially on the episodes that I really want to go back over. I usually... Eric's a good example because I have no fucking idea where he's going to go. So I can't really sort of detect it. Oliver Berkman, for instance, I'll go back and listen to that. But I've done so much prep and I understand his work so well, I think, that...

I know where it's going to go. I don't really need to remind myself after. I can just sort of luxuriate as it goes along. Weinstein is much more like riding a very unsafe rollercoaster car and holding on for dear life and hoping that you don't get thrown out. So I don't take a ton of notes after Weinstein.

The episode, remembering that doing three a week means I already need to be thinking about the next one. But I do revisit them and I do enjoy listening to guests on the show because I made the show for me. Like they're all people I want to speak to by design. So yeah.

Ryan's Spalding. What's the underlying theme behind every interview you've done? Like, does it seem like there's a particular mindset or advice that's common in most, if not all of the interviews you've done? So there's two questions, I guess. The underlying theme is just how to understand yourself. That's the thing I wanted to learn when I first started the show.

I didn't understand myself. I didn't understand how the world worked. And I hoped that if I spoke to enough people who did, that maybe it would help. And I think it has. The particular mindset or advice that's common in most, if not all of the interviews that I've done, it does vary, but there is this sort of sense of letting go, of sort of relinquishing of control, a reduction of fear. That I think is...

is very common across a lot of the episodes. People learning to not fear so much about the outcomes that they're going to get in their lives, but working harder. So it's this odd blend, right, between the two. It's this beautiful, you can do it, you can work harder. And also the outcomes that you're going to get are going to come along no matter what.

how much you fear or vacillate about them. So even in that, there is a paradox, which I think is why continuing to go over the same kinds of topics is interesting because each time it gives you a new perspective and gives you a way to manage the distinction and the tension between these two things. SnowbearU2i, will we ever see a Modern Wisdom Cinema production episode? Bernie Sanders, his episode on Joe Rogan is still one of the best JRE episodes to date.

I love Bernie on Rogan. I thought that episode was fantastic. Like I said, we've tried to bring him on. I would love to speak to him. I think he's super interesting. I mean, think about all of the different things that that guy's seen. He has been like competitor, outcast, independent threat, then like back in the tent and

But I would really love to know, I don't know how much you can talk about this, think about the social politics internally inside of the Democratic Party. If you're a guy who basically tried to, he was the Trump of the left, right? He tried to sort of flip the, I'm aware, not specifically, but like, look, caveating, don't get me in trouble, I promise. Yeah.

He tried to sort of flip the table over. He was as close to that, I think, as you're going to get on the left of a disruptor in many ways.

I would love to find out, does he think that he was sabotaged? It seemed like he had all of this momentum going in and then it doesn't happen. And God, I mean, yeah, he's great. I think he's like a fascinating individual. I would love to, I'm really trying to educate myself about the best meaning parts of the left. I think the ways that the left gets it wrong are so memed, especially on my side of the internet, that it's very,

obvious and it can sort of cause me certainly to be like hypersensitive to them. I'm like, oh, there's that thing again. I'm like, right, okay, what is the left in its absolute best light? Not from libs of TikTok, not a takedown from the Daily Wire. What is the absolute sort of best foot that they can put forward? And given that people are struggling with cost of living, what does Bernie Sanders think about immigration?

I have no idea. I have no idea what he thinks about immigration. It's the biggest talking point for the right. I'd love to know. So Bernie, if you're listening two hours deep into a 2.75 million Q&A episode, call me. R Jones ES7UR. Is sobriety still easy for you or is it a daily slash regular challenge and have temptations? As a fellow Brit, it's the hardest thing to kick because it's pretty much in our blood as much as betting shops. Harder than SIGs, I reckon.

Yeah, dude, I wish that I could sympathize with you, but honestly, I don't ever think about it. Don't ever think about it. I did, like I say, that six months, three times, and then a thousand days once, and it just broke. Two six-month periods broke it, and then the thousand days just annihilated it. There's no part of me that ever...

feels the compulsion to have a beer. But I remember what it was like. I remember what it was like as a British young dude, 22 or 21. I was working at the AA doing outbound telesales. Was that 20? I think it was 20 or 21. Outbound telesales. And there was a summer where I would get this Friday afternoon itch. It would be 1 p.m., 2 p.m. And there would just be this desire to have a Corona and then to go and get on it with the boys.

And that's how it felt. It was like an itch, a gravitational pull toward a beer. And it's nothing like a dependency because I was only doing it every other week or something. I just really wanted, there was some times where it really called to me. So I promise you, if you work at it, you may need to change your friend group. You may need to go monk mode for a little while. I promise if you stick at it, you'll just, something snaps.

inside of that link that you have between having a beer and having fun. And sometimes having a beer can be fun, but the only way to have fun is to have a beer that gets severed. So yeah, I hope that that helps. Wow. That was a two hours. Look, I, um, I appreciate you guys listening, uh, to me start to open up about this stuff. Um, and I really think, um,

that I'll have the opportunity to hopefully teach people who are dealing with some of the health problems that I've gone through or are worried about or need to learn about them. I really hope that that's something that I'm going to be able to do more of on the show. Appreciate you being patient because it is like I'm learning out loud in real time here, trying to get things right, going to make errors, going to...

not be as transparent as I would like to be and then have to fucking retcon and say, hey, I've been ill for however long or whatever I've been dealing with. So thank you for your patience. Thank you for your support. It's 3 million next. My lord. All right, I've waffled enough. Appreciate you. Bye.