#896 - 3.25M Q&A - Marriage Plans, Beautiful Women & Chris Bumstead
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Hello everybody, welcome back to the show. It is a 3.25 million subscriber Q&A episode. You ask questions, I try and answer them and not do a Nazi salute.

Let's see how we get on. Actually, before we get on, a lot of questions about books, book suggestions, Red Rising, which is this fiction series I've addicted everybody to and is amazing. There are 100 books, a list of my favorite 100 that I've ever read that you can get completely for free at chriswillx.com slash books. If you need new suggestions for fiction and nonfiction and real life stories, and there's descriptions about why I like them and there's links, you can just go and buy them from Amazon or whatever.

And it's awesome. And like a quarter of a million people have got it. And you can too. It's free. You can go and get it now. There'll be a button somewhere or chriswillx.com slash books. So go and upgrade your brain with that. All right, let's get into it. Dude, it's Danny. What happens to the music intro? It always hyped me up.

Good question. So we switched on audio from audio only to video on Spotify, but that means that we can't have a spoken intro with the music because there's no video to go along with that. So we got rid of the intros entirely. So blame Spotify for enabling video. Lots of people wanted video on Spotify and every new episode is now available in video. Plus the entire back catalog of 900 episodes is currently being uploaded.

But the sacrifice we've had to make is you've lost me chatting shit for the first 90 seconds and the music. So I don't know, maybe it'll come back at some point in future as like a special Hall of Fame thing. But yeah, for now it's gone and we just get straight into it like we do on YouTube.

Greaves Josh did you find some of the Finn versus the internet stuff a bit close to the bone dude I loved it I that guy is going to be so massive for the people who haven't seen this I did kind of like a roast I guess it's like a friendly collaborative roast in a way uh with a British comedian called Finn Taylor and that's available on his channel you can go and see um

I love what he, I'm a huge fan of that show and I have been for seasons and seasons. George Mack first intro'd me to him. I think he's great. And I really enjoyed it. I didn't find any of it too close to the bone. I mean, it's either true, in which case you've got nothing to, you can't push back, or it's so exaggerated that it's not true, in which case you don't need to worry about it. So yeah, they're great. The team's fantastic. It does feel a little bit like, I know, like you're in a school game

classroom with a bunch of naughty kids at the back that are just throwing insults at him to throw at you uh that's pretty funny because all of the producers are in there as well but process was great and uh he's gonna be massive i'm very confident that it'll be like he's gonna be so so huge so like the british charming nicer version of tony hinchcliffe maybe but yeah i i loved it

Maxime 66 what are two important questions you would ask a woman on a first date to see if you are compatible that's a good question um what does a happy life look like to you I think is probably pretty important uh and when would you want to have kids um

I think both of those help to ensure that you're both moving in the right direction, but what you want to basically avoid on a first date, and this may be moving too quickly, two important questions. She might run away, but it depends how serious you are, right? This is, this is what I would ask. But if you're serious and if this is you looking for a life partner, you want to make sure that you're both pointed in the same direction. So if,

A good life to her looks like regularly going on holiday and never really having to be around the house and not really building a home, but you want to be a homebody and you can't wait to make a family, that's not going to work. And the same is true vice versa. If you want to just be this sort of decadent,

degen world traveler having tons of fun parties and stuff until your 50s and she wants to be the four golden retrievers and five kids person that's not going to work and then I think the second big question is when what sort of a timeline are you wanting to make the next big milestone on you can't really ask when do you want to get married but you can most people have got an idea about when they want to have kids and by asking when you also get to ask the question of do you so it's kind of a

It's a little cheap. So way too intense, way too over the top, probably going to scare loads of women off. But you said what are the two most important, not the two most likable. So there we go. Lizzy Low 31. I'm a female and avid listener for the last six months. Curious how many women subscribe. So it's about...

30% of the audience is female on audio. On YouTube, it's less. It's about 15%. But YouTube skews super male in any case. Interestingly, when you look at the live shows that we did in Australia and in the UK and the ones that we did last year in America, it's nearly 50-50. It's 55-45. Now, can't work out how many of those are girlfriends that have been dragged along by the boyfriends, but you also can't work out how many are girlfriends that have dragged their boyfriends along. And I'm going to

fight the corner for that so it's a lot uh and you know for all of the uh finn versus the internet thing of your podcast is primarily for men it's definitely not and it never has been it's male focused and i talk about the issues that interest me to do with men because i am one and also because i get accused of mansplaining if i try and do it for women um but

Yeah, it's a mixed bag. And I like that. I certainly think that a lot of the episodes about men, men's mental health, emotions, opening up, all of that sort of stuff, in many ways is as useful to women as it would be to men, because you get to actually find out something you have no insight into, as opposed to something that's just aimed at you. So yeah, there you go.

Chris, you said that you got a comprehensive DNA sequencing in one of the episodes with Dr. Mike. Which company did you do it with? Also, where are your glasses from that you've worn in some vlogs? Red tint, gradiating. Intellex DNA, I think it's called. The medical director head lady is actually going to come on the podcast because I think it's super interesting. Intellex DNA, you do a cheek swab test.

send it off and they basically do your entire genetic profile and send back anything that looks interesting. It was really, really eye-opening. You get to learn so much about yourself, you know,

A lot of episodes I've done have talked about the impact of behavioral genetics in that 50% of everything that you are psychologically is genetically predisposed from your parents. But so I knew that. I knew that there were these things, these traits that I was inheriting from one generation to the next. But I never actually thought about the individual building blocks that that was made up of. And yeah, you get to see. You get to see

literally the bricks that are used. Okay, that's me. And that's me. And that's one of the reasons that I have this disposition. And that's one of the reasons I have that disposition. It's fascinating. It kind of can lead you, I've noticed myself looking a little bit toward a kind of

fatalistic approach because when you can actually see the individual elements that can contribute to you being you, it makes it way easier for you to say, well, that's just because of my CMY3AA fucking like allele or whatever. It's not necessarily great, but I think if you can get past that, which I'm doing, it's super interesting. So in IntellX DNA, the glasses aren't red, they're pink and they are

moscots in blush uh monochrome moscots in blush they're not cheap they're about 350 quid but uh they're beautiful and you can wear them by day you can wear them by night and they seem to go with pretty much anything so there you go greaves underscore jock you've managed to get two of these in you've managed to get two in okay uh where's the merch mate um we're working on that very hard

It takes a long time to actually get merch done to the level that you want if you want to have really, really nice merch. So I felt icky about it for a long time because in many ways, lots of merch just seems like kind of a nameless, faceless cash grab, shameless cash grab. But then I also realized that if I was a fan of a show and they had some cool designs, I would wear the living fuck out of them. So I got past my own

fear of grift accusations uh and we are going to do it so you will have merch within can't put a timeline on it within a few months hopefully adam steel 4987 are you into hardcore music metal music in general or just bare tooth yeah i mean i've won

Paris, I've won. Sleep Token, I've won. Misery Signals, A Day to Remember. Lots of different t-shirts, which is what I'm guessing you've got the Beartooth thing from. Massively into Polaris at the moment. Polaris and Beartooth are my two most played at the moment. It feels like there's a resurgence coming along. Bill Murray, all of these different bands putting out

like half throwback, very tuneful, very groovy, very sort of uplifting metal and scene-y music. I can't get away with Knock Loose and like the really, really heavy end. But anything that's got a little bit of melody on that.

Margie May 12. There has been much discussion around pornography being harmful. Knowing this, I can't help wondering if popular romance books that have very intense sexual content are just as harmful for readers who tend to be more female, or do they just get designated as harmless because it's a book? That's a really interesting question. So I don't know what the mechanism is that people think porn is harming men on that...

romance novels wouldn't do the same to women on. Maybe something about it being more visually stimulating. Maybe something about you being less involved in self-generating the fantasy. But maybe there's an argument to be made that that's more damaging. Maybe it...

detaches you even further from what real life could be because this is purely a fantasy as opposed to at least you're constrained by the reality of watching two other people that were actually people at some point, I guess, until you get to AI. But yeah, that's an interesting question. I've had a bunch of conversations about this. The sort of panic and the porn harm thing from an evidence-based perspective seems to be up in the air. I'm aware that there's this...

felt sense, this kind of ick, this naturalistic fallacy type thing that's like, it can't be good for guys to spend all of their time. And we know that some people kind of get behaviorally addicted to porn. Therefore, downstream from that, it's got to be bad for everyone. I'm not saying it's not. I'm just saying that I'm yet to see any evidence that says that it is definitively. And there is a lot of evidence on the other side of the fence too. But that's a really unpopular... If you want a campaign to be

porn isn't as bad as you think it is, you are fighting an incredibly unpopular corner there. I'm an open book on that, but my point would be if there are issues, if porn genuinely is a negative impact for most men, I would be surprised to find out that romance books aren't having a negative impact on women because satiating sexual desire without having to leave the house

allowing fantasy to creep in, which may create an unrealistic expectation, both for your other partner and for what happens during the bedroom. So yeah, maybe we need to age verify romance books too. Have they got a... They must have. There's no way that you could go and buy Fifty Shades of Grey and be 12 years old or something. That has to be an age limitation on books. Anyway, Texas's porn ban thing is in. So maybe they'll come for the books next.

Joseph Thompson, congrats man. Do you feel like you have more support or less now compared to when you started the pod? Yeah, that's a good question. I think it's weird when you get to something that people would call success.

Because you see you as the same person, but the world sees you as someone else. And when you're on the way up, everybody's happy to support you because you're just the young upstart making it. It's spit and sawdust and cable ties and sellotape. And you go, man. You go get it. And then you...

get to some kind of size or escape velocity and people then look at you and say that it's a position of privilege or that you are, you know, shilling for the government or that the CIA has come in and you're glowing and whatever accusation they throw at you.

But you're just the same person. To you, you've just been one person throughout this whole thing. And the way that people saw you at 10,000 subs versus 3.25 million subs has completely changed. And I think we have a tendency to want to root for the underdog. And this sense in the back of our mind that...

really, really large success, especially very public success, especially very public success that hasn't come by virtue of specific expertise.

That is something that triggers a lot of people to be mean. I mean, one of the issues I think people have with the world of podcasting and YouTube in general, especially if you do what I do, I'm just a professional, stupid person in the room. I'm a good avatar for the layperson who didn't stop doing a thing and was able to communicate relatively well. And here we are.

But when you look at me, when most people look at me, I think what they see is someone whose abilities are probably kind of within reach. Like, yeah, you know, if not for the accent and the hairline and the timing, there could have gone I. You know, I'm not...

LeBron James starting a podcast. I'm not Taylor Swift starting a podcast. I'm not somebody who's got an unbelievable sort of untouchable amount of talent that is doing a thing. I'm a normal person doing a thing. And I think that that maybe in the back of some many people's minds triggers this sense of, well,

why that could have been me and in that sense of that could have been me and it's not and if there is envy there which definitely shouldn't be like it's not a fucking dream all the time this is an awful lot of work and uh yeah it's not exactly a breeze um

If you feel that, one of the ways that you can try and shorten the gap between why did that person get that thing that I want and why did I not get it is by dragging them down. So that's when the accusation of you must have had rich parents comes in. It's like one of the best ways to know when you fully reached some degree of fame or reputation is that people accuse you of having rich parents. And what are they saying? They're saying the only way that you did this was by unfairly getting a leg up in the beginning. And if I'd had that type of a leg up, I would have been able to get that too. So...

What I'm saying is total amount of support is greater, but relative amount of hate is way higher. Million to one odds happen eight times a day in New York City. So if you accumulate a sufficiently big pool of people watching anything that you do,

you will accumulate a lot of haters. And given the fact that we remember the insults, but we forget the compliments, any increase in platform size doesn't feel like an increase in support. It largely just feels like an increase in hate. So working hard at doing that. So what I'm saying is pay me more compliments. That would be

That's the main takeaway. CP Griffin, why don't you include Spotify or other platform subscribers in your follow account milestones? We feel like we're not part of the team. You definitely are part of the team. I think the main reason that I do it is that the Spotify and Apple podcast subscriber numbers are private. So when I can tell you it's 930 something thousand subscribers,

on Spotify. I can tell you about it, but nobody else knows. So, I mean, first off, I could be lying. Secondly, by virtue of it not being public, there's less of a reason to sort of celebrate. I've said to Spotify, because I'm a part of their creator council, I've said to them that they need to do public follower counts and they also need to do

uh plaques like youtube does for 100k and a million because getting a million followers on spotify is way harder than getting it's million followers on spotify is probably 5 million on youtube i think it's probably about it's probably about five to one in terms of difficulty to accumulate them so that's what i'm saying but you are definitely part of the team and you're so much part of the team that we're uploading 900 episodes of video thing to spotify so everyone can watch

Creator Kate, what is it like on the top? Does it get easier when you win or problems get more complex and cost more? I guess it depends whether you're talking about personal or professional. Um,

Personally, it's more complex, but not necessarily more costly. Business-wise, it's both more complex and more costly. What it's like at the top, which I'm definitely not at, but toward the top, you need to develop a very different set of skills. What gets you...

out of the atmosphere is really just hard work. You're just sort of gritting your teeth. You don't have enough experience to have unlocked any talent you've got. So really, no matter how talented you are, it only gives you a little bit of a leg up because you need the experience to really unlock the talent. So without experience, your talent is sat dormant and you don't have experience to tap into experience. So all you've got is hard work.

And that means you work super hard and then you get to the stage where you actually need to work way less hard. Like your job is not to work hard. Your job is to have good ideas. And that for me with my Puritan working class mentality feels opulent and bourgeois and lazy. Uh, and it doesn't give you the immediate dopamine that a lot of the time I've been used to because, you know, sending all of the emails and being frantic and having a busy calendar, uh,

That's not the skill set that gets you from, whatever, 95 to 96 or 96 to 97. But it is the skill set that gets you from 0 to 1. Yes, it's more complex. Yes, it costs more. And it's a different sort of skill set. It doesn't necessarily get easier in every way. It gets more difficult in some. And

Are you going to work as hard when you're at the absolute top? Probably not. But all of the routines and habits that you built up of working hard, you need to not. Perfect example of this. If you're somebody that's type A, classic, insecure, overachiever, and you like to go to the gym, the hardest thing for me to tell you to do would not be to go and train hard. The hardest thing for me to tell you to do would be to sit on the couch and not train. That would be harder than you having to go to the gym.

Why? Because you're a driven person. And what you've learned is that if you go and you work hard, you feel good afterward. So letting go of that. And then again, this is one of those problems that nobody's going to give you sympathy for. It's like, oh, poor person that's managed to achieve some success, whining about how they need to not work so hard and they need to focus on a different mode. They need to delegate. They need to learn to be a leader, not to be a boss. They need to learn to be like an idea person, not to be an operator.

But it's true, at least as far as I can see, unless you want to cap yourself at just being a grunt who grinds things out over and over again. And if you do that, you're going to limit the pace that you can do this at because you can't work that hard. You can't run marathon pace for 24 hours. You need to take a break. And if you're going to try and do this for a very long time, you need to dial back off the gas. So.

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tap on the back after you've beaten me up and thrown me out the door. Do I feel sad about being 36 and unmarried or without a life partner? Don't you want children? I can't wait to be a dad. I really do want children. The more that I think about it, the more that I spend time around them. A lot of my friends have had kids recently or are pregnant or whatever at the moment. And I'm fired up for it. But I focused on different things when I was young. And I focused on different things when I'm slightly less young as well. And

I hope I don't look back and regret it. I don't think that I'm going to. I'm intent on building a family that I'm really going to love. But look, you can't do everything at once. And I've hopefully done things that set up the future family that I create to be well positioned materially, emotionally. Holy shit. Even three years ago, if I look at

the person I was. Forget all of the objective metrics of everything, just the subjective way that I showed up and what I knew about myself. I've made a big difference, and I don't know whether I would have been able to do that whilst learning to swim or fly with a family at the same time. Different people on different timelines. But I am aware, and I am

expediting the timeline as best I can. Like it's not just the sort of thing that you do on your own. So yeah, I'm moving quickly. Guy Fincham, PhD. Do you practice breathwork? If so, details please. Yes, I do. State app, S-T-A-T-E is what I've used for

Half a decade now. It's great. I must have done thousands of sessions on that thing. A bunch of different pathways. It's super cheap. I think it's maybe two bucks, three bucks a month. And I'm

That's awesome. There's a couple of YouTube videos that I've done, holotropic stuff, two-part breathing, breathe to stomach, breathe to chest, breathe out, breathe to stomach, breathe to chest. Some of those have got gratitude stuff that works in with it. Some don't. But State App is the best one-stop shop. Cake. Which podcasters would you cast in a live action adaptation of Red Rising? Fuck, that's good. Which podcasters? Okay.

Rogan's got to be Darrow. Michael Malice can be Severo. I don't know who would be the super... There's no super Chad podcasters. There's no insanely good looking podcasters. So we're stuck. Leave that with me and I'll come back to you. That would be good. I mean, who's Mustang going to be? Fucking Whitney Cummings. I don't know. And also for everybody that hasn't read Red Rising, like what? Anyway, go download the reading list and you'll explain why chriswillex.com slash books.

Mary Broadman, to what do you owe your success? You started with no listeners and grew so much. Just consistency, I think. It's the one thing that

everybody who I know that's successful has got. Being consistent doesn't guarantee that you'll be successful, but not being consistent will guarantee that you won't reach success. And that's been it for me too. I just didn't stop. And, you know, that's one of the funny things about getting criticized of, I don't know, some help up from the non-existent

wealthy parents or whatever accusation that people give to really anybody that's spent a long time doing something. It's like, bro, there's 900 episodes. How are you lying at the feet of anything that isn't just repetitions over and over and over again? So it's just consistency. Coming out of Love Island, I gained 3,000 subscribers on Instagram. So it wasn't that. And Love Island was like

like four years before I started the show. It wasn't me standing on the front door of nightclubs. It was just doing a thing, working hard at it, thinking about it, paying attention and not stopping. And I'm pretty sure that that's just the solution to everything else as well if you've got the raw talent. Ezriki7, what's the crack for episode 1000? Cheers. Yeah, we've been thinking about that. I want to do 999, 1000, 1001. I want to do 300.

motherfuckers back to back i don't know what it's going to be um but we have got that in the back of our mind it's going to be uh october time i think something like that will be episode 1000 so 900 is coming up shortly oh maybe it'll be a little earlier yeah it'll maybe be october september october time we'll do something great steph verhagen biggest thing you learned from c-bomb man i learned

I've learned so much from that guy. He's been really formative to me, I think.

an important rebalance against homosies influence on me it's like uh sebum and alex are the good angel and the bad angel sat on either shoulder like jacked as fuck angels um you know alex is telling me stop being such a pussy just work harder deny your feelings you don't need to feel them just keep going this is the challenge that your future self will tell us a story um

Chris is saying, embrace the way that you feel. Don't flee from your feelings. Tell other people, open up. Don't work too hard. Spend time at the beach. And I've definitely been in a sebum era, not a hormosy era for probably the last six to 12 months or so. This has coincided with me reflecting more about

what I want from life, certainly becoming more serious about wanting to have a family, wanting to settle down, wanting to set myself up for the rest of life, as in create the kind of cadence of living and working that I can do for a few decades, as opposed to having to find something new to do. This is the thing. If you work really, really hard and you blow up

as in get the big exit or achieve the level of success and you never need to work again, or you've got some sort of a business that allows you to really, really step back. If you're a driven person, you're just going to turn yourself inside out trying to find new challenges to do. And the other route, if you were, so that's if it goes right, but if it goes wrong, you're burned out and maybe you kick yourself out of the game because you've damaged your health or you've damaged your motivation or you've lost passion for whatever the industry was that used to be. And

So biggest lesson that I've learned from Chris is emotions, um, to embrace them, to listen to them. Uh, and the, uh,

bravery to be able to open up to a partner about them is, yeah, I mean, he's the king. He's the absolute king at it. Ricardo Penna R, tips for being more positive and optimistic, being less of a hater. That's a great question. And I appreciate that you asked it because I think a lot of people revel in their negativity and, you know, being positive online is very rarely rewarded. If you look at, you know, all of the

the top comments, unless they're really funny, they're almost always like a piss take. It's either clapped her, funny, genuinely, or some sort of a piss take. So tips for being more positive and optimistic, just be around people that are positive and optimistic. Especially if it's a U-turn in terms of values,

You can try really hard and think about it, or you can just be around people like the person you want to be like. And that's a much quicker route, I think, to success.

It'll expedite because you're going to have the social pressure of these people being like that. And if you come in and they're always being positive about stuff and you just come in and you're disparaging and you take the piss and you're negative and you're backbiting, they're just not going to want to be around you. And you're going to feel so awkward. If you've got an ounce of social awareness, you're going to be so awkward. So you think this isn't the vibe. This is a group that wants to big everybody up. And I keep coming in and saying these mean things. And then you're going to have whatever that French word is for staircase regret, which

where you leave a party and you go, damn, I really should have been kinder when he brought up that new project he was working on. But I wanted to get this quip in. I wanted to make myself seem really cool. So I said this thing that sort of took the piss a bit, but no one really laughed. And I don't like me when I'm like that. So be around people like the person you want to be like, positive and optimistic and Godspeed. Mike Atleta.

You mentioned about your autoimmune problems once or twice, promised a full episode and disappeared with it. Can you please mention how you tackled it on the Q&A? Some of us suffer exactly from that and don't know how to fix it. Your help is much needed. Thank you. All right. Yeah. So being completely honest, the reason that I haven't done the big roundup to sort of explain what went on and what's going on is that it's still going on. And talking about

a negative situation when it's not resolved doesn't make people listening feel hopeful. It makes them feel sad for you. And as much as sympathy is very welcome, I don't know, it feels weird to me to be, I don't know, does it come across as if I'm a woe is me? Please look at

help. I need some sympathy thing. I don't know. It just, it didn't feel right. It didn't feel right to, um, to talk about it until it is resolved, but it's been over a year now and it's still not so long and short of it.

got COVID 18 months ago, was living in a house that had toxic mold in, didn't know. Turns out like 85% of people that I've got EBV, Epstein-Barr virus, which that got kicked off by the mold plus the COVID. Then America is very unforgiving to people

immigrants. So, uh, the food system here just ruins anybody that wasn't born here. Um, although it's bad because you've been exposed to red 40 and blue three, and you've got ADHD and autism, uh, it's good because your stomach's used to them. But if you move here, you don't have those things, but your stomach has no idea what's hit it. And it's sure enough, two and a half years, two years in like everybody else, every Mexican person that I know that's moved here, uh,

Ton of gut dysbiosis, candida, H. pylori, SIBO, roundworm and liver fluke from fucking Africa, maybe. I don't know. Tinnitus, memory loss, mood dysregulation, sleep. I'm falling asleep at 8 o'clock at night, 8.30 at night, every single evening. And it's like the most...

salient part of my entire life. The reason that I don't talk about it that much on the show, apart from right now, is it's a bit of a buzzkill. This isn't fun. You guys come here, I don't know, maybe you come here to find out about me, but presumably you come here for interesting conversations and a good vibe and a good hang. And I don't know, I think I get worried about ruining that or not being a professional.

Being a professional is sucking it up and doing what needs to be done in any case. And I'm proud that I managed to do that over the last year because it's not been superbly easy. And it's meant that I've had to dial back a lot of workload, spend a ton more time and effort and money and

Thought cycles, trying to fix it. But yeah, that's it. In terms of how I tackled it, the same way that everybody else will have done with binders and cholestyramine and phosphatidylcholine and glutathione and red light therapy and saunas and...

and ozone and high dose vitamin C, IVs and a ton of other stuff. And I will detail the whole protocol of everything that I did. But to be honest, because I'm still like balls deep in it, maybe the worst I've ever been from a health perspective, at least a felt health perspective, even though we fixed a lot of those problems, I'm hesitant to go, and this is what I did because I also would go, this is what I did and it's still an issue. So

I don't know, man. I'm sorry if it's felt like I've opened the door and then abandoned everybody, but that's not because I'm off dancing in the moonlight having a great time. It's because I'm still down in the trenches trying to fix it. So that's the update on my health. I hope that's useful. I'll have more stuff soon. We've tracked a lot of it with Max, the videographer. So there will be, I guess, a

semi-interesting vlog coming at some point uh which will show me in various states of disrepair getting a lot of different treatments and in a good mood and in a bad mood and sad and all the rest of it so hopefully that'll help and uh if nothing else just keep on keeping on get enough sleep and uh yeah i'll keep you updated

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Blake Alexander 925, what can the left do to win back young men? I mean, first off, stop castigating them. Stop telling them that they're broken women. Stop telling them that they are misogynistic and oppressive and patriarchal and privileged women.

because no group is going to be shamed or patronized or passive-aggressed into supporting your cause. So it's like, what can the left do to stop pushing men away, young men away, before they even look to win them back? Because they're actively pushing them away further and further. And then once they've done that,

I think, provide a positive vision for what young men could be. What is it? I saw this on Reddit somewhere, maybe it was a Gen Z thread or something else, and somebody had asked people of the left, assuming that you don't like Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan, who are some positive male role models that you can think of that you would agree men should try to emulate? And it was

I think almost all of them were fucking fictional characters. It was like Aragon from Lord of the Rings and some guy from a sitcom I'd never heard of. I think, right, if you're having to dig into fantasy novels and rom-coms

in a desperate attempt or sitcoms in a desperate attempt to try and find role models for men that you can agree on you need to do some more work because your criteria for an acceptable man is one that's so unrealistic you've had to turn to fucking fiction to make it happen and uh

So that's it. Stop pushing them away. Stop calling them things that turn them off and provide a positive vision. I think if you just begin to do that, Scott Galloway, Scott Galloway understands the dynamic men's want for conquer and mastery and progression and to, to feel like they're contributing and to feel like they're valued young men like him, who could have imagined. And, uh, the same thing I think needs to be done at large. Uh, yeah.

Jdealmider13, do you own any properties and or short-term rentals? Curious about your investment strategies. So I do, I think six.

in the UK that I accumulated while I was there doing the nightlife stuff. And that was classic 25% down LTV, buy to let, interest only mortgage as opposed to an equity repayment. And they're just, you know, they're student properties that wouldn't be given to families in any case. And

Uh, so I picked those up and they'll have capital gains a little bit and they positive generate positive cashflow every month, but I'm going to unwind those over the next two to three years because your boy got his visa renewed, came back from Jamaica, new visa, new driver's license. And unless I actually mess up the USCIS can't get rid of me. So I'm here for three years given that.

I'm currently a dual tax citizen, which is a fucking nightmare. By the way, if you ever move to another country and you need to start paying taxes in that country, unwind the investments in the main one if you can, if you can afford to live without them and if they're just small stuff. Because straddling two different tax markets, it's a nightmare. So currently my personal house in the UK plus a bunch of others, but all of the other ones except for my one are going to be let go of over the next few months.

A couple of years, probably. Ethan Stevenson 418. What country has the most beautiful women? Ethan, that's the wrong question. The question you need to ask yourself is which country has the ugliest men? Because you don't need beautiful women. You need ugly men. If your question is pointing in the direction that I think it is. Some areas that have an imbalance ratio of female attractiveness to male unattractiveness would be...

Medellin, when I went to Medellin, that was mind-blowing that you have solid 8 out of 10 Latinas with, at best, 5 out of 10 balding, thinning-on-top guys. I don't know why. Maybe they're all super rich and I was in some area that I didn't really realize. Dubai, actually, but the problem there is that, again, you've got the rich thing and you actually are competing with oil-shake countries.

new world order money uh but a lot of beautiful women there um where else italy got some pretty beautiful women in it uh it's also got some beautiful men in it though see so you're fighting here need to find a place with ugly men and beautiful women i think uh yeah i think columbia is is a good place to start yeah get yourself off to columbia it'll be fine tara siobhan ryan

What were the pants you wore at the Melbourne show? Asking for my BF. They were aloe, the aloe. I can't remember the type of cargo pants that they are. I think they're discontinued. If you're in Melbourne, maybe you can get them. But in the US, I've tried to buy another pair and they're discontinued. So Trez sad, but they were discontinued.

aloe with a drawstring at the bottom and I love them and I'm sad that they've been stopped. Beatniks, what's the biggest irrational fear that you have besides being unsuccessful? What's the biggest irrational fear that you have besides being unsuccessful? I guess not being enough or not being good enough. And I don't know who for. I don't know who I am scared of not being good enough for or enough for.

But just that energy, that insufficient, unwanted, the sense that you always need to prove yourself. You always need to sort of offer the world something in order for it to love you back. And yeah, I think the fear of not being enough has behind the scenes driven an awful lot of what I've done. And I think it's very common for a lot of people, this fear.

the fear of abandonment, sense of always sort of being on the outside. It's like a rational fear, the sense that someone's mad at me, and I don't know why, very familiar with. And the weird thing is that it is potent fuel to drive you to go and do some pretty magnificent things, but it's toxic if you use it for too long. So I'm working hard at trying to

switch from diesel to electric in that regard. Carlton K, how do you deal with your energy levels? Fucking with difficulty, bro, right now, because I fall asleep at 8pm at night, which makes me frustrated and sad and bitter. And I feel like life's passing me by in many ways, even if I've had a great day, even if I've done things. So I struggle at the moment. And

I'm going to keep working until they're back. You know, it's so strange. You're talking to somebody who would work until two or three or four in the morning, running club nights and then drive back from Manchester and get in at 5.30 in the morning and then wake up at 10 and go and train. And now if I haven't had 10 hours in bed, I feel like I've been hit by a train. And if I haven't,

any travel it's just it's it's rough it's really rough so um how do i deal with my energy levels i don't i'd poorly i suppose and uh i will tell you once i've fixed them and i will stay awake for 48 hours and i will dance over the grave of this whiny little monologue that i've done

Actually, no. Is putting out three shows a week sustainable long-term, even if you were doing what you love? Well, we're five years deep into three a week and I'm still holding on. So there is a bit of me that wonders if two a week would be better in some ways. The main reason...

now that I do too. The reason I went from two to three was it was COVID and I figured it would be a good opportunity to keep me busy. And also no one had any friends because we were all isolated in the house. So it was a chance for me to make people feel less alone by going from Monday, Thursday to Monday, Thursday, Saturday. Now, the reason that I do it is if you run weeks times episodes, I have 150 ish spots a year. That's not that many people. And there's

2,000 people that I want to speak to. So if I go from 150 to 100, even though the workload is easier, the sense that there's an interesting person I want to speak to, fuck, I don't have a slot, that's going to hurt. So I don't know. There is a bit of me that thinks holding at three a week is tough. Probably another five years would be the gas tank would start to dwindle a little.

But then another bit of me thinks, but look at how much motivation you get from speaking to another 50% on top of 100 more people than you would do if you only did two. So it's a balance and you will see. I'm not going to be able to hide it. If I go to two, you'll know. Third, I'm scared to ask for more, even though I know I deserve it, but shaking things up scares me. Beautiful sentiment. So interesting. I think advocating for yourself

learning to be assertive believing that your needs are worthwhile and not subjugating your desires in order to keep other people happy or so that you don't make a fuss or something is super common and it's change which is scary shaking things up scares me it's going to require change it's going to require maybe other people will reject you maybe they'll think that you're entitled but

In Newcastle, there's a tagline, like a colloquial saying that's shy bands getting out. And it means shy people don't get anything. I, if you don't ask, you don't get. And at the end of your life, no one is going to give you any applause or gratitude for saying she never made a fuss. It's just not going to happen. You can live a unturbulent life of sort of quiet,

resentful subjugation or you can still be just as polite just as loving just as caring and you can have boundaries and you can set standards for yourself and for the people around you and I'm scared to ask for more even though I know I deserve it please please just tomorrow try and ask for something just a little thing whatever it is just a little thing ask for whatever more it is that you think that you need and uh

The bottom line is, it sounds like you're doing this with somebody else as well. Somebody else, something else, an organization, a person, a partner, a dog, I don't know. If that other entity isn't prepared to help you, even if they know that you deserve it too, why would you, if this person isn't prepared to help you, why would you sacrifice yourself just to keep them happy? It's like, I deserve this.

I would like this. It would make my life better and it would make me happy. No, you can't have it. Okay, no worries. In that case, I'll hurt myself by putting your needs ahead of mine. Please enjoy the rest of your life. No way. No way. Assertiveness, politeness, firmness, boundaries. Very, very important. I hope it helps. Solimanowa. What proportion of your success do you believe came from luck, market, charm, etc.? Ah...

At least a good bit of it. I think if I was starting now, it would be significantly more difficult. Have you ever seen those Indiana Jones movies and he's running for the door and the big...

wall is coming down and he slides underneath and then he gets his he reaches back and he grabs his hat and he pulls it in that's kind of like from a timing perspective what i feel like with the world of podcasting that if you look at really the only other shows that came after me that have been comparable in terms of size have been stephen bartlett huberman

and Sean Ryan, I think, apart from people that already had big platforms and then sort of pivoted them or converted them in one way or another. So timing, yeah, definitely luck. Charm, I'm not convinced that my charm has helped all that much. Looks, unfortunately, don't help really at all when it comes to the audio side of podcasts. You have to remember, we do more plays on audio than we do on YouTube. So I don't know...

The pretty privilege doesn't, it's like the face for radio thing. It's not a massive draw. People are just listening to you. We've only just put video on Spotify, what, three weeks ago. So, but all of that being said, it's a balance. It's the same as everything. If you do not take shots at goal, if you're not consistent, you can guarantee that any residual luck of market and charm and whatever isn't going to be captured. So yeah, yeah.

many legs up some that I'll have seen some that I wouldn't have done probably but also I feel you know firm in my foundation of saying well I think I deserve this too this

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Alan Toon, seeing all the Lily Phillips and Bonnie Blue news is so depressing. What is your reaction to them? All right, yeah. So I mean, I haven't done a, oh my God, Lily Phillips is sleeping with a thousand men in one day, bro. These sluts are cucked. I haven't done this. Makes me pretty sad, to be honest. The main emotion that I feel is sadness. It does feel a little bit like

Anyone who is highly critical of Andrew Tate from a cultural perspective and an influence perspective, but not highly critical of Lily Phillips and Bonnie Blue from a cultural influence perspective, I would be interested to know how they square that circle. Because it is the criticisms that are lodged at Tate that he is all of the worst parts of toxic modern masculinity. And you really should, I think,

keep the same philosophy, the same level of scrutiny and the same standards when you're looking at Lily Phillips and Bonnie Blue? Like, is this not the most sort of extreme version of modern, liberated, toxic femininity? Using body for sex,

basically being treated like you're allowing men to masturbate with your bodies and then sort of proclaiming it as liberation whilst crying. I don't know. It makes me sad, dude. And I can't say anything that hasn't already been said. But it is depressing and it makes me feel... It does. The primary emotion that I take away from it is sad. And it's a bit dour.

And I mean, if the guy who's whining about his fucking autoimmune problems thinks that what you do is sad, that's the worst review that you can get. Daniel Morgan one, having done the live show in London, has your view on the UK being counterproductive to ambition or success from tall poppy syndrome changed? You seem to have had a very positive reaction when you were there. I did have a very positive reaction when I was there. And yeah,

No, unfortunately, no, it hasn't, because there is always going to be these sort of kernels of inspiration and fire, even in sort of really cold tundras. And I was amazed we did.

The show was so fantastic. The audience was so amazing. Everyone was so attentive, so respectful. The vibe was exact. I would have gone for a coffee with anybody in that entire auditorium, three and a half thousand people. And then everyone at the meet and greet had cool things to say. And I've got this book, I brought you a book and I've traveled with this book around the world. It was fucking amazing. But...

Those are the outliers that prove the rule in the UK. The reason that they're in the room, apart from the fact that they're fans of the show, one of the reasons that they're in the room is that there's nowhere else for them to go in the UK. And it's the same all over. This isn't just a UK thing, right? It was the same in Australia. Went out to Australia, everybody, lonely chapter, leaving friends behind, people wanting me to do the normal trodden path, even though I know I don't want it.

We, Dubai, we had the same in Dubai, a place that people move to because they're already upward aiming and people still had that there. In Canada, we had that. In the US, we've had that. But the UK has it. It's like ground zero for this. And, um,

very positive reaction, but it's a minority of people. So when we do Glastonbury sized stages and there's half a million people, then I'll say that it's become a mass movement. But for now, it's just an underground cult of people wanting to try and make their lives better because there's not really anywhere else for them to go. Big Bob 677, what is the proper balance between having social life and not drinking and smoking constantly?

I think you can tell what I'm going to say here. You don't necessarily have to drink and smoke constantly to have a social life. If you don't want to drink and you don't want to smoke, but you do want to be social, and the only friends that you have to be social with want to be around you if you're drinking and smoking constantly,

You need to get better friends. You need to get different friends because they're not in the same place that you are. And this is exactly what I was just talking about. Lonely chapter, leaving friends behind that can't grow at the same pace as you or don't want to grow in the same direction as you. You need to have people around you like the person you want to be like. It sounds like you don't want to drink and smoke constantly. It sounds like the social life you have revolves around that.

You need new friends or you need to get really, really selective with the ones that are there and say, hey, man, I don't want to drink and I don't want to drink or rip a dart for the next three months. Are you in? Can we do this together? Will you do this with me? And you will always sort of regress back to the mean with this. And the mean is going to be the person that's the most degen, the person that's taking the easiest path forward.

If you're on a diet and you live in a house with two other guys and both of them get takeaway every Saturday and Sunday, it's going to be really rough. But if you are trying to diet and you live in a house with two guys who are already dieting, it's going to be a piece of piss. So yeah, you need to change your circle. Rossi Gianni. Congrats, Chris. Well-deserved. And thank you for your fantastic content. Thank you.

Question, how do you find your thing in life work-wise? Sometimes I envy the people who have known since they were a child to become a doctor or a pilot, since I seem to struggle to get a grip on anything. My problem is that I get super into something and feel like it lasts for a few days or a week and then come up with a new thing again. My ultimate goal would be to just enjoy my time, not to reach for fancy things. At the moment, I have a decent job, but everything feels too normal and sort of boring. Yeah, I feel this sense of...

envy toward people that kind of had that path because when you know that you've got drive but you're permanently being distracted and you're grasping and you're moving between lots of different things it feels like it feels like

all four tires of the car going as fast as possible, but in opposite directions so you don't actually move. You know that you've got fuel inside of you and the capacity to go and do something, but because it's not being pointed in the right direction, you end up going kind of nowhere, and that's really frustrating. So first off, accept the fact that that's frustrating and give yourself a little bit of a pat on the back. Even if it's a champagne problem, luxury issue,

It's difficult. It's difficult to deal with. And you're not the only one. This isn't a personal curse that's just being bestowed on you. This is, as far as I can see, an endemic part of being an individual who is maybe competent at a bunch of different things and also interested in lots of different things. And that is something to be proud of. That's something that you can use. Now, the issue with you getting super into something and feeling like that lasts for a few days or a

That is one of probably two things. First one is a planning problem that there is some hurdle that you come up against that was unforeseen. You really wanted to get into Thai boxing or you really wanted to get into playing pickleball or you really wanted to get into salsa dancing or you really wanted to start a business or you really wanted to start vlogging or whatever.

But you didn't foresee some issue with one of those things structurally, operationally, in terms of the way that it's implemented into your schedule or what it's going to take out of you or the sacrifices you're going to have to make. So maybe you can get around that from a planning perspective. Sit down. Here's my inspiration. I'm excited, but hold on. What are the prices I'm going to have to pay? How am I going to make sure that I can keep at this?

Then the second part would be just not being distracted and actually committing and using some discipline. So if you decide this is the thing I'm going to do, set a time. I would suggest 30 days and then I would suggest three months. Those would be the two blocks. Something that's a bigger commitment like...

something that has longer term sort of validity, creating a sub stack. Let's say that you want to write. Maybe I should be a writer. I've always kind of liked writing. I'm going to start a sub stack. You need to do that once a week for three months.

But if it's, I'm going to try out Barry's Bootcamp or this new workout class or something, you can probably get away with doing that once a week for four weeks and then go, Barry's wasn't it, but maybe Orange Theory or maybe Solid Core or maybe whatever, CrossFit, BJJ. You can move through those things more quickly, but set yourself a time and don't quit before that. Plan,

use the enthusiasm to build the plan. Doesn't need to be super complex. Just what would make this succeed? What would make this fail? Why do I want to do it? Three questions. Next thing, commit to a time. Minimum of one month up to a maximum of probably six months. I would suggest three months. Reassess at the end of that and don't change and don't stop.

Henry 6595, do you travel for work often? Seems like you're always on the move. Yeah. That's the additional level of pain on top of all of the stuff from the last year is so much travel and it's fun and I love it and it's amazing. And I've got to see Australia and Montana and Gatlinburg and Miami and Florida and all of these different places.

But it is energy sapping. And I mean, the people that like comedians, working comedians who, by the way, I don't know whether you've realized this. I only realized this recently. The way that comedians in the US do a domestic tour, they don't run a tour like a band does. Because when you're in a band, in order to be able to sort of set up the

stage, all of the staging, the lighting, all of that. And because presumably there's quite a few of you together, they need to batch together the tour. So it tends to be between two weeks and two months long. And it's essentially back-to-back shows or one-on-one off, something like that. Comedians, at least in the US, will go Friday, Saturday, or maybe Thursday, Friday, Saturday, every week for 20 weeks. So there's this sort of weird...

weekly cadence that they've got uh so for them my point being that's rough um but yeah it's been a lot of travel it's exciting and i love it and it's also energy snapping and when you're at home you want to be traveling and when you're traveling you want to be at home and tis the uh inevitability of life

Travis Manning 9682. What's your training split looking like now? So I am following RP Strength. You can go to rpstrength.com slash modern wisdom and they've got a discount. It's the way I've trained for over a year now. And I just, I do what the app says. I've got a PT that I work with three days a week. So I follow along with him and this session's a roughly sort of a push per legs-ish split. It's kind of like that. And I'm

I love it. And I've done it for over a year now. And my gains have been the best they've been in probably a decade. So all hail Mike Israele and go to rpstrength.com slash model wisdom.

JNAgoston436, relationship question. I love my girlfriend. She's super cute, funny, and kind. However, she's not intellectual at all. I regret that she doesn't want to slash can't have deeper or more complex conversations sometimes. Some days, I think it's not a big deal.

other days the thoughts reappear. I don't know if I'm overthinking things and I want to feel like my relationship has to be perfect. Not sure how to navigate this. Any advice is deeply appreciated. P.S. Thanks for doing what you do. My life has improved considerably since finding your content. Thank you. And dude, fair play for asking this question because first off, you've asked it publicly. And secondly, you know that it's something that's sort of playing on your mind. So you're obviously reflective.

This basically comes down to what do you want to prioritize? So there are no solutions in the world of relationships. There's only trade-offs. I mean, maybe there is the absolute perfect, funny, cute, kind, and intellectual girl who speaks your language, lives in your area, is available right now, is the right age, wants the same life outcomes that you do, all of those things. But

You need to ask yourself, given the fact that that's not a certainty, you're not always going to necessarily trade up. You're probably just going to swap familiar problems for unfamiliar problems. And it's like playing blackjack, right? Are you going to stick or are you going to hit? Well, you know, you've got a 17 or whatever. Yeah, but I could get a 21 or I could get a 20. And you don't know. So I guess what it comes down to is how important is having...

deep and complex conversations to you. One thing I would say is marriage, as far as I can tell, as a unmarried, never married person who wants to be married, marriage is one long conversation. What you're basically looking for is the best conversation partner that you can, who you could spend 20,000 hours speaking to and not get bored because that's what your marriage is going to be.

Your marriage is going to be one huge fuck-off podcast that never gets broadcast anywhere. And you need to make sure that you can have a conversation that does not get tiresome, no matter how long it goes on for. You want somebody who you can open up to about the most difficult, darkest parts of your life. Your relationship should feel like home. It should be a safe harbor for you and your

I don't know whether if you have all of the things you can open up, you feel safe, you're reassured, your nervous system is dialed, you never feel dysregulated. She's understanding. She adores you. She worships the ground that you walk on. But you don't really feel that fired up about the conversations that we have. That's a fair trade to make to get rid of it. But you need to ask, what do you prioritize most? Because it's one of those trades that you don't get to

have a store credit for you can't pull the pin and then get it back at least you can't get it back the way that it was so it's a an irreversible decision so think wisely work out how important it is uh but also consider that this is a it's one long emotional regulation uh scenario with a conversation attached to it and um you need to make sure that you got both of those things

Wah-pah. How have you dealt with cutting out friends from childhood? Do you have certain regrets around it? I'm so hot. I'm going to have to take this hoodie off. Modern Wisdom merch, not yet available. How have you dealt with cutting out friends from childhood? Do you have certain regrets around it? I have zero friends from before the age of 18. Zero friends. No one that I'm particularly close to. Some of the people that I played cricket with from my old club.

I don't think I speak to a single person that I went to school or college with still. So that would be all of my formal education until the age of 18 and maybe a few people from the sport that I played. As soon as I went to uni, a bunch of those people come along for the ride. But I don't know. I have...

I have no regret around it at all. I didn't particularly enjoy my time in school. I wasn't made to feel particularly welcome in school. And I have no desire to revisit that world. There was nothing for me when I was there. So going back, oh yeah, check this out. There's no reason for me to go back to it. So for me personally, but I understand that that's a slightly non-typical situation. So no. Alan Wickst...

to 91992. Have you ever bitten off more than you can chew work-wise? Literally my entire working life, probably from the age of 19, turned 19 six months into uni, probably from then until about six months ago. So a full 17 years or something, I permanently bit off more than I could chew. I rode...

the threshold of burnout for you know the best part of two decades and uh maybe some would say well have you considered that might contribute to the way that your health feels at the moment you'd probably be right so you know whatever but it's common you're a type a person you want to maximize your time on this planet you don't want to fuck about you want to make a dent you're going to bite off more than you can chew that being said do it in your 20s and a bit of your 30s

uh, and work out how hard you can work and know that you've got that in the tank. And if the shit hits the fan, you can get back to doing it. But after a while, at least in my experience, and you know, this has kind of been brought on by the, uh, chronic awareness of my own work mortality by having my capacity severely diminished over the last 12 months. Um, that fuel kind of starts to run out and you realize that the dopamine you get from just being busy, uh,

doesn't necessarily move you toward the life that you want. That what you're doing is you're healing existential loneliness and a need to feel important and a need to feel like you're making progress by being busy but not doing things that matter. And that's a very dangerous situation to be in because you can create an addiction to the dopamine of pressing enter on the email and

And none of the emails that you've sent for the last hour actually move you any closer to the life you want. They don't actually even do anything for the business that you're working on or the project that you're trying to achieve. They've just kept you busy. And sure, there's worse ways that you can distract yourself with drugs and junk food and stuff like that. But dopamine is a hell of a drug as well. So yeah, be careful with it. Jal Alexander Evans. How do you feel about turning 40 soon? I'm 36. Okay. It's not soon.

37 next month, 36. Okay. I'm going to be like David Brent in the office where he's going 30s. I'm in my 30s. It's not soon. Okay. Got ages. Unless you're that guy asking about my wife that I don't have.

isaac rogue what are the plans with newtonic uh okay i no new skews i don't want to make no more products right james wanted the focus but people might think that the conversations that me and james have on the newtonic marketing are all for show or something that's it's perilously close it may be like selected you know uh specifically but it's perilously close to our real working relationship and uh

He wanted the Focus Blend because you can't get the cans in Australia. So you wanted to drink in Australia. I'm a huge fan of the brain capsules. Those brain capsule tablets, the red pills, are fucking money. I think the cans are amazing and they're always going to be amazing because we worked so hard on the taste and they're enjoyable and all the rest of it. But caffeine-free, I challenge anybody to put something in their mouth that makes them feel better that is legal.

Those brain capsules are phenomenal. I just don't want any new skews because my point being, for I've whined and talked about that, I don't over confuse what we are as a company. We are brain health company. We are productivity, performance, and focus, right? But cognitive. We don't need anything else. We don't need a suppository. We don't need a sniffable powder.

I would be down for doing a Zinn-style pouch because I think that would just be funny, but that would be a joke product. That wouldn't be a real product. And I just want to really, really dial in. We are going to do a raise. So we're going to be raising some capital because we want to go into retail in the UK and in the US.

It's not cheap. Unfortunately, cans cost just an absurd amount of money. The margins on them are awful, which means you need tons of cash in order to be able to get the stock order, in order to be able to put the stock into the retailers, in order for them to be able to sell it, in order to get more cash back, in order to be able to grow. And you can do it by bootstrapping.

it's going to take you forever. So we're going to get an injection of cash, which means we're going through valuations and we're doing pitch decks and all this other stuff. And largely I'm not involved. I get kind of wheeled out to sell a dream. But the coming up with the figures and all of that, I mean, I have input. I guess I could contribute something useful if I was asked. But well, I don't know about like annual EBITDA or an annual run rate multiplicatives and stuff. It's not my, it's not what I do.

So that's the plan with New Tonic. Put it into retail. I want to do a variety pack by the end of the year. So we'll probably release at least one new flavor on the cans. And then that would mean that we could do a four pack, one of each, four flavors, variety pack by the end of the year. And I think that would be awesome.

The peach mango and the mixed berry on the focus blend, the stick packs, great, awesome flavors. We've got one more flavor that we might release with that. And then brain capsules are just money. And I just keep on using those. So yeah, between those, keep growing, get more people on board. We've got subscriptions now. You can get discounts. We've got cool welcome gifts and stuff coming. So just do that and keep making cool marketing because I love the marketing for it. An inside story.

When will you have someone on to talk about nonviolent communication? I believe you said it's the best example of the worst branding. I don't remember saying that, but I agree with me. Nonviolent communication is terribly branded because what's implied is that all other communication is violent, which may be true. I mean, who knows? But...

I probably need to learn a little bit more about it. I got sent, I've been doing like a really deep dive into relationship dynamics recently. So Stan Tatkin's Your Brain on Love, or This Is Your Brain on Love. Fucking awesome. And then from that, I got conscious loving suggested to me. And I think that conscious loving is half a step away from nonviolent communication, or at least nonviolent communications included in that. So I need to do quite a bit of research and

alongside all the reading to do for the show that's like more more more more on top but i'll get there and uh i feel like non-violent communication is kind of like the cbt of the relationship world it's quite evidence-based at least from what i can tell evidence-based very well regarded people are impressed with it but just fucking awful brand and i haven't got around to it yet so hold on tight oliver oliver norgrove chris

How, if at all, has your personal money management improved over the years? I think the only thing that I've been particularly good at when it comes to money management is I don't have a big, I don't have extravagant spending habits. I'm not a particularly showy person. I like nice things, but, you know, I'm talking about nice things like a new pair of trainers or a nice car, but not an insane car or, you know,

a coffee where i don't have to look at the price tag i don't tend to have particularly expensive tastes uh and i guess the other side has been even if investing like managing money as in putting in places and moving it around and etfs and all this stuff even if that hasn't been super dialed uh i've just worked sufficiently hard to accumulate money and um i don't know i don't have i'm not a

credit card points optimizer i'm not a cashback guy i never have been that sort of stuff just feels like homework to me um and i've always felt guilty about not doing it like i should uh you know like if i care about my net worth i should be maximizing all of these different opportunities to do it uh and i didn't do it when i was poor and i still don't do it now so um i guess i felt more guilty previously but you can only prioritize on so much stuff one time um

Honestly, the 90% of my investing strategy comes from Morgan Housel, which is just dollar cost average into the S&P 500 and leave it for a few decades. So he was the guy. I trusted him. So I've just followed that since I spoke to him four years ago or something. I don't know how much I've got in the S&P now, but it's gone up. So more, hopefully, I guess.

Ben Boyd mindset. Has anyone farted on a Modern Wisdom podcast? Maybe Jordan Peterson from All That Steak. I think Jordan's actually very far down the list from that because of how clean the pipes are going to be. I mean, look, regularly I can, but I have the opportunity to mute my microphone. So...

Sometimes Dean, I will have to put a little note in, like 24 minutes, 30 seconds, mute my mic if I forgot to. But I can mute it for the guests, but it doesn't mute the local recording. So sometimes Dean's version. So he has had a laugh on particularly gassy days, but I don't think so. Mark Norman burps a lot. But apart from that, not much gas.

simone to luca your channel is slowly but surely changing my life for the better it's awesome to see you have so much fun doing what you love i come to you to educate myself and this prompted my question how do you handle it when an expert you're talking to directly contradicts another expert you've spoken to which do you believe and why i find it important to have accurate knowledge of topics discussed in case it comes up in social conversation thank you so much chris well i

I appreciate that. And if you're working very hard so that you can have good social conversations, you sound like you should become friends with the bloke that wants to stop smoking because I think he needs that. Look, no two experts agree, even the ones that train together. They're all going to have different perspectives. Direct contradiction becomes more difficult because if someone says you should be vegan and another says you should be carnivore, those are diametrically opposed and you can't do them both.

And unfortunately, this is where you as the audience and me as essentially a member of the audience as well. I'm a member of the audience to my own show. This is the show. I made this for myself. And I bring on guests that I ask questions to that I want to know the answers of. You need to do some discerning. Well, does this fit me? Does this fit my life? Is that the sort of person that I am? Perfect example of this, Dry Creek Dwayne and David Goggins.

Dwayne literally said, I see myself as the anti-David Goggins. Goggins obviously sees himself as like Goggins is dark Goggins. So, okay, which direction do you want, Western man? Do you want cowboy wisdom with cigar in hand who will be happy that he just didn't mess something up today and that would be the total accomplishment of his 24 hours? Or do you want ancestral trauma

endurance running until your knees bleed, man. You have these two options, right? But it's for you. Yes, when we're talking about science and health and sleep, should it be a little bit less open to interpretation? Mostly, but what you should be trying to draw out of it, at least what I try and draw out of it is, okay, where is this relevant to me? What are the underlying dynamics that go on? Okay, is fasting actually better than going keto?

Well, what you're trying to do is calorie restriction and I don't actually like avocado that much and I don't like it when I have that much fat because it kind of makes me feel a bit bloated or whatever. So maybe I'm going to try the intermittent fasting thing. Both of them could be true, even if the mechanisms that their proponents are suggesting are a little squirrely and maybe...

they're getting out over their skis a bit, there needs to be some filtering. You know, the BBC dragged Bartlett about this about a month ago, having experts on that contradicted each other or said things that science disagrees with and stuff like that. Look, there's a threshold that you can reach where your size and the claims being made by people become ridiculously egregious. Has Stephen reached that? I'm not sure. But

It's so patronizing when those kinds of stories come out because it treats the audience like they're brain-dead morons. You're smart people. If you sit through the sort of episodes that go out on this channel, you're a smart person. You can think for yourself. You're discerning.

You don't need me or the BBC to fucking spoon feed you what you should think. That's the entire reason that the independent creator economy started so that you can pick and choose. And if you don't like it, you can go to a different channel. You go, do you know what it is? Like, I don't think that this is, I don't agree with this and this isn't for me. You go, huh, I don't agree with that. But it's really interesting that I've learned about it. It's a tough one.

It's a tough one. I would love there to be just a one-stop shop IMDB rating of the accuracy of what everybody's done, but there isn't. The positions that scientists and health experts and everybody else has are going to contradict each other. It is your job to try and be discerning as best you can. David...

when you started out what vision did you have for yourself and the channel and how did you get through the first few months dude the first few months i was fucking flying all i wanted to do was record the show i was thinking about it 24 7 it was early 2018 i think i'd just gone through a breakup so i had that i had that like post breakup resentment energy and uh

I was having a great time. I was locked in, routine, daily routine, reading. It was great. I had no vision for myself or the channel. I just wanted to learn about myself and the world around me. And that's largely what I think everyone's pet project should be. What do you want to see in the world? Make that. And you just don't get bored. I didn't do it for plays. I've never done it for that. So it was easy. We weren't getting any in. I didn't care.

Ethan Powers, congrats. Thank you. Would you be interested in the calendar being 13 months of 28 days instead of what we have? Does that work? What is 13 times 28? 364. Holy fuck. So you'd have 13 months of 28 days and one month of 29. Imagine if you did that with February. 13 months of 28 days.

I actually really like that. I've never even thought about that as a potential. All of the extra two and three days you get on top of 28 would allow you to have another month. And it would align most months with a four-week cycle. Fuck, this is good. This is really good. I could start an entire new campaign around this. This might be my thing. You might have just given me my new identity. 13 months of 28 days.

is 364 days. I'm down, Ethan. I'll stand there on the battlefield with you. I think it would mess up quarters. Quarters would be a nightmare and halves would be a nightmare, but weeks into months would be a piece of piss. Anyway, I'm on board and I can't believe that it's taken me nearly 37 years to realize that 13 times 28 is 364.

Cal Knox, what's your exit plan when it all goes south? Oh, man. I don't know. Fucking masturbate furiously until I die of heat exhaustion. I don't know. We'll see.

My current plan is sort my health and have more fun. If I get to the end of this year and I've done that, the show's going to do what the show's going to do. The newsletter, the writing, all of that stuff I think will take over perfectly fine. I need to focus on me this year and just not let the stuff drop, not say anything stupid, not get myself in trouble. And I think all of that will go great. I got so many amazing guests, like literally all of the dream guests I've ever wanted lined up for the rest of this year. So...

I'm not really thinking exit plan. I'm kind of, to be honest, I'm kind of in survival mode at the moment. So just not looking too far ahead. Sloth ruptured my Achilles seven weeks ago. Any tips on how to get back to normal activity, running, sports? Everyone I speak to says it'll never be the same. Everyone you speak to is a fucking prick. My Achilles is as good. Both of my Achilles are equally good and I had a complete detachment. So...

Don't listen to them. Read Art of Resilience by Ross Edgley, Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday, and watch the documentary Resurfaced with Andy Murray. That's my three-car garage for you. Two bucks. You can listen to both Obstacle is the Way and Art of Resilience by Ross and watch that documentary.

follow a plan find a physio stick to the plan do not fuck about eat lots of protein uh some additional collagen will help and just don't stop and in 12 months time you'll be able to look at all of those people that said that you couldn't get back to normal and you can stick your middle finger up at them as you run away perfectly functional jack montague what is enough poignant question given when somebody asked what my biggest fear was earlier on uh probably not the

best person to ask, I guess. I don't know, man. Humans are not designed to be happy. We're designed to be successful. And success is chasing things, resources, status, money, partners, reputation. So I don't know. But I hope to find it. And

And it's just got to be a state of mind, right? Like the only way, as Morgan Housel says, the only way to win the game is to stop moving the goalposts. So yeah, you need to, it's unrealistic to suggest that you're going to reach some, you can discount any worldly success. Doesn't matter at all. Just go live in a tree in the woods, man, and you'll be fine. You don't need anything. It's like, we're social creatures. We need validation. We need to achieve shit. Okay.

But we don't need to achieve like Bezos shit. Bezos needs to achieve that. You should look at people who are very successful with more pity than you do envy. What is it that's inside of them that's driven them to do that? Like, look at how complex and involved your life has had to be in order for you to feel like you are enough.

And sure, some people are driven by this beautiful pull of just maximizing their sense of self, but most people aren't. Most people are driven by a fear of not being enough. Need validation. I want the world to love me, and I'm not sure it's going to love me, so I'm going to make it need me, and need is close enough to love. So I think it's a state of mind that I haven't got to.

Uh, L Kali, I heard you mention about your bladder training or retention in a podcast recently. I need to shut the fuck up about everything, especially health stuff. Could you go into more detail about your, how you've done this as I have to get up in the night and I've done so, uh, have done for so long.

Would much appreciate it. Okay, apparently I've talked about that. So during COVID, I noticed that I was going to the bathroom more frequently. I went to see my GP in the UK and he laughed. And I thought, is it fucking funny? Something funny to you? He said, you wouldn't believe how many men have come in to see me that have got the same thing. And it's my pet theory that what had happened was working from home,

closer to the kitchen tap drinking more water with no boss looking over your shoulder and no structured timeline of when you're supposed to work and when you're not meant that you drank more went to the bathroom more frequently and you can detrain the valve that kind of sits at the bottom of your bladder so basically you have this pressure gauge inside of your bladder uh

And when it gets to a certain level, it says, hey, you need the bathroom. But if you go very frequently, you detrain that down so that it thinks you need to go when you've still got bags of room left in your bladder. Bad idea.

They put me on anticholinergics that help to get that muscle to chill out. I stopped caffeine for 500 days and I just gritted my teeth despite the discomfort. Slight problem about anticholinergics, if you know anything about the nootropic blends that we've got in nootronics products, choline is a neurotransmitter. Anticholinergic is an anticholine, anticholinergic.

So it kind of makes you done. It definitely knocked probably, you know, six to 12 IQ points. So I forgot the name of the seaside town next to Manchester for 30 seconds one day. It's like Blackpool. Yeah, Blackpool. That's it. Um, so treat the medication carefully. Don't overdo it. Um,

go to a doctor, they'll be able to do it. It's very, very common. Don't need to be embarrassed about it. And now I've got the bladder of a fucking world champion. So it's not broken. You're not broken. You'll be fine. And as with everybody else, Godspeed. Where's Rob Thomas? How are you feeling now with some separation from mold exposure? I've been feeling a similar decline in fortitude and health. Had a third party assessment done that flagged black mold, very old property and moving end of month. So yeah, new house, which is where this new studio is.

uh has been cleaned top to bottom a million times it was built last year so it hasn't hopefully had that much time to accumulate any mold we've got an hvac thing that dehumidifies and like i've had to spend time and money and all sorts of stuff to just stop austin from killing me uh which is a good testament to how much i like being in america that the country is really doing its best to like stick a knife in my side and uh i just keep on like avoiding it as best as best possible um

Look, I don't want to color your expectations, but get out as quickly as possible. And it will take some time. I've been out of that house. I lived in, I mean, you guys, I don't know whether I even told you this. I lived in hotels for four months last year because the house that I was in was being remediated and cleaned of mold. And that didn't work.

So then I went back into a hotel and then went traveling and then came back and moved into this one. But it's going to take some time. So I've been out of that house for nearly 12 months and I am still dealing with a lot of the effects. So it is going to take a little bit of time. Alex Arango, what was the lowest point in your life and how did you overcome it? I don't want to be ungrateful, but it's probably right now. Like you're probably watching me go through it, which is a strange thing to say to...

a few million people. I think it just shows, it's so obvious and cliche, but if you don't have your health, like the sick man wants one thing, the well man wants a thousand things. If you don't have your health, there really is nothing else. It's just so front and center of everything. And then all of the stories that you tell yourself about what this means and whether or not you're going to get well and how life's passing you by and this is your youth and this is your fault, you should be working harder at it.

Um, so I guess I'll tell you when I overcome it. Um, but it's been a big learning experience and again, fucking vibe killer. Am I right? Uh, but you asked the question, I'm trying to be open. I'm trying to be honest. Hopefully it makes people who are well feel, I mean, Jesus Christ, if you've got your health, we just take 30 seconds for me, please.

And just be grateful that your brain works and your mood is where it's supposed to be and you don't fall asleep at 8 p.m. at night. Because if you have any ounce of envy for something that you think that I have or people like me have, I don't have those things currently. I'm tired all the time no matter how long I sleep. I fall asleep at 8 p.m. every night.

My brain feels like it's dripping out of my ears and I have no memory, despite the fact that my job requires me to fucking remember things, specifically words, which is the precise area of the brain that this thing gets at. And my mood, I never find myself in a good mood unless I've done the most ridiculous ritual rain dance beforehand.

Like I've just finished a great workout in the gym with my best friend, with a coffee in my hand, listening to my favorite song and the sun shining and there's a bird tweeting. Like that, maybe there's a little bit of lift. So if you've got your health, take 30 seconds and really feel into that because fuck me, like that would be nice. And if you're struggling and you don't, then I'm fighting along with you.

Murph, a huge section of the podcast space is dependent on the culture wars and without couldn't exist. Not yours, but we can all think of some obvious examples. So they have a vested interest in perpetuating disputes about culture wars issues and will die without it. Discuss.

True. So fucking true. The most important driver, I think, on YouTube at the moment is timeliness. So if Donald Trump gets shot yesterday and you do a breakdown right now,

you'll do huge numbers. It kind of doesn't really matter how good or bad it is. If you've got enough launch velocity, subscribers on your channel and a good algo placement, you'll do huge numbers. Now, obviously, if you talk total dog shit, people are going to get pissed and all of the exposure will be negative to brand, negative to the way that people see you. But this is so true. That being said,

Trump has been back in office for a few days. And as much as the mainstream media was so, oh, we can't have Hitler back in. This is going to be the beginning of the end for America, so on and so forth. Without a doubt, they are loving it. Their numbers will never have been higher. CNN complaining about it. Loose women whining about him. Fox News promoting him. Like, doesn't matter which side of the fence you're on. Trump shows, the prevalence of Trump and the amount that people are talking about him shows that.

All that people care about is fucking gossip. All they care about is gossip. And that vested interest in perpetuating disputes about culture wars issues is so true. But we have four more years. You don't need to even perpetuate it because there is just this

this nuclear reactor spitting out stories on what feels like a daily hourly basis at the moment um that being said blowing it out of proportion it will be in the back of a lot of podcasters minds because they'll think huh i should talk about this it'll get plays and then if someone reacts to it i can react to their reaction so yep they have a vested interest and uh i try and avoid ch de

Chudda Kakare, not bored with self-help themes. Will you focus more on culture and sciences? I did not put those two back to back, but I mean, this is just a perfect example of how if you have a sufficiently big audience, even a very small audience, it's very difficult to please everybody. Not bored with self-help themes, question mark. Will you focus more on culture and sciences? I personally, for me...

Where I've been recently with the show, I really have just been loving this emotion stuff, feeling feelings, emotional connection, relating to others, building friendships, overcoming nervousness, performance, but from a sort of a holistic lens. I'm really deep on that. And that was, you know, whether...

show between productivity and that, that was really where the show started. So, you know, the Alain de Botton's of the world, Sam Harris, when he's talking more about sort of self-help and inner work, I'm in love with that. So, you know, it's probably going to be another season of that coming through. Culture, yeah, sure. It depends what kind of culture you mean. You know, like if I'm talking about like ancient Roman culture or something, perhaps, but

I really do have limited desire to sort of add to the slop that's out there about whatever Trump did yesterday. And I'm always going to get dragged into it because it's interesting and engaging and it's easy. But I want a body of work that I look back on in five years' time and I go, fuck, yeah, I should listen to that again.

I cared about that then, I care about that now. How many people are going back for all that? He's a very impressive individual. How many people are going back and listening to what Ben Shapiro had to say a year and a half ago? No one. Like it's, you are permanently riding the crest of now, just surfing on whatever the last 24 hours news story was. And that's fine. I mean, more power, 8 million person YouTube channel and however big Daily Wire is and all that stuff. And you know,

But that's just not what I want to do. I want an evergreen body of work. Sure, there'll be some smatterings of bullshit in there. But focus on sciences. Yeah. I'm open to that. We've got some chemists coming on. Got a couple of biologists. Got a couple of physicists. So, yeah. I'm going to leave it there, I think. 3.25 million subscribers is fucking insane. The last year has been tough. Sorry for being a bit of a buzzkill. Hopefully...

That was insightful, made you feel like you resonated a little bit, gave you some reassurance if you're feeling bad, gave you some gratitude if you're feeling well and have health I'm jealous of. And we've got huge episodes. Who have we got coming up soon? Alain de Botton. If you've made it this far, I can actually just open up my skirt and tell you everyone who's coming out. How about that? Let me open up the doc. So who have we got here? Monday, 27th of January, Piers Morgan.

Monday 3rd of February, Alain de Botton. Monday 10th of February, Rory Sutherland.

Monday 17th of February, Tom Segura. Monday 24th of February, Rhonda Patrick. Monday 3rd of March, Dr. Julie Smith. Monday 10th of March, George Mack. Monday 17th of March, Freya India. So those are the big ones. We've got Malcolm Gladwell coming on, got Louise Perry coming back on, got Young Pueblo, Vanessa Van Edwards, Tracy Viancore, Sahil Bloom, got 900th episode dropping soon as well, Rick Hansen, William Von Hippel coming back on for the first time in like six years. So

Look at, see, stick about to the end. Stay through me whining about all bullshit. You get a little treat. Download the reading list, chriswillex.com slash books. See you next time.