600k Q&A - Masculinity Crisis, Woke Pushback & Lex Fridman

I hit 600k Subscribers on YouTube!! To celebrate, I asked for questions from YouTube, Twitter, Locals and Instagram, so here's another 90 minutes of me trying to answer as many as possible. As always there's some great questions in here about whether Lex Fridman is coming on the podcast, who the most overrated thinker is and my plans for 2023. Expect to learn what my thoughts are on masculinity being in a crisis, my best advice for men in their 20's, whether it's possible to have a well meaning conversation about the Left without calling everyone woke, where I buy my t-shirts from, who I want to bring on the show in 2023, my biggest tips for starting a YouTube channel, why it's a good thing that Newton didn't have Twitter and much more... Sponsors: Get 10% discount on all Gymshark’s products at https://bit.ly/sharkwisdom (use code: MW10) Get 15% discount on Craftd London’s jewellery at https://bit.ly/cdwisdom (use code MW15) Get the Whoop 4.0 for free and get your first month for free at http://join.whoop.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Extra Stuff: Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom #masculinity #woke #lexfridman - 00:00 Intro 01:02 Chris’s Spotify Listenership 02:03 Returning to College Later in Life 03:05 Changing Opinion on Birth Control 04:56 Recommended Books 05:20 Micro-dosing Mushrooms in Vegas 06:12 ‘Does Bruno Mars Is Gay?’ 06:24 Writing a Book 08:26 Hitting 600K Subs 09:41 Back Troubles 10:47 January Special Guest 12:24 Chris’s Uni Accommodation 13:02 Foregoing Relationships for Self-Improvement 15:00 Who in Self-Help is Overrated? 15:58 2 Million Subscribers? 16:29 Chris’s Relationship with Alcohol 18:03 Are We in a Masculinity Crisis? 22:00 Why Chris Cut His Afro 22:59 Obsession with Evolutionary Psychology 25:11 Advice for a Party-Hard Guy 27:58 Spaghetti Fingers or Lasagne Feet? 28:59 Sam Harris 29:57 Stupid Guests 31:00 Would Chris Be Successful if He Was Ugly? 33:55 A Dream Guest for 2023 35:56 F***, Marry, Kill: Rogan, Schulz, Peterson 37:00 Justin Timberlake Hair 37:15 Influence of Andrew Huberman 38:36 Abstaining from Alcohol 38:52 Is Athletic Greens Worth the Hype? 39:25 How Careful is Chris About Guest Selection? 41:54 Most Under-appreciated Modern Thinker 42:53 How to Find Good Friends 45:29 Chris’s Involvement in the Nightclub Business 46:36 Will Chris Host Rogan? 47:00 Greatest Achievement 48:14 Tips for Starting a Channel 50:47 Difference Between the Radical & Sensible Left 53:57 Origin of Bro Science 55:15 Being Surrounded by Negative People 56:20 Do You Need a Platform to Start a Podcast? 58:25 Is Chris Still Hungry? 1:00:41 Marriage & Children 1:01:30 Continuing to Find New Content 1:03:08 Popularity of Dating Shows 1:05:11 Matthew Walker 1:06:11 Was Jocko Difficult to Deal With? 1:07:33 Favourite Evolutionary Psychology Books 1:08:15 Is it Safe to Workout Commando? 1:08:24 Avoiding YouTube Censorship 1:09:12 Chris’s Background Lights 1:09:39 Number 1 Life Hack 1:09:53 Best Advice for Guys in Their 20’s 1:10:22 Adapting YouTube Styles for 2023 1:11:43 Having Direct Conversations in the Manosphere 1:13:09 Avoiding Controversy 1:14:14 Collaborating with Lex Fridman 1:14:48 Does Chris Meditate? 1:15:34 Where Does Chris Buy His T-Shirts? 1:16:08 Becoming a Better Mother 1:16:33 How to Settle Down Young 1:17:35 Favourite UK City 1:17:40 Is Chris on TRT? 1:17:49 Opinion on Andrew Tate 1:18:02 Trimming Pubes 1:18:18 What Chris Thinks of WEF & Jews 1:18:47 Did Historical Figures Benefit from Not Having the Internet? 1:19:41 Seeking Progression 1:20:50 What Trait Should Bring a Higher Status? 1:21:56 End of Year Review 1:22:36 Michael Malice - Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn or Apple Podcasts - https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, monk mode's great unless you don't fill the space with something productive, because something will fill the space and this vacuum just sucks in the lowest common denominator or the path of least resistance, which is usually bold. Change your friends, stop drinking, create some goals. What would have had to have happened in six months' time for you to look back on those six months and consider them a success? Ask yourself that question. That's where you need to start.

• 0:23Chris Williamson?

  Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. It is a 600,000 subscriber Q and A episode. As usual, I've asked for questions from YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and locals, and I'm going to try and get through as many as I can. I have condensed a bunch down, a lot to do with 2023 and goals and podcasting and whatnot. So I tried to condense them together as much as I can. As always, thank you so much for all of the support. It really does mean the world to me. Every time that you share an episode or comment with something reasonable and insightful and useful, it really does help. So thank you to everyone out there. Let's get into it. Chris Le Pauvden, you said recently that your Spotify shows that 96% of your audience has joined you this year, 2022.

• 1:09Chris Williamson?

  Do you know how many of those 96% are new listeners and how many are migrating from other platforms? So no, I don't, but that stat did surprise me that this is just about to be year six of the show. So it'll be almost five years that we've done the show and 96% of listeners found me during 2022, which blew my mind. I'm not sure. I think that Spotify is starting to capture more of the audience from other podcasting platforms and also from YouTube. I certainly use Spotify for most of my podcasts now. There's some that I still use on Apple Podcasts, but most of my listening happens on Spotify. I think the search function is great. I think that the different variants of speed that you've got in terms of your listening, your playback speed is really great.

• 1:53Chris Williamson?

  So yeah, I can see Spotify continuing to accumulate more and more listeners, but I would imagine a lot of it is just new people that didn't listen to the show before that now are. Main Man Mick, after listening to your podcast, I've given up alcohol and gone back to college at 27. Got any tips? First off, congratulations. That's amazing. Giving up alcohol will give you the biggest competitive advantage over pretty much everybody else that you can think of. And going back to college at 27 involves swallowing a lot of pride. Whatever life path you'd gone down before has now been completely closed and you're going to be probably one of the older people in the lectures that you attend. So props for that. That's very, very admirable. In terms of tips, just knuckle down. You know, the bottom line is that your timeline

• 2:36Chris Williamson?

  is a little bit more condensed because of whatever you've spent the last sort of eight or nine years doing. And that means that you need to knuckle down. So focus, spend some time working hard, use your maturity to your advantage because you're going to be more conscientious, you're going to understand the world better, you're going to have better self-control and discipline. So use that, use that and continue to try and push. But I mean, making that call, I think it's safe to assume that you've got pretty good things ahead of you if you're prepared to do that at 27. Jace66, what's the last strong opinion you had changed your mind on? Birth control, hormonal birth control. So Dr. Sarah Hill, the episode that I did with

• 3:15Chris Williamson?

  her, just took my head off. I couldn't believe how wild, unsophisticated, scary the changes are to everything about a woman, her entire psychological profile, her mate preferences are more feminine. You can lock in a type of protein folding in the brain, which gives you a predisposition to be more anxious or depressed throughout life if you take them during your formative years, which is when most girls will start taking birth control during puberty or whatever. So the Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff thing about the coddling of the American mind and there's

• 3:55Chris Williamson?

  this onset of increases in anxiety amongst girls around about the time that social media was introduced. But has anybody accounted for the base rate of the introduction of hormonal birth control or the increased prevalence of use of hormonal birth control around that time? I don't think that they have. It changes. Girls that are on hormonal birth control show an increased preference for bisexuality. It's crazy. So I previously was super, everybody should take it. We don't want unwanted pregnancies. Teen pregnancy is both bad for the child and bad for the mother. And now I don't know what the solution is. I don't think that there is a particularly good solution. I think that expecting teenage girls to understand like safety of ovulatory

• 4:39Chris Williamson?

  cycles and using one of those under the tongue natural cycle test things to track on an app. I think that's pretty unrealistic. So it's that. And it's pretty scary. And I don't think that there is an easy answer to it yet. Mark Cousin, recommended books. I have a list of 100 that you should go and read, and it is at chriswillx.com/books. It's 100 of my favorite, most interesting and impactful books that I've ever read, and the summaries about why I like them, and links to go and buy them. And they're all categorized, and you should go and read it right now. If you need books, this is the place to go. chriswillx.com/books. It's completely free.

• 5:20Chris Williamson?

  Tuono Carter, are you going to microdose on mushrooms with Michaela P. at your New Year's Bash? She will be in Miami. I'm currently in the UK. However, I took a pretty moderate dose of mushrooms when I was with Michaela in Vegas about three weeks ago, and watched Cirque du Soleil live, which was inexperienced whilst I was coming up on mushrooms. And then ended up in Omnia nightclub, and Zach bought Andrew Tate's Hustlers University in the middle of the club because he lost nods on. And then we went cold plunging at 5:00

• 6:01Chris Williamson?

  in the morning and played ping pong for money. So I think I've done my partying in mushrooms for at least the next couple of months. That was a, that was a heavy night. Cloud Bloom, does Bruno Mars is gay?

• 6:19Chris Williamson?

  Sure.

• 6:21Chris Williamson?

  Sure. Lee Ham. Chris, if you could write a book, what would you write a book about? Okay, so it looks like 2023, I may start writing something. There's two broad directions that I would go down. One would be about the current state of the mating market and the challenges that it's facing. I think that there needs to be a full length treatment on that, which is not manosphere, all women are bitches and not

• 6:49Chris Williamson?

  sort of soft and cuddly chicken soup for the soul. It needs to blend the insights from evolutionary psychology with what's going on in terms of the data for the modern world, with an insight around culture and what is happening with sex and relationships and intimacy from a cultural standpoint, and then it needs to try and be applied. The problem that I have and the scary thing about it is it's a really massive undertaking, like that's a huge book. If I got that book right, it could be a really important, very well selling cultural moment. But getting it right is such a huge task that it's kind of intimidating, frankly. And I keep having conversations with my book agent about

• 7:31Chris Williamson?

  why it's scary to me and why I don't feel like I'm qualified to write it. And then he keeps on telling me, shut up, like just try writing it and see what happens. So that is one. And the other one would be a collection of the lessons that I have learned from the podcast. So trying to really synthesize like the 16 lessons from 2022, but stretched out many more lessons, longer, more examples, more narrative, more stories and try and stretch that out into a book format. So I mean, if you want to tell me which book you prefer, that would be great. Maybe comment below with whether you would want the one about mating or the one about lessons first or second. Cause I'm going to write both, I think eventually it's just a case of which one do I go for first? And any of the thoughts would be great, but yeah, I really can't wait to try and write.

• 8:15Chris Williamson?

  I think it's the mental equivalent of trying to run an ultra race or something. And I'm going to enjoy the process of finding out just how much suffering I can deal with. Resnoven. Did you think you'd get to 600k subs so quickly? I don't think that we've got there that quickly, actually. I mean, it's been five years, right? So.

• 8:38Chris Williamson?

  This bedroom where I am right now is where the start of the podcast be actually the start of the podcast was at my office in Jesmond about three, four miles from here. But we've been doing this for five years. Me and Dean have always said that we think the channel is hopelessly undersubscribed and hopelessly underplayed and we don't really know why. Maybe it just took a little bit of time for us to pick up a little bit of speed, but I still don't think that we're where we should be. And maybe every creator thinks this, right? You obviously produce the channel that you would want to watch. But if I wasn't the person making Modern Wisdom, I would subscribe the shit out of it. I think that the guests that are on are like always interesting and diverse. And

• 9:21Chris Williamson?

  yeah, it is the show that I would listen to. And I think that we've got way, way, way more headroom. But it is nice to finally start to feel like we're getting recognition and the market or whatever the audience is starting to see that this is a something worth watching and listening to. It does feel very, very good. RP 8072, does your back ever give you any troubles anymore? Any tips? So yes, it does. I'm actually flying to Columbia at the start of February to go and get stem cell treatment, intradiscal injections and IV and sleeping in a barometric chamber and a bunch of other stuff. That's

• 10:03Chris Williamson?

  with bio accelerator in Columbia. If you have a bad back, I have two episodes with Dr. Stu McGill, who is the number one back pain specialist on the planet. And he has been a massive help to me and most of my understanding about the back and the spine and core stiffening comes from him. So just search Chris Williamson, Dr. Stu McGill, and you'll see two episodes. The first one especially is just a beautiful overview of everything that he thinks. And if you want to go deeper into that, his book Back Mechanic is fantastic. He's got three exercises, the McGill big three, and then he focuses a lot on offset carries. So like single arm kettlebell carries, suitcase carries, etc.

• 10:44Chris Williamson?

  They are a very, very good place to start. Christopher Dunn, congrats dude. Any hints on who your special guest is mid-January? Yes, because today that this episode goes out will be one day after I've announced who it is. It's David Goggins.

• 11:03Chris Williamson?

  Just saying that sentence sounds crazy. David Goggins is the guest that I went and recorded with in Las Vegas. I had it planned and lined up for nearly six months and it took a lot of work to get there. The production is, I would maybe say the best, the most beautiful podcast that's ever been recorded. Call me wrong, but I adore it. And I think that it was just such a great time to speak to him. He was in a good place, so was I. The episode flowed fantastically. We got really deep at some points. Yeah, it's, it's really, really lovely. And I can't wait to get it out. I can't wait to show you guys the conversation.

• 11:48Chris Williamson?

  He's only doing two podcasts at all. So he did Rogan, December 4th, 2018, he did Rogan. December 6th, 2022, four years and two days later, he does Rogan again. Then 10 days later, he did Modern Wisdom and now he's going away for another four years. So if you like David Goggins, that's all you're getting, I'm afraid, for the next four years. You're not getting any more of him. It's going to be Rogan's episode, my episode, and that's it. But yeah, it's, it's spectacular. It's two hours of just gorgeous insights from one of the hardest men on the planet. So get ready for that. JamesSargent1, what Newcastle Uni accommodation did you go to?

• 12:28Chris Williamson?

  I was at St Mary's in Fenham on Fenham Park Hall Road, Park Hall Drive, I think it's called. I put Newcastle down as my insurance rather than my firm, which means that you get put into the shit accommodation. So I was placed in accommodation which is four miles outside of the centre of town and we needed to get a bus in whenever we wanted to go to uni or to go out drinking and you needed to get a taxi home. I think we walked home a few times, but it's brutal, walking four miles in freezing cold. It wasn't fun, but yeah, St Mary's. Memeine, I am butchering names yet again. Everybody needs to make better usernames so that I don't do this. Every single Q and A.

• 13:12Chris Williamson?

  What are your thoughts on not seeing other women for some time while building yourself? Okay, so there is a great blog post called Monk Mode by Ilimitable Man. And you should go and check that out. He is a fascinating guy, really interesting dude. And Monk Mode was pretty formative for me, maybe five, four or five years ago when I first read it. And it just helps to remind you that focusing on, I think there's three I's, isolation, introspection and something else. Long story short, I think that it's a good idea. I think that there are, there is a limited amount of time that you can invest your money.

• 13:55Chris Williamson?

  There is a limited amount of hours that you can invest your time into. And chasing tail takes up a lot of it, especially as a guy, right? As a guy, you are inevitably going to be the person who spends more time messaging more girls because more of them are going to say no. So you do need to spread the market more and you need to do the whole wooing thing. And it's effortful and emotionally can be quite taxing too. So I think a focused period where you develop yourself and then re-enter the mating market as an upgraded, more confident, more capable individual with a new skillset is a very good idea. And that blog post is a good place to start. But otherwise, like if you can't be bothered to read the blog post, just commit to three months

• 14:40Chris Williamson?

  where women aren't going to be a priority to you and focus on whatever it is that you want to focus on. Now make sure that you do not do, I'm not going to speak to girls for three months and I'm going to smoke weed and play cod. Like this needs to be in service of something that you care about. It can't just be for no reason at all. But yes, I highly, highly recommend doing that. Harry Keenan 37, who is someone in the self-help space you think is overrated?

• 15:07Chris Williamson?

  Rhonda Byrne, the author of The Secret. Yes, the author of The Secret, Rhonda Byrne.

• 15:14Chris Williamson?

  Horse shit, as far as I can see, encourages people to take a passive, low-agency, low-sovereignty,

• 15:24Chris Williamson?

  victim mentality when the world doesn't deliver what it is that they want. It encourages people to, like, wish it, believe it, and have the world make them achieve it, as opposed to it being you that is the architect, the designer, the engineer, the driver, the fuel of all of the things that you want to do. Rhonda Byrne needs to get in the fucking sea, as far as I'm concerned.

• 15:49Chris Williamson?

  Lowmies, no question, just a huge thank you, quality content, incredible work ethic, inspiring. Thank you. Thank you as well. Martin Kassic, 2 million subs next year, that would be big. That would be, I would be surprised. I mean, this Goggins episode is going to do a lot of work for us, which would be great. But I think if we could get toward 1mm, up toward 1mm by the end of next year, I would consider that a massive success, given that at the start of last year, we were at 250 and the year before that, we were at 80 or something. So anywhere close to 1mm by the end of this year, I now consider that a success. LowTurtle, how's the relationship with alcohol nowadays?

• 16:32Chris Williamson?

  Very good. Better than when I was sober and better than when I was drinking beforehand. The reintroduction of alcohol after a really, really extended period of sobriety is a little bit of a difficult one because your tolerance is a way off and you don't really know how to use it. You don't have a place in your life for alcohol and I've just found a place in my life for it now. So if I'm flying home from Austin for Christmas and the lady server comes over and says, would you like a glass of champagne? After I sit down in the plane, like, I'm going to say yes. I feel like I've deserved that. It's been a big year. But for the most part, I don't feel the need to drink. There is no pressure to drink.

• 17:14Chris Williamson?

  Going sober at the end of your twenties or at any point after you've learned what it's like to live a degenerate lifestyle for a bit is such a superpower. I can't describe how big of a change it makes, especially if you're part of a culture, you know, working-class towns in maybe the UK or the US or Canada or Australia or whatever, where a lot of your culture is... Born out of drinking and that's what young people do every weekend. You need to deprogram that and it is great. My relationship with alcohol now is fantastic. I haven't sent it too hard. I did it once in 2022, but was drinking whenever I wanted, which wasn't that often. And when I did drink, had almost complete control over how much it was and how I felt the

• 17:59Chris Williamson?

  next day. It was great. Joey Duckworth, do you think we have a crisis of masculinity? Do men lack purpose? How can we change this without radical leftists calling everything we do toxic? Okay, big one. The term toxic masculinity, there is definitely a big problem there. I think it was originally a term used to describe prison inmates and quickly was taken from the fringes of academia and used to describe any behaviour that a man does that you find objectionable or just uncouth, basically. So first off, reframing what toxic masculinity

• 18:42Chris Williamson?

  means would be a good idea and pushing back against it and highlighting the fact that this is a stupid term that shouldn't be used for things that aren't genuinely toxic. Do I think we have a crisis of masculinity? Yes, I think that there aren't many firm places for men to stand at the moment. It's very hard to find a, to find anywhere that you can feel proud about being as a man that doesn't quickly get lambasted as some sort of oppressive patriarchal overreach that you're trying to impose on the rest of the world. And on the other side of that, that isn't so submissive and agreeable that it doesn't feel anything close to masculinity,

• 19:26Chris Williamson?

  you know, courage, competence, doing hard things, striving, achieving, like protecting, providing, those are

• 19:36Chris Williamson?

  Elements of masculinity that you should be able to feel proud about, but because of this linguistic game with the toxic stuff, it does mean it's hard to find a place, a way to be able to do those things without immediately being shouted at for having done them, which is stupid, right? It's like being gaslit out of your own gender role. Do men lack purpose? Um, I think everybody lacks purpose at the moment. I don't think that women are having an easy time of it either. And this is like terrible to say if you're a part of the manosphere, which I'm not, but girls aren't having a fantastic time either. Like they've got rates of anxiety through the roof, whether that's due to hormonal birth control, social media, whatever it might be. 50.1% of women are childless by

• 20:18Chris Williamson?

  30. Like they're not having a fantastic time either. So both men and women lack purpose. The difference is that men are being accused of being like the architect of both their own and everybody else's misery as opposed to, I think women do still get more sympathy on average from culture at the moment than men do. Um, how can we change this without radical leftists call everything we do toxic? It needs to be a pushback. There needs to be, um, what I've called like the third wave manosphere or holistic masculinity, whatever you want to call it. We need to be able to blend together the insights that genuinely make men feel powerful and capable and like they, it's an aspirational vision

• 20:59Chris Williamson?

  for men to become whilst also accepting the fact that there are ways that that can go wrong. And also accepting the fact that men and women need to work together and be friends and not be adversaries. Like a lot of guys that want positive masculinity have a very negative view of femininity. Like, look, you don't get it both ways. Like you have to be able to work collaboratively with the other sex if you're going to expect them to complement you. So progressing on from this adversarial, men and women are against each other world would be great. Dispensing with toxic masculinity, uh, re-pedestalizing stuff like bravery, courage, um, protecting, providing, et cetera. I think all of those things would be great. And that can happen through culture as well, right? Like it's

• 21:41Chris Williamson?

  not just small creators like me. Um, the more times That a classically masculine show like Top Gun comes out and does really well. It reinforces the fact that, look, like this is actually what people want. They don't want to be patronized or told that they're pieces of shit because they like fast cars and guns. Caleb RG, is there a reason behind the buzz cut? You had that beautiful curly hair. So I did. So Dean, if you can make a photo of my hair appear from Take Me Out, that would be great. This was a haircut that I had for a long time. For the people that are just listening, it's like a Wafro, so white guy Afro. And it was very big and it made me very recognizable on the front door of nightclubs for a long time, for many years.

• 22:25Chris Williamson?

  And I got to like 25, 26 and I thought, I can't, in all good conscience, I can't keep having this haircut because I look a bit silly and I wanted to grow up and I wanted to look more mature. And I also wanted to look more masculine. It's not massively masculine hairdo. And the buzz cut happened during COVID because it was the only haircut that I could get legitimately without slowly growing back into that hairdo. So it's just stuck. I might grow my hair back next year into what I had between the long hair and this one. But we'll see. Oh, Henry Barr, ever had moments where you wish you could turn off your evolutionary psychology obsession?

• 23:05Chris Williamson?

  Yes, a lot. One of the problems of learning evolutionary psychology is that you stop seeing people as people and you start seeing them as puppets on the end of the strings of their evolutionary programming. And there's a quote that I always use about the choices between becoming aware of your mental afflictions or the discomfort of becoming ruled by them. And the discomfort of becoming aware is much lower than the discomfort of being ruled because I hate the idea of anything having control over me that isn't my own sovereignty. It's the reason that I stopped alcohol for a thousand days. I stopped caffeine for 500 days. I want me to be the architect, the sole sovereign controller over everything that I do in my life. I don't want to be controlled and yet I know that I'm a rider on top of an elephant, right?

• 23:49Chris Williamson?

  And that I can like pretend or make believe like I'm steering this huge, big lumbering thing, which is my programming and my biases and my disposition, all of that stuff.

• 24:00Chris Williamson?

  But taking control of what you can control is really important. Problem with learning more about evolutionary psychology is you realise how little you have control over and how much of the things that you thought were unique, idiosyncratic, beautiful cultivated insights or dispositions that you do have turn out to be something that's ingrained, or it turns out to be something that you're maybe going to struggle to get past. And yeah, the only way out is through, as far as I can see with this. If you love the insights from evolutionary psychology, understanding why you are the way you are, which I do, you're going to keep learning more and more. And the solution isn't to

• 24:41Chris Williamson?

  kind of ignore them or forget about them or hide away from them. It's to transcend and include, right? It's to realise this is a part of my understanding and I now need to, I need to integrate them into a holistic view of myself that realises that there are limitations, that realises that there are predispositions, but that actually uses that information to make me a better person, not to feel like a nihilistic, apathetic human that's just at the mercy of whatever it is that his genes decided.

• 25:11Chris Williamson?

  Pierre Ogus, any advice for 27 year old guy who can't stop partying, doing drugs and sleeping around?

• 25:19Chris Williamson?

  That's a tough one. It depends whether or not you want to stop. You shouldn't stop doing those things if you don't feel like you want to, right? Just because I did at pretty much bang on that age, doesn't mean that you necessarily should. I think that it is a better life. I'm sad that I didn't do it earlier and stop the degeneracy a little earlier, but I also like, I had fun in my twenties. It was really fun. And I also have stories and experiences that have shaped where I'm at now. Hurrying along maturity is something that you can do. If you are serious about wanting to stop doing it, the plan to do it is pretty easy, right? The gateway to most of the things that you're

• 26:02Chris Williamson?

  doing is a combination of your friends and alcohol. So you need a new friend group or the friends within your existing friend group, you need to splinter some of them off and say, why don't we try and focus on knuckling down for the next however long? The problem is...

• 26:20Chris Williamson?

  The temptation to go and drink and party and do all the rest of it is very high. And if there's two of you, it only takes one sometimes to fall back into temptation a little bit to drag the other one along as well. So if you are the most disciplined person in your friend group, and it sounds like you might be, you're going to be carrying the weight in part of your sober partner, or whatever you want to call them, you're going to be having to help them along. Or conversely, you're going to see them as kind of pulling you back a tiny little bit. I would change your friend group. I would focus for a period of six months on not drinking. If you don't drink, you're not going to do drugs and sleep around and party, right? Like alcohol is the gateway to all of this stuff. And set yourself a goal, you know? I'm going to write a blog post once a week for every six months.

• 27:05Chris Williamson?

  I'm going to gain five pounds of lean muscle. I'm going to lose 3% body fat. I'm going to accumulate this new skill, whatever it might be. Those are the things that you need a reason to not do it. I had a reason to not do it. When I stopped drinking, I decided, right, I'm going to spend all of this time reading, doing self-development, meditating every day. I had a bunch of things that filled that space. It didn't feel like, again, your man from earlier on that was asking about going monk mode. Yeah, monk mode's great unless you don't fill the space with something productive, because something will fill the space. And this vacuum just sucks in the lowest common denominator or the path of least resistance, which is usually bullshit. Change your friends, stop drinking, create some goals. What would have had to have happened in six months' time for you to look back on those

• 27:49Chris Williamson?

  six months and consider them a success?

• 27:54Chris Williamson?

  Ask yourself that question. That's where you need to start. Lydia Garbutt, would you rather have spaghetti fingers or lasagna feet?

• 28:05Chris Williamson?

  It's basically, would you rather have hands or would you rather lose your hands or lose your feet, right? Because the spaghetti fingers and the lasagna feet are mostly useless. Probably lasagna feet. I feel like I could survive better with hands and no feet than with feet but no hands. However... I would have concerns about dogs coming along as I'm wheeling myself along in a wheelchair and trying to nibble at my toes. That wouldn't be very fun. So I'd need to find some sort of spaghetti functional encasing shoes, like wellies perhaps, like Wellingtons. Or I could try and get custom made crockery pots in the shape of shoes that I could sort of slot my spaghetti toes into, maybe.

• 28:50Chris Williamson?

  Dennis Kamunya, Kamunu, Kam, Kamun, Kamunya, Kamunya. Fuck. Plan on bringing Sam Harris. So yeah, I'm still a massive fan of Sam, you know, for whatever his transgressions of sacred cows last year.

• 29:11Chris Williamson?

  I think he's great. He has been a hugely influential thinker for me.

• 29:18Chris Williamson?

  And I would love to speak to him at some point, and I'm sure that I will do eventually.

• 29:23Chris Williamson?

  I do think he probably needs a little bit of time just to come up with some new stuff. Like he's been, it's been a little while since he's put out any original content in terms of a book, even his most recent book was kind of like a synthesis of conversations that he'd had on the podcast. So I'd be very interested to see where he goes next. And if it was me, I would love to see him go back into the

• 29:47Chris Williamson?

  death in the present moment, meaning of life, existential stuff. That's where I think Sam is at his best, that and mindfulness. So I hope that he goes back into that. Alex O'Connor, has there been a time where a guest said something and you thought, that's stupid, but didn't want to say it at the time to their face?

• 30:06Chris Williamson?

  There must have been. I can't think of any specific examples at the moment, but there absolutely must have been.

• 30:12Chris Williamson?

  It's strange, man. It's strange sitting down opposite someone and having a conversation, but also knowing that it's being watched. It's, it's both a conversation and a performance. And you try not to be as performative as possible, but you need to be a little bit performative, right? Because if, if it was just a conversation with you and your friend over coffee, you'd go down whatever rabbit hole you wanted, which wouldn't be a very enjoyable listening experience. So I'm sure that there are a bunch of times, and you, Alex, say stupid things to my face all the time when we're on FaceTime and I, I don't tell you. So

• 30:46Chris Williamson?

  perhaps we should record them and then I can give you some examples.

• 30:50Chris Williamson?

  Fuck me, how am I gonna pronounce this? Six, Yovakshan, sipadzidanna2432. Fucking nailed it, bro. How much do you think your looks have shaped your life? Where would you think you would be if you were very ugly instead? It's a good question. So part of the like black pill worldview, I had a conversation with this guy called Wheat Waffles a little while ago. And one of the criticisms that comes out of the black pill is anybody that is an above average looking guy, giving dating advice to normal guys should be kind of dispensed with because the experience of the above average looking guy is not replicable or usable

• 31:34Chris Williamson?

  by those that aren't. I don't know, maybe that's true, maybe it's not. But in terms of pretty privilege and the halo effect, like, yeah, it gets people ahead. I'd certainly seem to have more luck in life than I think is fair. But then there's been a bunch of times where I've felt pretty unlucky. Like I was hopelessly alone and isolated throughout most of my childhood. Like the, literally the most unpopular person in school for throughout all of school. Got to college and still kind of felt quite displaced. Got to uni and even though I kind of had positioned myself in the right place at uni, there was still a lot of discordance that was going on there throughout most of my twenties. You know, the, the social stuff, I was still trying to find my feet with how all of that worked.

• 32:18Chris Williamson?

  So it's not like life has been a breeze. However, it probably has helped in some regards. It's probably, I mean, it got me modeling jobs, which gave me practice on camera, which has meant that when I've come to podcasting, it's been easier. Got me on two reality TV shows, although they didn't really help anything that I care about at all, apart from giving me some interesting philosophical insights about a direction of life that I don't want to go in.

• 32:44Chris Williamson?

  I don't know where my life would be if I looked different.

• 32:49Chris Williamson?

  The podcast is heavily, heavily geared toward audio, which is, you know, a beautiful equalizer for anybody that doesn't think that they have a face for doing YouTube. And I don't know whether that would have made any difference at all. The accent and the work that I've done on speech and diction and stuff hasn't been influenced at all by the way that I look. But I don't know, life would probably suck a bit more. I'd get invited to fewer, fewer parties and things, but you have the opportunity to compensate if you look differently by being extra funny. And it can sometimes play into, I mean, like Tim Dillon, right? He's not exactly the, the most handsome, beautiful man on the planet, although I'm

• 33:31Chris Williamson?

  sure that some of his gay guys find him, he sounds like he goes through enough twinks to suggest that there is a market for Tim Dillon. But he fucking crushes because he developed a different part of himself. So swings and roundabouts, I think everybody gets different allocations of points throughout their life. And you should be careful about judging where someone's at now as opposed to where they were previously. Olten Casely, is there any guest in 2023 you would really want to have a conversation with? Oh man, so many. I'm really keen to try and get Alan de Bot on, on from the School of Life. Been in touch with him a little bit. Alan, if you're watching, if you are whatever 40 minutes into a Q and A on this podcast, let's, let's start moving this forward. I would really love to speak to him.

• 34:15Chris Williamson?

  He was, him and Sam Harris and Peterson were like the three, the big three for me in terms of how my like emotional education, philosophical education worked throughout my back end of my twenties. I'd love to bring Rogan on. We've been talking about doing it at some point, but obviously super busy guy. So we'll have to see. I also have stopped posting as much my upcoming lists of guests. I used to do it all the time. I used to just at the beginning of each month list, everybody that I had coming up because some podcasters were using my tweet as.

• 34:52Chris Williamson?

  There to like front run guests, reach out and basically they didn't need to do their own guest booking because I just posted what I'd done my work on. Which is a bit of a shame because I think that was cool to like, tell everybody who it was that I had coming up. I'd love to bring Huberman back on again. I would like to speak to Peterson. I know that everyone wants me to talk to Andrew Tate, but I think he's in Romanian jail at the moment, which might be difficult. Also going to see where he goes next. I'd like to do a conversation with him that's a little bit more different. So I want to see what he starts talking about next. Sam Harris would be great. Bill Burr would be great. Tim Dillon would be fantastic. I'd love to speak to Tim. Shane Gillis is definitely up there. Mark Norman last year was fantastic to get him on. Really appreciated that. Derek from More Plates More Dates, probably bring him back on again. I really enjoyed that one.

• 35:36Chris Williamson?

  Schultz, round two. That conversation was one of the most fun, like two hour periods that I've had. So there's a lot. There are absolutely tons.

• 35:48Chris Williamson?

  There's probably a couple that I'm forgetting. I feel like there's maybe one or two that I'm really forgetting from that list. But yeah, there's some. Mindful Mitch. Fuck, marry, kill, Rogan, Schulz, Peterson.

• 36:04Chris Williamson?

  Okay. Fuck, marry, kill, Rogan, Schulz, Peterson.

• 36:10Chris Williamson?

  I feel like.

• 36:14Chris Williamson?

  I feel like killing Rogan would be

• 36:21Chris Williamson?

  the best trophy that I could have, like, you know, use his pelt, take it like skin him and use his pelt as like an entrance mat into the podcast studio in the future.

• 36:35Chris Williamson?

  Fuck Peterson, might as well give him a good time. You know what I mean? Like a young buck showing Jordan a good time. And I'll marry Schultz. Seems like he's a

• 36:44Chris Williamson?

  very nice guy. I think he went, took his missus away over Christmas to some Saint Tropez type, nice Costa Rica sort of holiday thing. So there we go. Kill Rogan. Fuck Peterson, marry Schultz. Six words that I never thought I would say. What's with the Justin Timberlake hair? There we are again. Dude, if you have curly hair, there are two options mostly, right? Shave it off or grow it long. And I was sick of growing it long. Be all right. Did Andrew Huberman change anything in your daily life? Tons. I mean, that guy is an absolute monster, right? Sleep supplements. I use his sleep cocktail every night. Magnesium

• 37:23Chris Williamson?

  L3 and 8, apigenin and L-theanine. The sunlight before screen light rule is just great. First thing in the morning. He really reinforced the importance of sunlight. And I think that's been one of his biggest contributions in terms of like applying his insights to people. Fucking hell. So much, so much stuff. Also, he's, he's very

• 37:52Chris Williamson?

  open to having his mind changed. And I really appreciate how he

• 38:00Chris Williamson?

  has strong opinions loosely held, as in, he believes the things that he believes, but if he sees countervailing evidence, he's happy to change his mind. That is like very, very rare. And I think that it comes out of having a non culture war, non political focus for a long time, especially coming out of academia. Hopefully, that would be the case. All academics should be prepared to change their views if they see evidence that convinces them otherwise. Yeah, he's, the guy's a beast and I take a lot from him. And I'm looking forward to speaking with him again next year. Tim Cairo, how much you recommend abstaining from alcohol considering your own experience? Should have bundled these together. Lots. See previous answers. Absolutely loads. Like I,

• 38:46Chris Williamson?

  it will change your life. Six months of sobriety will change your life. Justin Fall One, is Athletic Greens Worth The Hype? About to give it a go. I highly recommend it. It's not just me, right? It's Tim Ferriss, Joe Rogan, Andrew Huberman, like.

• 39:00Chris Williamson?

  Dr David Sinclair, like, these are people that are either experts within the field of longevity and health, or people that have tried pretty much every product under the sun. I did the same, I've been through every different green strength, and this is the best one. And you can go to athleticgreens.com/ModernWisdom if you want to sign up. And it's 60 day money back guarantee and a bunch of other free stuff. But I highly recommend it. If there was one supplement that I was going to take every day, it would be Athletic Greens. RP8072, does your back, oh, I've got two back questions in here. Joanna PL, are you more or less careful with your choice of the guest the bigger the show gets? That's a good question.

• 39:39Chris Williamson?

  Um, I actually think that you've got a little bit more leeway as you get bigger. Now, you're obviously going to be scrutinized more heavily, but you are more capable of having a difficult conversation, or one where you need to push back. And you've also accumulated more goodwill from the audience. So, I mean, I've stepped outside of whatever world people want to accuse me of being in, whether it be like center right, or a cuck for fucking fascists, or whatever it is that people want to accuse me of, like, people like Helen Lewis, Rutger Bregman, he was the dude that called out all of the rich people at the Davos thing, like, he's really fucking left.

• 40:22Chris Williamson?

  Destiny, I had a bunch of people on that I'm not, the audience seemed, you guys seemed to be very prepared to take at face value and actually listen to what they had to say, which is fucking brilliant. Like, having a reasonable audience is all that I could ask for. And I think that you accumulate that by showing that you're acting in good faith and by having conversations consistently that are reasonable and bringing on a variety of points of views. There is an element where- If you're putting this out to a thousand people as opposed to a million people, there is a responsibility that you need to have to not just allow crazy views to go unchallenged.

• 41:03Chris Williamson?

  I think that's what Rogan realised after the Peter McCullough and whoever the other guy was, there was some other dude from that did COVID stuff. That's what he realised was that balance and pushback is something that he felt he needed to do. So, yes, to one degree or another, I'm careful with the way that I speak to the guests. But I also think that you've got a broader access with more skills and also the audience is more forgiving. Right. They're prepared to, a lot of the time now I'll get a comment that says something like, interesting guest, don't agree with them, but really appreciate the point of view. I don't think that you would get that if you hadn't put in whatever 600 reps of showing that this is the sort of show that you can expect.

• 41:48Chris Williamson?

  Jamal Maroon, who do you believe is the most underappreciated modern thinker? Very difficult question. One that I would love to see more of would be Alain de Botton. He's kind of backed out of the School of Life stuff. I don't think he's written anything for a while. The last book that he wrote, which I really loved, was An Emotional Education. That's a School of Life book, but that's, it was written by him, narrated by him, but done under the pseudonym or whatever of the School of Life. And I get the impression that he is slowly stepping away from the School of Life to allow that organisation to be able to run on its own. Fuck, man, this cough, this chest thing, this chest infection that is going around the UK is murdering people. So if you are anywhere else, don't come to the UK.

• 42:32Chris Williamson?

  We have something that's way, way worse than a pandemic. But yeah, Alain de Botton, I would like to see him step up a little bit more. Maybe he's taking a break, maybe he's doing less stuff. I'm not really too sure, but he would be someone that I think could add a massive amount of value. Not that he hasn't already, not that he isn't very accomplished, but I'd love to see more from him.

• 42:52Chris Williamson?

  Nathan Colossimo, this is a long one. Hey Chris, I'm 16 and I've been watching the show for one to two years now, since the start of my self-development journey. Currently, I just can't relate to anyone else around me because of all of the things I do. Fitness, mindfulness, health, learning, social media and running my business. I've only had one to three friends that I feel like talking for most of my life. But I really want to work on social skills as well. So my question would be, how can I find other people like me at this point of my life? Should I just accept that there's not going to be that many and set my bar lower? I just really don't like talking to people I find boring or not on that wavelength. This might be a me problem of perspective though. Thanks.

• 43:35Chris Williamson?

  Fuck, that is such a smart question, dude. I, I was functionally retarded at 16 and I mean, that's a really, really high level question to ask. It's a fantastic position to be in. A few like applicable, I could just gush about the fact that you're a highly developed 16 year old for a while. But obviously you need something that you can use. One solution would be to get older friends, right? To hang around with people that are older than you. I don't mind if some 22 year old kid came to me that was mindful and well-balanced. I would happily take them under my wing and like have a chat. I've got a bunch of friends that are younger than me, like tons. Video guy Dean, I think when we started working together was 22 and I would have been whatever like 30, 29 or something like that.

• 44:20Chris Williamson?

  So maybe get older friends who are more aligned with your like expedited maturity.

• 44:29Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, you are probably going to have to accept that if you want same aged friends, you're an outlier. Which means that unless you can find other outliers, it's going to be more difficult for you to find people to talk to. Yes, you want to work on social skills, but it's not like you can only work on those with people that are your age.

• 44:46Chris Williamson?

  Monk mode would be a potentially good solution. One thing I would be slightly cautious of is that at your age, the formative experiences socially are super, super important. Because the grind is always going to be there. But if you allow the social side to atrophy and to fall away, that's going to put you at a real disadvantage. That was my issue, right? As someone that basically had zero social skills at the age of 17 or 18. I had a lot of catching up to do and you don't want to let that fall away. So. Find older friends, but keep doing what you're doing, man. Like that that foundation will allow you to be so adaptable and so flexible and so quick to progress that I you're not going to have any problems. You're going to be absolutely fine.

• 45:29Chris Williamson?

  Nath Cousins, have you stopped slash sold your involvement in the nightlife events business? Yes, I have. I worked an exit from that this summer finally, which took a little while. It's very difficult to sell a to sell a club promotion business because there's no assets. The only assets are the brand, right? And the brand is worth a hell of a lot because the brand is the vehicle for earning the money. And most successful nightlife events businesses are very cash rich. The quick turnover, no one is walking into a nightclub and saying, I'll pay you on 60 days or anything. It's a very good vehicle for generating cash. The problem is, how the fuck are you supposed to create any kind of number of value over that? Do you say, oh, it's one year's revenue? It's two years revenue?

• 46:13Chris Williamson?

  What's the most volatile industry in the world as far as I'm concerned? So no, you can't really do that. But also, it's not nothing. So it took us a long time to work out what that number was and then did that and push it off. But Darren, my business partner, is still spanking it in the UK. I'm actually going for pizza with him later on today, which is going to be great. So really, really proud of everything that we did, but it was time to move on. Matt Reynolds, are you going to invite Joe Rogan on your podcast? Yes, I am. That will happen whenever it happens, but I absolutely can't wait. I'm going to do something ridiculously special. I've already chosen the location of where we're going to film it. It's going to be, it's going to look like something out of a Final Fantasy end boss fight. It's going to be great.

• 46:56Chris Williamson?

  Abigail Cross, congratulations on the follower count. My question is, what has been your greatest, not necessarily biggest, achievement?

• 47:06Chris Williamson?

  Um, really learning to be proud of myself, I think. For a long while, I didn't resonate with the things that I did. I didn't feel like I was worthy of praise or love or whatever. And I couldn't work out why I didn't know why I didn't have this same like existential sense of connection to compliments from people or love or care from people. And I think it's because I was playing a role, right? Throughout a lot of my twenties, I was this big name on campus, big dick around town, like party boy, club promoter. And that was only a part of my persona, but I'd allowed it to subsume my entire person.

• 47:47Chris Williamson?

  And when I stopped doing that and I started to tell the truth more and started to sort of live in a little bit more alignment. I actually started to connect with what people said and how they felt about me and so on and so forth. So becoming proud of myself, giving myself enough of a reason to like feel pride and love. Probably that.

• 48:13Chris Williamson?

  William Cummings, what are your best tips for someone who wants to start their own YouTube channel? There were about a hundred questions to do with this, some to do with podcasting and some to do with YouTube.

• 48:26Chris Williamson?

  Best tips for someone who wants to start their own YouTube channel.

• 48:32Chris Williamson?

  I would

• 48:35Chris Williamson?

  take video creators 30 days to a better YouTube channel course. It's about 200 bucks and it'll teach you a lot of the basics when it comes to thumbnail design and how to title your channel and algorithm and stuff like that. You need to understand the physics of how YouTube works. That's really, really important. That's something that I didn't learn up until, it's only two, three years ago. It's three years ago when I took that course. And, um, was it two years ago? I think it was two years ago. Anyway, it's very important. You should do it. Be consistent.

• 49:07Chris Williamson?

  Find a way to produce videos that isn't incredibly arduous. If every time that you sit down with a blank piece of paper to write your outline or script or whatever it is, you it makes you feel terrified or resentful or bitter or bored or nihilistic or procrastinate, the process isn't working well enough. You need it to be as free flowing as possible, right? You need the creation of videos to be as easy as you can. It's the same reason why I have one of these here in both. There it is. Like for the people that are listening,

• 49:44Chris Williamson?

  it's a remote, a $10 remote control thing. And what you do, piss, what you do is plug lights into wall sockets, press those buttons, and then that turns everything on. So in the press of four buttons, everything comes on, camera comes on, lights come on, everything. So I've made the production part, the recording part of making a podcast as frictionless as possible. Everything is always set up. You need to have that same process. You need to have that same structure with your process, right? It needs to be as easy as possible. Be consistent. Learn the physics of the platform. 30 Days to a Better YouTube Channel from Video Creators is a great course. Focus on sound before light and camera and focus

• 50:26Chris Williamson?

  on light before camera. You can have an average camera with great lighting that looks fantastic and a great camera with average lighting that looks shit. People are more concerned about sound than they are about the way that the video looks. And just get going. Like you need to learn by iterating. So just start producing stuff and see where you end up. Joseph Buonadonna. Hey Chris, congrats on the new milestone. Nowadays, the term woke is used to describe reactionaries on the political left, the kind who get in a tizzy if you don't strictly adhere to the ever changing lingo they have for various minority groups. However, I feel that all too often it is used as a proverbial cudgel, often by those on the political right, against legitimate activists who are working for

• 51:08Chris Williamson?

  a better tomorrow. So my question is this, in your personal opinion, what is the difference between the woke left and those who are genuinely fighting for issues such as racism? racial justice, LGBT rights, environmentalism, et cetera. Love to hear your thoughts. Really great question and very difficult, right? By using nutpicking, i.e. picking the most ridiculous examples from one side as representatives for the entire side by the people that don't like them. You can quite easily sort of smear an entire movement, like calling someone a leftist now, like that that's just a description of their political leaning. But it's also like a pejorative term, like accusing someone of being a leftist now.

• 51:49Chris Williamson?

  And that's been done primarily because you do have these sort of blue haired screechy people that are poor examples. If I was somebody that was from the left, I would feel pretty embarrassed by them.

• 52:03Chris Williamson?

  What would the solution be?

• 52:06Chris Williamson?

  The entire volume needs to be turned down on the discourse and you need to have people from both sides of the fence wanting to genuinely engage in a well meaning discussion. The problem is that the incentives online do not.

• 52:21Chris Williamson?

  It's not conducive for that because on the internet, the most outrageous, outlandish take that is the most pithy dunk beat down that you can come up with is the one that is going to get the most traction. So the incentives online encourage people to speak in a way which

• 52:39Chris Williamson?

  disparages the other side in a low resolution, unnuanced, insulting manner. That's something that you can't get around.

• 52:49Chris Williamson?

  In your personal opinion, what is the difference between the woke left and those who are doing it? The difference would be.

• 52:58Chris Williamson?

  Are you doing it because you genuinely care about the plight or the issue that it is that you're talking about and have you thoroughly researched it? Those would be the people that are well meaning and that we should listen to and that should be given a platform. Or are you doing it because it is the current?

• 53:18Chris Williamson?

  In vogue cultural and political ideology to have. And it is an easy way for you to morally grandstand and gain status, clout, and have performative empathy that puts you on a pedestal. If you're doing it for those reasons, fuck off into the sea. That is the difference between the two. One person is doing it because they genuinely care about the issues at hand. And the other person is doing it because they see an easy route to accumulate status whilst having to do nothing difficult to accumulate it. That's the difference between the two. How you fix it? That's a more difficult question. Carfalog. Congratulations, Chris. My question is where the term bro-science originated from?

• 54:02Chris Williamson?

  It's a phrase that's made its way into my vocabulary from your podcast. As curious as to its origins. Dom Mizetti, who is a YouTuber that does, pretty sure his channel is called Bro-science or something. But yeah, he, that was the first person that I learned it from. It's just anything that is unsubstantiated inclinations that you think this might be right, this sounds about right, or it seems right to me. And it is a very nice way. You know, I spoke to Schultz about that thing where comedians have got the get out of jail free card. They can press a light that goes on over their heads and you're like, oh, I was just telling a joke. It doesn't matter. You don't need to accuse me of being a bigot.

• 54:43Chris Williamson?

  This is the same, but for psychology and philosophy insights, I can just say, oh, so here's something that I've just bro-science, i.e. don't take the next 30 seconds or 60 seconds seriously. I'm pulling this out of my ass. I hope that it goes well. Is it a little bit of a, like a lowball way to make yourself not culpable for the things that you're talking about? Maybe, but it works. Green and blue. What's your advice for being surrounded by negative people from work to home life and from the negativity that seems to have taken over online without becoming a recluse? It seems impossible to escape. Find positive people, man. Like, you can offset

• 55:27Chris Williamson?

  an entire world of negativity with a few positive people. And this is something that I learned since being in America. The American disposition is way more positive than pretty much anywhere else. Sometimes it can be annoying, right? But my housemate Zach is a really good counterbalance to me. I am this sort of slightly more dour, slightly more chill, peaceful guy, and he is this massive, excitable Alsatian. And he pulls me out of my positivity and I out of my whatever negativity, and I provide order to what it is that he does. So I've got, you know, a group of friends in Austin that are fantastic counterbalances. And there's maybe like, let's say there's five of them that I focus on, and all of

• 56:12Chris Williamson?

  them are able to outweigh the internet. So just find a small group of people and rely on them. Sierra 619, congratulations, Chris. You deserve it. One of the best podcasts I have listened to. Thank you. I love that you have a large amount of topics and different people. Come on. Keep up the amazing work. Thank you very much. Q, it would be interesting to me to start a podcast, however, I don't have a YouTube channel or an Instagram that I post frequently on. I haven't made a name for myself. When you started your podcast, was it hard to find people that would take their time to talk to you, especially someone like Jocko or Jordan Peterson that are extremely busy? They probably have plenty of people that would take that would like their time. Do you have to make a name for yourself in some other way before you can have a podcast? Absolutely not. Every person that thinks

• 56:56Chris Williamson?

  that Love Island or Take Me Out or being a club promoter gave me any kind of platform for beginning this podcast could not be more wrong. I came out of Love Island with, I think, 7,000 more followers on Instagram than when I went in. And the show was so tiny in season one, which is why I'm not quite easy for me to dispense with that label, because nobody knew that I'd done it, basically. That most people find out about me doing Love Island from me telling them about it on the podcast as opposed to it Being some springboard that created the career. The way that I got a lot of guests on the show, you know, episode three and four, I think, with Dave Castro, the director of the CrossFit Games and Dan Bailey, CrossFit OG. James Clear was within the first 30 episodes. I think Robert Greene was within the first 40 episodes.

• 57:41Chris Williamson?

  I just reached out to people. People are very responsive if you are respectful of their time and kind. And it just seems to work. Do not be afraid of reaching out to people and DMing them or sending emails.

• 57:55Chris Williamson?

  They are very, very responsive to it. When you're talking about the Jockos and the Petersons of the world, yeah, like you're going to need an in, you need a warm lead. They're not going to speak to you for the most part, unless you do get a referral from one place or another. That is more challenging, but that's just networking, right? Like you are probably only three degrees of separation from Jocko Willink in any case. So, okay, I'll continue to expand the net until I get to the stage where I've got level one, then level two, and then level three. And then you got them. Noah Wilson, you damn legend you. How are you now this morning? What I'm asking is, I guess, are you still hungry? You've come a long way, pretty much from near bottom to top in just to top just one year. Will we see the takeover of Chris Williamson next year?

• 58:39Chris Williamson?

  Or are we taking another year to execute our goals with precision to add tools to the Rolodex? Can't wait to see where we will go.

• 58:49Chris Williamson?

  I think 2023 is going to be a year that I really put my foot down. Like, my plan is to fist fuck 2023. I would be, I think this is a year where all of the preparation that I've done up until this point starts to really get put on a pedestal. And yeah, I, I wouldn't bet against me this year. Unless I put my foot in my mouth and have some huge error, which is always a possibility. But yeah, I'm, I'm really going to try and make some big waves this year.

• 59:23Chris Williamson?

  It's interesting that you talk about is another year to add tools to the rolodex. Because that is something that I saw for a very long time, you know, sat right there next to where I'm recording on this little seat with this blanket on my lap, meditating or journaling or reading or doing fucking introspective work or whatever it was that I was doing, right? That is a price that you need to pay in order to be able to be ready to take advantage of whatever platform comes down the line. You know, going on Rogan was phenomenal, but I'm very, very glad that I'd accumulated 500 episodes before I had the chance to go on. If I'd done that 150, I wouldn't have been ready. If I'd done that 400, I would have been less ready.

• 1:00:07Chris Williamson?

  So all of the work that you get to put in to accumulate the skills that you need means that when the opportunity finally comes, you can take advantage of it. That's the way that you should see it. All of the time that you're sat spinning your wheels, wishing that you had better opportunities in front of you, you can take that as I'm going to be more ready when that opportunity finally does rear its head. And that's how I've seen it. But I think I'm done with the accumulating of skills bit for a little while. And it's now time to step out onto the stadium floor.

• 1:00:40Chris Williamson?

  Double. Do you want to get married and have children anytime soon? How many children? Can't wait to be a dad. Can't wait to get married. Do I want to have them anytime soon? I'm not sure. How many children? I think two to three. I'm an only child, right? So for me, one is a, it's, I think it's suboptimal, but it's not a ridiculous amount of children to have. However, I do think that on average, I would like, I think, three. Ideally, two boys and a girl in the order that my business partner Darren had, which was boy, boy, girl. I feel like that's a good way to do things. However, for every boy that you have, it does increase the chances of your son being gay.

• 1:01:22Chris Williamson?

  So I could have, I could have a straight, I could have a gay and I could have a girl, like the big three. Do you want to? No, that's the same one. Harrington Ja. How do you continue to find new content and interests? Bro, there I have more things I want to learn about than.

• 1:01:41Chris Williamson?

  Ten lifetimes would give me enough room to delve into. There is an endless amount of stuff that I'm interested in. So I don't know.

• 1:01:55Chris Williamson?

  I just, I really want to keep on finding the most interesting people who right now no one knows about. And the world needs to and continue to put them at the forefront of this ever growing platform. Like that would make me very happy. I find it on Twitter, on Instagram. I find it in books. I find it in other podcasts that I listen to. I find it in blog posts. Been a massive fan of a

• 1:02:20Chris Williamson?

  Substack this year and started subscribing, not to tons, but to some really good ones. Some of the good ones I subscribe to, Rob Henderson, Gwenda Bogle, Eric Hole, Pirate Wires by Mike Solana, Adam Mastroini's Experimental History,

• 1:02:40Chris Williamson?

  Astral Codex 10. Those are the main ones that come to mind and the browser as well. That's not a Substack technically.

• 1:02:51Chris Williamson?

  Those are, that's been where I've got a lot of new content insights. But the vehicle for that is just ass shaking curiosity, like just a reality distortion field of curiosity. Josh Duhamel, thoughts on why all these random dating shows are so popular? Yeah, well, I mean, what is it? Love is Blind.

• 1:03:19Chris Williamson?

  There was one that was to do with dating if you were twins that my friends Henry and Will were on. Love Island, The Bachelor, The Bachelor in Paradise.

• 1:03:30Chris Williamson?

  Too Hot to Handle as well. That's just done its second season.

• 1:03:34Chris Williamson?

  The reason that I think they're so popular is because

• 1:03:39Chris Williamson?

  fundamentally, people understand that finding a partner is an important part of your life and

• 1:03:47Chris Williamson?

  People want to observe the process of that occurring. Like, it is one of the fundamental gossip generators that human tribes would have had for a long time. Who is dating who? Who is changing in terms of status and accolades within a group, a small group, right? It's never a dating show with 500 people on it. It's always a dating show that's very, very small. If you were to take a Dunbar number group of 150 humans, the number that are between the ages of 18 and 35 would probably be about 10 to 12 that would be available, maybe. That's now just who is the available dating group? We'll take,

• 1:04:32Chris Williamson?

  everybody else will take the kids and the parents and grandparents out of the way and the ones that are already mated off and we'll throw the remaining group into an island or a villa or something and we'll let them battle it out and then we'll discuss who is the bastard or the cool one amongst them. That's why I think it's compelling. It's also compelling because it is chicken soup for distraction and it generates a shit ton of content. It makes people very tribal, you know, like I'm an Adam Collard person or I'm a like whatever.

• 1:05:04Chris Williamson?

  You pin your colors to the flag of whichever person it is that you're watching. Victor J., when are you having Matthew Walker on the show? So Matthew Walker is the guy that wrote Why We Sleep and number, I think it's number 1109, his episode on Rogan was one of the most important podcasts that I ever listened to. I had completely degraded my sleep, mostly throughout my twenties, from being a club promoter. However, I have heard a lot of criticisms about Matthew Walker's book and I don't know why. I haven't done enough digging, but he has been in a bit of bother and I would probably need to do some research before because there's a lot of criticisms

• 1:05:49Chris Williamson?

  floating around. That being said, his lesson of focus on sleep was very important. Before I would bring him on, I would want to probably do a bit of scrutiny on those criticisms. And maybe if that was the case, that would be a good angle to have him on the show to talk about, to get him to address some of those, because I don't think I've heard him do that. Tim D. Simons, did you find Jocko difficult to deal with? It sounded like he was giving very little. So I don't think, he tweeted about it about a month afterward, or a couple of months afterwards, someone had mentioned, you seemed a little bit off on the podcast with Chris. Was there a problem? And I think he said he hadn't trained that morning, which had put him in a mood. He was fine.

• 1:06:33Chris Williamson?

  I mean, if you want to go and listen to his episode with Michaela or his episode with Lex, both of which I listened to in preparation for the episode I did with him. Mine was like a hug. Mine was, mine was a warm cuddle throughout most of it. So there are gradations to what a, whatever 30-year veteran Navy SEALs, frosty disposition can get to. And he was, it was fun, like, and also a really important learning experience for me to have this big production, to fly all the way out to San Diego, to sit down with this guy that I knew, you know, hundreds of thousands, millions of people were going to watch these episodes and these clips. And it was really important for me to feel that pressure of, fuck, like, this isn't going to be just an easy walk in the park where I can poke him with a short question

• 1:07:18Chris Williamson?

  and then see a huge answer fall out of him. So that was really important. I took it as a very valuable, like, strategic learning opportunity. And we got him well. I'd like, I'd love to have him back on. I think I will. But yeah, maybe make sure that he trains before we record next time.

• 1:07:33Chris Williamson?

  Quiat Tech 25, favourite evolutionary biology books? I'm going to give you evolutionary psychology just because evolutionary biology isn't really my area of expertise. I would say The Moral Animal by Robert Wright. Again, chriswillx.com/books. All of these will be in there. Go and get it, free reading list, blah, blah.

• 1:07:52Chris Williamson?

  Moral Animal by Robert Wright. The Ape Who Understood the Universe by Steve Stuart Williams is the number one primer. In fact, just The Ape Who Understood the Universe by Steve Stuart Williams, all you need is that book. And then from that, you can tumble into David Buss's Men Behaving Badly, or David Buss's The Evolution of Desire, Jeffrey Miller, The Mating Mind. But start off with Steve's book. It's great. A P Vox, is it safe to work out commando? Depends how big your dong is, I suppose. rattlesnake.tv Has it been difficult to cater your message around YouTube censorship?

• 1:08:30Chris Williamson?

  Not really.

• 1:08:32Chris Williamson?

  I we've got popped. We got popped for a conversation I had with Schultz. One of the clips got diddled. And maybe one or two others, but generally my relationship with YouTube so far has been great. My partner manager there is also fantastic catcher. And if there's ever any problems, I can usually speak to her, I think.

• 1:08:53Chris Williamson?

  The rules on YouTube are a lot more tight than some people would like. But for me, my like overton window of what I typically want to talk about doesn't, at least on a podcast, not necessarily in private, doesn't stray too far outside of that. So I don't feel like I need to be too constrained. Stemistrello. Why is the background split in red and blue lights? Not sure what you mean. If it's this, if it's the fact that I've got teal and copper here, it's because it is a color palette that I absolutely adore. I really like that sort of classic Hollywood look. It's kind of Adastrae, space travel meets sort of old and worldly filament bulb shit. I just like it. I thought it was cool.

• 1:09:38Chris Williamson?

  Smith Amb. What is your number one life hack and why? Speed up your trackpad. Put your trackpad speed to as fast as it goes and your mouse will move around the screen more quickly. Like, thank me later.

• 1:09:52Chris Williamson?

  Joe S. Hey, Chris. What is the single best advice you have heard for guys in their twenties?

• 1:09:59Chris Williamson?

  Work hard. Like, learn how hard you can work, actually. Push yourself to the limit, the absolute limit of how hard you can work, because that is going to set a tone of what you can expect from yourself later in life. Learn to love work. Learn to love working. Learn to love working hard. Learn to appreciate sacrificing now for rewards in the future. Joseph Tucker, how do you think YouTubers will adapt their style in 2023? Are you planning to do anything differently? This short form stuff seems to be a big part of it. Like, people are really pushing hard for YouTube Shorts.

• 1:10:37Chris Williamson?

  I don't think the audiograms are going to take off. I don't think you're going to see those like audio clips where there's no video associated with them and it's a waveform with captions. Just don't think that they're able to compete with video clips. So all of these sort of clipable audio services, I don't think that it's there. When you, when almost all podcasts are available in video, audio isn't going to take over in clips.

• 1:11:02Chris Williamson?

  In terms of adapting stuff, we're just going to keep on doing what we do. The conversations that I have, the quality of them in terms of the guests that come on, the room that they have to breathe, the reasonableness and the insightfulness of the audience, you guys. And

• 1:11:20Chris Williamson?

  keep on doing those big productions, like what you're going to see from the Goggins episode, which, again, I, like, if I could get four or five of those a year out,

• 1:11:32Chris Williamson?

  I don't need to do anything else. I can keep ticking over with the normal episodes and those will be the flagship, super eye-catching growth engine bits. It'll be perfect. Incredible Met, "Hey Chris, love your work. You talk a lot about the manosphere and the issues that they address heavily in their content with your guests. Do you plan on having a conversation directly with a few of those guys and gals in that space anytime soon?" It depends on what you mean by manosphere. It depends on whether you mean David Buss and Jeffrey Miller, who are the guys that did the studies, that the guys in the manosphere

• 1:12:09Chris Williamson?

  misquote or turn into their own. Like, I much prefer going to the actual source. If I'm going to talk about hormonal birth control, I don't want to do it with some guy that once was like part of a men's rights Reddit thread and wants to say about how hormonal birth control is allowing all women to be sluts. I'd rather speak to Dr. Sarah Hill, who is the woman that did the work. The manosphere at the moment needs like, I don't know, it needs sanitizing. It needs to be more collaborative. It needs to be more mindful. It needs to be more holistic. It needs to be more positive. It is a fucking negative space to be in and it needs to not see women as adversaries. Like, I don't consider myself a part of the manosphere. I don't consider myself a part of Red Pill.

• 1:12:54Chris Williamson?

  I'll keep on speaking to the people that do the research and having great conversations with them about their insights. Maybe at some point in the future, but I, I don't feel like I have a massive amount to gain from that just yet. We'll see. Boyo Terry, hi Chris. How have you managed to avoid any drama? I have thought about doing something in the public arena of social media. It looks fun and gives me a chance to flex my social and creative muscles, but I was a bit of a lad in my younger years. I'm nervous my past will come back to haunt me. How have you managed to avoid this? Any tips? I don't know. I don't know why drama hasn't come chasing me down. I make a point of not calling people out, except for Brian Rose from London Real. In fact, no, I just make a point of not calling out people that aren't egregious assholes.

• 1:13:36Chris Williamson?

  If you're a complete dick, fine, you're up for debate with me. But as far as I'm concerned, I would much sooner have a positive conversation about something that's interesting as opposed to try and kick off beef. I think you don't really have much to worry about. The likelihood of you getting to the size where something from your past would come up to then destroy your current, what you have built is relatively small. And if you do get to that stage and you're being honest and truthful and you integrate that previous lad version of yourself into who you are now, you're basically uncancellable and that's hopefully the situation I'll get myself toward as well. Malcolm J, hey Chris, thank you for all the work you've done this year. Your podcasts have been super insightful and eye opening.

• 1:14:19Chris Williamson?

  I've been wondering whether you would ever do some kind of collab with Lex Fridman. Cheers and happy holidays from Miami. Thank you very much. Yeah, Lex is a busy guy, but me and him spent not Thanksgiving just gone, but the one before that together. Got on super well. Yeah, I would like to do some work with him. Maybe 2023 will be the year we're both in Austin together, but the guy's busy. He's building robots and trying to save the world. So, you know, it'll happen when it happens. Raymond Tendao, do you meditate? If yes, I'm curious to know how it has impacted your wellbeing. Yes, I have. I've probably done between 1,000 and 1,500 sessions over the last six years, something like that. So not massive compliance, average length of probably between 10 and 15 minutes.

• 1:15:03Chris Williamson?

  About half of that has been guided through a combination of headspace and waking up. And fuck, what's Corey Allen's thing? Whatever Corey Allen's meditation program is, and the other half has been unguided. It massively impacts my wellbeing. It makes me more calm. It creates a mindfulness gap in between stimulus and response. It gives me better insight into my own thoughts. I mean, it's phenomenal. It's been one of the big changes that I made. Vendant Patel, from where do you buy your t-shirts, Chris? I'm going to guess that you mean the ones that I wear mostly on the big episodes, because I get asked about those a lot, and they're Zara. I think I'm an XL in Zara because they're made for teeny tiny little European men.

• 1:15:48Chris Williamson?

  But those are pretty great quality, like smart, work perfectly well, great quality cotton, and they last for a good while. Other stuff, a lot of Jimm Shark, obviously. Pretty much all of my wardrobe now is Jimm Shark and Zara. That's it.

• 1:16:06Chris Williamson?

  Anna, congrats. I listen to your podcast every week. Question, where should women seek advice to become better mothers?

• 1:16:18Chris Williamson?

  I literally don't have an answer to that.

• 1:16:21Chris Williamson?

  I don't know, which is pretty damning. If you have any suggestions for where women can find advice about how to become better mothers, please put it in the comments.

• 1:16:32Chris Williamson?

  Joey Starr, what's your advice for a young man in his early twenties not wanting to fuel the promiscuity train, but rather find a good quality woman to settle down with and have a family? They're out there, man. There are girls that are ready to settle down. Oh, there's more. This is a predicament many young men are facing. Not all of us want to submit to the degeneracy and savagery of the dating market. For many of us, following the traditional virtuous route is more appealing. However, finding a woman who hasn't been dragged through the promiscuity phase is difficult. But you're 20, they probably haven't had a chance to get through it. So go on as many dates as you can, as quickly as you can. And find the one that's right and make a life with them. My business partner and his misses, I think, started dating when they were 19. They're now 34, 34 and 35, three kids, two dogs, white picket fence, perfect life.

• 1:17:17Chris Williamson?

  Like, get started and behave in the same manner that you would want the partner that you're trying to find to behave in. So don't go out on dates and try and fuck them on the first night. Like, spend time, make them aware that this is something serious, not something that you're looking for that's transactional.

• 1:17:34Chris Williamson?

  Harry Lees, what is your favourite UK city? Edinburgh by far, it's like real world Harry Potter land. Con McClosky, are you on TRT? No, never been on TRT, would consider it, would like to be on it, but no. Niklas, what is your opinion on Andrew Tate being unbanned on Instagram? Fine, like, I don't mind too much, really. I don't know what he did to get banned in the first place and his Instagram's kind of funny. Gavin, what's the simplest and most effective way to trim your pubes going into 2023? I would say Manscaped, Lawnmower 4.0, that's the way that I do it. It seems pretty useful to me.

• 1:18:17Chris Williamson?

  Triggered London, what do you think about WEF and Jews?

• 1:18:24Chris Williamson?

  That's going to be a difficult question to answer without getting cancelled, is it? Well, actually, no, it's not, I just don't have any thoughts on it, like, what do you mean? What do you think about WEF and Jews?

• 1:18:40Chris Williamson?

  They share a lot of letters in the name, I don't know, I haven't done my research on that stuff. Ted Wunderlich, do you think that the revered historical figures had the reputational luxury of not living in a time with the internet? Where they couldn't have their legacies blown with bizarre interviews or bad tweets? Or a TMZ video or a leaked nude or text or something? Would we view many of these people differently, possibly with less reverence if they were alive now? Fucking great question, yes, 100%.

• 1:19:11Chris Williamson?

  Mutants of the world would be seen through this much more broad lens, right? An entire worldview of this entire person, all of his foibles, the fact that he was like, just a horrible person by the sounds of things, that also happened to be genius. At the moment, separating the art and the artist are almost impossible because people are their opinions, they are their takes online, and no one that is famous and good at one thing doesn't decide to have takes. It would be an entirely different world if that happened. Cole Campbell, what is something that you are still proving to yourself even at this stage of your podcasting career? Fuck, that's a good question as well. Um, still the worthy of love thing, I think, that even more than that, actually, that

• 1:20:00Chris Williamson?

  there's been a big change over the last 12 months of how

• 1:20:07Chris Williamson?

  much attention and how many opportunities I've been getting, like the number of things that have come in, sponsor opportunities, paths that I could go down, ways that I could be distracted have been like insane, but my lack of confidence or like vestigial lack of confidence still lingers there. So the imposter syndrome is still pretty real, but that's starting to get to drop away, which is nice. But proving to myself that like I'm worthy of love without having to offer people something in return, and also that I deserve to be here, I deserve to have the successes that the show's got is probably it as well.

• 1:20:49Chris Williamson?

  LJ22, status is a frequent topic of discussion on Modern Wisdom when covering topics such as intra and intersexual competition, cancel culture, group dynamics in the dating market. If you were to give the power to convey a higher status to a particular characteristic or trait that you feel is currently undervalued in society, what would you choose for the trait you select? Who do you think best demonstrates the virtue whilst not receiving sufficient recognition for doing so? Mothers, 100% it would be mothers. I think that the lack of pedestalization

• 1:21:21Chris Williamson?

  of motherhood makes it not very un-

• 1:21:28Chris Williamson?

  Aspirational, very unmotivating to want to be that and just pick any, any stay at home mum that decides to work hard, manage a household, which is not a small task. Make sure that the kids and everything else is oiled nicely. That would be

• 1:21:47Chris Williamson?

  if we got to the end of 2030 and that was starting to become more pedestalized again, that would, I would consider that a win. Claire McLeod, smashing it, 600K. My question, please, is there anything in your end of your review that surprised you? And if yes, why? Thank you. Haven't done my end of year review yet, so I don't know. However, if you want to do your own end of year review, you can go to chriswillx.com/review. You can see the process that I will be doing when I finish mine.

• 1:22:18Chris Williamson?

  I would guess that it will be, one of the things I would be surprised by will be the impact of having friends that believe in you and that support you and understand what you're doing. Like, that's a power that is very, very difficult to realise just how good it is. Steven Mrojo, any chance you're going to have Michael Malice on? Yes, for his new book, The White Pill, which I think you can get at The White Pill Book or whitepillbook.com. And I'm going to be speaking to him right now, today, while this goes out, and it should be live this Thursday.

• 1:22:56Chris Williamson?

  And then David Goggins goes live on Monday. So it's a good, very good week that we've got. Anyway, I'm going to leave it there. I love you all. Thank you. 600K is wild. One mil, maybe by the end of 2023, that'd be great.

• 1:23:11Chris Williamson?

  Keep sharing the episodes. The people that do, you are my favourite humans. It makes a massive, massive difference. Also, don't forget, if you want to get access to all of the episodes 10 hours before they go live on YouTube, you can subscribe on Spotify to Modern Wisdom or Apple Podcasts to Modern Wisdom. They get uploaded 10 hours earlier on there. For now, that's it. See you at 700K.

• 1:23:31Speaker 01

  Mr. President, my company foreme of the explosion on our rig. On October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me. Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 1:23:48Speaker 02

  What would happen if I stopped going? You start, you freeze in there, that's what.

• 1:23:52Speaker 01

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 1:23:55Speaker 02

  I'm not the first then.

• 1:23:56Speaker 01

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a middle out parent.