Rome, Greggs & Flat Earth | Catch Up 102

Jonny & Yusef from PropaneFitness.com join me again as we continue our Catch Up series. No agenda, no specific topics for us to cover, just us talking about what we've been watching, reading & experiencing in our lives. This week we're talking about my holiday to Rome, Yusef's disaster in Greggs, Jonny nearly being abducted, Flat Earth and lots more. Extra Stuff: https://propanefitness.com/ - Video & production by Dean Hindmarch https://www.deanhindmarch.com/ https://www.instagram.com/deanhindmarch - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/modern-wisdom/id1347973549 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0XrOqvxlqQI6bmdYHuIVnr?si=iUpczE97SJqe1kNdYBipnw Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - I want to hear from you!! Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Email: [email protected]

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

• 0:00Chris Williamson?

  Catch up 102, it went so well last time that we're gonna do another one. I went to Rom, to anyone who's considering going and hasn't been, it's fucking mint. You don't have any bum, have you?

• 0:10Speaker 01

  No. So.

• 0:14Speaker 01

  The most.

• 0:15Chris Williamson?

  Johnny's gone, Johnny's gone.

• 0:18Chris Williamson?

  It's like you're on a train.

• 0:18Jonny?

  The delivery of that question, Chris, was honestly artistic. I can't believe.

• 0:23Speaker 01

  You're on a train and someone pulls a hand.

• 0:25Jonny?

  The way you reacted to it as well, it was no shock. You don't know, do you? No, I don't. And then he said, your mate, your business partner, the guy with the beard, I was trying, I was putting a leaflet, promotional leaflet through his door and he was sat in the window and he got up and he banged on the window and went, what are you doing mate?

• 0:42Chris Williamson?

  Did this actually happen?

• 0:44Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 0:46Chris Williamson?

  So the reason that this has occurred is because on your letterbox, you have a statement.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  No junk mail.

• 0:52Jonny?

  The guy's reply was, he just shouldn't live in a student area, it wouldn't happen.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  That's, that's equivalent to she shouldn't have been wearing that.

• 1:04Chris Williamson?

  Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. Johnny and Yusef from propanefitness.com are here again. Catch up 102, it went so well last time that we're gonna do another one. Just talking about whatever, whatever the, whatever the fudge is going on.

• 1:20Jonny?

  Catching down.

• 1:21Chris Williamson?

  The first thing, the first thing which is going on is for the listeners at home who aren't watching on YouTube, you are missing out. My belated birthday present is adorned across my chest and it is.

• 1:31Speaker 01

  Glorious.

• 1:32Chris Williamson?

  This lovely saurine t-shirt.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  You're like the sun, being honest of. Plane.

• 1:37Jonny?

  Plane.

• 1:41Chris Williamson?

  It's a saurine t-shirt. It's got the logo from the saurine on it.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  Aeroplane, yeah.

• 1:49Jonny?

  No man, because it's a plain saurine. It's not the chocolate one or the banana one.

• 1:54Chris Williamson?

  Potentially be banana though. It's the same coloured logo. It's not, don't, stop kidding yourself, Chris. That is the plain saurine.

• 2:01Speaker 01

  For anyone that doesn't understand this, Chris's idea of a pre-meal snack is an entire saurine malt loaf of extremely dense, it's like the closest thing in food terms to a brick and a kilo of yoghurt.

• 2:17Jonny?

  Did you build a house out of saurine?

• 2:18Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, easily.

• 2:19Chris Williamson?

  You need to wait, you need to wait for them to air, wouldn't you, aerate and then you know they'd get a bit harder.

• 2:25Speaker 01

  It'd be so weatherproof though, like it would stand all weather.

• 2:27Jonny?

  So does that, that means it's a.

• 2:30Jonny?

  Cake, not a biscuit.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  Uh, okay.

• 2:34Chris Williamson?

  Biscuits got soft.

• 2:35Speaker 01

  So, so there's a story that every forensic accountant loves to tell because it's the only.

• 2:40Jonny?

  Jaffa cakes.

• 2:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:41Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  Can you relay that?

• 2:43Jonny?

  Oh god, I'll probably get it wrong. So you charge VAT on biscuits but not cakes because biscuits are seen as a luxury item. Cakes aren't.

• 2:54Chris Williamson?

  Because birthday cakes are necessity.

• 2:56Speaker 01

  Because of the queen, something to do with.

• 2:58Jonny?

  I think because cakes used to be made from um leftover necessity foods.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 3:04Jonny?

  Whereas biscuits aren't. I think this is right. I'm so sorry if it's wrong.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  This is just some like artifact of a time gone by.

• 3:10Jonny?

  Well, it's just the way that the three's are classified. So biscuits are, cakes are.

• 3:13Speaker 01

  Eh, Zvors are gonna be like, ah, Johnny, Johnny, do not.

• 3:17Jonny?

  So Jaffa cakes were like, like, we're, we're a cake mate, like, don't, we don't pay VAT.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  Fuck on me, yeah.

• 3:25Jonny?

  And then they were subject to the biscuit cake test, which was that biscuits go.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  Soft when left to their own devices.

• 3:34Chris Williamson?

  And what do they do?

• 3:34Jonny?

  They go hard.

• 3:36Chris Williamson?

  Unbelievable. So if you can develop a biscuit that goes hard.

• 3:39Jonny?

  Well, you haven't got a biscuit.

• 3:41Chris Williamson?

  No, but if you can develop a biscuit which gets harder.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Then you've ruined it for the whole of the committee.

• 3:45Jonny?

  What you got there, Chris, is a cake?

• 3:47Chris Williamson?

  Oh, but by that, by that logic, if you can have something which has the texture of a biscuit. But then goes, you, you have essentially a cake, a cake masquerading as a biscuit.

• 3:57Speaker 01

  Well, thi- this is why Jaffa cakes uh allow themselves to be, to evade the need to be tactable.

• 4:04Jonny?

  I just found a tiny little bit of my birthday cake on my nose there.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  On your, on your nose?

• 4:07Jonny?

  On my nose, yeah, I must have got it.

• 4:08Chris Williamson?

  Oh, I saw that.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  No one, no one decided, sorry.

• 4:12Jonny?

  Um, cause didn't your, there's another, another VAT, VAT banter. Um, great banter to your brother.

• 4:20Jonny?

  Did he try and ask for a bit of pizza heated up in Greg's?

• 4:24Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:25Jonny?

  They can't heat it up because that's bad.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  So.

• 4:28Jonny?

  Oh, wow.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  So I remember, um, we're not, we're not sure of the reason. I'm guessing that's.

• 4:33Jonny?

  I guess possible, yeah.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  I was driving my brother to the gym and sometimes I'll have to take care of him, you know, he's, he's, he's forty four. So, um.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  So I was like, right, before we go to the gym, are you hungry? He's like, oh, I'm starving. I'm like, okay, let's, let's just pull into the Greg's. Went in and he was like, and this is, this is him having a, a real problem because he's, he's wrestling with the moralistic attempt to try and be halal and the fact that he's very hungry.

• 5:03Jonny?

  Surrounded by sausage.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  Surrounded by sausage. So, so I was like, look, you should get the steak and cheese roll. It's fantastic. He was like, hmm. I'm like, you, you're trying to eat halal on you? And he was like, yeah, if I can.

• 5:14Jonny?

  Isn't that what you say?

• 5:15Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 5:15Jonny?

  It's like a French person saying croissant.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  Croissant, I, I like good to sack.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  Go to, go to that cool to sack and just.

• 5:22Jonny?

  Go croissant.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  The croissant.

• 5:25Jonny?

  Halal, that's it.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  Halal.

• 5:27Jonny?

  Halal.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I'm, I'm still anglicising it, but anyway.

• 5:30Jonny?

  Chris and I should try, should learn to try and correctly pronounce.

• 5:33Speaker 01

  You're, you're good with shatafa and Araq and.

• 5:36Jonny?

  Araq.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  Afghanistan.

• 5:37Jonny?

  Afghanistan is clumsy. Afghanistan.

• 5:44Jonny?

  Shatafa.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  Anyway.

• 5:47Jonny?

  Sorry.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  So he was like, okay, um, can I have one of those, um, veg, veg roll thing, veg pastries? And then we're like, oh, I haven't got any left. And we're like, okay, can I have the four cheese pizza? No, there isn't any. Like, okay, can I have that bit of pizza? But can I have it hot? And no, we, we're kind of heating them up. It's like, wh- why not, can you, is it hot? No. Or can you just, can you not heat it up?

• 6:19Speaker 01

  I was like, look, the steak and cheese rolls are hot.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  He's like, look, can you just, he's like, no, it's health and safety. And he's like, look, I don't care about health and safety. Can you just heat up? I just want to have a hot bit of pizza. And then, no, he's like, right. Give me a toffee yum yum and two chocolate eclairs. And so he's then had to go on to. Yeah, so he's had to have his like fifth choice down. Well, not haram, but like. Even that. So there's halal, haram and makru. Oh my god, what's the middle one? It's a makru, it's kind of, this is, it's kind of. No, don't worry, habibi, it's. So. What is, what is? It's like. Bit shit.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  Tax evasion, tax avoidance. Okay. Tax evasion, so. So sausage.

• 7:13Chris Williamson?

  Once, once was in a farm with a pig, but isn't a pig.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Can you define haram? Just forbidden. Forbidden. In, uh, Germany.

• 7:24Speaker 01

  Dubist verbotten is. What's dubious? You are forbidden. Alright, no, pork is bad. So, um, he's, he's then in the car stuffing in three creamy chocolatey treats that he really didn't want. Because they're fifth choice down, because he'd scuppered himself into having, basically, I'm hungry, but I have three constraints. I want it to be from Greg's, hot and halal. And that bit of pizza.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  So, the, the same Greg's. Apparently has this like, cause it's on quite a rough street, it's on Shields Road, and apparently, um, there's a guy that comes in and just nicks stuff. And quite often he'll come in, uh, this was Alex, he was saying that, um, he was in there in the queue and this guy ran in and took a tray of pastries and just ran out and all the staff just went. Not like, as if like, oh, not again. Oh, no.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  It was like, this is a frequent occurrence. You know what they need, security. Yeah, but then. Is it worth the paying the security man?

• 8:28Jonny?

  Yeah, what's the security guys hourly?

• 8:30Chris Williamson?

  What's the total cost of production of that tray of like four by six?

• 8:35Speaker 01

  It'd be like, cause they cost what eighty p each or a pound each. So even if there's twenty.

• 8:39Chris Williamson?

  RRP.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  RRP.

• 8:42Chris Williamson?

  RRP. Can we talk about the time when?

• 8:47Jonny?

  Can I tell my story?

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Oh, yes.

• 8:49Chris Williamson?

  This is a great story.

• 8:51Jonny?

  Okay, so today or?

• 8:56Chris Williamson?

  A while ago in podcast land.

• 8:57Jonny?

  Yeah, um, I was walking from my car to Costa Coffee. I won't say where in case anyone tries to follow me, but somewhere in Newcastle. And as I'm walking, this is gonna kind of give it away a little bit. So I'm walking past an EE shop, EE phone shop, right?

• 9:16Jonny?

  Standing at the door of the EE phone shop is a fairly well muscled man. Um, looking frustrated because EE isn't open yet, right? So I notice this. AirPods in actually listening to, uh, catch up one on ones. This is very meta.

• 9:31Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 9:32Jonny?

  Um, and I, I saw him see me. And then just like missile lock onto me and follow me along. And I noticed he like, like side eye him. Like, okay, side eye him again. He's still doing it.

• 9:48Jonny?

  Um, cause I did get started on the petrol station that time. Remember? So I'm just always, you know, whenever I'm around cars. Then see him turn around and run back towards a white van like, okay. Walk into Costa, order my decaf, of course, coffee. See him then run back towards Costa, come into Costa. And as he comes around the, the door, I notice he's got a handful of protein bars. I'm like, okay, he's got a T-shirt that says O T on it.

• 10:22Jonny?

  Like if this guy's coming to attack me, this is a very convoluted way of attacking someone. So he's like, hi mate, listen to the podcast, et cetera, all all these nice things.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  Saying I love how this is.

• 10:35Jonny?

  Familiar with modern wisdom, et cetera, um, got talking about, um. The protein bars that he was giving me to try and things like this, um, and then he said, um, actually. Your your mate, your business partner, the guy with the beard, um, I was trying, I was putting a a a leaflet, promotional leaflet through his door and he. He was sat in the window and he got up and he banged on the window and went, what are you doing, mate?

• 11:03Chris Williamson?

  Did this actually happen?

• 11:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. Do you know what? I I feel like, I feel like when I'm sat at my desk, I'm having to like defend.

• 11:14Chris Williamson?

  Ward off.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, so quite often people will bring their dog into into the little bit from my front door and try and make it poo.

• 11:22Jonny?

  Oh, really?

• 11:23Speaker 01

  Their dog, I'm not, I'm like.

• 11:24Jonny?

  Poo to their dog?

• 11:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like, cause even if they pick it up, there's still bits of.

• 11:29Chris Williamson?

  Residual floor poo, yeah.

• 11:31Jonny?

  So. I just, I just loved, I loved how long-winded that experience was for me for a scoby problem to happen.

• 11:37Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, so the reason that this has occurred is because on your letterbox, you have a statement.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  No junk mail.

• 11:44Jonny?

  The guy's reply was, he just shouldn't live in a student area, it wouldn't happen.

• 11:49Speaker 01

  That's that's equivalent to she shouldn't have been wearing that. He's encouraging rape culture and I think that's a reprehensible, not not really, thank you for the attempt at the O T bar. Sorry for any offence caused, um.

• 12:07Jonny?

  So he was, so actually, he he then went on to say that part of the reason why he now has a bar-based strategy, rather than a leaflet.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  Bar is a mu- much better.

• 12:15Jonny?

  These base strategies because of experience like that.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  Oh, mate, if if you had a bar and you approached the door.

• 12:21Jonny?

  Bar.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  A bar, then I.

• 12:23Chris Williamson?

  You're gonna have to have.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  Open arms, I'll be.

• 12:25Chris Williamson?

  You're gonna have to have an asterisk now that's like.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  Except free gift.

• 12:28Chris Williamson?

  No junk mail.

• 12:28Jonny?

  Items of value are accepted.

• 12:30Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, minimum, minimum cash value equals twenty five pence or above.

• 12:35Jonny?

  So you would, you would accept anything with a cash value, wouldn't you?

• 12:38Speaker 01

  No, because.

• 12:39Jonny?

  Because paper has a cash value.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then you end up with a bunch of.

• 12:42Jonny?

  What about anything that have a cash value over a quid?

• 12:44Speaker 01

  Because the ball ache of trying to find a market liquidity for that and sell it is, is a problem. What, what I love about your story is the instant frame shift from threat, big dude locking on to me.

• 12:56Jonny?

  Hmm.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  To put a protein bar in his hand, same situation, and it's suddenly, ah.

• 13:01Chris Williamson?

  Hmm, great, body power.

• 13:02Jonny?

  If you hadn't been wearing the T-shirt as well.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 13:05Jonny?

  As I am, yeah, because protein bar, like, maybe he needs a, a mid beat up Johnny snack.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Hmm, oh, yeah, that's bad. So I mean, because then you've got an energized man who's had, he's had, he's been fueled with his own team bar.

• 13:16Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  He's had his collagen, yeah.

• 13:18Chris Williamson?

  Um, I thought that your initial concern was going to be that you might be abducted and put into the white van. But I challenge anyone out there to move you to anywhere that you don't want to be. Because you, you are.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  Especially in a wide stance.

• 13:33Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  There's just nothing.

• 13:34Jonny?

  I think if I, especially.

• 13:35Chris Williamson?

  Braced.

• 13:36Jonny?

  I think if I, if like, if I was just lay there and he tried to move me. But I think if I, if I'm trying to stop him from moving me, it's.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  Even this.

• 13:45Jonny?

  It's certainly not going to be easy for him.

• 13:47Chris Williamson?

  No, not at all, so.

• 13:48Jonny?

  Because I hadn't had my coffee yet either. I'd ordered the coffee, I paid for coffee, I hadn't had it yet.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 13:52Jonny?

  So he tries to take me away then.

• 13:53Chris Williamson?

  Did he give you an O team bar in a coffee shop that sells essentially O team bars, like flapjacks?

• 13:59Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 14:01Jonny?

  And the, the woman was sort of like trying to complete the transaction with me. I was dealing with Mr. O team.

• 14:06Chris Williamson?

  Mediating.

• 14:07Jonny?

  Hmm. But I mean, it was a nice guy, nice man to give us stuff, listens to this podcast, probably listens to this.

• 14:12Chris Williamson?

  Fantastic, shout out.

• 14:14Jonny?

  So, yeah.

• 14:14Chris Williamson?

  Give us some O team bars.

• 14:15Jonny?

  One day, so he, he wanted you to, to promote. I said, I didn't know what your affiliations were.

• 14:20Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 14:21Jonny?

  Said, I don't get involved in this.

• 14:22Chris Williamson?

  I mean, the, the, the problem, the problem is that anyone who's had an O team bar knows why they're doing this much promo.

• 14:29Jonny?

  So you just had anti-promo there, sorry about that.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  Well, look, I'm giving it balanced.

• 14:33Jonny?

  So I actually, and I'm not, I promise I'm not affiliated in any way. I was actually quite impressed.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 14:39Jonny?

  I had a brownie and a, a protein bar. I was, I was quite impressed.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  Might not have tried.

• 14:45Jonny?

  They're from Whitley Bay.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  They, I've, I've never had them, can't comment, but.

• 14:49Jonny?

  They might be a ramen.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  That, yeah, if they're pig flavour.

• 14:54Jonny?

  Well, it can be pig flavour, that's okay.

• 14:57Speaker 01

  That's true. Smokey bacon flavour crisps are totally halal, but.

• 15:01Jonny?

  There it is again.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  Cheese, cheese, cheese and onion apparently or not.

• 15:05Jonny?

  Why?

• 15:05Speaker 01

  Well, they didn't, didn't used to be. They used animal rennet in them.

• 15:08Jonny?

  Rennet?

• 15:09Speaker 01

  Like the, the scooping from the stomach of, of an animal, of a cow.

• 15:14Jonny?

  Hang on, so.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  Fuck, scooping.

• 15:17Jonny?

  But the cow was, the cow's uneaten grass.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:20Jonny?

  And that, that's. And the grass is fine.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  That's happened. So I'm going to give an analogy for, so that.

• 15:26Jonny?

  Is it like hydrolyzed way?

• 15:27Speaker 01

  I mean, driving your car is totally natural because the, the oil, the petrol is from the oil, which is from the rocks and trees.

• 15:35Jonny?

  Cause.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  So your cars run on trees, it's, it's all.

• 15:38Jonny?

  So it.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  What the hippies worried about.

• 15:40Jonny?

  So the, the, the rennet.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:42Jonny?

  Is not halal, halal, because the cow's not halal.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:50Jonny?

  But the cow's alive.

• 15:52Speaker 01

  Well, they have to kill the cow.

• 15:54Jonny?

  To get the rennet. Do they? Right, they're just going with it.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Right, but.

• 15:58Jonny?

  Like an ice cream, like ice cream. So if it was a halal cow.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:01Jonny?

  Is that just where it turns upside down, cut, cut his throat?

• 16:04Speaker 01

  Then rennet. Yeah.

• 16:06Jonny?

  Then you get the rennet.

• 16:07Speaker 01

  Fantastic. I, I went to Rome. Yeah.

• 16:10Jonny?

  You didn't use the phrase when in Rome.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  I didn't do it once.

• 16:13Jonny?

  I didn't say to him, while he was there, make sure you use the phrase frequently.

• 16:16Speaker 01

  Opportunity.

• 16:17Jonny?

  Well, when in Rome, didn't use it once.

• 16:18Speaker 01

  Would, would your company have understood the reference?

• 16:24Chris Williamson?

  It's a really complex reference. Icelandic, Icelandic people probably don't, probably don't understand the reference.

• 16:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, they, they, they only have when in Reykjavik, when eating crop.

• 16:32Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, exactly. When having skill.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  Skill, how you say it?

• 16:36Chris Williamson?

  Skill, I don't know.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 16:37Chris Williamson?

  Can you believe, can we, can we please just divert for a second to uh work out how the fuck a company managed to own the word skier in the UK?

• 16:47Speaker 01

  It's amazing.

• 16:48Chris Williamson?

  Arlo. Arlo, oh, Arlo, own, skier. And it's shit compared to actual skier. Remember how animated they got about that? Anyone who doesn't know what skier is, it's, it's like very thick yogurt. Um, and it's. Chris, it's more than that. It is more than yogurt. I, I've done it in the service. I apologize. Um, but yeah, I went to Rome and to anyone who's considering going and hasn't been, it's fucking mint. Lush. So good, like just sensory overload. Couldn't. There was, I don't have enough mental ram to be able to take in all of the stuff that was going on. I'll send video guy Dean some photos so that you can see some of the cool shit that's all. Did you have a cappuccino? I had shit loads of coffee. We were up. Better than you, better than you thought? Same as?

• 17:32Chris Williamson?

  So had, this was, this was a bad bit of the experience. So I decided that I was gonna go like as phone free as possible for the entirety of the trip. So phone didn't go out with me on any of the the trips. Other people had uh like phones or whatever, recording shit and um.

• 17:50Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, left my phone at home and I decided as well when I got off the train that I was going to find my way to the hotel, like old school style. I was the first one to get to the hotel, so I didn't, I was like, I can take as long as I want. Um, walked the wrong direction immediately, straight out of the train station. Got off on the wrong side of the platform, walked the wrong way. Oh my god.

• 18:11Chris Williamson?

  It was bad start. And then I was like, I'm a little bit tired, early flight. So I was like, I'll get myself an espresso. And I'm just like totally blown away by these high stone streets, old, old, like um Italian buildings. On Italian coffee. Well, that, that, that, this, it comes to this next bit. So I ordered this coffee, going, going to this little cafe bar thing, pretty cool. Um, order espresso, one euro. Wow. One euro for an espresso. So like, what, eighty five p probably, something like that. I was like, I am gonna really enjoy it here. Eighty five p for an espresso and I'm just looking out the window because I can see the top of St Peter's Basilica, the Sistine Chapel and all that sort of bollocks over the far side. And I've put a small amount of sugar in just to sweeten it.

• 18:56Chris Williamson?

  And I'm just like stirring as I'm looking out the window, stirring, stirring away. Still stirring, looking out the window, look back down and I have managed to get all of the espresso out of the cup and on to the counter. It was just on the top of the counter. It's on some of the sandwiches that were behind the counter. It's on the front of the slanted front of the glass counter now dribbling down towards my leg. And the owner, who was over the far side and the waitress.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  It was like mamma mia.

• 19:26Chris Williamson?

  They were just looking at me, like no one warned me. No one warned me that as I was doing this, I was just sloshing.

• 19:33Jonny?

  Just aghast.

• 19:34Chris Williamson?

  You couldn't believe it.

• 19:38Chris Williamson?

  The owner actually just put his head in his hand and just went like.

• 19:41Jonny?

  Oh, gre, gre, gre.

• 19:43Chris Williamson?

  I was like, oh.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  That's, that's, that's Italian fury, isn't it? When you're like, oh man, he's gonna cause.

• 19:49Chris Williamson?

  He was so angry.

• 19:49Jonny?

  Sicilian mafia, yeah.

• 19:51Chris Williamson?

  And then I saw a man, I saw a man, it was about two thirty in the afternoon. Saw a man come in, order a large glass of red wine, say grazie to the people that were in there. Down it, walk out. It's like Italians have a fucking minute life.

• 20:07Jonny?

  This during the week?

• 20:09Chris Williamson?

  On a Thursday, Thursday, two in the afternoon.

• 20:11Jonny?

  We should live in the wrong place. We just live in the wrong country.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  Is that what it is? Did we talk about this last time where you're walking down like a Marks and Spencer on a Tuesday morning and like.

• 20:19Jonny?

  There's loads of people there.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:21Jonny?

  So I think if you walk into a, whatever the equivalent is in Rome. Everyone's just sloshing paninis and.

• 20:28Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, so but it was.

• 20:29Jonny?

  Very expensive pastry.

• 20:31Chris Williamson?

  Lots of pastries, so there's the big, the three Ps, big, big three Ps. Uh, pizza, pasta, pastries, like.

• 20:38Jonny?

  The penis.

• 20:39Chris Williamson?

  No penis.

• 20:40Jonny?

  No penis, no poo.

• 20:41Chris Williamson?

  No, neither, thankfully, although there may be, I need to do a stool sample. But yeah, like, um, the one thing that I wasn't aware, like, prepared for was the assault of gluten. Like, it is unrelenting. Everything is carbs. Like, you think that you're actually having chicken, but it's just like chicken shaped dough.

• 21:04Jonny?

  And they make it nicer by just putting fat and garlic on everything, don't they? It's bread, fat and garlic. That's just Italy.

• 21:11Chris Williamson?

  Went to a place, went to a place near Sorrento, uh, down on the Amalfi coast, just down from Pompeii, which is a Sunday, beautiful drive. Um, and went to a pizzeria where you buy pizza by the metre.

• 21:24Jonny?

  Oh, my god.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  Those places are.

• 21:26Chris Williamson?

  Legit, so they bring in.

• 21:28Jonny?

  Meters square?

• 21:29Chris Williamson?

  No, so it's what I can only describe as a, as a stretcher.

• 21:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:33Chris Williamson?

  So this guy has a three metre long, flat bit of wood. Some guy feeds it in from behind and there's all scaffolding, if you can imagine, it's like clumping down on the scaffolding and it gets slid towards him. Then he gets like some of the flour, throws it on, rubs it in, gets some of the dough, like whizzes it around, plonks it on. And then just to segment where one flavour of the pizza finishes and another one begins, just add some more dough. Rolls up some dough, strings it on, like creates a little barrier, little bread barrier. And then throws some toppings on that bit, some toppings on that bit, hives it in the oven, and then it, it comes out. And if you're eating from end to end, you and the other person have to shout to speak to each other because you're fucking miles apart.

• 22:18Jonny?

  Wow.

• 22:18Chris Williamson?

  But the man, it was like unbelievable, like very, very impressive place and. Like nine euros for pizza and ten euros for pasta.

• 22:30Jonny?

  So I, I went to room. I think two years ago and Venice a year ago.

• 22:36Chris Williamson?

  Mm hmm.

• 22:36Jonny?

  Rome, brilliant. Venice, just tourism.

• 22:41Chris Williamson?

  It's quite dirty.

• 22:42Jonny?

  Yeah, really disappointing Venice, I thought.

• 22:45Chris Williamson?

  I wanna go, I wanna, I wanna go to Florence with my mum this year. That's like the other big Italy one.

• 22:50Jonny?

  I went there, I went there like ten years ago, a long time ago. That's nice.

• 22:54Chris Williamson?

  No.

• 22:55Jonny?

  It, Italy's nice.

• 22:56Chris Williamson?

  You don't have any bum hair, do you?

• 22:58Speaker 01

  No. So. Who, so someone suggested, was it, uh, LifeLock?

• 23:06Speaker 01

  The most.

• 23:06Chris Williamson?

  Johnny's gone, Johnny's gone.

• 23:09Jonny?

  It's just.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  It's like you're on a train.

• 23:10Jonny?

  Delivery of that question, Chris, was, was honestly artistic. I, I can't believe.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  You're on a train and someone pulls the hand.

• 23:18Jonny?

  The way you reacted as well, it was no shock. You know, you're like, no, I don't. Brilliant.

• 23:25Chris Williamson?

  Um, yeah, so me and Daniel Sloss were talking about our individual strategies for how we.

• 23:30Jonny?

  Ane-tat.

• 23:31Chris Williamson?

  Shave down there.

• 23:33Jonny?

  Okay.

• 23:34Chris Williamson?

  Um, and we came up with the shame squat, which is pretty correct. Also, a. Uh, biomechanically very good position to poo in as well.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 23:45Chris Williamson?

  Un-kinking sphincter.

• 23:46Jonny?

  Rect, uh, rectum.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. This is, this is, so there's a product called the Squatty Potty.

• 23:52Chris Williamson?

  Just.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  Which, um, yeah, if you, if you struggle with poos. You can buy it. It's fits in a U shape around your toilet and it basically allows you to sit in a squat position.

• 24:03Chris Williamson?

  What's different? What is the difference between that and what five-year-olds use to help them reach the toilet?

• 24:10Speaker 01

  Oh, it's the same, but, but because, because five, you can buy one of them, but because five-year-olds have, they're smaller. Their hips are in more extension.

• 24:19Chris Williamson?

  You need to be in front of you, right? You couldn't be. No, my point is that a five-year-old steps up to wee forward.

• 24:25Jonny?

  But, so that's just a little step in front of the toilet.

• 24:27Chris Williamson?

  Okay, yeah.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  It's a full ring.

• 24:29Chris Williamson?

  So you need to be able to go narrow. You need to be able to squat.

• 24:32Jonny?

  It's a pregnancy pillow, but around the toilet.

• 24:33Speaker 01

  It, yeah.

• 24:34Chris Williamson?

  Need to be able to squat now to be able to do that.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  You could maybe even use your pregnancy pillow to double up. Wouldn't recommend it.

• 24:39Chris Williamson?

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna talk about my upgraded pregnancy pillow.

• 24:42Jonny?

  Don't, put it on the pillow.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 24:44Chris Williamson?

  Um, yeah, so Daniel Sloss, episode shame squat, shaving bumhole, nether regions.

• 24:50Jonny?

  How do we get on with that?

• 24:51Chris Williamson?

  I know he's. He hasn't got any, he hasn't got any bumhole. He hasn't got any bum hair.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  We're talking about recent, recent balometer and then suddenly.

• 24:58Chris Williamson?

  Hang on, hang on, we're, we're, we're, I've got a trajectory here. Hold on. It's towards. Hold on, how long have you not had Bumph for?

• 25:06Speaker 01

  It probably years.

• 25:07Chris Williamson?

  No, but like recently, how long has it been very, very?

• 25:10Speaker 01

  Oh, acutely, four days.

• 25:13Chris Williamson?

  So it's timely. This is a timely topic. Okay. And did you do it with a razor? Wait, wait, you're, you're jumping ahead. Stop it. Stop it. You're ruining it. Me and Daniel Sloss, shame squad, we said that you have to work yourself up because anyone who's ever used an electric razor, like even a normal, normal electric razor down there, like your scrotum is a.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  It's corrugated.

• 25:35Chris Williamson?

  Crinkly. It's, it's the fact that it's crinkly. Hmm. Like it's just built to get nicked by stuff and fuck, like it's so painful. And when it happens and what do you do? Do you stop? Do you keep going? You're like, oh, I've done half of it. Look like a man, Alan Shearer before he accepted that he was going bald.

• 25:56Chris Williamson?

  Alan, mate, honestly, what's this?

• 25:59Speaker 01

  Uh, the island.

• 26:01Chris Williamson?

  Do you know what I mean?

• 26:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:02Chris Williamson?

  That, just that. And so, and you, so we posted it. I've, I've talked about this online. Someone tweeted me and said.

• 26:11Speaker 01

  So Daniel uses just shaves.

• 26:12Chris Williamson?

  Daniel just shaves, same as, same as me, shame squad. And someone tweeted and said, uh, at Daniel, at Chris, use a both amateurs. Uh, Veet Sensitive Hair Removal Cream. I mentioned it once to Yusuf. We went to the sauna on Sunday and he said.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, so next Asda order, online, fully recommended. Never go back to a supermarket again. Never have to buy the Veet Sensitive in front of other people. Um, just talk about it on, online.

• 26:43Chris Williamson?

  So all of those people have free, unlimited access to it.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, but I would highly recommend for anyone for health, hygiene, speed. Uh, if you're a, you know, speed swimmer, speed runner, um.

• 26:56Chris Williamson?

  What, the aerodynamic efficiency?

• 26:59Speaker 01

  Exactly, just the.

• 27:00Chris Williamson?

  Aeroscope.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  Um, and just general quality of life.

• 27:05Speaker 01

  So.

• 27:05Chris Williamson?

  Was it, was it, was there any, how's the discomfort? Cause there's a tiny.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  None whatsoever. So.

• 27:10Jonny?

  Imagine it burns. That's.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  So, so the it as, yeah, I think it's important to get the V sensitive. I've not tried the V normal. So I can't.

• 27:17Jonny?

  V Pro.

• 27:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:19Chris Williamson?

  Because last time we were talking about Listerine and about the original.

• 27:23Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 27:23Chris Williamson?

  I actually quite like the Listerine that makes me go like. I don't think that the same can be said for being woken up by bum rash.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, the, I mean, the, as they say on the packet, you should test on a innocuous bit of skin first. Make sure there's no allergy. Make sure there's no.

• 27:40Chris Williamson?

  What was the innocuous bit of skin you chose?

• 27:42Speaker 01

  I, I didn't because I've used other, I've used previous hardcore V before. So, um, but, but you're right. Like I could have changed the formula.

• 27:52Speaker 01

  That's it. I'd probably.

• 27:55Chris Williamson?

  Probably very.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  Cause it's perfumed. And so if you don't know what we're talking about, read a recent article on propane about B P A and estrogens in the environment. Terrifying article. Basically, we're being poisoned left, right and centre.

• 28:09Chris Williamson?

  Well, I mean, you, you would never need V, would you? Because you are completely hairless.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  Below the bottom lip.

• 28:15Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  From the bottom lip. Yeah.

• 28:18Jonny?

  Yeah. Yeah. I am, I, I think fortunate.

• 28:21Chris Williamson?

  I mean, credit.

• 28:22Jonny?

  I don't have much to manage.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  Like I'm fortunate.

• 28:23Jonny?

  You're very hairy, aren't you?

• 28:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, but.

• 28:26Chris Williamson?

  Not for an arrow.

• 28:27Speaker 01

  In my family, I'm the least hairy. My brother, you, you know, the horrible bits of hair that you get like.

• 28:32Chris Williamson?

  Coming down.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. Hit, that's just continuous with his back. And then he's in Greg's and the guy in Greg's is like, why have you, why have you got such a hairy back? And he was like, look.

• 28:40Chris Williamson?

  He's like, just give me that fucking bit of pizza.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 28:43Chris Williamson?

  Man.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  So.

• 28:45Chris Williamson?

  Um, what have we been watching on Netflix recently? We start talking about something.

• 28:49Jonny?

  Ah, ah.

• 28:52Chris Williamson?

  Here we go.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  Flat Earth.

• 28:53Jonny?

  Flat Earther.

• 28:54Chris Williamson?

  I watched Flat Earth. Did you watch it?

• 28:56Jonny?

  I knew you'd seen something.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  I watched a bit of it.

• 28:58Chris Williamson?

  You fucking said that you hadn't watched anything.

• 28:59Speaker 01

  Well, that was, yeah, it was, it was back when we'd done the.

• 29:02Chris Williamson?

  Right, okay.

• 29:03Speaker 01

  In the, we're in the magical time.

• 29:05Chris Williamson?

  Podcast live. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. Um, yeah.

• 29:07Jonny?

  Are you a flat Earther?

• 29:09Chris Williamson?

  Believe the dome or something. Leave the dome.

• 29:12Speaker 01

  I was keen to become the Flat Earther. I was like, I'm really willing.

• 29:15Jonny?

  Exactly the sort of thing you would believe in.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  Like Socratically, I'm ready to like, to peel apart all of my beliefs and be like, right, is there a convincing argument? But the problem is.

• 29:23Jonny?

  It's like, uh.

• 29:27Speaker 01

  It's like a what?

• 29:30Chris Williamson?

  You know on it whether like when or where in your life are you a flat earther? The first thing I thought of was your uh every every week for twelve weeks when you went to that room and.

• 29:47Chris Williamson?

  I was like that that's if anything more extreme.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  And going under the water for an hour, like there's a lot of these things. So what but the problem is. So the the difference is I am an evidence based person and so in when there is evidence to. Pro or contrary to to a belief, I will adjust by I I'll happily shift on a dime. These flat earthers shift on a dime to twist reality to match their belief. And there's a really, really interesting clip from it. I think you will both both seen where. They they do this special test where they shine a a pinhole of light. Through a sheet with a hole in and then three hundred metres away, they have another guy receiving the light and based on the angle. That determines whether if they can, if the earth was flat, they would be able to see it. At the horizontal angle and if it's not, it would go up slightly.

• 30:35Speaker 01

  And so they tested it and it showed that the earth was curved or it showed a.

• 30:39Chris Williamson?

  Curvature.

• 30:40Speaker 01

  It showed a curvature of the.

• 30:41Chris Williamson?

  Well, he had to raise it, didn't he?

• 30:43Speaker 01

  He had to raise it.

• 30:44Chris Williamson?

  Raise it to to account for the fact that the the earth is.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, for the sort of calculated curvature. And so then they were like, oh, no, but um that's just because there's there's heavenly energies that are shifting the light and causing this. And what we need to do is we need we need to repeat this in a Gaussian chamber. And so they then repeated it. This guy like dropped twenty six grand to get a Gaussian chamber and they repeated the experiment. Same thing happened and they were like, oh, but that's because of there's a refractionary effect from the magnetic field and it's.

• 31:14Chris Williamson?

  There's a there's a bit where they they buy, isn't it like, oh, is it the twenty six grand? Right, and he says, one of the guys is literally saying, this could really throw a spanner in the works here. Be like, you are not trying to find out the truth. You are trying to find things which support your argument. That's just, it's the whole thing is confirmation.

• 31:37Speaker 01

  He was like, well, this better not get out to the the flat earth crowd if if it does show.

• 31:41Chris Williamson?

  I mean, that that whole documentary is a bit, it's it's funny, but it would make me more annoyed if they were less ridiculous.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:51Jonny?

  The the two the two questions that I would have for them is firstly, what do they think? Why do they think the lie is being protected so aggressively by Big Pharma?

• 32:04Speaker 01

  Such a pointless lie.

• 32:05Jonny?

  Like, like, who's who's gaining?

• 32:07Chris Williamson?

  CIA division.

• 32:09Jonny?

  CIA division, yeah. Like, who's who's gaining from the fact that we think the world, the earth is a sphere?

• 32:14Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 32:15Jonny?

  Whereas they are gaining financially in many ways from saying that the earth is flat.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  The podcast.

• 32:20Jonny?

  So where's where's the ulterior alternative motive? And secondly, like, save that twenty six grand and just fucking find the edge of it?

• 32:29Chris Williamson?

  Did you see?

• 32:30Jonny?

  Take a photo of the edge of it?

• 32:31Chris Williamson?

  Have you seen Alex Jones on Joe Rogan?

• 32:33Jonny?

  No.

• 32:33Chris Williamson?

  The second one. So anyone who is listening hasn't seen this, the man is a force of nature. So he, him and Joe Rogan had a pretty public fallout recently, and he basically called for the destruction of Joe Rogan. But he's this, you know, do you know how it means? Do you know?

• 32:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:51Chris Williamson?

  Do you know Alex Jones?

• 32:51Speaker 01

  He's he's he's like the David Icke successor in a way.

• 32:55Chris Williamson?

  Kind of. He's like a right, a right leaning American political commentator who's been deplatformed from a few different places.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  Round face, American.

• 33:04Chris Williamson?

  They're making the frogs gay!

• 33:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, very shouty, says psychotic things like that.

• 33:08Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  Really, like, talks about everyone, like, the big politicians being lizards and.

• 33:13Chris Williamson?

  So the but the the thing about Alex Jones that makes him so compelling is that he is such an unbelievable speaker. Like, I couldn't, he should go on. I admire him in a really bizarre fashion because his capacity to just elucidate everything. So you hear him speak and he's he'll be talking about the CIA and the moon landings. And of course, this is why it happened. And you know that dogs are psychic buffers? Yeah, dogs can be psychic buffers. They kind of take in auras. A little bit like the aliens do, but not the real aliens, because the real aliens are the ones that are connecting like intravenously with everybody. Like the grays, the grays, the grays are simply just like artificial intelligence. And you're like.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  Like so many, so many vast concepts just connected.

• 34:00Chris Williamson?

  And he just does, and Joe, Joe is like, try desperately, if there's anyone in the world that can wrangle a conversation like that, it's Joe Rogan.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:08Chris Williamson?

  And he is, it's like being pressure sprayed with just bullshit at all time. But he talks about, um, he was like, I will give a million pounds. He's like, I'm not a rich man, but I've got a million pounds. He's like, I will give a million pounds to someone to charter a flight to fly over the Antarctic. And he wants Eddie Bravo to do it. And he's like, Eddie.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  To find the edge of the earth.

• 34:32Chris Williamson?

  Yes, to see if he can find, because that's where they say it is, right?

• 34:35Speaker 01

  So, so you know how we, we, we see the North Pole as a point.

• 34:38Chris Williamson?

  Mm hmm.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  Whereas I guess they see it as like all the, the edge all the way around. So it's just all pole. So it's all.

• 34:44Chris Williamson?

  It's all south pole.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  The guy said, the guy, you know, the guy, Mark Sargent in the documentary said that he tracked flights and no flight flew over a portion of the ocean. And then someone just went on the internet and was like, oh, where's that flight come from? And where's that one going? But then he would say, oh, the, the site's fake. Or like, you know, there's always like a.

• 35:03Chris Williamson?

  Just challenge it. Yeah, there's always Big Pharma to blame if you need anyone to blame. So, but yeah.

• 35:09Speaker 01

  It's just this guy who owns a farm that's massive. Like he's a really, really large man. And he has to be big to handle the farm.

• 35:16Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Um, have you seen the, uh, most recent Amazon Prime documentary? Which is about Big Pharma and the effect of antipsychotic drugs on kids.

• 35:29Speaker 01

  No.

• 35:29Chris Williamson?

  So there is some really fucking harrowing research about the, I think it's the top ten antidepressants. And the fact that pretty much every mass shooting in America, the people, the perpetrators have had one or more of these drugs in them. And they wouldn't release the toxicology report of the other person from, what was the really famous one? Well, there was two of the guys.

• 35:57Chris Williamson?

  Uh, that Ben Shapiro called out uh Piers Morgan for saying.

• 36:00Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Sang.

• 36:02Chris Williamson?

  Sandy Sandy Hook. Um. They wouldn't release the toxicology report of the second because the first one came up that that he had like. X in his system and they were pretty certain that the second one. And if you had this big school shooting in both of the the common denominator. Uh. Denominated between the two wasn't that they both had like a previous history of mental illness. It was fact that they were both on these. Anti-psychotic drugs. Um.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  Surely there are lots of other commonalities like it, cause in that case it's hard to say whether it's causational correlation.

• 36:33Chris Williamson?

  They are, but the it was just something that Big Pharma wanted and it's that that's why they're literally not allowing them.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  The Americans are so bad. They they love over medicating kids with just it. So there was a. I remember, so my my dad was a psychiatrist and I remember showing him a bit of the Louis Theroux documentary. Um, whatever over medicated kids and there was a ten year old boy, he's eleven now, um, that had. Five diagnoses. He had a diagnosis of.

• 37:04Chris Williamson?

  I remember seeing this.

• 37:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, OCD, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, autism and ADHD. And he was on five separate medications for each of these conditions. The family were all on something, including the dog for PTSD, apparently.

• 37:20Chris Williamson?

  What the dog gone through?

• 37:21Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, exactly. So that's another, it's another flag on like the family just think like. Yeah, maybe. Let's just throw medications at it. And I remember my dad watching him being like, first of all, statistically. The likelihood of all of these conditions to be, you know, one in a hundred thousand.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  To get all of these simultaneously, plus this one is a chemical imbalance in this way and this one is in the opposite way. It is impossible to have both simultaneously. And these drugs have not been tested on people under eighteen years old. So. No, no, this is abusive. And but so what you've got is just like this idea that. We should just throw drugs at people, it's untested on those age range or whatever.

• 38:04Chris Williamson?

  It's it's only um.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 38:05Chris Williamson?

  America and Australia that.

• 38:08Speaker 01

  Are to advertise.

• 38:09Chris Williamson?

  They're allowed to advertise drugs.

• 38:10Speaker 01

  And and the others are like. Hey, do you wake up in the morning and feel a bit groggy? And then do you go to bed at night? And do you sometimes feel hungry? And do you?

• 38:21Chris Williamson?

  It's that, it's that um.

• 38:22Speaker 01

  What you need per cassette.

• 38:24Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's that scene from Chris Rock's stand up, isn't it? Where he goes, like, they just keep on naming symptoms until they come up with one that you've got.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  Nausea, headache.

• 38:33Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, he says, like, are you tired? Do your feet hurt? Are you bald? What have you got? He uses some language that I'm not going to try and use because it will get me in trouble. But, yeah, and and he just keeps on naming things. If you want to watch an awesome documentary, Prescription Thugs by Chris Bell, who is the guy that also made Bigger, Stronger, Faster. Um, and that is.

• 38:55Speaker 01

  It's a harrowing film.

• 38:56Chris Williamson?

  Fantastic. Um, and he, like, even on that, he was taking them and lying to the people that he was producing the show for, that he wasn't on them while he was on them, while he was doing a show about not being on them. And you're like, oh, this is pervasive as fuck.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 39:15Chris Williamson?

  So it's, it makes me so glad that we're in the UK, do you not think?

• 39:17Speaker 01

  It, cause it, it, it's the, it's not the drugs themselves, but it's the use of them. It's like having such a low threshold for like, I think people don't appreciate it because it's just a pill, like, ah, fine, like.

• 39:26Chris Williamson?

  I don't.

• 39:26Speaker 01

  You know, but because, you know, you take your paracetamol and there's no, there's no visible effect, yeah, so, um.

• 39:33Chris Williamson?

  I was trying to find a, I saw an image on social media the other day, which was like, um, I take this drug to deal with this side effect and I take this one to deal with this that I get from taking this, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, because, um,

• 39:48Chris Williamson?

  like, diet, training and and sleep and lifestyle management is just too much hassle, something like that. But it's, I suppose, the, they, they, because it's branded and because it's solution based to problems that people are experiencing, it's not like.

• 40:02Speaker 01

  It's just the, it's.

• 40:03Chris Williamson?

  I'm unwell, therefore drug.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  It's the quickest, easiest fix, isn't it?

• 40:07Chris Williamson?

  Even, I remember being in Vegas in a pool, shattered, like, you know, you're like, you're hungover, dehydrated, you, you're in the desert, you're, uh, jet lagged.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  Well, hang on, mate, like.

• 40:18Chris Williamson?

  You're in a pool in baby.

• 40:19Jonny?

  No, no, that's great. So I was, we, we, we were speaking to this, this group of girls who were from like, I don't know, somewhere in America, but they'd still had a long flight, like two or three hours or something, you know, boo hoo. Um, and I was like, yeah, I really struggle to get to sleep on planes. And like, what do you mean? I was like, I really struggle to get to sleep on planes. And their answer's just Xanax and out. And I'm thinking like, well, can I get some melatonin?

• 40:46Chris Williamson?

  It's not quite the same.

• 40:47Jonny?

  Yeah, but I, I don't even know, what is Xanax? Like, I imagine it's a brand of a drug that's also available in the UK.

• 40:54Speaker 01

  I, I think it's Diazepam. It's an American trade name, but.

• 40:58Jonny?

  What? Um, solid snake, snake text.

• 41:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:04Jonny?

  Metal Gear Solid.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  If you take too many, then it like.

• 41:07Jonny?

  He goes.

• 41:07Speaker 01

  Do you drop his health or something?

• 41:08Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 41:10Chris Williamson?

  And it's just that.

• 41:12Speaker 01

  Let's look it up.

• 41:12Chris Williamson?

  The first, um, the first port of call, it would appear for a lot of Americans, just Medicaid.

• 41:17Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 41:18Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. And I was thinking about this earlier on. So in Life Hacks one or seven, we talked about the Pomodora technique and I'm currently reading Deep Work. Um, which I'll be done on soon. And we're going to start doing, uh, essentially a Modern Wisdom Book Club, which is where we'll review books that we've read and then deliver some like key readings and stuff like that. So if there are any books that you want us to cover or that you've read that we think that we should, drop it in the comments below. Um, but

• 41:45Chris Williamson?

  I partway through like fifty pages in a deep work and it's just delivering some real home truths to me. Um, which I really, I don't want to swallow.

• 41:54Jonny?

  Wait till you read Digital Minimalism.

• 41:56Chris Williamson?

  Struggling to swallow. I've listened to the Sting preview. Yeah, it'll be.

• 42:00Jonny?

  It, you know, it works being punched in the gut.

• 42:02Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 42:03Jonny?

  Digital minimalism, someone just going with like sharp things at your eyes.

• 42:06Speaker 01

  Really? Much worse.

• 42:08Jonny?

  I thought it would be.

• 42:08Chris Williamson?

  It's just like, but both of them are just like, you twat.

• 42:12Speaker 01

  So like you've been fully sucked into this.

• 42:14Chris Williamson?

  And do you know, do you know what I started thinking about with that is the equivalent situation that appears to be occurring in so many different areas of life. Same in, uh, training and wanting to get lean and.

• 42:28Chris Williamson?

  Same in working and the same in dealing with emotions or feeling feelings. Feeling feelings, these feelings are uncomfortable, I'm gonna medicate my way out of it. It's I'm not being productive enough, a- as opposed to. Let's spend some time doing some introspective work, actually work out what the fuck is wrong with me. Or why I feel this way, et cetera, et cetera, do do the work. Um, I'm not being productive enough, therefore I'm gonna take some nootropics, which are these. Unproven, like untested drugs and just throw them in me and see what happens. Or I'm gonna fill myself full of loads of caffeine, or I'm going to work. For inordinate amounts of time to get an amount of work done that could have been achieved in five hours.

• 43:09Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 43:09Chris Williamson?

  Instead of actually tackling the issue, which is I do. Low concentration diffuse work across a lot of different tasks and don't actually do a lot of what you can tell I'm taking it.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  It's such a high, that's such a high yield thing to fix before you start on the nootropics.

• 43:23Chris Williamson?

  And then, yeah.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  It's like the the guy who doesn't train, doesn't sleep, doesn't eat properly.

• 43:27Jonny?

  This is how I felt about Alfred. This is where my.

• 43:31Chris Williamson?

  Effi- efficiency versus effectiveness.

• 43:33Jonny?

  It felt like pouring fuel on a fire that's barely burning.

• 43:36Speaker 01

  So the the Tiago Forte's productivity pyramid really slots it into place.

• 43:41Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 43:42Speaker 01

  Cause then it's like, ah, that's just computer literacy, but it's only part of the pyramid. And it's like saying. You know, get your calories in place, but you eat it all from cake. And it's like, okay, well, I need to fix that.

• 43:51Jonny?

  Well, it's doing something fast, but if you're doing something inefficient. Or ineffective fast, it still is ineffective.

• 43:58Chris Williamson?

  He's going quicker in the wrong direction.

• 43:59Jonny?

  Yeah, or slow, still needing slowly, but.

• 44:03Chris Williamson?

  I'll tell you what, one of the, one of the quotes from James Clear's Atomic Habits, which I really fucking love and I never thought of before. Was where he says, um.

• 44:15Chris Williamson?

  He's talking about people who are working hard and working effectively. Haven't achieved their goals yet and are feeling dissatisfied. And he said, being on the correct trajectory and being concerned about not getting, about not being there yet. Is the same as getting in your car to drive to a destination and complaining that you haven't arrived.

• 44:34Jonny?

  Yep.

• 44:35Chris Williamson?

  You're like, you're going in the right direction at the speed. Yeah, there is nothing to do other than just continue to make the car go in the direction it's going in.

• 44:44Speaker 01

  So I I digitally minimally tweeted about this today.

• 44:48Chris Williamson?

  Did you Alfred it?

• 44:49Speaker 01

  Uh, no.

• 44:51Jonny?

  Didn't tweet from Alfred.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  Tweet Alfred doesn't seem to.

• 44:53Chris Williamson?

  Need to press command return.

• 44:55Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 44:56Chris Williamson?

  If you press return, it deletes it. If you press command return, it tweets it.

• 44:59Jonny?

  There's a healthy skepticism there in this response. Did you understand?

• 45:02Speaker 01

  Well, no, I have to. Yeah, I have to test that.

• 45:05Chris Williamson?

  I am tweeting to prove Yusuf wrong. Command return.

• 45:13Speaker 01

  Fine. And then does it come, does it come up and say?

• 45:15Chris Williamson?

  No, I've got, I've got.

• 45:16Speaker 01

  Do not disturb.

• 45:16Chris Williamson?

  Do not disturb.

• 45:17Speaker 01

  Good. So, yeah, anyway, tweeting today, just saying a quote from one of our articles. The bad news is there's no way to accelerate the process. The good news is there's no way to accelerate the process. And it's actually so liberating when you fully get that, because it's like.

• 45:34Chris Williamson?

  Just long for the ride.

• 45:34Jonny?

  People still have an anxiety though, because the.

• 45:36Speaker 01

  But how do we get faster?

• 45:38Jonny?

  Well, but they worry that. Because they're not, they're not, because they're not there yet. They think, well, I'm, I'm, I'm moving in the wrong direction, don't they?

• 45:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:46Jonny?

  It's like, I should be there. I'm not there. Maybe the process is wrong.

• 45:50Chris Williamson?

  It's the open loop, isn't it?

• 45:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, that is the.

• 45:52Jonny?

  I think that what all these books are making me realise is that I actually haven't got a clue how to just manage myself.

• 46:01Speaker 01

  It's so frustrating after all the years of what we're doing. Because each book just points out a big, you idiot there and there. And you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, fine.

• 46:11Jonny?

  So deep, deep work, Atomic Habits. Digital minimalism, probably less so. I think digital minimalism is like, these are the two things you need to do. And this, and digital minimalism, minimalism, minimalism is just dealing with the shit.

• 46:22Chris Williamson?

  Get some stuff out of the way maybe.

• 46:24Jonny?

  Yeah. I'm reading the life-changing.

• 46:28Chris Williamson?

  Art of not giving a fuck.

• 46:29Jonny?

  No. Um, no, he's just releasing a new book, actually, Matt Manson. Um, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up or something by Marie Con- Connor, Condo.

• 46:41Chris Williamson?

  Right.

• 46:42Jonny?

  But.

• 46:44Jonny?

  Okay.

• 46:47Jonny?

  But to be honest, it's it's a similar approach towards personal organisation to your physical spaces. And again, you just realise, she makes a point in the book of like, no one ever teaches you how to like organise, effectively organise your spaces.

• 47:04Chris Williamson?

  Well, like Sam Harris fucking hits it on the head as much as people might not, like he he's a little bit out there and a kind of a bit of a wanky intellectual for probably a lot of people.

• 47:14Jonny?

  Speaks speaks like a written essay.

• 47:16Chris Williamson?

  Super slowly, yeah, full prose. Um, but he hits nail on the head and says, um, much of our lives are taken up learning how to live. Once we find an approximation of it, we stick at that for the rest of our days. And you're like, fuck, yeah, you are right. Like I just work out some approximation of how to live effectively, say, that'll do. And then double down on it for the rest of of time and.

• 47:42Jonny?

  That's what we should do.

• 47:43Chris Williamson?

  No, no, that's what people do, do.

• 47:46Speaker 01

  Rather than optimising to.

• 47:48Chris Williamson?

  At all times.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  I think it's it's easy also, though, to get stuck in constantly optimising and never actually doing anything.

• 47:54Jonny?

  Well, that's the difference between um being on receive and being on send, right?

• 47:58Speaker 01

  Like the mindless accumulation. I've I've I'm I I struggle with this. Like I've just I just mindlessly index reams of data and stuff. And then it's like, well, hang on, I haven't actually implemented any of this. And I think Johnny started to do the opposite really effectively um after Garrett J White's then, which was just, you read a book and rather than read it from cover to cover, every time you come across it, like, ah, you then stop, reflect on it, do the thing and then teach it to someone else, or like create a bit of content about it. And then you've.

• 48:30Jonny?

  To just solidify.

• 48:31Speaker 01

  You've already cemented it in.

• 48:32Chris Williamson?

  It's a good way to do it, although if you're reading a book that like Atomic Habits, it would take you a year to finish because because every other page is actionable.

• 48:41Jonny?

  So I've heard I've heard a counter approach to that, which is that like, if you're reading the right things, the the things that need to stick will stick.

• 48:48Chris Williamson?

  That's Tip Ferriss, right?

• 48:49Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 48:50Chris Williamson?

  The good shit sticks.

• 48:51Jonny?

  I don't know.

• 48:51Speaker 01

  Just in time.

• 48:53Jonny?

  So that's, yeah.

• 48:55Chris Williamson?

  It's not quite the same as just in time, though, right? It's that it it's more like you will you will take your own top filtering.

• 49:01Speaker 01

  The best things, naturally. But then it means that's an argument to keep rereading books because at different stages of your life, different things will, yeah.

• 49:08Jonny?

  I think if you're reading to solve a problem or improve a specific thing, like if you're looking for an outcome from a book rather than just reading. You you're like looking for the answer. So when you find it, or you're looking for the insights when you find it, you remember it. So definitely the stuff that I'm like, it it happens especially with a course or um.

• 49:29Jonny?

  So like, so with digital minimalism, what I was looking for for that was like, how can I just improve my relationship with technology?

• 49:36Chris Williamson?

  Um hum.

• 49:37Jonny?

  So you're almost looking for like a model to.

• 49:39Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 49:40Jonny?

  Rest your attention on.

• 49:41Chris Williamson?

  Um hum.

• 49:42Jonny?

  Whereas if you're just reading a book, because you might find it interesting.

• 49:45Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 49:45Jonny?

  You just, it just kind of all goes.

• 49:47Chris Williamson?

  I mean, how much, how much self-development do people read from that sphere of books?

• 49:53Jonny?

  I don't.

• 49:53Chris Williamson?

  Where they're reading for pleasure, like.

• 49:56Jonny?

  I think people read because they, someone's told them to read it or.

• 50:00Chris Williamson?

  But even that, even if someone's told them to read it, it's that this will benefit my life, this will make my life better somehow. So there is a frame this is being draped over.

• 50:08Speaker 01

  It's easy to read that stuff for pleasure, though, if it's like, if it replaces, if it acts as a surrogate for the, oh, I'm I'm moving forward because I'm reading a book about.

• 50:17Jonny?

  The worst place to be is is having some really well-written notes on deep work while still working shallowly.

• 50:23Speaker 01

  Um hum.

• 50:23Jonny?

  Having some really well-written notes on atomic habits while not actually having any consistent habits.

• 50:28Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 50:28Jonny?

  You're like, well, actually, I'd have been better just not doing any of that. And then I wouldn't feel bad about not doing it.

• 50:33Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's the second order, the second order effect of knowing, knowing that you know it and still not doing it is.

• 50:39Speaker 01

  The second arrow. Speaking of optimizing, you've you've heard the Serge Faget interview.

• 50:47Chris Williamson?

  No, I've read his Medium article, which is like forty five minutes long.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah, similar thing. He's a guy who's, he's like a Silicon Valley tech guy. That's just decided to turn himself into an experiment and he's just nailing all of the nootropics and um testosterone.

• 51:04Chris Williamson?

  It's on like low dose mercury and lithium and.

• 51:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, low dose lithium, low dose thalapram, um it's antidepressant, uh clomid, clofimab.

• 51:14Chris Williamson?

  My microdosing MDMA.

• 51:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, my MDMA, um just basically.

• 51:19Chris Williamson?

  Really, some of these things. Almost cancel each other out or.

• 51:23Speaker 01

  Probably, yeah. He he basically just says, like, if I just try all of them and then something, like, he's like, I think the net benefit that I get eventually will.

• 51:32Chris Williamson?

  It was tracking, he's been tracking it a fair bit. So he's like, uh, the ultimate biohacker, tracking it a fair bit and having his blood stone and stuff. It's just not very, it's not a very scientific way to approach problems, is it?

• 51:43Speaker 01

  It's not.

• 51:43Chris Williamson?

  The anti, cause if he feels better, great, but like, do I just have to live this way for the rest of my life?

• 51:48Speaker 01

  I think, I think that's his intention. He's allowed, he wants to become a superhuman and try and like really elongate his life and, you know, he's like, I'm happy to be at the forefront of this. Um, but I suppose in his case, like, he he's got a lot of quite interesting, like, he, he, he goes and. There's like a agency where he pays Russian models to sleep with.

• 52:06Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, very open about his transactional sex life.

• 52:09Speaker 01

  Because he says, like, it's just, um, he wants to have no, he wants to have no shame about anything. So he's like.

• 52:16Chris Williamson?

  Including his sexual proclivities, like what he finds like attractive in the bedroom and stuff like that.

• 52:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, so he's like, I want my parents to listen to this and I want to, you know, just so that he can be fully. And he said, like, he's, he's trying to adopt like a never, never lie approach and never, um.

• 52:34Chris Williamson?

  I've got so much respect for people that do this, that they choose to do this like radical change. But it's so, I find him fascinating. I find people, I think there's so many people exist in this safe area. Of I'll do a bit of this and not that much more and guys like him are fucking.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:58Chris Williamson?

  Megged. What I, what I mean and what I find almost frustrating with it is that because he's doing it all at once.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  Um, yes, what.

• 53:06Chris Williamson?

  I'd like to find what it is. What, you know, yes, fair enough. The, the approach might work really well for him, but.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  But his.

• 53:12Chris Williamson?

  In terms of, for those of us who maybe don't wanna do all of it, you don't know what, what. His goal isn't to create a model for other people. It's just to make him as good as he's possible.

• 53:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's, like, I, I definitely get that, cause I think from our perspective, we're like, well, hang on, that we'd have to make one change and then determine the result and then. Whereas I think, yeah, he's just, he's deliberately shotgunning and just thinking like.

• 53:32Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 53:32Speaker 01

  That's just.

• 53:33Chris Williamson?

  I, I did a, a podcast which is now out in podcast land, uh, with a guy called Jordan Hall. Who basically worked, uh, he, he spends a lot of his time thinking about how to redesign civilizations.

• 53:47Speaker 01

  Is he, he's the one, one life hack a month thing?

• 53:50Jonny?

  No.

• 53:51Speaker 01

  Who is that?

• 53:52Jonny?

  I remember. Carl Sederstrom.

• 53:53Speaker 01

  Ah, okay.

• 53:54Jonny?

  That was really, I really like that one. Episode, I think it's forty. Eh, thirty eight, something like that. Carl Sederstrom, um.

• 54:01Speaker 01

  I like you.

• 54:01Jonny?

  Like, really fucking good. Um, but he, even he said on that, man, anyone who's not doing the Pomodoro technique, he said the best. Life hack that he came up with out of the entire year. But yeah, this, this.

• 54:12Speaker 01

  Crazy.

• 54:12Jonny?

  I know, unbelievable.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  How, how credible is that? You hear a man who's done a year of rotating life hacks systematically, he's like Pomodoro.

• 54:21Jonny?

  Pomodoro techniques, man. It is free.

• 54:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, fucking.

• 54:24Jonny?

  Free?

• 54:26Speaker 01

  All the other ones paid.

• 54:27Jonny?

  Well.

• 54:30Jonny?

  That, like with, with, with anything, like building habits, for example. Truly using the Pomodoro technique, really mastering it, it's really hard, really hard. I can do like a fifty percent deep Pomodoro quite easily.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  I can go a hundred miles an hour.

• 54:46Jonny?

  I know that. I know, well, it's kind of the D two. I do as well.

• 54:49Speaker 01

  I, I actually won an egg and spoon race once.

• 54:51Jonny?

  Really? I think it's important that none of us are underestimated. We can girdle the world.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  I mean, he, he knows the words to Candlelight.

• 55:03Jonny?

  Yeah, so do I. Thing is, your car does go a hundred miles an hour. It does go a hundred miles an hour, yeah. Um, so. Eight pounds. Eight pounds.

• 55:13Speaker 01

  I thought that was Kyle saying iPad.

• 55:18Jonny?

  iPad.

• 55:19Speaker 01

  iPad.

• 55:20Jonny?

  Definitely wasn't. We need to include the cassette boy clip.

• 55:25Jonny?

  What's that? That's what all those references are from. Oh, the. Yeah, yeah. Alan Sugar thing. Yeah, fine. Uh, video guy Dean will make Alan Sugar appear over our heads.

• 55:32Speaker 01

  And the Pomodoro article.

• 55:34Jonny?

  I'll put that in the show notes below.

• 55:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was a good, bloody good one. Was it the guy who came up with, was it the Anki CEO?

• 55:40Jonny?

  Different one. No, so there's a guy called like Chris Whitfield or something.

• 55:44Speaker 01

  He just tracked every Pomodoro in his life, including like climbing.

• 55:47Jonny?

  Oh, no, that guy, that is the Anki guy, yeah. That was a guy who was like. I just coded my own tracking software for it and logged it all. But there's another guy who was like, I was working forty hours a week and decided. I'm just gonna do eight Pomodoras a day and described how he was able to achieve the same volume of work.

• 56:05Chris Williamson?

  Do you remember when?

• 56:06Jonny?

  Deep work, innit?

• 56:07Chris Williamson?

  Do you remember when I got that message on Instagram off a listener who'd been, who'd heard us talk about the pomodoro technique? And had created his own spreadsheet. I sent you guys a screenshot of the spreadsheet.

• 56:18Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 56:18Chris Williamson?

  He's like, man, it's completely changed my life. I'm like, holy fucking shit.

• 56:24Jonny?

  I think just related to using pomodores for the rest of your life, I think that's how to ruin your life. If you start seeing everything as a pomodoro, I think it's purely for work. For me, as soon as the the timer goes on, I try my best to, timer goes on, cold turkey, email, WhatsApp message.

• 56:41Chris Williamson?

  It's like, you know, the noise from Who Wants to be a Millionaire when they start the quiz?

• 56:48Chris Williamson?

  Oh, yeah, that one.

• 56:48Jonny?

  Yeah, it's exactly like that.

• 56:49Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 56:50Jonny?

  Showtime.

• 56:51Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 56:52Jonny?

  Game on.

• 56:52Chris Williamson?

  Fuck about, cause Chris Taggart's here.

• 56:54Jonny?

  Yeah, Jeremy Clarkson.

• 56:58Jonny?

  And they've got a new helpline.

• 56:59Chris Williamson?

  Oh, he is.

• 57:00Jonny?

  You've got a new helpline, which is Ask Jeremy.

• 57:02Chris Williamson?

  Hey, what?

• 57:03Jonny?

  Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

• 57:04Chris Williamson?

  That's so narcissistic.

• 57:05Jonny?

  On TV.

• 57:06Chris Williamson?

  When?

• 57:07Jonny?

  It's been on for a while.

• 57:08Chris Williamson?

  Right.

• 57:08Jonny?

  Jeremy Clarkson's the new host. There's a new live line, which is Ask Jeremy.

• 57:12Chris Williamson?

  But he's the host.

• 57:13Jonny?

  Precisely. So the the light goes.

• 57:16Chris Williamson?

  Turned around to Jeremy.

• 57:17Jonny?

  And he goes, he goes, I don't know.

• 57:21Chris Williamson?

  What's the?

• 57:22Jonny?

  Every time.

• 57:22Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. What's the, what channel is it on?

• 57:25Jonny?

  Don't know.

• 57:26Chris Williamson?

  Must be ITV.

• 57:27Jonny?

  Think so. That reminds me, that's what I was gonna say. The thing that I mentioned before, I don't know why I pointed you, I'm sorry. The thing I mentioned before about.

• 57:34Chris Williamson?

  The big thing.

• 57:34Jonny?

  A documentary following, a documentary following a guy who'd been accused of a sex offence.

• 57:39Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 57:40Jonny?

  It's Louis Theroux and it's on BBC iPlayer.

• 57:42Chris Williamson?

  Louis Theroux is accused. Is Louis Theroux the sex offender?

• 57:44Jonny?

  No, Louis Theroux's interviewing him.

• 57:47Chris Williamson?

  Right.

• 57:47Jonny?

  I wish so much that I was Louis Theroux. Just had Louis Theroux's mannerisms.

• 57:52Chris Williamson?

  Have you?

• 57:52Jonny?

  I wish that I had the mindset of Mark, Mark Bourne from The Big Short. I wish I could ask questions like Louis Theroux.

• 57:59Chris Williamson?

  You, you've seen it. You've seen the clip of the Scientology trailer?

• 58:02Jonny?

  Ah.

• 58:03Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I've seen the full thing. Absolutely brilliant. And so. You're making a documentary as well. You tell him to stop and I'll tell him to stop.

• 58:09Jonny?

  So The Big Short, the guy who produced The Big Short, fantastic um film about.

• 58:14Chris Williamson?

  The two thousand eight financial crisis um is the exec producer on a new Amazon Prime documentary series with one of the actors from Harold and Kumar got a White Castle.

• 58:26Jonny?

  Okay.

• 58:26Chris Williamson?

  And it's the guy who was a very successful politician or like political advisor, worked in the Obama administration. It's one of the two main actors also. There's been a few things and it's just about money laundering and he.

• 58:42Jonny?

  That sounds class.

• 58:43Chris Williamson?

  It's fucking.

• 58:43Jonny?

  Is it out now?

• 58:44Chris Williamson?

  Available now, Amazon Prime.

• 58:46Jonny?

  Is it called?

• 58:47Chris Williamson?

  I can't uh uh this great beast that is the global economy, wordy title.

• 58:53Jonny?

  Yeah, someone needs to work on the headlines, don't they?

• 58:55Chris Williamson?

  It's all, it's kind of a bit, it's very American, but it's fucking cool. So literally the first episode is he gets given a fake one million dollars and has to work out how to launder it.

• 59:07Jonny?

  Oh, that sounds so good, Chris. I can't wait to watch that. I'm so excited. He's also, that director's also done um Vice. That's just been at the cinema, which is about Dick Cheney.

• 59:19Chris Williamson?

  All right, yeah.

• 59:19Jonny?

  That's cool. That's recommend watching that. So that he, there's a scene where nine eleven's just happened. Dick Cheney's played by Christine Bale. Nine eleven's just happened and everyone else is in like fucking uproar. And Dick Cheney's just sat there.

• 59:33Chris Williamson?

  Shorting the S and P.

• 59:35Jonny?

  So it's not far off. He's sat there just thinking and then picks up the phone and it pans out and it's like, no one knew on that day. Why, when a plane flew into the Twin Towers, Dick Cheney rang his lawyer. But it later turned, and then it shows basically how he just like manipulates his way like, cause he's painting a very bad light.

• 59:53Chris Williamson?

  Uh, what, what did he do?

• 59:55Jonny?

  So he was the vice, he was the vice president to George Bush.

• 59:58Chris Williamson?

  Right, but no more. What did he do there? Just capitalize?

• 1:00:00Jonny?

  Like, so a lot of the Iraq war, a lot of the decisions made around like when to invade and what to do were him.

• 1:00:06Chris Williamson?

  What was he, how was he benefiting?

• 1:00:08Jonny?

  Financially.

• 1:00:09Chris Williamson?

  Right, okay.

• 1:00:09Jonny?

  So he was, he was CEO of a big oil company. So not, not far off.

• 1:00:14Chris Williamson?

  Not big far.

• 1:00:14Jonny?

  So like, not big farmer.

• 1:00:16Chris Williamson?

  Easier just show the C F.

• 1:00:17Jonny?

  But it's just, it's the, it's the scene where everyone's like, oh, I got it. And he's just like.

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  It's I find that so weird because it's like.

• 1:00:25Chris Williamson?

  Is that actually recorded that?

• 1:00:27Jonny?

  No, well, it's not in the film.

• 1:00:28Chris Williamson?

  Right.

• 1:00:29Jonny?

  But I I wouldn't have thought so because it's in like the it's an it's acted in the film.

• 1:00:32Chris Williamson?

  That's my point, it's dramatized.

• 1:00:34Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:34Chris Williamson?

  Okay, um I did a another podcast with the FBI's uh ex head of the FBI's Behavioral Science Division. Guy called Robin Drake, um so he is one of the world's experts on uh body language.

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  I think I've seen something from him.

• 1:00:50Chris Williamson?

  He's Robin, he's he's been around a few different uh a few different podcasts, but he was unbelievable. And he said he started at the FBI about six months before nine eleven.

• 1:01:00Jonny?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:01:00Chris Williamson?

  And I asked, I was like.

• 1:01:02Jonny?

  Think of the paperwork that guy's.

• 1:01:03Chris Williamson?

  What man.

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  That's it, you know, we were saying last time about when someone goes into the back of you and it's just all the paperwork just flash in front of your eyes.

• 1:01:11Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:11Speaker 01

  It's that times.

• 1:01:13Chris Williamson?

  A lot. I mean, that is a lot of paperwork, isn't it?

• 1:01:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:17Chris Williamson?

  Anyway, gentlemen, thank you very much for coming.

• 1:01:19Jonny?

  Um.

• 1:01:20Chris Williamson?

  Something else to watch, just s- sneak it in.

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  Lay it on me.

• 1:01:23Jonny?

  Um AlphaGo on Netflix.

• 1:01:26Chris Williamson?

  AlphaGo is unbelievable.

• 1:01:27Jonny?

  You've seen it?

• 1:01:27Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, fantastic.

• 1:01:28Jonny?

  If you watch AlphaGo, you'd like.

• 1:01:29Chris Williamson?

  Uh is it Lee Su Dong?

• 1:01:31Jonny?

  Yeah, have you heard of Go, the game?

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  Chinese board game.

• 1:01:35Jonny?

  Chinese board game, uh it's like apparently the hardest game in the world.

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:01:39Jonny?

  Um they build a deep mind, so by Google, based in London, it's just a bunch of really clever people. Trying to make an algorithm, trying to make AI essentially, and the mark of of AI is can we get this algorithm to beat? The best Go player in the world.

• 1:01:56Chris Williamson?

  Because they they managed to do it in chess, but they said essentially that because the number of permutations that Go can have, the number of different plays that you can have in Go is ten to the one fifty, which is more than there are atoms in the observable universe. Um so basically, it was so complex.

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  Four hundred and forty three billion, billion, billion, billion, billion.

• 1:02:20Speaker 01

  Stars in the known universe.

• 1:02:21Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Um if every tear was a drop in the ocean, it would um so, yeah, and they uh they said it wouldn't wouldn't be able to be done. And I want I want to buy.

• 1:02:32Speaker 01

  But then that that surely means that the human mind is just taking punts rather than like the the mind that someone, the best Go player is mostly taking punts and it's just quite good.

• 1:02:43Jonny?

  Well, no, that that's how do you program it?

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  Because if you can't pro like if because if he you can't program a human to do it, then you can't program a computer to.

• 1:02:52Jonny?

  So they're trying to create intelligence.

• 1:02:54Speaker 01

  Or the humans just making heuristic.

• 1:02:56Chris Williamson?

  Their argument is, their argument is that there is some uh undefinable characteristic to human intuition or whatever it might be, which you wouldn't be able to replicate. Then they do this, then, do you know about AlphaGo Zero?

• 1:03:11Jonny?

  Yeah, it's beat AlphaGo.

• 1:03:13Chris Williamson?

  A hundred games to zero with no, it was given nothing. So it just did self-play locked in its own box, wasn't given the rules.

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  Oh, scary.

• 1:03:22Chris Williamson?

  AlphaGo Zero started from nothing and within four days had beaten the game.

• 1:03:27Jonny?

  Someone needs to go down London and just unplug that.

• 1:03:29Speaker 01

  I don't like that at all. Yeah.

• 1:03:31Chris Williamson?

  But so um I've mentioned this on the last catch-up episode, Josh Clark's The End of the World. If you haven't listened to it, you need to go listen to it. It's fucking unbelievable. And in that, there's a fairly cleverly balanced view of the threat of AI. And it's that some of the cleverest people on the planet say that we are definitely getting closer to very, very good specific artificial intelligence. But essentially, in the last thirty years, we've made no progress towards general AI.

• 1:04:00Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:01Chris Williamson?

  And there's just, there's so many very difficult things to do, like to get a robot to be able to pick a ball up off the ground. It needs to define so many different things.

• 1:04:12Jonny?

  Hmm.

• 1:04:12Chris Williamson?

  What is a ball? What is pickup? What are the motions that are required? How do you do it? Like, it's impossible.

• 1:04:18Jonny?

  The worry is that you, you build something specific that becomes so intelligent that it's like, I, I now need to learn this as well. And then it, and it learns itself to be general. Do you see what I mean?

• 1:04:31Speaker 01

  This is why the, the book Superintelligence.

• 1:04:33Chris Williamson?

  Sounds, I, I, you promised, you promised me.

• 1:04:37Speaker 01

  There's a lot of that stuff.

• 1:04:38Jonny?

  About tagging up and stuff.

• 1:04:39Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I know you are.

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  Basically, the, the sentence that you just said, there's like, there's a chapter on, on that, like what-if question.

• 1:04:45Jonny?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:04:46Speaker 01

  And he just goes deep down the maths and like, if we define K as the integral of S over T, and this is equivalent to the number of neuronal connections that you have.

• 1:04:55Chris Williamson?

  You had to, you had to dial back the pace.

• 1:04:58Speaker 01

  To, back to two, yeah.

• 1:05:00Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, from three.

• 1:05:01Jonny?

  The, the Tim Urban, you know, Tim Urban's on the Flat Earth guy. They interview him a few times.

• 1:05:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:07Jonny?

  His interview with Tim Ferriss, he has the, the. The best like Fisher Price A I discussion I've ever heard. And like the the theory of what we know, are we going to live on planets or space stations like that? That interview is genuinely brilliant. So so many things.

• 1:05:23Chris Williamson?

  Let's let's recap what people need to watch and read.

• 1:05:26Jonny?

  So much stuff.

• 1:05:27Chris Williamson?

  Digital minimalism.

• 1:05:27Jonny?

  What if people have read none of this stuff, they're honestly in for the best like couple of months.

• 1:05:31Chris Williamson?

  Chris's work, Atomic Habits, um, then they need to watch.

• 1:05:36Jonny?

  It got you.

• 1:05:36Chris Williamson?

  But um, need to watch prescription thugs, need to watch this beast, uh, the great beast that is the global economy.

• 1:05:43Jonny?

  Bigger, stronger, faster as well.

• 1:05:44Chris Williamson?

  Bigger, stronger, faster, um, uh, what's that, the dome, under the dome?

• 1:05:49Jonny?

  Yeah, what's the flat earth thing called?

• 1:05:51Chris Williamson?

  Something to do with flat earth on Netflix, you'll be able to see it's been promoted like hell.

• 1:05:55Jonny?

  The new Louis through.

• 1:05:56Chris Williamson?

  New new Louis through BBC iPlayer, Alpha Go.

• 1:05:59Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:00Chris Williamson?

  Anything else?

• 1:06:01Jonny?

  Big short, if you've not seen that.

• 1:06:02Chris Williamson?

  Big short, if you've not seen that as well, yeah, unbelievable.

• 1:06:05Jonny?

  Margin call, if you've not seen that, Wizard of Lies, if you've not seen that, have you seen Wizard of Lies?

• 1:06:09Chris Williamson?

  No.

• 1:06:09Jonny?

  Brilliant. It's about um Bernie Madoff.

• 1:06:13Chris Williamson?

  Oh, I've seen it advertised, uh, the new um, Joe Rogan with Alex Jones. Four and a half hours of unrelenting.

• 1:06:24Jonny?

  It's what stops you from getting fully into Joe Rogan, cause it's just such a commitment, like that that'll take me like two weeks to listen to.

• 1:06:30Chris Williamson?

  So he does this.

• 1:06:32Speaker 01

  The way to listen to it is like what what Chris does where it's just on in the background.

• 1:06:36Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's a good way, especially with that one, you don't care, cause the problem, the problem that you have with an audiobook is you don't want to be doing anything else while you're listening to it that's too taxing in case you miss some of the gold.

• 1:06:47Jonny?

  Or even if you list five, five, you miss five minutes, you're like, oh, I don't know.

• 1:06:50Chris Williamson?

  What's going on? Whereas with Alex Jones, if you'd listen to five seconds, you don't know what's going on. So it's like.

• 1:06:56Jonny?

  Right, so you might, if you just never know what's going on.

• 1:06:58Chris Williamson?

  You're fine.

• 1:06:58Jonny?

  I really enjoyed the Elon Musk on um.

• 1:07:01Chris Williamson?

  Rogan.

• 1:07:01Jonny?

  Rogan.

• 1:07:02Chris Williamson?

  He was good.

• 1:07:03Jonny?

  And Darren Brown.

• 1:07:04Chris Williamson?

  Darren Brown was very good, very lucid, but Elon Musk didn't do himself any favors in not looking like a weirdo.

• 1:07:11Jonny?

  I think it's all part of his plan.

• 1:07:13Chris Williamson?

  To do what?

• 1:07:15Jonny?

  To get Tesla and SpaceX into massive exposure. How much traffic did that interview have?

• 1:07:21Chris Williamson?

  Well, zero to their Facebook, cause he deleted it.

• 1:07:23Jonny?

  I don't know. There's no way you fly rockets to Mars, make electric cars, try and revolutionise all these things, but you're you're a bit of a twat when it comes to your PR, like it's all it's all got to be on purpose.

• 1:07:38Chris Williamson?

  So he's got that kind of megalomaniac creative genius thing going on. Did you see the video of his new rocket mounted on the floor? The test burn?

• 1:07:46Jonny?

  No.

• 1:07:47Chris Williamson?

  Oh, God.

• 1:07:48Jonny?

  That's the rocket that can take people that they've just sent up, isn't it?

• 1:07:51Chris Williamson?

  It's a new one. It's just a like um prototype.

• 1:07:55Jonny?

  They just they launched one the other day.

• 1:07:56Chris Williamson?

  Not not that one. It's not ready yet.

• 1:07:58Jonny?

  Okay.

• 1:07:58Chris Williamson?

  Um, they did this thing and the sound that this machine makes is like it just sounds like the end of the earth.

• 1:08:06Jonny?

  Like the sort of thing that would take us to Mars, I imagine.

• 1:08:08Chris Williamson?

  Probably, yes. And on that note, I think we'd better leave. Gentlemen, thank you very much for coming along. Uh, all of the links to what we've linked are in the show notes below. Everything that we've brought up during this podcast. Please do not forget to press subscribe. Johnny's touching Usit's hand. Oh, he's waving. Goodbye. Goodbye, everybody.

• 1:08:28Jonny?

  Thank you.