How Did The Modern World Get So Ugly? - Sheehan Quirke

Sheehan Quirke is a British writer and online educator, known as The Cultural Tutor for creating accessible posts on art, history, and literature. Why does modern life feel so devoid of beauty? For decades, efficiency has beaten out elegance. Cheap has replaced meaningful. When did we stop creating things built to last and meant to move us, and what would it take to return? Expect to learn why contemplation is a luxury, or a necessity for sanity in the modern age, why we lost when architecture became more functional than beautiful, if there such a thing as objective beauty in architecture or if it’s purely cultural and subjective, which city or structure best captures the balance between progress and timelessness, if sterile architecture is one of the reasons the students of today are so bored and uninspired, and much more… - 0:00 Why the World Desperately Needs More Charm 14:26 The Surprising Origins of Sheehan's Cultural Education 27:58 Is the Mona Lisa Actually Boring? 34:50 Why Liberals Shouldn't Ignore Traditional Architecture 54:07 Is Consumerism Quietly Killing Beauty? 58:19 Which is the Most Beautiful Place on Earth? 01:06:31 Why Modern Life Makes Romance Feel So Hard 01:22:02 How Does Online Content Shape Us? 01:32:21 Is Poetry Too Hard to Understand? 01:45:43 What Would You Be Willing to Die For? 01:49:08 Sheehan’s Vital Cultural Lesson 01:54:17 Where to Find Sheehan - Get a free bottle of D3K2, an AG1 Welcome Kit, and more when you first subscribe at https://ag1.info/modernwisdom Get a Free Sample Pack of LMNT’s most popular flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Get 35% off your first subscription on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Get $100 off the best bloodwork analysis in America at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom - Check out Sheehan's book: https://linktw.in/PdoFxP 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/ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic here - https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom - 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?

  What is beauty?

• 0:03Speaker 01

  It's a hell of a question. I think the word is overused, misunderstood. The best way to think about beauty, the most helpful way, is to think of it as synonymous with the word love. Once you do that, all the complications kind of fade away. I think beauty is basically love manifest in the physical world. But anyway, so that's how I think of beauty, because I think.

• 0:29Chris Williamson?

  Because you're a hopeless romantic.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm a hopeless romantic. Well, I'm a hopeful romantic, I'll say.

• 0:33Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 0:34Speaker 01

  But I think the problem is, once you start talking about beauty, what is beauty? It's kind of like asking what is art? But it's a very, very interesting question, but you can end up talking, we could spend the whole two hours of how long we're going to be here, just talking about, well, maybe beauty is this, maybe beauty is that, but what are this? Same with art. I think it's very helpful to agree on a pretty simple definition and then move on to the more important stuff. So taking beauty, I think people obsess too much over the idea of beauty, like is the modern world beautiful? Is architecture beautiful? Is design beautiful? Is this room beautiful? I don't think it's helpful. I think more helpful words are interesting, charming and meaningful. They're the words I prefer to use.

• 1:14Chris Williamson?

  Delineate those for me.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  So, well, I think interesting is the opposite of boring. And I think, you know, a lot of what I write about online and what generates an awful lot of interest is when you talk about the ugliness of the modern world. But I think boringness is a much more important and powerful word, because again, ugly and beautiful, they're very, they feel very subjective. But when you say boring, it's a lot easier to agree on what is boring. And I think something being boring is a bigger problem. I've often said to my friends, the one thing human beings cannot stand is being bored. Like, we can put it with a lot of stuff. We can put it with suffering and misery.

• 1:53Chris Williamson?

  And ugliness.

• 1:54Speaker 01

  And ugliness. We could put it with, but being bored is the worst thing. And I think actually being bored has driven a lot of events and movements in human history. I often think a lot of revolutionaries end up being revolutionaries just because they're bored. And a revolution is exciting. It's a chance to be part of something. And anyway, yeah.

• 2:13Chris Williamson?

  Okay, so we've got interesting, which is the opposite of boring, presumably sort of engaging, captures attention, maybe memorable.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then charming. No, I love the word charming. It's probably my favorite word. It's my word of the year. You know charm when you see it and charm, I think, is is a kind of playfulness. It's not too serious and it also respects the person looking at something or viewing something. When you make it charming, right, there's no obvious use to charm, you know, there's not really a profit margin.

• 2:49Chris Williamson?

  That's true.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. But when it's charming, it's like, oh, wow, the person who made this thing has thought about, it's thought about me, they wanted to give me, you know, something, so something to look at, something to to make me smile. I think that's charming, charmingness is kind of like playfulness, I guess.

• 3:03Chris Williamson?

  Whimsy in the experience.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it doesn't have to be like, you know, Wes Anderson level of of whimsy, but it just has to show that there's something about this object. Um, that isn't just interesting in in the straight sense of like having something to it other than what is basically necessary. But also, um, yeah, uh, makes you smile and kind of reminds you in a way, in a way, charm, what it does. It gets you out of your your thoughts, you know, walking around and, you know, miserable, thinking about, got to email this man, I think it's all the time, I hate emails, I've got to email this person, I've got to, I've got to read Chris Williamson's texts or whatever. And then, you know, then I see something charming and I smile.

• 3:37Chris Williamson?

  Which is also Chris Williamson's.

• 3:41Speaker 01

  Indeed. And then you think the world isn't so bad. And then finally, meaningful, which I guess, I mean, this conversation is more about the the physical world than anything else and meaningful, basically, uh, can mean a few different things, but a a good example is when you walk around a town and and you find that the way things have been designed reflects something about that town, its people and and its history. I think that's what meaning is and it kind of brings you out of this generic, standardized, convenient, hyper optimized, online, modern world. And it brings you back into the reality. We're living in the one that we have been since the dawn of civilization. So meaningful, charming and interesting are much more useful words than than beauty. And I think also.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  They're much less inflammatory. Like, you know, if I put out on on X or something about, you know, the modern world is so ugly. Or or look at this, you know, palace of Versailles is so beautiful. People start, you know, getting angry about it. But you say it's interesting, it's charming. Or you take a sort of a modern building and say, well, this is boring. People say, yeah, actually, you know what? You have a point. It is boring. It's funny how quickly you can take the charge out of these conversations by using better words.

• 4:54Chris Williamson?

  I wonder whether some of this is because beauty and ugliness feels like a moral judgment.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 4:59Chris Williamson?

  It feels like a value. So I I got a speech coach who you met at the Leicester Square. Uh, sorry, London last year backstage miles. And when I started working with him, some of my friends said, working with a speech coach is going to sort of neutralize your identity. What if you lose your speaking cadence? What if you lose who you are? And I found it really fascinating because I realized that there were preferable and less preferable, more optimal and less optimal ways to speak in the same way there are to write. And in the same ways that there are to sing or play the piano. And nobody would say to you, learning to play the piano, well, why are you going to that piano teacher? What about the lovely, natural way that you played the piano? And you say, well, yeah, but it sucks.

• 5:44Chris Williamson?

  Or it can be refined, even if I'm great, it can be refined. So what it taught me was that there are certain things that people attach closely to our sense of self, like the way that we speak. And there are other things that people don't attach so closely to our sense of self, like the way that we play the piano. And it feels to me like beauty is this word that's imbued with moral weight, with judgment. Oh, it's it's it's the sense of the building or the piece of art or the poem itself. As opposed to a simple comment on the way that it presents.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So imagine like, you know, before you'd seen this, this, this vocal coach, I said, you know, Chris, the way you talk is ugly, man. That that feels quite offensive. But if I said to you, you know, the way you talk, you could work on you can. Yeah, it's boring. Suddenly like, oh, wow, really?

• 6:32Chris Williamson?

  I should work on that.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 6:33Chris Williamson?

  I should work on my ugliness. Doesn't feel. Quite the same level of, what are you getting at? I want to see.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  So, yeah.

• 6:43Chris Williamson?

  You bought props.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  I bought props, yeah. I went to Snappy Snaps a couple of hours ago.

• 6:46Chris Williamson?

  Oh, thank you.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  It's about two hours in there because I'm not very good at emailing. And I sent all the wrong files and there were Google Workspace attachments.

• 6:53Chris Williamson?

  If you spent more time on your emails, you'd be better at sending emails when you go to Snappy Snaps.

• 6:57Speaker 01

  Well, we can get into that.

• 6:58Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  The good news is.

• 6:59Chris Williamson?

  Here we are.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  So in terms of the illustration, because what I find is that when you talk about these things, having visual illustrations helps so much. You know, the old saying, a painter, a picture paints a thousand words. It's so true. And all you, I've found in order to make points effectively, all you have to do is contrast two things. Put two images next to each other and it says everything. So when we talk about things being beautiful versus ugly, interesting versus boring, I have some pictures of drain pipes. Now, I love drain pipes and gutters and air conditioning units and rail. Like, I love all the stuff that the world is filled with. It's amazing, you sort of don't really pay attention to it, but it, once you start noticing how much fricking stuff there is in the world, like, you know, go outside on the street, anybody here, you know, listening or watching, when you finish watching, which is hopefully not just yet,

• 7:44Speaker 01

  go outside and just look at how many things there are on the street outside. There's literally like the cars, the signs, the windows, the drains, everything. And all of that has been designed, right? This stuff didn't just appear, like, everything in this room, it's all manmade. Like, someone had to decide how all this stuff looked. And I guess my big gripe and the thing that bothers a lot of people is that all these things around us feel increasingly boring and standardized and generic, regardless of beauty. So I have some pictures of drain pipes and I will show them. I mean, I could maybe, I don't know if you can put them on.

• 8:19Chris Williamson?

  We can put them on.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, so these are some 19th century drain pipes.

• 8:22Chris Williamson?

  Wow.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  And like, I'm not going to sit here and tell you these are beautiful. Like, I think that'd be crazy for me to say, oh, Chris, isn't this beautiful, isn't it? But what it is, it's charming, it's interesting, it's fun and it's meaningful. And it's it's it's basically it shouldn't be revolutionary revolutionary idea, but it is that drain pipes can actually improve the appearance of a town or city or home. But you think of it as something that has to be functional and you want to get it out of the way, but you still have to see it. And it's like, well, you know, it's kind of ruining this wall. No, our drain pipes can make our towns and cities more beautiful. They can make our lives better.

• 8:58Chris Williamson?

  Make drain pipes beautiful again.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah. And so here's another one comparing some of the same to some modern, uh, more modern drain pipes.

• 9:06Chris Williamson?

  Uh huh. How would you categorize the difference between the two in terms of what's what they are? If you were trying to describe them to someone?

• 9:13Speaker 01

  What do you mean?

• 9:14Chris Williamson?

  So you have this list on the right and this list on the left. What is the difference between those two? Because they do the same thing.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  Well, that's I don't think they do do the same thing.

• 9:24Chris Williamson?

  Functionally, they do this.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  Yes, but this is the point. So you know, this famous line and form follows function, right? Everyone knows that line and everyone sort of thinks what that means is that the function is what matters. An appearance is, you know, doesn't matter. That's kind of how people interpret it. That we shouldn't care about appearances. We should just care about how it works. But the guy who said that Louis Sullivan, the great American architect, who kind of solved the big skyscraper problem in the late 19th century. So skyscrapers, they appeared in America, uh, in Chicago first in the late 19th century. And like, no one had ever seen a skyscraper before, so no one knew how to make them look. And the first skyscrapers, if you look, you can go and see more of the photos. The first skyscrapers i- in America were basically just like stacks of smaller buildings, you know?

• 10:07Speaker 01

  You know, sort of take what would normally be a three story building and just replicate that for another 10 stories.

• 10:12Chris Williamson?

  Command C, command V.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And Sullivan realized that this is nonsense. It's not working. And he identified the chief characteristic of skyscrapers as what he called loftiness, you know, their height. And when he said form follows function, he was the guy who said it, what he meant is that its innermost purpose, the appearance must um be be suited to that. So what he did was he got rid of this weird multiplication thing and basically just made all the stories the same from the top to the bottom without all these horizontal lines and kind of um. In short, he figured out how to make them look good.

• 10:47Chris Williamson?

  I've done an architectural boat tour.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  Of?

• 10:50Chris Williamson?

  Chicago.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 10:52Chris Williamson?

  I mean, so many people do this tour. It's musically, at least mine was musically accompanied. The guy, maybe it was a harmonica, but I went on my own. I was there on tour. And I went on my own. It's fucking freezing. I wore shorts because I'm an idiot. And I was enthralled. It was brilliant. It was so cool. And you go and you see the fire. This is where the fire was. It goes down. It does a U-turn. You see everything of one side and you see everything of the other. I think it's got the tallest skyscraper in the world that was designed by a woman there. It's got the tuning fork building with this sort of unbelievably thin base and the way that they had to structure that in order for it to go. The most hilarious thing is you're pulling in the very beginning. You go underneath the bridge from the harbour.

• 11:31Chris Williamson?

  You pull through and they're showing you all of the different buildings and he's going sort of from right to left, all the way around. Right at the end, right in the middle, huge, big thing, big letters. Trump Tower, Chicago. And this guy's going, it is the tallest building in the world. It was built by a woman and it is using the granite that was imported from East Germany. And it's da, da, da, da. And moving over to the left and he just completely leapfrogs the Trump thing. I'm like, it's probably safe. It's probably safe. Some people are gonna hooray you for doing it. Some are gonna be not so happy and they just made the executive decision that. We'll forget that building. I thought it was quite funny.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  No, it is, but by the way, we may need to mention that name again later in this, in this conversation because Trump is weirdly. And maybe unfortunately important in this conversation, you know, he, in both his terms has done these executive orders. To say that all federal buildings need to be in traditional architectural styles. Which is, I think, in some ways good and in some ways bad, but actually I will put a. Bookmark there and we'll come back to it because on this point about form and function.

• 12:38Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  Sullivan decorated his buildings, right? Like his skyscrapers have this beautiful sort of ornate terracotta panelling and all these floral wreaths and stuff. His point was just that the decoration should be suited to what the building is. The problem he felt in the 19th century, why he said that is because people decorated everything the same. And he was saying, no, no, we need to decorate and design things according to their purpose, not that they shouldn't be decorated. And in my view, with those two different sets of drainpipes, he said, you know, they're both functionally the same. But I don't, I disagree. I think any object we design, not in all cases, you know, I don't need the inside of my laptop. It's a look beautiful, right? It's just got to fricking work, which it still does, by the way, all these years later.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  But I think anything that's in the built environment, our homes, our offices and our streets. If it's not making that environment more humane, if it's not making the lives of people there better, it is not fulfilling its entire function. So those drainpipes on the right hand side, I don't, it doesn't seem like I'm picking on them, you know, they do their job, which is great. But my point is very simple. It's just like, if we can also make drainpipes that do their job and like make the world a more interesting place to live in. Shouldn't we be doing that? And now that why things have changed and how to achieve it, we may get into that. But I think that's the first point to establish. And yeah, it sounds kind of shocking to people, but drainpipes can be not beautiful, but charming.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  You know, like all those weird creatures or whatever, like imagining, you know, you're walking down the street and you see those. It does something which doesn't occur when it's just a plain metal or plastic pipe.

• 14:13Chris Williamson?

  Well, it's interesting when you say form follows function, but you ask, what is the function? Is the function to add charm to your day? So there's no reason that the job of a drainpipe needs to begin and end with water.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  Exactly, yeah.

• 14:26Chris Williamson?

  I saw a photo that you are the leader and traffic in the world of viral X posts about beautiful things and interesting, meaningful, charming. And I saw one, I think it was the the inside of the latch on a door. So when you look at a door and there was all this engraving. Imagine that this is a common currency that you traffic in. And yet another thing, you do kind of see it, you do. It's I don't see it much, right? But doors are left open, especially if it's an internal kitchen door or something like that. So why not make the edge of a door?

• 15:05Chris Williamson?

  Opportunity to add charm. You go, well, what's the door for? Well, it's to create a boundary line, a territory line between the kitchen and the hallway. Well, but what if it could be?

• 15:17Speaker 01

  Even more than that.

• 15:18Chris Williamson?

  A source of charm.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, the analogy here is like, is life itself. Like, I'm not going to ask you what is the what is the point of life right now? But like, universally, people agree the most important things in life are love and friends, fun and adventure and achieving stuff, like all of that. Like, that is beyond the function of life. Like, if I said to you, Chris, what is the meaning of life? And you said, well, it's to not die and reproduce. Some people do believe that, to be fair, but most people don't think that about life. And most people think a good life is one that has love in it and friendship.

• 15:49Chris Williamson?

  More than raw functionality.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  So that the way we view life is that view of life is reflected in drainpipes like those.

• 15:56Chris Williamson?

  Wow, what a take. Drainpipes are life.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it's funny you mention the virality of these things is so interesting to me. Like, because this is kind of how I got started on X or Twitter as it was then.

• 16:06Chris Williamson?

  Now, why don't you tell the story? Tell us the regale us with how you began, how you became a cultural tutor.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  So how did I become the cultural tutor? So my name is Sheem Quark. I was born in Scunthorpe, of all places, actually. Anyway, that's not really relevant. Well, it is maybe relevant, but I won't go into that just yet. So I went to university. And then when university finished, this weird thing happened where all my friends had plans. And they went into their master's degrees, they went and got jobs in the city of London as lawyers and accountants and all that. And I and it kind of took me by surprise because I just I just did not have a plan at all. So I'd always wanted to be a writer. I've always been writing and reading, you know, since I was a child. My head has been, I've just, you know, my bedroom as a child was filled with nothing but books. And I always wanted to write and I've been writing since I was, you know, since I could first hold a pen, basically.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  And I'd always thought it would happen. And then this, then after I left university without a plan, I sort of got into this state of complacency where I was expecting life to just hand it to me on a plate. I sort of thought one day someone would knock on the door and say, Shin, we've heard you're a great writer. Here's a book deal. Obviously, that's not how the world works. So I got a job as a security guard, sort of, more or less. This was four years ago. Um, doing the night shifts, you know, which I loved. I loved the night shift, the twelve hour night shift. At, at my old university, actually. So it was when Covid came. Covid came. Um, and then they ran out of, of, of night watchmen or porters, as they're called. Cause guys were off sick, they didn't wanna work and all the students had gone. And I was still living there, just in like a small house with, with my girlfriend at the time.

• 17:40Speaker 01

  And I needed a job, so they rang me, said, Shin, we don't have any, uh, porters left. Do you want to be one? Normally there are sort of guys who are in their fifties, sixties, semi-retired, retired. I said, sure, like I need a job. So I did that and I spent a year and a half, um, unblocking toilets and like fixing door handles and, uh, sitting, sitting through the whole night and doing rounds and making sure no one was trying to break in or seal anything. And in those night shifts, I would write and stuff and watch films. Um, but, but in terms of the big picture, where I wanted to be, life wasn't happening. I wasn't unhappy. But, um, things weren't heading in any particular direction. I left that job and then I realised I didn't have any money. Um, I didn't have a job for about three months, uh, ran out of money. I needed to pay the rent on this house I was living in.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  I borrowed money from my friends and my family. And I just needed a job as quick as I could. So I just went on Indeed, applied to everything. Um, Pizza Hut rejected me, but McDonald's said yes. And so on, on the second of January, twenty twenty two, I went for my interview. And then two days later, I was there and I wasn't a burger flipper. I was a maintenance person. So my job was to take in the stock, you know, get it, uh, sort of six in the morning. The truck would arrive, bringing all the fries and all the sausages, which were packed in the scum top, as it happens. And the chicken came from Cambodia, which surprised me. You know, I'd get into the freezer, stock it all up, and then I'd have to get out the jet washer and go and clean my car park. You know, there's McFlurries everywhere and tomato ketchup. The, the McDonald's tomato ketchup, um, when it solidifies is like Biscuit.

• 19:11Speaker 01

  It's like rock solid. Wow. You have to freaking get like boiling hot water to get that stuff off the walls. So that's what I was doing. And there was just no sign of his ending and I wasn't earning enough money to actually pay back all my friends. And I guess it was a bit of a spiral. And then I have a very good friend, Harry Dry, who you may know.

• 19:29Chris Williamson?

  Of course.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  He's a genius and and also a fiercely loyal, brilliant friend who who tells it how it is. And and I was, one day I was with him and I was giving him all these ideas, oh, Harry, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna write this this novel about this. And, you know, I think I'm gonna make a film. And he's like, Shin Shin, all you're doing is telling me that you're gonna do all these things, not doing anything. And he said this great line, he said, what you lack is deadlines, not ideas. You lack deadlines, not ideas. And it was maybe one of the most important things anybody said to me.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  And I had this, what I call my Mulan moment. Have you seen Mulan? The Disney film Mulan, not the most recent one, the the animated.

• 20:07Chris Williamson?

  Long time ago.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:07Chris Williamson?

  You might need to.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  Well, anyway, so there's this wonderful scene in the film where Mulan, her father gets called to war. But he's very old, very sick. He doesn't have any sons and and the eldest male member of the family has to go off to war. Mulan, she loves her father, doesn't want him to go off and die fighting. So she goes in his place, which obviously they don't want want want her to do, but she has to pretend to be a man. So there's this wonderful scene in the film where the synths kick in, it's the middle of the night. And she goes and gets out her father's armor, gets out his sword and she cuts off her hair. She cuts off her hair so she can ride off to war as a man. And I kind of had that moment, there was this one day. And I thought, you know what, I'm just gonna quit my job at McDonald's. And gonna just give everything I've got to to to getting to where I think I should be. And I took off my my McDonald's beanie for the last time and my big yellow jacket.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  And it felt like that moment in Mulan. It was like a point of no return. I did a few things. I applied to film school. They rejected me. I applied to the army. And went through the whole process. They actually offered me a place at Sandhurst, which I said no to because by then something else had taken off, which was this Twitter account I made. My plan had been to make some money, or how can you make some money? Well, by tutoring, online tutoring is quite a good way to make money. People sometimes pay like freaking fifty pounds an hour for a good online tutor. And I thought, well, I'm going to tutor people not in maths or, or I'm talking about maths or law. I did law at university, I don't want to tutor law. I thought I wanted to do cultural tutoring. I thought some parents might want their kids to be more rounded.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  So I thought maybe they'll pay me to tutor their kids in poetry and architecture and art, which I've always loved, you know.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  And so I made, I made this little website, offering tutoring lessons. And then how do you get eyes on the website? I made a Twitter account, hoping to drive traffic towards this website. So people would book in tutoring sessions and I could finally make some money. What did I call the Twitter account? Well, the cultural tutor, because that's what I thought I was. And I put this little statue of Plato as a profile picture. And within six weeks, it became pretty clear that no one wanted me to tutor them, but they did like what I was writing about. And after six weeks, I had a hundred thousand followers on Twitter as it was then. And kind of from there to here, it's been a dream. But what I did, I said, when I made the Twitter account, I was going to post a thread every single day for a month. And just see where it gets me.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  Obviously, the first 10 threads, you don't get a single like. So I would stay up all night, like go on Twitter, searching for other people who'd posted about church windows. Seeing who'd liked it, then message those people, say, hey, I saw you like this post about church windows. I've just written one too, you might be interested. And sort of, you know, after a week, you're getting two likes on a post. It's really bootstrapping your way to virality. Yeah, I was obsessed. It was like, I had this clear mindedness, which is a very rare thing in life. It's very rare to be able to have that level of, of focus and determination. And what started out as a month ended up being two and a half years. So for two and a half years, I posted every single day online. What was the first day that you didn't post like?

• 23:08Speaker 01

  It was when I was writing my book, it was after I got the book deal. And there was this one day when I thought like, I have a choice today. I can either make this particular chapter of the book better, or I can post on X. And at that point, I thought, you know what? It's very hard to let go of something like that. Like, it's really hard to let go of a ritual, because that was my life. Like, I would just, I was obs- like, I would, you know, I said no to all my friends. If ever there's, you know, friends going out, I'd say, no, I've got to write on Twitter. See, why the hell do you want to tweet instead of hanging out with your friends? Like, I remember sometimes I would go out and then I'd get home at five AM and stay up till eight AM putting something out on Twitter. And eventually it got to a point where I was where I needed to be. I had my dream, which was to have a book deal, and then that became the focus.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  And a key part of the story is Mr. David Perel, who you know, of course. He saw I was going viral online. And he reached out to me and he just, in this fantastically American way, just said, let's get on FaceTime. And I said, we're on a FaceTime. He said, look, Sheen, I really like your work. And, and I'm guessing you need to make some money from this. But rather than you monetizing your audience and trying to, you know, maybe start a Substack and then you turning your focus from the wider public to your audience, I'm gonna support you. I'll be your patron. I'm gonna pay you a living wage, a good wage, and all you have to do is write every single day. And thanks to David and then his patronage of me, I was able to write every single day and then get to where I am now with, you know, nearly two million followers, whatever, and a book deal and some other exciting projects on the way.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  So that's how it happened and it kind of brings us back to where we started. I mean, maybe, I don't know if you want any sort of, if you have any comments on that or any reflections. It was one hell of a journey. But the post that went viral, the post that took me from, I'd sort of grand my way after five and a half weeks to fifteen thousand followers, which is pretty good. But then I did a couple of posts and they got like, you know, less than a hundred likes. And I was thinking, maybe this is it, I'm washed. I don't know if you ever have, I mean, you've been, you know, you're an old hand now. And anyone who works online will know the, sort of the dread and anxiety that hangs on your back, right? Because you live by those numbers. And as soon as they dip, even by half percent, you're like, this is it. This is it, my time, you know, my fifteen minutes of fame is done. And I was, I was really mad, really mad. And I was staying with my mum at the time.

• 25:24Speaker 01

  And I thought, you know, and I decided to write about something, which had always bothered me. This one, I used to moan to my friends about it all the time, which was this thing we're talking about. Because ever since I was a kid, I'd always like, why is stuff so boring? Like, and, you know, I would look at older things, I think, well, they're so pretty, so interesting. Why is modern stuff so boring? So I wrote about that online. I did bring screenshot actually of this post to just kind of show the point. This was the post. It's called the death, the, the, the.

• 25:50Chris Williamson?

  The danger and the danger of minimalist design and the death of detail, a short thread.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it got four hundred and forty thousand likes.

• 25:59Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, that'll, that'll build a fifteen K account.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it got me ninety, ninety thousand followers overnight. And what's so funny about this is what's so funny about it is so interesting. And look at the lead image. It's just two bollards, right? It's like a typical old bollard, it's not even that interesting. But then it's a typical new bollard. And what it turned out is that people all over the world had been feeling exactly the same way. That things are boring and generic these days and that people are crying out for the world to be a more interesting, charming and meaningful place.

• 26:33Chris Williamson?

  A quick aside, I've been drinking AG1 every morning for years. Uh huh, uh huh. And it just got even better. AG1 Next Gen keeps the same simplicity, one scoop, once per day, but now comes with four clinical trials backing it. In those trials, AG1 Next Gen was clinically shown to fill common nutrient gaps, improve key nutrient levels within three months, and increase healthy gut bacteria by ten times, even in healthy adults. Basically, they've upgraded the formula with better probiotics, more bioavailable nutrients and clinical validation. And it's still NSF certified for sport, which means that you know the quality is legit. I actually got to meet the team that runs AG1, all of the top pods at a offsite a couple of months ago here in Austin. And I was really impressed.

• 27:17Chris Williamson?

  They took my feedback on board, they were very receptive. And I actually think that they put some of my ideas into the product and the new marketing. So any success that you see going forward from now can be exclusively attributed to me. So, hooray for me. And if you're still unsure, they've got a ninety day money back guarantee. So you can buy it and use it every single day for three months. And if you don't like it, they'll just give you your money back. Right now, you can get a year's free supply, vitamin D3, K2, and five free AG1 travel packs, plus that ninety day money back guarantee by going to the link in the description below. Or heading to drinkag1.com/modernwisdom. That's drinkag1.com/modernwisdom.

• 27:58Speaker 01

  Dude, what a great story.

• 27:59Chris Williamson?

  You know, I'd heard this from David's side, but it's really wonderful to hear it from you. What a, it's really inspired me even hearing what David did with you. Uh, I had, I've had a bunch of conversations with the, um, people who look after my accounts.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:15Chris Williamson?

  And, um, in America, you can start a nonprofit and do these things. It's a fucking nightmare because what I would love to do is start a kind of scholarship thing where maybe once every 12 months, I find somebody or maybe a small group of people who are in your position and liberate them.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, man.

• 28:35Chris Williamson?

  To be able to go and do the thing. And it's so difficult. It's so difficult to be able to do that because if they're an employee, then it means this. And if it's a nonprofit, then you can't be the person that chooses because the opportunity for nepotism is, you know, obviously through the roof. It's basically a way for you to tax-free funnel money from your business to other people that you like. And well, obviously I like them if I want to support them because I think they're good. But, oh, you're not allowed to like, so you can be the director, but then you need to have a, a symposium or a board of people and they would choose and you can't have in. I just want to give someone, I just want to enliven one or a few people that I think are making good work to go and do it. And it turns out to be really difficult. So that's a work in progress.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  But good, mate, you, you've got it because honestly like patronage is like a very old fashioned way to make things happen. In the modern, sort of throughout the 20th century, you had establishments, you know, you had the publishers and the media broadcasting organizations. That's where you went to get stuff done. Now we have the online creator economy as it's called. You become an influencer, you know, like us, I guess, you know, you get sponsorships or, or, you know, you have a Substack. The old fashioned way is a guy who has some spare money finds people who are talented and gives them that money. Right? And then that's how so many of the world's most famous and beloved works of art appeared, pretty much all of them. Like, you know, Michelangelo didn't paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel based on, you know, uh, Substack subscriptions. He didn't have a sponsor.

• 30:02Speaker 01

  Pope Julius II said, Michelangelo, you're the best artist in Italy right now. I'm going to pay you 400,000 ducats, whatever it was, to paint the ceiling of my chapel. And he did it, same as the Mona Lisa, right? The Mona Lisa, which is, which was a pretty boring and overrated painting. But anyway, it was commissioned by a guy, Leonardo was back, back in, um, Florence, after being in Milan for a while, and this guy, he just got married and was moving into a new house, said, Leonardo, I want you to paint a portrait of my wife. So he's led him and he paints a portrait of my wife. Like, this is how great art throughout history and many books as well, and poems and stuff, that's how they appeared. Somebody with the funds directs it directly to the person who needs it and then it gets created. Patronage is an old fashioned system, but I think maybe it has a future in our modern world.

• 30:45Chris Williamson?

  Tell me more about your opinion on the Mona Lisa.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  Well, look, I think, I mean, there's a few facts about it. First of all, here's a question. Who is the Mona Lisa? What is she called?

• 30:55Chris Williamson?

  It's not after Mona Lisa?

• 30:58Speaker 01

  Well, no, her name is Lisa. But I think there's something interesting about the fact that the most, the most famous painting in the world, the most, in some sense, the woman with the most famous face in history, no one knows what she's called. Her name is Lisa Gerardini, or Lisa Del Giaccondo, when she got married. And also, the crazy thing is, she never actually saw the painting finished. Leonardo was a famous procrastinator. He would just freaking take forever to do anything. And he actually left Italy with the painting. He went off to live in France because the King of France asked him to come and work.

• 31:31Chris Williamson?

  He hired a man?

• 31:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, he hired him and he took the painting. So Lisa Gerardini never saw the finished portrait. It's kind of crazy, I think, and also.

• 31:38Chris Williamson?

  She died before it was done?

• 31:39Speaker 01

  No, no, sorry. He took, so Leonardo took the portrait with him to France before it was finished. And then he finished it in France and then gave it to the King of France, Francis the First, he was called. Anyway.

• 31:50Chris Williamson?

  Here's a painting of someone else's wife.

• 31:52Speaker 01

  Well, you know, yeah, I guess, I guess. But yeah, it's Leonardo. So even then, the guy was a, even then, like his reputation now.

• 31:58Chris Williamson?

  Savant.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  It hasn't changed at all. Like, people then worshipped the guy. But I just think it's a shame that the most famous painting in the world is a relatively boring portrait.

• 32:08Chris Williamson?

  Why is it boring?

• 32:10Speaker 01

  Well, if you look at other paintings and the things that might get people interested in art, like, you imagine, because I'm passionate about art, you know, it's my lifeblood. But the way our culture works, like, if you want to get someone interested in art, and they kind of start looking into it, and they see that the most famous product of the entire history of art is just, is like a woman smiling. It's, I don't think it's going to excite them.

• 32:34Chris Williamson?

  What do you wish was the replacement? If you were to say, hey, the world is gifted, I can hot swap the Mona Lisa for something else.

• 32:45Chris Williamson?

  This would be a good front end of the funnel for people into art.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  Sure, I think there's a few contenders, yes, some of which are already quite well known. Look, it depends on the person, because I think when someone's, for example, like, like, young, when they're a teenager, I think you need something a bit more brash and exciting. If you look at the, the paintings of a guy like John Martin, he was a 19th century English painter from County Durham, actually. And he painted these kind of crazy biblical catastrophic landscapes. You know, and there's lightning and there's thunder and there's like cities blowing up and there's gigantic waves and, and it's epic. You know, i- i- it's like sort of watching Lord of the Rings, but in a single painting. Like, that kind of thing is exciting. Also, you know, another painting which is very, very famous, you know, the Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch.

• 33:30Speaker 01

  That one is pretty famous, and I think paintings more like that are more likely to get people excited about art.

• 33:37Chris Williamson?

  A little bit more interesting.

• 33:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, they, they, yeah, they're basically more, because I, I don't hate the Mona Lisa, I mean, if you like it, then you like it. But I think people should be free to call it boring if they want. This is another problem, like, ah, the problem with art, like, it's in this space where people feel very intimidated. You know, they, they feel ignorant.

• 33:54Chris Williamson?

  Yes, I certainly do.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  Sure, and, and then, and then suddenly they feel like they're not allowed to say the Mona Lisa is boring, because.

• 34:00Chris Williamson?

  It feels unrefined, like, I don't get the joke that everybody else gets, or I don't get the, the subtext, I'm not sufficiently sophisticated.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly, whereas my view is, the only thing you need to get into art, uh, you only need two things, your eyes and your heart. That's all you need, and you've got to fall in love with it. And that's a lot of my work has, has been that, just trying to put art out there, not in the context of art, but in the context of just something that's not that different to cinema. Yeah, exactly, or a nice fricking drainpipe, yeah, man, e- e- exactly. Um, anyway, so how did, how did the Mona Lisa come up?

• 34:34Chris Williamson?

  Uh, uh, you were explaining, I think you were going through a, a, a bunch of, oh, it was, uh, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, he's laid on the ceiling.

• 34:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, so thi- thi- this thing you're thinking of doing, man, like, good luck with that, good luck with that, because it, it, who knows what it might lead to.

• 34:49Chris Williamson?

  What else have you got by way of, uh, example? I'm excited for what comes next.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  So I've got some really, some really good stuff there.

• 34:56Chris Williamson?

  Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, some deep cuts from the world of architecture and art.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  So the reason I brought these is, again, just to illustrate the points I'm making. Um, I, I could say, oh, just Google it, but it's much easier if I show it myself here. Now.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  A big part of my work online, a big part of the book, but not only the book, and a big part of this documentary, this short film, which is being released tomorrow as we speak, made it with David Perel.

• 35:23Chris Williamson?

  Congratulations.

• 35:24Speaker 01

  Thank you very much. It's a 15 minute short film. And we're treating it as a standalone piece and as a pilot for a future series we want to make about art and architecture. With and learning from art and architecture about life in the 21st century. It's called The Modern World, actually, because I think we can learn a lot about life now and how to improve it by looking at art and architecture and things like that in the past. And people are crying out for a sort of a high quality art documentary series. Anyway, now, what I think is really important, my life's work in a way, is to establish, first of all, that there is a problem with the way the world looks today and the way we design it. And then, secondly, this is the crucial part, to establish a consensus around this issue. A problem I ran into pretty early on, which I hadn't anticipated,

• 36:10Speaker 01

  is that as soon as I started writing about this, you know, this, this like, just bollocks, like, people have very strong views about it.

• 36:18Speaker 01

  Most people are inclined to agree, and like, the polls show very clearly, studies and polls show very clearly that people are dissatisfied with how things look. And that they generally prefer traditional to modern architecture. But I found that as soon as I started writing about it, people have all these connotations based on whether they think they're left wing or right wing. There's this idea, for example. No, it's, it's a big issue because the people think if you're, to criticize modernism, right, so like modern architecture, to criticize that must mean that you're somehow like a traditionalist, conservative, even a fascist. And also, if you want to revive traditional architecture, you must therefore be a conservative or a fascist.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  And, and then people also think if you defend modern architecture, the conservatives think you're like a radical socialist or a communist. And all of this is, is, is, it's complete nonsense. It's just not true. Now, so that's the second part. I want to demolish these misguided political associations around, around the issue and establish a consensus, which is why I've brought some little graphics. So the first thing I'll do is I just want, this should be quite good fun. I just want to show you these and, and, and ask you what you think they are.

• 37:35Speaker 01

  It's sort of a trick question and I'm hoping you get it wrong. They look like towers, towers of castles in some ways. Yeah, exactly. That's how they look. These are water towers. These are 19th century water towers. Wow. So all they do is, you know, for people who don't know what water tower is, like in a town or city, in order to have water pressure, you need to lift all the water up high to the pipe, right? So that's what these are. Unbelievably, these somehow are just bits of like the most boring infrastructure you can imagine. Water management infrastructure and yet they look like, they're just, they're so much fun, right? Imagine Northumbrian Water created one of those. Exactly, exactly. And what's most interesting perhaps is that these have all been decommissioned now, right?

• 38:16Speaker 01

  Because obviously, you know, we've got more advanced technologies and yet they still stand because people love them. They've been converted variously into houses. Some of them are like gallery spaces or viewing platforms. And again, just like the drainpipes, it's crazy to think that in the past, people believed that even something as simple and ostensibly boring and functional as a water tower could make a town or city more interesting. But this isn't about past versus present, which is what people assume. All I'm interested in is improving the present by learning from the past. It's difficult to learn from the future. Indeed, indeed.

• 38:57Chris Williamson?

  We'll get back to talking in just a minute, but first, some things are built for summer. Sunburns, hot girl walks, your ex posting their Euro road trip, and now lemonade and salt. Huh? Element just dropped their brand new lemonade salt flavour and it's everything that you want on a hot day. Tart, salty and stupidly refreshing. It's like a grown up lemonade stand in a stick with actual function behind the flavour. Because, let's be real, if you're sweating through workouts, sauna sessions or just walking to your car in July, then you are losing more than just water. Element replaces the electrolytes that your body actually needs. Sodium, potassium and magnesium with no sugar, no junk and no nonsense. I've been drinking it every single day for years and in the Texas heat, this lemonade flavour in a cold glass of water is unbelievably good.

• 39:42Chris Williamson?

  Best of all, they've got a no questions asked refund policy with an unlimited duration. So you can buy it and try it for as long as you want. And if you don't like it for any reason, they'll give you your money back. You don't even need to return the box. That's how confident they are that you'll love it. Plus, they offer free shipping in the US. Right now, you can get a free sample pack of Element's most popular flavors with your first purchase by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom. That's drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom.

• 40:09Speaker 01

  Now, to the first, to establish that there is, I mean, look at this. This is another screenshot of a tweet I did. So this is like, I can't read, what does it say?

• 40:18Chris Williamson?

  Why are cities all around the world starting to look the same? Yeah. The USA, Japan, Russia, Colombia, Germany, Ethiopia, Brazil, Taiwan, Poland, Australia, Spain, China. These are high-rise skyscrapers.

• 40:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, they just more like, it all looks the same, right? And what's, so I did this.

• 40:38Chris Williamson?

  Glass, steel, vertical lines.

• 40:41Speaker 01

  And he's got like 174,000 likes. You know, so like, people really care about this issue. Like, people feel very, very, like, the easiest way to get traction online is just to post two images, one of like a nice old thing, one of a crappy new thing, and everyone loves it because everyone feels it to be true. And it creates, it's like a global issue as well. So you know, with those water towers, with those drain pipes, the reason I wanted to show them to you is just to, to kind of give an example of two things. First of all, the fact that things have changed, that we don't design things how we used to. And secondly, to show that it's possible to make boring things, to make infrastructure interesting, meaningful, charming. So that is the, the problem.

• 41:25Speaker 01

  Now, at this point, people start getting very angry.

• 41:31Speaker 01

  And if I can sort of address the two sides, one off the other, this is what I would say. So, so I think it's very important to defend modern architecture, right? It's not popular with the public, even though a certain sort of group of architects. And planners love it. The general public do not like modern architecture. Look at any study, any poll. Look at, you know, look where people go. Look at where tourists take photos, right? When tourists come to London, where do they want to go and take photos? In front of the pretty old buildings. Where do people want to go on holiday? They go to Paris, they go to Rome, they go to Venice, they go to Kyoto. They wanna see beautiful old buildings, right? What the public want is very clear. That being said, I think it's very important to defend modern architecture.

• 42:15Speaker 01

  There's this idea, I think, maybe among conservatives, um, and what you might call more right wing or traditionalist people, which are all such unhelpful terms. Anyway, that modern architecture, these big sort of boring concrete tower blocks, skyscrapers, that they replaced these Baroque palaces and these charming cottages. But the truth is that this, this is the kind of, this is the kind of thing they replaced. But this photo was taken in the Netherlands in the nineteen thirties.

• 42:40Chris Williamson?

  Okay, this is a mud hut?

• 42:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:45Chris Williamson?

  It's a family of three, two adults and an infant. Uh, I'm not doing this for the visually impaired. I'm doing it because some people are just listening. Uh, black and white photo of what looks like farmland, the middle of a field, essentially. I think there's a wheel. Is that a wheel?

• 43:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:00Chris Williamson?

  On the top of the house. Yeah, so it's very low. It's basically the height of, maybe even slightly lower than the height of people. It's an A-frame sort of, it seems to be a bigger bit at the back, but I mean, it's halfway between a mound of dirt and a tent made out of wood.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:18Chris Williamson?

  For the chimney.

• 43:19Speaker 01

  Would you want to live there?

• 43:21Chris Williamson?

  No.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  Probably not. Now, most people throughout history were living in conditions not totally dissimilar to this. Like throughout most of history until the last century, people were living in conditions of absolute squalor and material misery. And all these modern buildings, which are very easy to criticize aesthetically, they look pretty nice when you compare them to that sort of thing. Modern architecture using concrete and steel and glass and plastic building quickly and cheaply and efficiently basically gave the world a roof over its head. It lifted humanity out of material squalor and into a world where they could have, you know, they, they, you know, they weren't living in, in, in, in places like that

• 44:03Speaker 01

  where you're warm and you're dry and there's no danger of imminent collapse. So it's really important, I think, that More conservative or traditionalist people recognise that modern architecture has actually been a blessing for humankind insofar as quality of life is is concerned. I also think a lot of modernist buildings are very beautiful, but but that's kind of a separate point. I think they can be lovely. And I think like, like, I like the Shard, you know, and I like the Gurkha. These buildings are so much fun. And I wouldn't want to see a world where we didn't build those. So definitely not boring, though. No, exactly. They're not boring. Exactly. That's also. And the charming. And the charming. Yeah.

• 44:39Chris Williamson?

  Meaningful. Hmm.

• 44:41Speaker 01

  But what I love about these buildings is like London has this fantastic practice of giving buildings nicknames, right? So the Gurkha, the Shard, the freaking walkie talkie, the cheese grater. That I think is meaning emerging, basically, when we give them those names. You know, the Gurkha feels like part of London. You can't imagine London without the Gurkha now, even though 20 years ago, a lot of people didn't like it. So that's my sort of piece aimed at the traditionalists who are, I think, too overly critical of modern architecture. But now the problem is that maybe the slightly bigger problem is that as soon as you start talking about this issue,

• 45:18Speaker 01

  a lot of more progressive people, generally conservative, progressive, maybe socialist, left-leaning liberal people, think that to call for traditionalism is some kind of like retrogressive, conservative, fascistic worldview. Which I think is clearly not the case, like asking for the world to be more beautiful, especially the streets where ordinary people live and work, like the rich can freaking afford whatever paintings they want. They can afford lovely houses. The people suffering most right now are ordinary people all over the world whose streets and homes and offices are literally making them depressed. But studies have shown, I mean, you don't even need studies to prove it, but you know, I suppose it's helpful, like, we are more stressed, more anxious, less productive, less happy when we're in boring environments.

• 46:03Speaker 01

  Like, why do prisons look the way they look? Like, why does Solis drink a confinement have nothing in it and harsh lighting? But there's this crazy situation where we literally design buildings these days in the same way that we design prisons. I mean, it's kind of. Sad to think about, but you know, there's this game that some people play, which is, is it a prison or is it a school? And if you look at prisons and schools built in the UK over the last fifty or sixty years, and I show you a photo of each, you can't tell which is which, they look pretty similar. Anyway, more to the point about why I think liberal people should embrace and progressive people should embrace this, this some traditional architecture. A bunch of reasons. One, it's more sustainable. Like, look at those water towers, right? You build something that's beautiful that people like.

• 46:46Speaker 01

  You don't have to demolish it. It lasts decades or hundreds of years, which is way more sustainable than building things like we do now, which can be demolished in twenty, thirty years. Um, because they're crappy and no one likes them. It's also more environmentally friendly. Traditional architecture is way more, um, interested in using local materials. It's also more suited to the local climate. Like, why do all old houses or buildings in Northern Europe have very steep roofs, steep gables? Because it snows, right? And you don't want snow to build up on the roof. Now we have flat roofs, so we spend like a crap ton, you know, having to, you know, we have to clear it or we have to heat it. So it melts, da, da, da, da. It's a mess. Anyway, so it's more environmentally sustainable. And also, the final thing, I'm realizing we're going on a bit, but this is so important.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  Like, when you have beautiful stuff, like those beautiful hinges, you would talk about, you know, the beautiful latches in the doors. William Morris, the great, great William Morris, nineteenth century poet and designer and a campaigner, also a massive communist and Marxist as well. The reason he loved beautiful medieval old fashioned design is because he felt it made people's lives more interesting when they have to use stuff. But it also made people's lives better when they had to make stuff. Like, right now, we're forcing people all around the world, on other sides of the world, to be fair, in other countries, paying them like crappy wages to make crappy, boring stuff. As soon as your job involves making something interesting and beautiful and you've got some creative say in it, like, imagine if,

• 48:15Speaker 01

  you know, people, the bricklayers in this country, you know, we just make them, we ask them to make plain brick walls. So the Middle Ages, bricklayers, what they did, they would make patterns in the walls, you know, that you can, you can do wonderful things with bricks. They sound boring, but bricks can be so charming, so much fun. And now, you know, we don't do that. But in a world where we embrace beautiful design, everyone benefits. The people who have to make stuff and the people who have to use stuff. Anyway, that is, I think, most of what is needed to be said. That I want to establish a consensus that the world can be so much more interesting, that we will all benefit from it, and that it's not a political issue. Anyway, I didn't, I didn't get through all my.

• 48:54Chris Williamson?

  I want to see more of your examples, go to the presentation.

• 48:58Speaker 01

  Here's, here's, here's one. So here are some, here are some, do you know what they are?

• 49:02Chris Williamson?

  Water fountains.

• 49:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:03Chris Williamson?

  So there's a variety, sort of a green, the classic green's okay. It's a little, a little sterile and minimalist, but it's not bad. And then there's one that's sort of a real aqua blue and it looks a little bit like a, like a cartoon.

• 49:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. So these are some water fountains that have been installed around London in the past sort of ten to twenty years and around the UK, actually. And they're like, they're fine. Like, they do their job. But on the whole, I wouldn't say that they necessarily make the place where they are prettier or more interesting. And I hear are some Victorian water fountains.

• 49:46Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 49:46Speaker 01

  Which.

• 49:48Chris Williamson?

  They look like mini chapels.

• 49:50Speaker 01

  They do. Yeah, they do. They do. They're beautiful. And they're really.

• 49:55Chris Williamson?

  Foursided. Yeah, I mean, that that almost looks like a fountain that you would go to.

• 50:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 50:01Chris Williamson?

  Where ducks would swim and.

• 50:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And there's a few points on this, but I'll keep it relatively brief. And the main one to me is that when you see something like this, when this much care and thought has been put into designing water fountains, which are one of the most important kinds of public architecture you can have, right? Like, water is a sacred thing. It is, it is, it is the source of life. And when you treat the public and treat water in this way. Um, I think everyone is is is much happier. And now the the the other the other slides, I can probably kind of speed through them.

• 50:38Chris Williamson?

  There's no speed through anything. We can indulge as much as you want.

• 50:41Speaker 01

  We can, we can, but there's there's just so much exciting stuff to talk about here. So this one is um kind of fun. So you remember I showed you the screenshot of how all modern architecture looks the same, all these skyscrapers? Well, it turns out in the past, things weren't actually necessarily so different. Like here's here's one of.

• 51:00Chris Williamson?

  Wow, Ireland, Mexico, Greece, India, Russia, Cuba, USA, Philippines, Argentina. And these are all quite sort of Baroque style pillars with the classics. A frame Greece, Greek, what is that?

• 51:19Speaker 01

  Pediment.

• 51:20Chris Williamson?

  Pediment.

• 51:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, and they all look the same, basically, all over the world. And it's the same here.

• 51:25Chris Williamson?

  Difference being, I think people don't mind when they think it's pretty.

• 51:28Speaker 01

  No, they they don't mind, exactly. But I think it's important to recognize that we we shouldn't romanticize the past. Even though I am prone to doing that, I think I've got better in recent years of being much more realistic about what things were like. But it's interesting, first of all, yeah, that people don't mind a modest architecture when it's pretty. But also that things in the past were also, you know, it's not like there was necessarily more variety. And these ones are kind of more to the point. Again, it's just like freaking loads of buildings that look the same.

• 51:53Chris Williamson?

  Wow, look at that sort of Gothic style cathedrals. Uh, UK, Norway, Slovakia, Germany, Czechia?

• 52:02Speaker 01

  Oh, Czechia, I guess that's the Czech Republic.

• 52:04Chris Williamson?

  Czechia, uh, Italy, that one in Italy is insane.

• 52:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's in Milan.

• 52:08Chris Williamson?

  Uh, Hungary, Portugal and Belgium all.

• 52:12Speaker 01

  Again, they're all very, very similar, right? Because they're all part of the same. And that was kind of, and then, sorry, there is one more of these, which is a now Byzantine style architecture.

• 52:21Chris Williamson?

  Okay, so this is with domes.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:24Chris Williamson?

  Uh, a little bit lighter color, a lot of white, some some yellows in there as well.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  And again, they all look very similar. So I kind of like making that point just because, again, perhaps more, some people who are more traditionally aligned tend to forget that there were phases in the past when buildings looked the same all around the world. But then the equal point that you made straight away is that people don't mind architecture. They don't mind when it's homogenous if it's pretty. Then the final thing, it's a bit, came out a bit blurry, unfortunately. But anyway, what do you think this building is? What do you think that is?

• 53:04Chris Williamson?

  I think it's a church.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  Sure. That's what anyone would think.

• 53:07Chris Williamson?

  Okay, you're telling me it's showers or something?

• 53:11Speaker 01

  So this is, this is a still from a documentary. Actually, I was, it's been my dream for years to visit this place and to film there.

• 53:18Chris Williamson?

  Where is it?

• 53:18Speaker 01

  So that this is, it's called Crossness Pumping Station. This is a sewage facility.

• 53:26Speaker 01

  When London's new sewers are built in the 19th century, they needed a pumping station a few miles, like about 20 miles east, closer to the mouth of the Thames. And the Victorians thought this was how you should design a sewage facility. Yeah, and it's just absolutely gorgeous.

• 53:47Speaker 01

  And this in a way sums up the change. And I think we've lost

• 53:53Speaker 01

  the belief, the conviction

• 53:56Speaker 01

  that even sewers can be beautiful, can be charming, interesting, meaningful. There are people working sewers and

• 54:07Chris Williamson?

  What's the excuse other than convenience and cost?

• 54:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, so this is where I guess really interesting. The cost point is frequently raised that we can't afford to build like that or design like that anymore. But this kind of isn't true. Like, there are two things to say about it. First of all, one point, it is a bit more expensive, but like, anything is too expensive if you don't want it. And then the question is, is the extra investment worth making? Well, if it's going to cost one percent more, which is usually what it's like to decorate, like decoration is so much cheaper than every other part of a building, right? You've just got to stick some pretty stuff on the front of it. Now, that's all cast iron, it's mass manufactured. This isn't made by some artist slaving away for years.

• 54:55Speaker 01

  You literally melt the iron, stick it in a mold, pull it out, paint it a bit, it looks beautiful. Like, is an extra percent worth an increase in human happiness and joy? Worth increasing, you know, the lifespan of the building will be expanded by, you know, decades. I dare say that that's a wise investment. And also, in purely speaking purely commercially, think of what it does for tourism. Like, cities, especially like in Europe, you know, in Europe, people don't make stuff anymore, don't manufacture stuff. Where does all the money come from? Comes from tourism. Like, you put up beautiful buildings and people from around the world will come flocking,

• 55:38Speaker 01

  spending all the hard earned money just to spend one night in this one freaking pretty street in your city. So like, it's one of the best investments you can make is in decoration. That's the one people usually raise as cost. This is kind of the biggest one. And it really is that simple. I think there's also other things we could get into that probably aren't worth addressing

• 55:59Speaker 01

  right now. But it's, so the point I want to make is that it is a choice. We act like it isn't a choice. And the problem with that, however, is that we live in a consumerist society. And again, this is why I think traditionalists and liberals, conservatives and progressives should be united. The problem, the biggest problem with modern design, isn't any, isn't people who want to return to the past, it's not socialism, it's not communism. The biggest problem is consumerism. Like, we live in a society where we have a culture of obsolescence, nothing's built to last. Because you can make more money, obviously, if you don't build things to last.

• 56:40Speaker 01

  Well, the cheapest, most convenient, quickest route is the one that we always take with everything we do. Like, everyone stands to benefit from that kind of meaningful, beautiful design. Apart from, uh, if you're the, if you're a property developer or a planner, whatever it is, and you, and you want to spend as little money as possible and get back as much as possible in a short time span, you make it boring, you make it ugly, you don't care about how it looks. That's the consumerism, I think, is the biggest problem.

• 57:10Chris Williamson?

  In other news, this episode is brought to you by Momentous. If your sleep's not dialed, taking ages to nod off, you're waking up at random times and feeling groggy in the morning, Momentous's sleep packs. How did I miss both of those? I'm here to help. They're not your typical knock-you-out supplement overloaded with melatonin, just the most evidence-based ingredients at perfect doses to help you fall asleep more quickly, stay asleep throughout the night and wake up feeling more rested and revitalized in the morning, which is why I take these things every single night and why I trust Momentous with my life, or at least with my sleep, because they make the highest-quality supplements on the planet. What you read on the label is what's in the product and absolutely nothing else. And if you're still unsure, they've got a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can buy it completely

• 57:53Chris Williamson?

  risk-free, use it, and if you do not like it for any reason, they will give you your money back. Plus, they ship internationally. Right now, you can get 35% off your first subscription and that 30-day money-back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to livemomentous.com/moderndwism using the code MODERNWISDOM at checkout. That's L-I-V-E-M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S dot com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom at checkout. Where do you think on the planet has got a good balance of beauty, of charm, meaning, interestingness?

• 58:33Chris Williamson?

  I imagine it, it, some unsophisticated idiot like me is immediately going to say Rome because it's so obvious and in my face. I went to Vienna for the first time.

• 58:42Speaker 01

  Oh, hell yeah. What do you make of it?

• 58:44Chris Williamson?

  I, I, again, I, that kind of very, um...

• 58:51Chris Williamson?

  I've just read my first philosophybook.com unnecessarily Baroque architecture thing for me is very it's easy to enjoy.

• 59:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 59:01Chris Williamson?

  I find the detail very pleasant. The fact that every street that you turn down is really wonderful. I thought that was lovely. I really, really enjoyed Venice. I thought Venice was fantastic and um small quaint streets and higgledy piggledy buildings leaning almost leaning up against each other. And they're being supported by bits of wood and the wood supported by iron and the iron brackets are on the side of the house and nothing. No two streets look the same and all of the pavements are cracked. And that was that felt quaint to me, which was charming. I think that would be very, very charming.

• 59:39Chris Williamson?

  Where else has got it right that I like? I'm a fan of Harrogate.

• 59:44Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 59:45Chris Williamson?

  I think Harrogate in the UK, Edinburgh.

• 59:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:48Chris Williamson?

  Phenomenal.

• 59:49Speaker 01

  Just yeah, when your spirits lift when you go to Edinburgh, you're excited. Every corner.

• 59:53Chris Williamson?

  But these are maybe not for Americans, but these are maybe more obvious examples.

• 59:59Speaker 01

  No, but they're good examples, man. You made such a like a good point like when you said about Vienna, like it's easy to enjoy. You know, I've got like I'm deep into this stuff and I don't like Baroque architecture. I'm much more of a Gothicist, I'm much further Gothic. But and I could sit here and talk for 12 hours about why that is. But it kind of doesn't matter what I think.

• 1:00:22Chris Williamson?

  I just like it. I like it because I like it.

• 1:00:24Speaker 01

  Like it makes you smile, you think and you get out your phone, you start taking photos, you know, and and that is what matters here. So Edinburgh, Rome, Vienna, other cities in the world as well, all over the world.

• 1:00:36Chris Williamson?

  Where else? Give it give us some maybe less obvious, beautiful locations that people could.

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  That you wouldn't think of.

• 1:00:43Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:44Speaker 01

  So I love Sophia in Bulgaria.

• 1:00:48Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  That's got a wonderful mix. It's got a mix of architecture, which is why I like it. Because for a long time it was under the Ottoman Empire. And the same is true all around Bulgaria. You've got a lot of Ottoman era kind of Turkish influenced. Buildings, but then you've also got, after it was independent, you've got all these 19th century neo Byzantine or big domed cathedrals. And then you've got Art Nouveau, all spiraling and flowery and pastel colours. And then the communists came and started building their massive brutalist monuments. And I adore brutalism. And so you go to any city in the Balkans, really. And they've got this just amazing mix over 500 years. You've got several different chapters of world and cultural and architectural history crammed in on the same, on the same street.

• 1:01:32Speaker 01

  And I love variety. I think variety is key. Again, I'll say, I'll say it once more. I wouldn't want to see a world where we just get rid of modernism in design. Like some modern buildings are just wonderful. We mentioned the girkin earlier, and I think the world benefits from variety. Look, it's a law of nature. One of the big points I make is like, okay, but why, why do human beings like variety? Why do we need variety? Why is decoration charming to us? Like, why is a door handle with a little spiral on it nicer than a door handle that's just a bar? Because it reflects nature. You go outside and look at a tree. John Constable, the painter, has this great line that no two leaves in the history of the universe have ever been identical. And it's true. Look at a tree. Every single leaf is different. Every single tree is different.

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  Nature is constantly changing and it's varied and it's detailed. And those principles of natural beauty, I think, which is the, uh, which is the environment that we were not raised in, that we evolved in. And that we've been in since the dawn of the human species is the one we feel most at home in. And go ahead, go ahead.

• 1:02:39Chris Williamson?

  No, I'm just, I totally get it that the, uh, the straight lines don't necessarily appear in nature. So trying to replicate some more complexity and some more uniqueness in design is a good idea. You mentioned brutalism there. I can see how brutalism might not be boring.

• 1:02:58Chris Williamson?

  I would absolutely say it is not charming, though.

• 1:03:01Speaker 01

  True, true.

• 1:03:03Chris Williamson?

  Make the pro case for brutalist architecture.

• 1:03:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh god.

• 1:03:10Chris Williamson?

  You might need to do a tiny briefer on what brutalist architecture is as well.

• 1:03:13Speaker 01

  Sure, so brutalism is a word that conjures a lot of images in people's heads. Like, it emerged after the Second World War in the late 50s, well, early 50s, and then kind of really took off in the 60s in the West. And then it took off in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc a little bit later, in the 70s and 80s. Now, when people say brutalism, they usually mean any building that is concrete and square. That's not what brutalism is. That's basically just, that's the most basic form of modernism, I suppose. Brutalism, properly told, is about these big, bold shapes. So you know the National Theatre or the South Bank Centre, just on the other side of Waterloo Bridge?

• 1:03:52Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 1:03:52Speaker 01

  That's like a great example of brutalism. I should have probably should have added to my presentation. But what you've got is these great big cubes and pyramids and weird angles and big open spaces. And it's all concrete, it's all unpainted, raw concrete, which is very honest, it's truthful, that's the idea. Anyway, the reason I love brutalism is because it's bold and it's exciting and it presents a vision for the world. It's like, brutalism, you look at all this old, like, fancy, pretty, detailed, delicate stuff. Brutalism is the opposite of that, it is massive. It is pure geometry on a huge scale, like the pyramids of ancient Giza or Stonehenge are kind of brutalist. Like, imagine those things but made of concrete, suddenly they're brutalism. And that's what brutalism has this like ancient monument, monumentality to it.

• 1:04:38Speaker 01

  And I think that's way more, I agree it's not charming, but not everything needs to be charming. Some things should be imposing or impressive. And I think brutalism is impressive, but what you said was so true. You said you don't think of it as boring, right? Because it's not boring. It's maybe ugly, but maybe ugliness is a good thing sometimes. But what did I say? The one thing we cannot bear is boredom. Ugly is fine, boring is not fine, and brutalism, I grant that some people find it ugly. And I wouldn't want a world of brutalism, but I think it's something inspired and to me very optimistic. It emerged after the Second World War, you know, the whole world has been devastated by the greatest cataclysm in the history of civilization. And from the ashes emerges this new style of architecture.

• 1:05:22Speaker 01

  It is, if you pick a brutalist building.

• 1:05:27Speaker 01

  And look at a photo of it from when it was first built in the 50s or 60s. It looks so futuristic. And I can imagine people, like imagine you're surrounded by all these like, you know, delicate Victorian buildings or all the plaster is peeling, the iron is rusty. And then you see this like concrete spaceship. It's like, this is going to be a better, fairer, more prosperous world.

• 1:05:47Chris Williamson?

  Only in comparison with a much more delicate.

• 1:05:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:54Chris Williamson?

  Refined.

• 1:05:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:05:56Chris Williamson?

  Glass, steel, chrome building.

• 1:05:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:00Chris Williamson?

  Does this begin to actually look kind of raw and primal and threatening?

• 1:06:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, threatening is a good word. It can be pretty threatening. And the problem now, which, yeah, is that the world has been filled with so much boring design. Plain squares and cubes, that brutalism has lost its charm because it worked by virtue of its contrast with that older environment. Now we have these brutalist buildings surrounded by just fricking glass boxes. Doesn't look that interesting, right?

• 1:06:31Chris Williamson?

  You mentioned earlier on, you're a hopeful romantic. I think I put myself in the same category, actually.

• 1:06:42Chris Williamson?

  How do you come to think about romance in the modern world? We've spoken about beauty, something that I think people wistful for, struggling to find perhaps, interestingness. And where is it this sort of increasing sterilization as they feel of the environments that they have to spend time in, whether inside or outside? How do you come to conceive of romance in the modern world?

• 1:07:07Speaker 01

  So you mentioned sterilization, a really, really good word. I think romance, romance is the least convenient thing.

• 1:07:19Chris Williamson?

  You say the word romance twice and things start falling out of the wall and that's the way it works.

• 1:07:24Speaker 01

  That's how it should be. That's how it should be.

• 1:07:27Speaker 01

  We live, as I said, I think we're okay. If someone agrees. We live in a world of convenience and of hyper-commercialized optimization. And in this world, amongst it, romance screams out as the opposite. Like, I said it to a friend of mine, I think I said it to David, actually. I said, we were talking, we were talking about dating and how he's getting on. And I said, look, man, it's not love if it's convenient. Like, love is anything apart from convenient. Like, when you're in love, and when you're taken by these passions, right, you stop doing things you should be doing. You think, well, I've got to work today, but I just, I just want to be with this person. You stay up all night.

• 1:08:10Speaker 01

  You know, you arrive at work, you're tired, you're sleepless. That is not convenient. And it's not beneficial to a world where your focus would be on, on, on, on, on kind of optimizing according to those material conditions. And yet, it's worth it, you know? And I think that's how I think of romance and why we're struggling to find it. Because it runs contrary to all the instincts that have been taught to us by the world. Like, I don't think you can schedule romance, you know? And I think online dating culture,

• 1:08:48Speaker 01

  it, it has transformed the way maybe we think about love into something that, that, that fits into a broader scheme of a scheduled and organized life. And I think it narrows the scope of possibility for passion to sweep you away. You know? And, and, and that is why I, that, that, that, yeah, that's how I think of romance. Does that answer the question or not?

• 1:09:13Chris Williamson?

  To a degree, it does. I think. The inconvenience makes an awful lot of sense. You know, to go from your slightly more artistic, whimsical approach to my remote area of expertise of evolutionary psychology and mating dynamics. Humans have two attachment systems. We have the passionate and the companionate. And the passionate is highly irrational. It's the honeymoon phase. It's obsession, a lot of anxiety. It's very painful. Anyways, it's very beautiful. It's the rush. It's the spark. You're unable to focus on anything. Wouldn't make for a particularly good society. It certainly wouldn't really even make for a particularly good family life.

• 1:09:57Chris Williamson?

  There's a lot of articles online. You can go and find this couple kept their honeymoon phase going for 20 years and here's how you can do it too. And there's a bit of me that thinks, oh, that sounds nice in some ways because there's the rush and there's the novelty and there's the uncertainty and oh, isn't it exciting? I would not want to be the child of parents who at 10 years, I'm 10 years old or five years old and they're still in the honeymoon phase. I don't think that your executive functioning, that's why you stay up late. Right? You should go to bed. You should go to bed. It's a good idea to go to bed. Something I imagine you tell yourself all the time, knowing your sleeping pattern.

• 1:10:39Chris Williamson?

  So, and then you move into companionate love. Companionate love is friendship categorized much less by sort of this obsession, but a deeper kind of connection. It's closer to friendship, but with the romantic interest in there too. And I think we

• 1:11:00Chris Williamson?

  I don't know how much of a place there is in the modern world for romance. Certainly not, given some of the challenges of roles that men and women have to try and contend with now, that women can be their own provider. And that men don't need to be the provider at all, especially if the woman is. But neither need to be procreator, which would have been very novel ancestrally. You know, if you have two people that are together in a relationship and there's no child that's come out of it, it's pretty likely that we're probably going to part ways. I don't know whether the fertility issue is me or whether it's you. But if we both split up, then you know, there's a 50% chance that we might, this might work with somebody else. Maybe it is you.

• 1:11:44Chris Williamson?

  Or maybe it's me and it'll be another, another whiff. But I wonder, given these sort of changing modalities, in order for you to be romanced, in order for you to apply, and this is a Joe Folly idea, I fucking become obsessed with this idea, it's so good, spoken about it twice today already.

• 1:12:03Chris Williamson?

  Joe makes this great point, that the modern world is defined in many ways, categorized by ironic speech.

• 1:12:11Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, man, hell yeah.

• 1:12:14Chris Williamson?

  Before we continue, if you haven't been feeling as sharp or energized as you'd like, getting your blood work done is the best place to start, which is why I partnered with Function, because they run lab tests twice a year that monitor over 100 biomarkers. They've got a team of expert physicians that take the data, put it in a simple dashboard and give you actionable insights and recommendations to improve your health and lifespan. They track everything from your heart health, to your hormone levels, your thyroid function, and nutrient deficiencies. They even screen for 50 types of cancer at stage one, which is five times more data than you get from an annual physical. Getting your blood work drawn and analyzed like this would usually cost thousands, but with Function, it is only $500. And right now, the first 1,000 people can get an additional $100 off, meaning it's only

• 1:12:57Chris Williamson?

  400 bucks to get the exact same blood panel that I use. Just go to the link in the description below or head to functionhealth.com/modernd wisdom. That's functionhealth.com/modernd wisdom. Earnestness, beautiful word.

• 1:13:12Chris Williamson?

  The courage to take your emotions seriously, right? Sincerity, you're planting a position in the ground that you truly believe in. Okay, this is me, here I am, this is what I want, this is what I believe in, as opposed to this is what I don't agree with, or I don't believe in, or I don't want. Anybody can define themselves. There are far more things in the world that we don't want than we do want.

• 1:13:35Speaker 01

  Oh, hell yeah.

• 1:13:36Chris Williamson?

  And it doesn't define who we are to say what we don't want. But it also means that you don't risk the fear of rejection. You can't be rejected for not liking something. Or you can in some ways, but it doesn't feel existential. You can be rejected for saying, I like this thing. Or that feels like a comment on yourself. We were saying earlier on, your ability to speak versus your ability to play the piano. That feels like a real, that's, you know, close to the core of who you are as a person. Oh, I really showed you a bit of myself. I showed you a bit of myself. I opened up, cracked my heart open and there it is. Here's a thing that I like. Sometimes that's a person and sometimes it's how you feel about a person. And for that to be rejected, it's painful.

• 1:14:18Chris Williamson?

  So I think a culture of ironic speech, of, of

• 1:14:25Chris Williamson?

  sardonic, distanced, second and third order aloofness is a prophylactic against being hurt. But results in romance, which by definition is sincere and earnest. The courage to take your emotions seriously.

• 1:14:47Chris Williamson?

  It doesn't leave much room for that.

• 1:14:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, every word, that was very eloquently and beautifully put. And yeah, I think in response to all of that, two things. First of all, yeah, I agree with what you're saying. When the word romance, I think can mean a couple of things. And I certainly don't believe that pure romance is enough for a sustainable relationship and, and a long lasting.

• 1:15:09Chris Williamson?

  Oh, you're so utilitarian. You need compatibility as well.

• 1:15:12Speaker 01

  That being said, I think the romantic life is when you can like, we, there's two sides. The romance is that the sweeping passion, you stay up all night, you leave your job, you run down the street with no shoes on. Whatever the hell it is, I don't know. But I think romance can also be a, a way of life and a way of understanding the world. And what that way is, is exactly what you said. This ability to express those sincere, earnest feelings. And the possibility of doing that is less available to us than ever. We all have, every human has this deep well of passion and love and light inside them. And I think the modern world in many ways is wonderful. And even modern dating culture does a lot of things right. But that particular part of us, we can't get it out there.

• 1:15:56Speaker 01

  And I wanted to read you a few lines from, it's the obvious place to go to, but from Romeo and Juliet. It sounds like the obvious play. To choose, and I don't want to get into what the play necessarily means and how it's been misunderstood. But it is, in many parts, a wonderful evocation of how to express oneself, so far as love is concerned. So here's a little scene, Romeo and Juliet are speaking from the balcony scene. Romeo says, "Oh, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied? Juliet, what satisfaction canst thou have to-night? Romeo, the exchange of thy love's faithful vow for mine. Juliet, I gave thee mine before thou didst request it, and yet I would it were to give again.

• 1:16:40Speaker 01

  Romeo, wouldst thou withdraw it? For what purpose, love?" And then Juliet says, "But to be frank, and give it thee again. And yet I wish but for the thing I have. My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep. The more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite."

• 1:17:05Speaker 01

  Now, that's a kind of expression which we...

• 1:17:13Speaker 01

  Doesn't really dovetail with this age of irony. And I think it would be-

• 1:17:18Chris Williamson?

  If she'd said all of that and then put lol at the end,

• 1:17:23Chris Williamson?

  it would have hit slightly less well.

• 1:17:25Speaker 01

  Indeed, indeed. I think we would be wrong to assume that all expressions of love are equal. And the language is obviously very old fashioned. I'm not saying we should all stop talking like that again. But those lines are as powerful and sincere, and they're also not generic, right? It's not just, "Oh, roses are red, violets are blue" kind of thing. That is like a really profound thought. She's providing it in explaining her, like at this point in the play, she's like way ahead of Romeo in terms of emotional maturity. Like, he's freaking playing catch-up there. He does catch-up by the end of the play, but at this point, he's just a guy who's... He thinks she's very good-looking and he'd like to kiss her, let's say. I think he's still in that stage, but Juliet, at that stage of the play, is already well beyond that,

• 1:18:10Speaker 01

  into the realms of actual enduring- Life-affirming, spirit-expanding love, which is what I think when I say romance, I think that's why it's so important because it allows us to access that side of it. Like, romance and love are good for your fricking soul, you know, they make the world brighter. And being able to talk, not in those words precisely, but to express oneself.

• 1:18:34Chris Williamson?

  The sentiment, the sentiment that I've loved you since before you knew it. And I love you so much that I'd withdraw it just so I could have the pleasure of giving it to you again. And it's boundless and reciprocal and circular. And regardless of how you say it, it's sort of cosmic and it's bigger than you. And it's real. And for that, for you to say something like that to somebody, for you to give them that much of yourself, which is actually giving you more than them, right? You're giving more than yourself, which is what love feels like. Love feels, you know, greater.

• 1:19:19Chris Williamson?

  For instance, one of the wildest things that I've done, when flying into London, I had a big day scheduled, had all of this stuff planned, and I decided I was going to torpedo these plans. Land in London, by the time I've landed in London at Heathrow, I've got an Uber booked to go to Gatwick. I go an hour Uber to Gatwick, completely annihilate all of the plans I had for the day. Trip to the dentist, hairdresser, two dinners that had been organized, meetings, all the rest of the stuff, go to Gatwick, fly to Edinburgh to meet a girl, to meet the girl.

• 1:20:01Speaker 01

  The girl, hell yeah.

• 1:20:02Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, and then I spend 20 hours in Edinburgh to then fly back to Gatwick to then go and do this, and destroyed the start of the week.

• 1:20:13Chris Williamson?

  Awful, horrible idea.

• 1:20:16Chris Williamson?

  Romance.

• 1:20:17Speaker 01

  Edinburgh is the greatest city as well, to be walking around hand in hand, damned as it lallyways.

• 1:20:21Chris Williamson?

  Very much so, yeah.

• 1:20:22Speaker 01

  That is, yeah, that's a beautiful story. And it's, um, actually, yeah, I was so into that story, I've completely lost.

• 1:20:29Chris Williamson?

  Romeo and Juliet, earnestness.

• 1:20:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, well, I was gonna say something absolutely life changing, but I can't recall this, but I think there is, this touches on a broader point and the poetry stuff might seem like, like, like it's kind of a trick or a gimmick and, you know, but it really isn't. And like, I'm not saying that, like, six AM in the morning, you wake up and, um, you know, I, I wake up and I make my girlfriend breakfast every morning before work, you know, she starts work at seven, I'll wake up at six, make breakfast, if you can believe it, I do sometimes get up.

• 1:20:58Chris Williamson?

  You've been texting me at eight AM awake as opposed to going to bed.

• 1:21:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, for, for the first time in a long time, I am now.

• 1:21:05Chris Williamson?

  You weren't nocturnal for a while.

• 1:21:06Speaker 01

  I was, yeah, I was, I was fully nocturnal, the whole.

• 1:21:08Chris Williamson?

  Your diet was largely red wine and cigarettes.

• 1:21:11Speaker 01

  Not red wine, actually, I, I didn't, I can't work drunk, I, I don't think you can work drunk.

• 1:21:15Chris Williamson?

  That's Alex, isn't it?

• 1:21:16Speaker 01

  It's Alex's thing. I do not, but it was, it was one meal a day, far too many cigarettes.

• 1:21:22Chris Williamson?

  I think I asked you one, one day what your plan for the evening was, and you said, I'm just gonna smoke and walk around.

• 1:21:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that's, that's.

• 1:21:33Chris Williamson?

  Romance.

• 1:21:33Speaker 01

  Romance, that's, but it's, it's, it's, it's actually a bloody good way to live. Not the smoking, it's bad for you, it's good fun, but it's bad for you and then you shouldn't do it. But the walking around part, doing nothing in particular is so much good for you. But I will, I will probably get back to that, although on this point, I'm not saying we should be giving these kind of speeches to, to our loved ones, you know, six AM in the morning, just woken up, faces a bit shiny and soft, or whatever it is. But there is a place for it. And I think, to speak practically, like how, like, why this age of irony, why do we struggle so much with romance, you know, this particular side of, of, of love, modern love?

• 1:22:15Speaker 01

  I think, and this is a broader issue, it comes down to education. And when I say that, I don't mean what you're learning in school. I mean the kinds of media and content you're consuming, like.

• 1:22:29Speaker 01

  What you watch and what you read and listen to shapes you even more than what you eat. That shapes your body, right?

• 1:22:38Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:39Speaker 01

  Like, like, you know, this kind of thing you talk about all the time.

• 1:22:42Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it just is a really lovely, hold the point.

• 1:22:45Speaker 01

  Don't worry, I'm not, I'm not going to lose myself in your.

• 1:22:48Chris Williamson?

  Good. Just, this is a lovely little, uh, someone put this in the comments forever ago. Um, which was, uh,

• 1:22:59Chris Williamson?

  your body is made up of everything that you put into your mouth and your mind is made up of everything you put into your eyes and ears. Prioritize appropriately. And, uh, I think, oh, lovely. And you want to, you want a, a mental diet that is spirulina for the soul, not fast food for the amygdala.

• 1:23:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm not sure what three of those words meant, but I think I probably agree.

• 1:23:18Chris Williamson?

  Had spirulina at some point. I'm sure they put it in cigarettes. I think that the new menthol. Uh, cigarettes that you've been smoking has probably got spirulina.

• 1:23:26Speaker 01

  I don't know, I don't, I don't like menthols. So, but I don't smoke anymore anyway. So that's, so.

• 1:23:31Chris Williamson?

  That's because your girlfriend's listening. That's why you've said.

• 1:23:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:35Speaker 01

  Anyway, um, the point I was going to make was, yes, that's also a fr- like beautiful way to put it. Prioritize appropriately. I love that. And in the same way that I think our souls and our minds and our hearts are better. When the things we consume with our eyes are charming and interesting versus boring. It occurred to me a little while ago. It sounds obvious, but I, I think, you know, I, I sort of, if I, if I have a talent for anything, it's realizing that obvious things are true. Um, and one thing I realized, I was speaking at, at an event about, about the manosphere. I was telling you about it. This weird event about the manosphere.

• 1:24:10Chris Williamson?

  Where nobody was on the side of the manosphere.

• 1:24:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. I said, put your hands up if you're in the manosphere. No one. Put your hands up if you know anyone who's in the manosphere. No one. So we just, it was a bit of a.

• 1:24:17Chris Williamson?

  We're not even two degrees of separation from a manosphere.

• 1:24:20Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:24:20Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:21Speaker 01

  But it was a good event. Well meaning. I just, it was just a really weird thing about it. But anyway. At that event, and one thing I realized, I suddenly, as I was talking.

• 1:24:30Speaker 01

  Like, one thing that we've done really well in the past decade, you know, you've been a big part of this as well. Is like, I think a lot of parts of our lives are better now because we're focusing so much more on the kind of habits we have and, and, and, and, and the things we eat or the, or the way we, even the way we schedule and journal stuff. The, the mass, the past ten, fifteen year boom in self optimization has been like a blessing for human wellbeing, I think primarily in a material sense. And maybe what we're lacking is the equivalent boom in an, what I would call an artistic or cultural or emotional spiritual.

• 1:25:03Chris Williamson?

  I was trying to work out what the word was.

• 1:25:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I need, I need to find a word that I will then use forevermore, but it's something along those lines.

• 1:25:10Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:25:11Speaker 01

  And I realized, I was like, what is, look at, look at all these people, you know, imagine everyone's there, they're eating well and they've got all the habits, like, they're, they're living great lives in a lot of ways, but what is the best piece of art they've ever been exposed to? What is the best show they've watched? What is the best film they've watched? What is the best book they've read? What is the best poem they've read? And like these days, notwithstanding the, the freaking infinite spew of Instagram reels, many of which are very funny, of course, but anyway, notwithstanding that spew, which has obviously negative effects for how we think and feel and like, I don't, we, we don't need to go into that, but the other, so, so, because, you know, we always focus on the bad stuff, like people are spending too much time on Instagram and reels, YouTube reels, da, da, da, brain rot. But we never look at the other side, which is, okay, what is the best stuff we're putting into our, to our brains and minds?

• 1:25:55Speaker 01

  And in the past ten, fifteen years, I was looking at these, these people all about my age, and I'm thinking maybe the, the, the greatest piece of art they've ever, ever witnessed and be, be, you know, seen is Game of Thrones or White Lotus.

• 1:26:09Chris Williamson?

  Okay, yeah, yeah.

• 1:26:10Speaker 01

  And like, they're, I've not watched them, I know they're very popular and that, that, that, that, obviously well made and people like, they're, they're clearly extremely good, otherwise it wouldn't be that popular. But I suspect across the scope of human history that they, they're not, I think there are other forms of art, by which I mean poetry, films, books, paintings, music, which access and exhibit an even higher, profounder, deeper, broader, and ultimately more meaningful side of, of, of, of humanity. And the great value of art is that it lets you into those secrets, it lets you see the world in a new way, like, what is the point of looking at a painting or reading a poem or reading a book?

• 1:26:53Speaker 01

  Okay, maybe you want to be entertained, but more than being entertained, It changes you. It either reveals things about the world that you didn't know, or reveals things about yourself that you didn't know. And like the difference between a whole life spent watching nothing but sitcoms, and one where you watch sitcoms half the time, but the other half of the time, you deal with slightly more challenging, more complicated, more difficult, but profounder forms of art. I think that second case, that person, is going to be happier. It's giving me more at peace. And this is why I think poetry is so important. The bit I read from Romeo and Juliet, I think the world stands to benefit from, when I say education, this is what I mean, like a more enriching cultural, a more culturally enriched

• 1:27:38Speaker 01

  environment where people do the hard work of like, reading difficult books, reading these great poems, looking at these great paintings, listening to this great music. It's not just for fun, and it's not just to show off. Like, this whole thing about being cultured can so quickly become like, oh, well, you know, I'm the cultural tutor. Like, oh, you know the Beethoven's Third Symphony? Well, you're, you know, the troglodyte.

• 1:28:00Chris Williamson?

  Look at how refined that is.

• 1:28:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, that is not what it's about. And some people think it is, that they couldn't be more wrong. Like, those people are idiots. What it's about is what it does to you. In the same way that eating a freaking Big Mac or a spirulina ball, which one is better for you? Same thing. And I think we need more poetry for that reason. And there is another poem I wanted to read.

• 1:28:22Chris Williamson?

  Bring it on. I'm ready. This is Sheen Quirks Poetry Hour.

• 1:28:26Speaker 01

  So this, I-

• 1:28:27Chris Williamson?

  That is a dog-eared copy of-

• 1:28:31Speaker 01

  It's called Verse and Prose in Peace and War by William Noel Hodgson. Now, William Noel Hodgson, he was a soldier in the First World War. He actually went to school in County Durham. Anyway, and he wrote poetry while he was in the trenches, and he sent it back to England. And there's one particular poem, which was published on the 29th of June, 1916, which I wanted to read. I think you'll like it. Let me just take it.

• 1:29:01Chris Williamson?

  Prepare yourself.

• 1:29:03Speaker 01

  This is William Noel Hodgson, writing on the 29th of June, 1916. It's called Before Action. So this is him in the trenches before, he wrote this, you know, just probably went off to fight.

• 1:29:16Speaker 01

  By all the glories of the day and the cool evening's benizen, by that last sunset touch that lay upon the hills when day was done, by beauty lavishly outpoured and blessings carelessly received, by all the days that I have lived, make me a soldier, Lord. By all of all man's hopes and fears and all the wonders poets sing, the laughter of unclouded years and every sad and lovely thing, by the romantic ages stored with high endeavour that was his, by all his mad catastrophes, make me a man, O Lord. And I, that on my familiar hill saw with uncomprehending eyes

• 1:29:59Speaker 01

  a hundred of thy sunsets spill their fresh and sanguine sacrifice, ere the sun swings his noonday sword, must say good-bye to all of this. By all delights that I shall miss, help me to die, O Lord.

• 1:30:17Speaker 01

  Two days later, William Noel Hodgson died in the Battle of the Somme.

• 1:30:24Speaker 01

  So it's a very powerful thing to read. Regardless of the fact that he obviously wrote this poem and had those thoughts in his mind before he went off to die in war, it is nonetheless, I think, you know, you struggle to find a more impactful poem, one that expresses a more shocking worldview in a way. I mean, you imagine a soldier in the First World War, in the trenches, in those miserable conditions, far worse than anything we could possibly imagine, far from home in this war, unlike anything seen before, with mustard gas and tanks and in the mud and the gangrene and the rats and it's just awful. But he has the wherewithal, the composure,

• 1:31:09Speaker 01

  the sort of spiritual depth to look within himself for this darkest of moments and write a poem which, you know, make me a man, O Lord, make me a soldier, Lord, help me to die, O Lord. It's just, you know, almost beyond words. Now, why do I read it? Well, because I think someone...

• 1:31:31Speaker 01

  Is better off, I think people these days in the modern world will gain immensely their health, their emotional, um, not much of their emotional texture, their spiritual wellbeing. It can only benefit from being exposed, for want of a better word, to that sort of thing versus, you know, I'm not punching down when I say versus Game of Thrones or White Lotus, but my point is there's more than that. And I think in art, we can find it. And that's just one example of one poem written by one guy. And I wonder if these days, if people found the time and effort to dedicate five percent less time

• 1:32:15Speaker 01

  to those other forms of media and more to this kind of thing, I would do is all so much good.

• 1:32:22Chris Williamson?

  So I think the problem that I've always had, and I told you this before we started, the problem I've always had with poetry is I find it somewhat inaccessible. I don't know whether I'm supposed to, how I'm supposed to like it, what I'm supposed to take from it. The holes, the unspoken words, the vacuum that allow you to suck yourself in are your spoon fed Game of Thrones. You know, two or three times, something is repeated to remind you of exactly who this person is. And, you know, the bad guy is disfigured and the hero

• 1:32:58Chris Williamson?

  has broad shoulders and, you know, um, there is a, there's a difficulty setting on, on poetry. And I mentioned to you that I'd read some Tim Burton, The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy, which is really great and fun. But it's fun, not because of its depth, it's fun because of its wit. And wit has a kind of depth to it, but it's immediately apparent what's going on. Another one about poor little mummy boy. And it's a pharaoh's curse that causes this woman to give birth to a, a bundle of gauze. And then a dog comes over one day

• 1:33:42Chris Williamson?

  and sort of pulls him apart. And then there's some Mexican kids at a birthday party and they mistake him for a pinata and they'd beat him to death. Is it ready, Tim Burton?

• 1:33:55Chris Williamson?

  It doesn't have the spiritual or emotional explanatory depth of a guy that is waiting at the battle of the sun. But yeah, I think I get it. I get that there is more to be gleaned and it gives you the opportunity to reflect on yourself and what this means in life and, oh, isn't that interesting wordplay? Or to think about, you know, a boy bobbing in the middle of the ocean, going nowhere but being on a journey or something like that, right? Like it allows you to suck yourself into the story. The difference between reading a book and watching a movie of the same, even of the same book, right?

• 1:34:38Chris Williamson?

  But the inaccessibility that at least I find, I'm not, maybe I'm a little bit ashamed. I feel like I should be more sophisticated, should be more refined, capable. The insecure overachiever inside of me wants to win at being able to understand poetry. But the advantage that you have of something like Game of Thrones or White Lotus or whatever is that the barrier to entry is essentially the floor. Very few people will struggle to understand what it's about. There are certain movies, Severance, for example, might be a good example of something that's a little bit more, or if you've ever seen, oh, fuck, not Looper, there's this time travel movie.

• 1:35:19Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, it's called.

• 1:35:20Chris Williamson?

  Where they have the box.

• 1:35:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've not seen it, but I know exactly what it is. It's like a famous indie two thousand and four.

• 1:35:25Chris Williamson?

  Suck. Primer.

• 1:35:27Speaker 01

  Primer.

• 1:35:29Chris Williamson?

  Little bit more difficult to follow.

• 1:35:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:32Chris Williamson?

  Tenet from Christopher Nolan.

• 1:35:34Speaker 01

  I love it. Tenet's so underrated. Tenet's so underrated.

• 1:35:36Chris Williamson?

  But people, why did people not like it? Unnecessarily complex.

• 1:35:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:35:41Chris Williamson?

  Memento, also unnecessarily complex.

• 1:35:45Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah, sure.

• 1:35:46Chris Williamson?

  Somewhat, just again, the barrier to entry to get into this is a little bit higher. So, yeah, you're right, for the right people.

• 1:35:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. Okay, okay.

• 1:35:55Chris Williamson?

  Something deeper is better, but the breadth.

• 1:35:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:58Chris Williamson?

  Is not there.

• 1:35:58Speaker 01

  So I'm excited now, I'm excited.

• 1:36:00Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, get in.

• 1:36:00Speaker 01

  Well, okay, so three things to say to all that, like really well, maybe mine are being four. First of all, like Tim Burton, his poem, that's a great place to start. You've got to like, that's fantastic, like, begin there and see where it takes you. Second thing is, yes, it can, again, poetry like art is dogged by the problem of connotations. That is this refined, sophisticated, like teacups and wigs, like, oh, well, I know, I, I, I can name everyone who takes this place. Like, that's crap, that's stupid and irrelevant and just pointless. The only reason this has any value is not because it makes you more sophisticated or refined in that sense. It's because in this stuff is contained the wisdom and the profoundest thoughts that humankind in a long civilizational history has come up with. Like, that's why these books survive.

• 1:36:41Speaker 01

  And obviously it does generate this kind of cultural gap and people use it as a shibboleth, you know, which I, my work is fighting against that. So I want to throw that all out the window and present this stuff and want people to look at it on its own terms. Now, it is more difficult, right? Uh, some of it isn't necessarily difficult, a lot of poetry is crap and pointless and you shouldn't read it. Um, but.

• 1:37:09Speaker 01

  A lot of things in life are difficult and the barrier, there is a barrier to entry. Look, like, I don't go to, to, to the gym. And maybe I should, like, I, in fact, I almost certainly believe I should, but I've not done it and it's quite scary. Like, just walk in like this, like, might walk in the gym and start, I, I don't, I assume.

• 1:37:29Chris Williamson?

  You and Alex could wear your suit jacket.

• 1:37:31Speaker 01

  Yes, I assume I should get changed, but I, like, I don't even know how to.

• 1:37:35Chris Williamson?

  I would love to turn you into a bro. I would absolutely love the opportunity to bro up Sheen Quark.

• 1:37:42Speaker 01

  Well, look, well, let's do a swap, you can start reading poetry and you can put on a.

• 1:37:46Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I'll get you to do Chest and Back with me.

• 1:37:48Speaker 01

  Sure, but this, but this is about, this, we're joking, this is what I want, I want a synthesis. I don't want to take us back to the Middle Ages. What I want is for modern world, modern people as they are, to have this extra life in, you know, infused in the system. Um, but, yeah, the gym, like, I don't know how to. Set up gym equipment. Like, to me, that barrier is the same barrier as when I sit down and I read poetry. It doesn't immediately make sense to me. Well, well, sure, but like, the only way to do anything, there are two ways to get in stuff. You either just freaking do it and learn on your own, or you have someone to help you. And I would like to think something I can do in my book. There's a whole chapter of the book, which is a, is, is trying to convince people to write a poem. You know, it begins with the line, I think you should write a poem and here's why.

• 1:38:31Speaker 01

  Um, I'd like to think my work can be to try and help people engage with this stuff without all those stupid connotations for what it is and for what it's worth and show that it has real value. Like, we need this stuff more than ever in the 21st century. And then also, just get into it, like, you've got to be fearless, you've got to be brave. Like, you could, because people, it can be a bit elitist, a bit frightening. Like, you read Shakespeare and then you think, oh, well, like, this is what I think it's about. But like, all these critics are saying it's not about that.

• 1:38:59Chris Williamson?

  What I think it's about is wrong.

• 1:39:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, here's the truth. What you think it's about is absolutely correct. Like, this is my view, the same with art. Like, look at that painting, you tell me what you think of it, what it means to you. And then maybe your view will change, maybe I'll try and change your mind. But that view is completely legitimate. It's no less legitimate than the view of, of whoever.

• 1:39:18Chris Williamson?

  I, uh, do you know Andrew Doyle? Do you know who he is?

• 1:39:21Speaker 01

  Name rings out.

• 1:39:22Chris Williamson?

  Titania McGrath on Twitter.

• 1:39:23Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:39:24Chris Williamson?

  Uh, he is the creator, or he was the writer behind.

• 1:39:27Speaker 01

  No, I think, I think I'm, I'm now.

• 1:39:28Chris Williamson?

  For a long time, he's been on GB News, he was on the show a couple of weeks ago. He's living in Arizona now. And, um, he, I didn't realize his masters, or maybe his, maybe his PhD, maybe he's got a, I might have a doctorate in this. It was in Shakespeare.

• 1:39:45Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:39:46Chris Williamson?

  And, uh, he was telling me these stories about him. I didn't know much about Shakespeare lore. And, um, he was giving me all of this really interesting stuff. I didn't know that. He said that, uh, Shakespeare basically made no commentary on his own plays. There isn't much by way of this is what this means. So as you said, well, this is what I think this means, but this is what the experts say it means. He goes, well, I mean, that's fine, but. Nobody knows what Shakespeare thought it meant. Maybe there are some small, I think there was, I think there were a lot of acknowledgements that he had in some of the, the scripts. But there was no, there wasn't much in the margins.

• 1:40:30Chris Williamson?

  He wasn't writing about his own experience. He was a commoner, because plays at the time were the entertainment of common folk. So I'm like, I need to just, I'm fucking chewing this stuff off. It was really cool.

• 1:40:44Speaker 01

  Exactly, right. When you present in that way, it's something like, oh, wow, this is like, nothing's do, like, it's not, like, whatever Game of Thrones, I'd say, is the same thing as the, as Macbeth. You know, it's just the same thing. And, yeah, tearing away that veil is, is, is, is so important. God, I was, I was about to say something. How did you, that last spiel you gave about Andrew Dore, what, what, when did that begin?

• 1:41:05Chris Williamson?

  You had said, it doesn't matter what you think this thing is about. It doesn't matter what the experts say or not.

• 1:41:11Speaker 01

  That was it. David Lynch, who's just, just so funny. You know, he has this great, he famously doesn't like talking about his films. Yes, because people are like, so David, what does this thing mean? He's like, well, look, I made the thing. Watch it, you can, what you think. It doesn't matter what I think, it's made, it exists now in the world. And all that matters is what you make of it.

• 1:41:29Chris Williamson?

  Isn't that interesting? Sorry for interrupting you again. Isn't it interesting that the, the creator of the thing is allowed to tell you what the thing means?

• 1:41:42Chris Williamson?

  That would be like the parents of a child being able to define what the meaning of their life is.

• 1:41:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess.

• 1:41:49Chris Williamson?

  As opposed to the child itself. You go, I've created this thing. And it's now in the interaction of that thing in the world that it, maybe that's a shite analogy, I don't know. But it's interesting that people look, I think this is one of the reasons that, that we do that is because we abhor uncertainty so much that we would rather collapse all of the different potential.

• 1:42:18Chris Williamson?

  Reasons for something's existence down into one, even if the one feels constricting instead of enabling.

• 1:42:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:26Chris Williamson?

  I can't, I can't, is it, is it a love story? Is it a tragedy? Is it a comedy? Who is a comment? Is it, is it a comment on class? Is it, is it Judy C66? What does he mean by? I just want to know, because sitting in the uncertainty is uncomfortable. We would rather snap that down.

• 1:42:47Speaker 01

  Hell, yeah, I couldn't, could agree more. And I, I think the artist's perspective is just a part of the picture. But yeah, it's like, if I said, Chris, I've got you this lovely gift today. I got, I got this nice table that you can put in your, in your, in your, in your, in your front room. And you say, well, she has a mug, it's, it's not a table. I say, well, I think it's a table. Like, well, yeah, similar thing, basically. Like, whatever you think it is, that's what matters. You think it's a cup, use it as a cup. You think it's a freaking hat, use it as a hat. I don't care. That's the beauty of, of art, that, that, that it just, it lifts you up and engages you. And there is one final thing I want to say about poetry, about why I think it's also so important in the modern world, along with everything else I've said about the wisdom that it teaches us and, and what it allows us to access in ourselves. It's also run, like, a lot of the problems that we find these days with the internet and social media addiction.

• 1:43:32Speaker 01

  Poetry, one reason it's so difficult is because it's the exact opposite. Like, rather than seeing thirty or forty reels in a minute, you have to kind of sit on your own in silence for maybe a couple of minutes while you read it and then think about what it, think about it. It was something you're alone and like all this world disappears and all our instincts to reach for something, to scroll, to flick, to look for an explanation, to ask about it. It's common, like, you're just left alone with this, with this poem. And that sort of little bit of contemplative, reflective experience, again, is like, just a little, little bit of texture that can help to, to lift the ailing human spirit of the modern world.

• 1:44:13Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 1:44:13Speaker 01

  I, I, I think. It's good training, basically.

• 1:44:17Chris Williamson?

  Well, yeah, it's the same way, it's the same way as going to the gym and lifting a weight while there's no weight on it.

• 1:44:22Speaker 01

  Wow, okay.

• 1:44:23Chris Williamson?

  Right, the progressive overload is injecting some of your effort into what it is that you do, putting some of yourself into this thing, asking yourself, what does this mean? It's an opportunity to reflect. Yeah, certainly, I wrote my first poetry this year and I really enjoyed it. It was a real challenge to allow myself to be more whimsical. This is certainly something else that doing this, the show, the live show that I'm doing, has allowed me to do, because when you're on stage, people kind of forgive a bit more whimsy. You know, if you're in a normal, I guess if you're telling stories as well, I learned this from friends that are great storytellers, Mr. Bolland, who has this huge YouTube channel. And even when he's just telling a normal story, Keegan Allen, another friend of mine,

• 1:45:02Chris Williamson?

  it's about a drive somewhere and there's so much unnecessary detail in there about, you know, where the sun was at, how hot it was, or what he was wearing, or the coffee that he'd had earlier that day, and you realize that all of the unnecessary detail fleshes the story out in the ways that you care about most.

• 1:45:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the point of it, in the end, that is almost the point of the story. It's like in life, all the most valuable things about life are the least necessary in a way, but no, I remember with your show last year, you came out on stage and I was thinking, okay, here we go, Chris, he's gonna fricking nail me to the canvas and sort me out, and then he's sort of telling jokes.

• 1:45:39Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, just doing what you want, I suppose.

• 1:45:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love that.

• 1:45:44Chris Williamson?

  Romance, anything else to say on modern romance?

• 1:45:47Speaker 01

  Um, I think most of what I care deeply about has been, maybe not quite as clearly as I'd have liked, but I think, I think in terms of my main gripes, it's, just give me one, maybe more than one second.

• 1:46:05Chris Williamson?

  Of course.

• 1:46:05Speaker 01

  Like five seconds. Um, yeah, without getting too, I have a bunch more slightly narrower thoughts, but I don't think there's any to get into them. Well, one is just about the willingness to die, you know, I think.

• 1:46:19Chris Williamson?

  It's a part of romance, the willingness to die.

• 1:46:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, um, Harold Bloom has this great line where he says, "The erotic is where the sex and death overlap," which is kind of an interesting thought. And that, the reason I bring up that slightly weird quote, is because the willingness to die is an interesting phenomenon, and I think love.

• 1:46:48Speaker 01

  In its highest and purest form, romance, love, that's what they are. It's got to be a complete.

• 1:46:56Speaker 01

  You've got to cast off your stake in worldly matters in order to give yourself to someone completely, right? But to give yourself to someone, you've got to give everything up.

• 1:47:04Chris Williamson?

  That's a kind of death.

• 1:47:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's some people talk about religious devotion, but the weird thing is, I think, I wonder in the modern world, like, okay, here's a question for you, man. Is there anything that you, what would you be willing to die for?

• 1:47:15Chris Williamson?

  Well, that's interesting.

• 1:47:16Speaker 01

  Like, would you die for me? Would you die for your country? Would you die for your parents?

• 1:47:26Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it wrapped up in that is love, right? It's wrapped up in that is romance.

• 1:47:32Speaker 01

  And it also touches on this, again, broader thing, I think, weird, interesting thing about the modern world is, I wonder what people are willing to die for, and it's kind of a morbid thing to ask yourself. But the thing, if you want to know who you are, if you want to get to grips with your life, you've got to ask, what would I be willing to lay down my life for? And I'm not saying people in the past had this sorted, they didn't. But it's certainly the case that at one time or another, certain groups of people did, and in many ways, the people we admire most in our films. And that's like, why people find medieval knights so interesting?

• 1:48:05Chris Williamson?

  Mobility.

• 1:48:05Speaker 01

  Or samurai.

• 1:48:06Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:48:06Speaker 01

  Many reasons. One of them is the fact that what they do is life or or death. And the same with many of the great Romans, you know, what's one of the things that's so impressive and weird and fascinating about them? And and so compelling is the fact that they are willing to stake their life on on a belief, on a conviction, on a kind of, on a kind of love and, you know, it's,

• 1:48:32Speaker 01

  Albert Camus famously said that the meaning of life is whatever's stopping you from killing yourself. You know, it's a very, very witty line. And true, my personal version is, you know, the meaning of life is whatever you're willing to die for. The meaning of your life is whatever you'd be willing to give up that life for. And if there's one question people should maybe ask, you know, I don't know whether this is the time, but often interviews end with, what's your one piece of advice? I usually have a few ones that I give, but the one that's on my mind right now is, one piece of advice, ask yourself, what would you be willing to die for? And a lot of other stuff will fall into place.

• 1:49:08Chris Williamson?

  Which is your favorite of the forty nine lessons? Not the best, not the most obscure.

• 1:49:13Speaker 01

  The last one.

• 1:49:14Chris Williamson?

  Can you grab your?

• 1:49:15Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:49:15Chris Williamson?

  Grab your?

• 1:49:16Speaker 01

  It's actually not the last one. I said that to be, to be, well, maybe it is the last one. So this is my book. You've got a photo taken by the lovely Alexander Griffin in the back.

• 1:49:27Chris Williamson?

  Ah, yeah, he's, he wants more credit. I think he's got a lot of credit, but he just wants more. Very selfish in that way. I wonder if he's here. Is he here? Is he? Good. Yeah, tell him he's selfish. Thank you.

• 1:49:42Speaker 01

  Maybe it is the last one.

• 1:49:45Speaker 01

  So is it, do you want to talk about it? Do you want me to read it?

• 1:49:47Chris Williamson?

  No, just, yeah, just give, give me a little explainer of it. Hi, Alex, you're selfish.

• 1:49:53Speaker 01

  In terms of what's most relevant or useful here, this, I'm not saying it's just because it's at the end to convince people to read the whole book. But the second to last chapter is, is called The Last Library on Earth. And in it, I kind of posed the question, the theoretical, theoretical situation, which is like, imagine in the far future, there's been global catastrophe, Earth is being evacuated and there's a spaceship and

• 1:50:18Speaker 01

  you're this librarian and you're like, okay, we need to leave Earth. There's only room for ten books. Like, which ten books would you bring? The only books that survive from all of human history. And my personal answer is that they shouldn't bring any books. But anyway, the, the, the reason I bring up this, this, this, this point is because this is on themes we've been mentioning. There's something like a hundred and fifty million books in the world. It's like a hundred and fifty million, not, not total, like physical books, but a hundred and fifty million different books you could read. Like, even if you read like a thousand books a year, you wouldn't read more than like zero point zero zero seven percent. Which is kind of scary. It brings you face to face with your mortality as soon as you realize that

• 1:50:59Speaker 01

  you literally, you can read anything, but you can't read everything, which means you've got to pick. And a lot of my work is just about trying to encourage people to pick much more judiciously and imaginatively, the very few things they'll be able to consume. In their life. Um, you know, I don't think people should read my book, to be honest. I think there are thousands of books they should read instead of this one. The problem is, uh, there are thousands of other crappy books being published every single year.

• 1:51:29Chris Williamson?

  Right.

• 1:51:29Speaker 01

  And if people reading my book come away with one lesson, it's that I don't need to read anything published in the last 50 years. Like, everything I need to know about life has probably already been written and written better and has also-

• 1:51:41Chris Williamson?

  What a way to make someone regret their purchase at the end of the book.

• 1:51:43Speaker 01

  Exactly. And but like, what is the best filter for quality in all of that? It's time, right? Time. If something is not good, it will not last.

• 1:51:53Chris Williamson?

  Lindy effect.

• 1:51:54Speaker 01

  Indeed. So like, an Amazon bestseller list, all it tells you is what's popular in any given week. Even book awards, they tell you what's been popular in any given year. But the past 10,000 years of human history, that tells you what people across all ages, in all corners of the earth, all backgrounds, all creeds, all religions, all situations, what all of those people, or at least, you know, a lot of them, thought was most useful, most interesting, most meaningful. Like, we have a list of these books. You can go and read them. Like, you can find, like, and I'm saying not to only do that. Like, I'm not saying you shouldn't read, you know, Dame Jilly Cooper, who died today, God rest her soul, that, you know, Jilly Cooper? She's, yeah, she wrote these, you know, um, she wrote all these books, these sort of racy, uh, novels about horse riding and, and, and football and stuff.

• 1:52:38Speaker 01

  Uh, a real legend, Dame Jilly Cooper. You should read about her. Anyway, I like, I'm not saying you shouldn't read her books ever, but the kind of the earn it, the burning message of this book is like, it's all waiting for you. Like, all this stuff, which will just completely transform the way you think about yourself and the world. And like, is, you know, for me, the whole experience of learning about culture, quote unquote, um, which I really got into about five years ago, I just, I, I kind of managed to cast off all these preconceived notions of what I should or shouldn't think, and just got into art and architecture and poetry. And it was like the world went from being in black and white to in full color. And I think, yeah, to summarize, that is what these days, uh, that's what not all

• 1:53:22Speaker 01

  were lacking, and a lot of the stuff we're doing is good, but it is one of the things that that people are missing is joy. Like, the words romance and adventure and death, like, these are such nobility, nobleness. You know, in our age of irony, it's very hard to say these words, but that doesn't mean that these things aren't real. And like, if you've got every single book printed in twenty twenty five and ask how many times the words adventure and romance and and and nobility came up, it'd be like, you know, no one talks about these things. And my job, if anything, is to inject that back into people's lives. And it's, uh, this is the place to begin, but it's not the place to end. This is not the place to end. This is not where you get everything. This is intended

• 1:54:04Speaker 01

  as a primer. This is where you begin. It's like, hey, I've just discovered this whole new like solar system, and I want to tell you about it. Please, please come and look at this. It'll be better, I promise, than some of the things you're doing currently.

• 1:54:17Chris Williamson?

  Shane Quirk, ladies and gentlemen. Dude, I think you're great. I really love the work that you're doing. Where should people go? They want to keep up to date with everything that's happening and check out?

• 1:54:25Speaker 01

  Sure. Well, follow me on X at the cultural tutor. I also do have an Instagram page now, which is-

• 1:54:32Chris Williamson?

  Do you really?

• 1:54:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:33Chris Williamson?

  You on Instagram is fascinating. It's gonna be like seeing, I don't know, your dad do an MMA fight or something.

• 1:54:38Speaker 01

  It's been pretty fun uploading stories, you know?

• 1:54:42Chris Williamson?

  Uh huh.

• 1:54:42Speaker 01

  Take a picture of something and say, oh, look at this. X Instagram, I have a newsletter, which is called the Ariopagus. You can subscribe on Substack. Find me at the cultural tutor on Substack. And along with the book, there's also this fantastic documentary, which I hope people-

• 1:54:57Chris Williamson?

  Where will that be uploaded to?

• 1:54:59Speaker 01

  It'll be on YouTube and on X.

• 1:55:00Chris Williamson?

  Who's channel? The cultural tutor YouTube channel?

• 1:55:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna release it on a brand new channel, which is-

• 1:55:06Chris Williamson?

  Exciting.

• 1:55:06Speaker 01

  I'm not sure if this is a venture into being a YouTuber, but it's more, it's the home of the channel. And I'm sure we can-

• 1:55:11Chris Williamson?

  Join us.

• 1:55:11Speaker 01

  I'm sure we can. What did they say? We can link it in the description.

• 1:55:13Chris Williamson?

  Join us, Shane. Dude, thank you so much. It's been a long time coming. I can't wait for the next one.

• 1:55:21Speaker 02

  Close your eyes, exhale, feel your body relax, and let go of whatever you're carrying today.

• 1:55:28Speaker 03

  Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-CONTACTS. Oh my gosh, they're so fast!

• 1:55:36Speaker 02

  And breathe.

• 1:55:37Speaker 03

  Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste.

• 1:55:45Speaker 02

  Visit 1-800-CONTACTS.com today to save on your first order. 1-800-CONTACTS.