3.5M Q&A - Dating Famous People, Naval Reflections & Marrying Douglas Murray

1. 0:00 – 0:20

   Reading List

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      Bonjour, friends. Welcome back to the show. It is a 3.5 million subscriber Q&A episode. I ask the questions on the internet, you give them to me, then I choose only the ones about the Gaza Strip and trans issues and, uh, I talk about them for an hour and a half. So, let's get

2. 0:20 – 1:14

   New Sleep Token Tracks

   1. CWChris Williamson0:20

      into it. TheMrWyatt, "What's your favorite new Sleep Token, Caramel or Emergence?" Uh, for the few people in the audience that don't know who Sleep Token are, they're a band. They're a band that I'm a big fan of and I've been listening to for quite a while, and they knocked Chappell Roan off the number one spot, uh, a couple of weeks ago, which was pretty fun to see given that that song has actual death metal pieces in it. Uh, I have got Caramel on repeat, dude. I adore that xylophone at the start. I think his voice is... The lyrics, they're super meaningful as well. You know, it kind of does track a little bit. I suppose he's talking about the challenges and perils of fame and increased attention and, and scrutiny and not really knowing how to deal with it. So, yeah, uh, if you need to listen to a new track, Sleep Token's song Caramel is muy bueno.

3. 1:14 – 1:54

   Upcoming Live Tour

   1. CWChris Williamson1:14

      PaulIrish1165, "When will you be in Toronto next for a live event?" I am about to announce my first ever US and Canada live tour. That'll be happening at the end of this year and tickets will go on sale soon, and if you want to sign up to get first access to tickets, first access to dates, VIP, VVIP meet and greet, all of that shit, uh, you can go to chriswilliamson.live and Toronto is one of the cities that's on there. And, I'm not gonna say what any of the others are 'cause that's what the announcement is supposed to be about, but chriswilliamson.live and you'll find out before anybody else.

4. 1:54 – 5:54

   Journey Of Self Discovery

   1. CWChris Williamson1:54

      Daniel Semperpico, "How do you deal with judging yourself for judging yourself? In your latest vlog you talked about how you weren't kind to yourself after your Joe Rogan interview, then you seemed to be (laughs) judging yourself for that." Um, yeah, dude, it's so funny that you say that. Um, I don't know whether this got left in the vlog, but I, I did a section, I spoke to Max, videographer Max, about how I was trying to be unkind to my unkindness to myself. Um, so how do you deal with judging yourself for judging yourself is a super smart question. And, um, it's tough, man. You end up with this infinite regress of feeling bad, and then feeling bad about feeling bad, and then feeling resentful about feeling bad about feeling bad, and then getting frustrated at your resentment, and then getting anxious about your frustration. And, yeah, these second, third, fourth order emotions that go all the way back, um, especially when the very thing that you need is the very thing you're complaining about, right? Uh, uh, you weren't kind to yourself and now I'm not being kind to myself about not being kind to myself. (laughs) Um, it's tough. Uh, I mentioned on the vlog, if people haven't checked it out it's, it's pretty cool, it's probably my favorite thing we've done. Um, it's strange if you have a period where your confidence gets knocked, and mine certainly has over the last couple of months, um, being ill, still trying to sort of hold onto the same work rate and, and, uh, output and mood and stuff whilst just not, really, really not having it in the tank. Um, it can chip away at your self-belief and then someone saying, "Hey dude, why don't you go on the biggest podcast in the world and then record the biggest podcast you've ever done within four days of each other? Oh, by the way, you've got to travel in between to, like, two other cities." Uh, that just really sort of pushed it. That's also, for the people that watch to the end, I have a little sad boy moment. Um, that's the first time that I think I've ever cried on camera. Which, I was so fucking close to cutting it out. I was so close to just saying, "Get rid of it, it feels too uncomfortable. I can't bear to see myself be such a pussy." Uh, but it was real. It was definitely how I felt at the time. And, uh, yeah, trying to be kind to my unkindness, um, is a skill that I'm yet to develop. But, I, it seemed to resonate which was beautiful and no one said too many mean things about it, or not many people said that many mean things about it. I get the sense that if I was a fan of this show or, you know, I think about shows that I'm a fan of, fucking, like, Huberman, right? Let's say that I'm watching one of Andrew's shows and he gets a little bit emotional talking about the challenges that he faces. And I think, "Oh my God. Like, he's so... He seems so smart and well put together and he's got all of this stuff going for him. And wow, like, he feels the same things that I do." And, um, I'm proud that I was able to say it on camera and I'm proud that we left it in the vlog. So, uh, if it resonated with you then I appreciate you. But unfortunately, I, I do not have anything remotely appropriating a solution for this because, as you may have noticed, I'm, I'm still going through it, so I will tell you when I find one. And hopefully, you know, the fact that I'm kind of growing with you on this journey of self-discovery, whatever it is that we're all doing, um, hopefully that is reassuring because I, I'm on the same trajectory, growth trajectory thing that everybody else is. I'm just, I guess, doing it in public. And if that makes everyone feel a bit less alone and helps me to work out my own emotions publicly then I consider it a win.

5. 5:54 – 11:11

   Why Are Millionaires Leaving The UK?

   1. CWChris Williamson5:54

      TheMagicLemur, "You often say about all the millionaires leaving the UK, but where are they going and why?" Uh, yeah, there's a stat from last year that UK was second in the world for millionaire exits after China, but it's got-... four percent of the population of China, so per GDP, by far the highest. Um, there's some fuckery with those numbers, some of it is to do with non-dom ex-pat people who don't live there and were then, they had their income cut, this special carve-out that they had where they were gonna have to start paying taxes in the UK and now they've left, but they weren't living there. Uh, but I still get the sense, even when you account for that, I get the sense that the UK's losing, uh, brain drain, might be another way to put it. Uh, I get the sense it's losing some talent. And not only that but some capital and some people that own businesses and tha- those businesses help to provide employment and, more importantly than that as far as I can see, they provide role models for, uh, growth-minded people within the UK to look up to, to think, "Holy shit, like, that's somebody that made it work. Like, that's a, that's another Ben Francis or that's an Alan Barrett that started Grenade or, you know, that's, uh, Ollie that started Myprotein. Like, these are guys that really made..." It didn't matter how big the business is, you know, a small, local gym or what- whatever, right? Um, where are they going? I would guess places like Bali, like Dubai especially. Um, the US is a little bit probably less popular, just it's hard to get into. If you wanna get a visa to come over here it's, uh... I- I was gonna say, I was gonna make a joke about crossing the border illegally but, uh, that's kind of been clamped down as well since Trump's come into office. So, yeah, I would guess, places in Asia, the sort of Thailands of the world, the classic sort of boho work-from-anywhere thing, uh, Dubai. Outside of that I'm not too sure. Uh, why? I would hazard a guess that the quality of life you have in the UK compared with the opportunity to earn, and the, laid on top, the level of taxes that you need to pay, I don't think that's a particularly great, uh, cocktail. So, uh, for the people that don't know, the way that the UK works, especially if you're a business owner, there's something called VAT which is, uh, value added tax, and that's a deduction of 20% on, um, applicable sales. Now, a lot of the time you can claim that VAT back, but that's 20% off the top and you can't claim all of it back all of the time. So that's 20% off a, let's say you have a pound sale, right? 20% comes off the pound sale so that's like 83p or something left over, and then there's something called corp tax, which is on your net profit. So, uh, let's say that you had... Let's say it was all profit, right? Let's say it was the best, best, best, best case scenario. The corp tax was 25% on your net profit, so 83p, 25% off, that's like 60p or something left. And then let's say that you wanted to draw that down as a, a, a personal, um, dividend, uh, payment to yourself. So you've got it in the business, you've had the corp tax off the top, you've had... Uh, sorry, you've had the VAT off the top, you've had the corp tax off the profit, then you've had the dividend tax of the, like, additional rate taxpayer that you need for, to draw it down to yourself. That ends up at 40% or if you earn more than, I think about 150 grand, 200 grand, it's at 45%, so you end up from one pound, you have 38 pence left. One pound goes into your business, 38p goes to the business owner if you are the only person that owns it, if it was 100% profit margin (laughs) , uh, obviously if you didn't get to claim the VAT back. All of that is to say, it doesn't matter about the, the, the details too much I guess, it's not that fantastic when you don't have particularly good weather, there aren't that many places to go, it's just not that big. The culture isn't fantastic. It is, um, becoming diluted culturally. I think that's a fair thing to say. Uh, if you walk around most of the big cities in the south, I don't think many people will be surprised by that. Um, (sighs) so, not good. And, uh, I don't relish... It might sound sometimes like I relish in this sort of fleeing of the UK and I'm, you know, I managed to get on some Titanic life raft and I'm over here having a great time and I, you know, just sort of pity or, or scorn all of the people that are back in the UK. Dude, I really tried for a long time, you know? I employed between 1,500 and two and a half thousand people over the space of a decade and a half career, and they were all 18 to 25, they were university, uh, educated, highly, highly motivated guys and girls, and, you know, these are little seedlings that me and my business partner tried to leave our stamp on and I hope that we did a good job with them. Some of them went on, many of them went on to do, like, amazing things, but there's only so much that we can do. So for the, uh, "You should stay and fix your country," crowd, I, I spent my time in the trenches and, uh, I, I wasn't able to make that much of a dent. So, yeah, it's sad. It's sad, and, um, I don't know what the solution is.

6. 11:11 – 12:04

   Chris' Forearms

   1. CWChris Williamson11:11

      (laughs) Wild 48267, "How did you get your forearms so big?" Yeah, this is, these things seem to be a, um... (sighs) At the live shows, the, it's the, invariably the first thing that people mention, like, "Fucking hell, they're really big in real life, aren't they?" And, um, I don't know what to say. It's just genetics, dude. It is. I've never done... I did direct forearm training once with Mike Israetel and it really hurt. Uh, there's a lot of receptors in these bad boys. I, I really don't know. It's, it's ch- the same, everybody's got one body part, every person has got one body part that just grows freakishly big. Uh, mine happened to be maybe the most obvious one on your entire body. So, p- uh, g- parents (laughs) , I got my forearms from my parents.

7. 12:04 – 16:56

   Dating Life In The Public Eye

   1. CWChris Williamson12:04

      Guacamole Criden47, "How is dating being famous or a public figure? Is it harder to trust people's intentions? Do you get asked mout- out more often?" (sighs) Uh, I mean, look, I'm not famous. Uh, I do think it's important to put that caveat in there that it's like niche, degenerate internet f- micro fame. Um, but whatever level I've managed to get to, it certainly kind of gets in the way of people behaving normally around you, which is not great, um, because... (sighs) So, for instance, I saw this with Rogan, right? If Rogan walks into a room, let's say we're in the Mothership or whatever, and you're downstairs in Mitzi's, which is the bar, uh, attached to the Mothership, and sometimes they close that off and just the comedians and their friends and family are- are in there. And if he walks into the room, there's this distortion field that follows him around where people are just... most people are unable to behave normally. And it's wild to see what just very, very, very high levels of fame and status have, this odd warping effect on the way that people sh- are able to show up and just be normal. And what that means is that if you're Joe, everybody must seem weird to you. Everybody must seem like they're being a little bit contrived or obfuscatory or, uh- um, disingenuous in some way. And m- maybe some, maybe many of them are, and then some of them are just (laughs) looking at you going like, "Holy fuck, it's Joe Rogan. Holy fuck, it's Joe Rogan. Holy fuck, it's Joe Rogan." And then (laughs) trying to hold it together and you don't know (laughs) which one's which. And, uh, you know, in whatever micro-niche equivalent it is for me, uh, I guess that that might be the same thing. That status and fame can be warping. And yeah, it- it is a little bit harder to trust people's intentions, not necessarily because you're skeptical, but because people in many ways just struggle to show up in a- a normal manner. That there's things that they could get from you or they have a- a preconceived idea about the way that you want people to behave or- or whatever. And, uh, again I- I'm fortunate, whatever period I'm in now, it's the perfect level of fame. People say hello once every 15 minutes on the street. If I'm in a gym, there'll be, you know, 10 or 20 guys that'll come up and give me a fist bump and- and let me get back to my training session. It's- it's really nice and everyone's got cool stuff to say and I don't need a fucking security or anything like that. Um, but that's going to keep getting more difficult, uh, over time. And I don't know what the optimal level of fame is. I know that... to use an example from earlier, I know Huberman, he needs security outside of the lecture theaters that he's, uh, speaking at. He's- I think he's teaching undergrads this year or next year at Stanford and he needs two security guys. Uh, that's- that doesn't sound fun. That sounds kind of shit. Um, so but you can't switch the tap off and you can't slow down the sort of roller coaster that keeps going up. And again, that's why... to fly the flag for Sleep Token again, that's why the Sleep Token song resonated with me. Uh, you know, he's talking about the stage being a prison and sort of how he's getting bitter in the lens. He needs to sort of... he's feeling constrained and constricted by this, uh, reality that he's made for himself. And again, champagne problem. Oh, boohoo, poor, poor person that's got too much fame. Uh, but I've seen, you know, firsthand from some friends, uh, the prices that they need to pay to- to deal with this stuff. And it- it- it's fucking rough. So, uh, unlike Nava- I'm pretty sure Naval turned up to the episode in a Waymo. No security, no nothing. So, uh, maybe he's got the optimal level of fame. What's his thing about you want everybody to know your name and no one to know your face? Uh, perhaps that's the- the level that he's got to. Anyway, uh, the dating thing. Do I get asked out more often? Definitely not. Uh, I think there is a- a sense that you must have lots going on. Um, even this happens with friends. Like, how many times would someone, if you were at a- a- an event, a pickleball party or something else, how many times would people invite you to go and do something afterward? But I think there's this meta-cognitive, I don't want to be the person that says to the person other people want to say things to, "Do you want to come to this thing after?" Because that seems beggy and that seems like... People just get in their own heads and I'm sure that it's the same for- for girls too. So, um, yeah, I don't know. I'm, uh, I'm not- I'm not paying too much time trying to, uh, pay attention to that.

8. 16:56 – 19:21

   DNA Genetics

   1. CWChris Williamson16:57

      Carter Valasa, "As a fellow giant brow bone haver, I was wondering if you know where it comes from genetically. I took a DNA test and it turns out I have more Neanderthal DNA than 99% (laughs) of people. I heard you mention you had done one, so I was w- curious if you know what your Neanderthal percentage is." (clears throat) I do have a prominent brow. Thank you for reminding everyone about this. Let me see, how can I... So the prob- oh, there we go. There we go. For the people that are just listening, I'm kind of using my forehead as a, uh, solar panel. Someone actually said... put a petition on- a petition on the podcast to make Chris's forehead into a solar panel. Um, someone else said that watching me and Mike Israetel talk was like seeing two alien head races meeting for the first time, which is very charming. Uh, and we did need to actually change the lighting (laughs) setup previously because the- it had a grid on the big key light that I've got here, had- had a grid on it and it was just forming a perfect, um, sort of reflective surface in the middle of my fore- all of that is to say, uh, the DNA test that I did just looked at pairs of alleles. It wasn't a 23andMe or- or an Ancestry.com. So I actually don't know that number. I think I know everything else about my- my genetics except for that. Um, and whether I'm mostly Irish or French or something. Uh, so I should do that.I would hazard a guess that I do also share in a high percentage of Neanderthal DNA. (inhales deeply) What I do know about the brow ridge for men is that the reason, it seems, men have got bigger brow ridges than women is that it would be protective if you were in a fight. Same reason, bigger knuckles, bigger hands. These are your weapons, this is your defense. So, I don't know if you're suggesting that I, like you, am a high percentile Neanderthal, uh, descendant. Does that mean, Carter Valasa, that me and you are the descendants of men that were punched in the head a lot but survived? I'm not sure if that is the lineage that I want to be a part of. Um, but alas, here I am. Please don't punch me in the head, but, uh, apparently I can take it. So, I might find that out and, uh, come and tell you soon. Da Wok,

9. 19:21 – 19:58

   Book Recommendations

   1. CWChris Williamson19:22

      "How do I get you to read The Will of the Many by James Islington?" So, I think this is the- it's sort of set in quasi ancient Rome/Greek times, and my friend Ricky told me that I should read it a couple of years ago after I was lamenting the fact there wasn't another Red Rising book. And I've been told it a few times, and I just saw on Reddit yesterday, uh, in R/Fantasy, someone else harping on about it. But I tried, I tried for the first (sighs) chapter and I couldn't get into it, so I'm gonna give it another crack, Da Wok, and I will- I'll report back. And if it sucks, I'm gonna come and find you.

10. 19:58 – 21:28

    Peeing During Podcasts

    1. CWChris Williamson19:59

       R Campbell2321, "Do you ever pause interviews to pee?" That is an error on your part typically. Um, I would say virtually, as in like the virtual ones I do, never. In person, very rare. Uh, you know, you talk about having the memory of an elephant. What you want is the bladder of a podcaster because we're like the fucking Navy SEALs of holding it in. If- especially if you're in the zone. You don't- y- you get up, you come back. "Where were we?" The flow's all broken. Um, it's very rare, but Rogan did it. Me and Rogan did it, I think, on the second episode. Um, if- this is the way that it works. This is great, this is a good one. So, if you really need to pee, what you should be doing is trying to encourage the other person to drink more so that they say to pee. And if they say, then you can go with them. You're like, "Oh, cool. I can- I'll come with you, you know, I don't really need to go." But meanwhile, you're sort of walking to the bathroom like this. Uh, but no, it's rare. You've gotta time the hydration properly, which I do. I actually try and drink a ton of water. Also, this is from my speech coach, Miles, the way that your vocal folds get hydrated, it takes I think between, uh, two and four hours for them to be hydrated. So you wanna pound water for the morning, and then you wanna cut it off about an hour before you go, and then out it is. And then, obviously on the show, I'm just swimming in all manner of stimulants and hydration drinks and nootropics and nootronic and everything. But, you know, I can- I can usually hold it together for a few hours.

11. 21:28 – 25:03

    Outcomes Vs Inputs

    1. CWChris Williamson21:28

       George Swain99, "You like outcomes over inputs. Top footy coaches say focus on inputs leads to best outcomes. Discuss please." Uh, footy, for the Americans listening, is football with your feet, not your hands. Outcomes over inputs versus inputs leading to the best outcomes. Okay. I agree, and I think that the James Clear approach of not focusing too much on goals and instead focusing on systems, you don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems, you fall to the level of your habits. Um, I think that's a good way to think about things, especially in something like football. Uh, the problem is if you are in a less bounded game. In football, you are always just try- get the round, spherical thing into the square box over there. That's really it. There are different ways that you can get there, but largely, you're working on individual skills and you've got a very tightly defined goal. The reason that I like outcomes over inputs is in a much broader environment where your goals are more poorly defined. So if you don't know whether you're sitting down with your instrument today to practice or to, uh, learn a new song that you're going to play on stage, or to try and work out a new tune that you've been thinking of in your head, or to refine and record that tune that you've already reco- Like, think about all of the different ways that this can go, and that's just a musical instrument. Then you get- get yourself into a business. I want to grow, I want to build a business, I want to run a business. Okay, well what are you gonna do? Are you gonna build your brand? Are you gonna work on your supply chain? Are you gonna try and hire people? Are you gonna work on your marketing? Maybe you need to sit down and do your accounts. Like, there's so many different things that you can do. And if you- all- all you were to focus on was, "I'm going to sit down and be focused," you could be focused on completely the wrong thing and end up putting tons and tons of effort into stuff that doesn't actually yield any outcomes. You could spend your entire day labeling your inbox. Well, I mean, that's lots of inputs, and I'm sure that in many worlds of productivity, that would be something that's really helped. But what have you achieved? How much closer have you moved yourself toward your goal? And at least for me, as somebody that really took the sort of James Clear red pill when his book came out, I just realized that growth without goals is kind of like having a super, super fast, well tuned-up car that you can be driving in entirely the wrong direction. And that sometimes you've got your foot to the floor and you don't realize that like the tires aren't on the ground. Um, so yeah, focusing on outcomes for me... Like 'cause even ultimately the- the football coaches say a focus on inputs leads to the best outcomes, but the goal is still the outcome, right? Nobody is doing inputs just for inputs' sake. Very rarely. The only reason that you focus on inputs is to detach yourself from the emotional connection to the outcome and to not get sort of drowned in this movement toward the goal.Outcomes is ultimately what you want to do, and I think that the broader the environment that you're working in, and the n- uh, wider the number of roots th- that there are in order for you to move toward what you would call success, I do think that maybe the more focus on outcome would be better. And a more bounded game, something like a sport, maybe something like, uh, uh, working on a musical instrument, maybe you would be looking at focusing on inputs a little bit more because the outcome is much more tightly defined. M- maybe that helps.

12. 25:03 – 26:38

    Will Chris Embrace A New Haircut?

    1. CWChris Williamson25:03

       Jaffy Rider, "How come you haven't tried a new haircut yet? 3.5 million subscribers have all seen the same suspiciously Neanderthal hairline. Said with love. (laughs) Any chance to grow it out and be a wild man? Love you." Well, I didn't realize that the prehistoric human-noticing crowd was so strong today. Uh, I haven't tried a new haircut. Remember this. I... Look, this haircut is a COVID haircut. Okay? I am still really, really riding, uh, rinsing out the coattails of, "COVID is happening. All the barbers are shut. Just shave my head, mate," to my housemate that I was living with. Um, I am going to maybe try to grow it out, but the problem is, I'm going from so short to a hair length that d- has got five embarrassing midpoints between it, 'cause my hair doesn't get longer, it just gets bigger. And be careful what you wish for, man, because this thing is unruly. Um, but yeah. I'm actually, I... Interesting that you say it. I'm in the middle, you may notice it's a tiny little bit longer than usual. Uh, this is three weeks, three or four weeks, perhaps. Uh, anyway, I... We'll see. I may bail out. You... Uh, honestly, I may get five weeks deep and go, "I can't deal with this fuzz anymore," and just pull the rip cord and eject myself out of it. But, yeah, this haircut's only existed for the last five years, and the show's been going for seven. So if you go back to pre-COVID, you will see me with hair.

13. 26:38 – 28:36

    Upcoming Modern Wisdom Reading List

    1. CWChris Williamson26:39

       Chad Preet. Oh, good name. Like, Indian, like, fucking jacked guy. Chad Preet. "When" (laughs) - when are you updating book list? Name some you would add. Uh, good question. So, I have a reading list. I'm really proud of it. I wrote it four years ago. It's 100 books you should read before you die, and you can get it at chriswillx.com/books. It's completely free. Uh, and like 300,000 people have got it. And a lot of people have asked for a second one. Uh, so many people that I actually wrote one. So I've done it. It's finished. So there is another Modern Wisdom reading list volume two with another 100 books coming. Uh, it's with the designer. He'll be putting it together. Uh, and this will be available, I would imagine, end of the month, maybe? Probably before May. Start of May? Something like that. Um, there'll be a different landing page. It'll be offered to people who are on the other reading list, uh, list first. So, I guess, uh, sign up. Chriswillx.com/books, and you'll get 100, and then you'll get another 100 at the end of the month. So, yeah, I'm updating it soon. Uh, s- name some that I would add. Who is in there that's really cool? Um, uh, From Vikings to Tinder, uh, by Mads Larsen. So I've got some stuff in there. I've got poetry in there for the first time. I've got free books, like Mads' book. Uh, so most of it is stuff that you would buy, but I've got more shit that's on... I suggest that you listen to on Audible as opposed to just being like n- a consumer however you want. So I tried to refine it a little bit more. But, um, uh, I'm happy with it. It nearly killed me to do it again. It's such a mind-numbing task to do 100 books, all with custom, written-by-me summaries about why I liked them, and then I create my own categories for them, and then I got to reorder them so I think they work an- ... Yeah. I- I realized partway through it why I hadn't done it for four years since the last time I did it. But it's done, with the designer, and you'll get it soon.

14. 28:36 – 29:28

    Modern Wisdom Merchandise

    1. CWChris Williamson28:36

       Chobra, "When are we getting the Modern Wisdom T-shirts?" Yes, I know every time that I do a Q&A, uh, I give you the same answer, which is we're working on it, but we're working on it, and you'll get it soon, and the first drop will be an exclusive, you know, first edition of what it is we're gonna do. It's gonna be a slightly adjusted brand, which I adore and I can't wait to release and I really, really think is one of the coolest things I've done in branding, probably since Newtonic. So, uh, it's fun. I haven't got... You know, Modern Wisdom's kinda locked in, and I don't get to play about with new ideas from branding. I get to do copy for the episodes and the titles and stuff, but I... It's not something brand, brand new. Uh, and this is brand new, so, uh, I'm excited. I'm really, really fired up to show you what we're working on. But the answer's not yet. Maybe within a few months, hopefully.

15. 29:28 – 32:46

    Exploring New Ideas For The Show

    1. CWChris Williamson29:28

       Danielraj5218, "Do you plan on getting your own pet Jaime, like Joe Rogan?" That's not nice to call Jaime. He's a agentic, strong, independent woman who has a lot to add. I fucking love that guy. He's great. We went to go and see Bill Murray play together at the start of... The end of the summer. Uh, he's not a pet. He's great, and unfortunately, if you realize how great he is, uh, you will also realize that he is kind of hard to come by, to find someone who's got that full skill set. That being said, I'm in the process of trying to find a location in Austin, Texas, to use f- for a studio. So I'm gonna build my first studio here in Austin. Uh, maybe have an office on site, a little office on site too, but mostly it's gonna be the recording spot. Um, I guess... Fuck it, we're half an hour in, I can break the fourth wall. I got a few ideas for the show, like new things that I want to do. Uh, I'm really keen on the idea of-... having a little bit more of a hang with some of my friends. Uh, I love all of the dusty academics that I speak to. I love how tight and lean the conversations are. I love that we get straight into them and there's no fuckery. I love that you know that you're always going to leave with something of value, even if it's a topic that you didn't think you were going to be interested in. Uh, I love that the conversation moves forward at a quick pace but doesn't sound, I hope doesn't sound too sterile or sort of stripped of all personality. But even I find sometimes when I listen to episodes, I'm like, "Fuck, like, there's so much practical, applicable stuff in this, I almost feel guilty if I don't start applying it to my life," and I don't want this show to always feel like there's homework on the other side. And I think, uh, when it comes to the Q&As, I know that these are some of the most popular episodes that people tell me about, um, the Christmas episode that I do once a year with my friends back in the UK. Uh, and I just have this sense in the back of my mind that kind of like giving you guys a palate cleanser every so often, uh, and also for me, uh, doing, you know, multi-guest episodes that's just a little bit more slow pace, doesn't necessarily have a tightly defined outcome before the episode begins. I'm gonna test some of those, uh, over the rest of the year, but the problem is I want to do that. I don't wanna be flitting around, b- building pop-up studios and doing it with the sort of cinema style that we've done before. It needs to be in a spot that's mine, and we would need to have a Jamie there because it's gonna be more complex to be able to piece together and for stuff to get put up onto a, onto a screen if someone wants to reference it. But I think you'll be seeing more of Jack, uh, more of Zach. George Mac is also moving to Austin, so he'll be here, and a ton of other friends. Huband's moving out here. Brian Callen's moving out here. So, uh, yeah. The, I don't know. I'm gonna test some of those and having my own pet Jamie will be, uh, an important part of that. So if you happen to have a huge warehouse space in Austin that you want to give me that I can build a studio in, hooray.

16. 32:46 – 34:47

    Should A Successful Person Be Pitied?

    1. CWChris Williamson32:46

       Pete Cudahy, "You've said that someone who is super successful should be pitied rather than envied. Why?" Um, much of the time I think we should default to pity rather than envy. Not always, but very successful people have been driven to create that world of success by something, and looking at them as non-typical outgrowths of probably a pretty sort of mean, uncomfortable childhood. Uh, uh, a requirement to be seen by the worlds w- this n- requirement and n- need for external validation is not something that you probably want. I, I don't think that you would envy most of the richest, most successful people on the planet if you could see the inner texture of their minds. And when you look at them you should think, "Holy fuck, what had to happen to that person to cause them to build that business, or that body, or s- spend so long, uh, uh, curating their writing ability or their speaking ability or their singing ability?" And yeah, from the outside what you see is the success but from the inside what you see is the journey that it took to get there and the motivation that started the journey. A lot of the time I don't think that you would pay the price that you need to be to people that you admire and, you know, admiration is fine, but it should be, uh, tempered, and I think a little bit of pity, especially if you're a, a happy person, if you're someone who, uh, is able to be comfortable in your own skin. Holy shit, you have got, you have got it sorted. You have got the thing that successful people are trying to find. They're just taking the long route to the top of Everest, and yeah, I think pity is not necessarily a bad default.

17. 34:47 – 37:16

    Finding Financial Success And Stability In Life

    1. CWChris Williamson34:47

       Zacharysparks5078, "Is it better to hustle in your 20s and 30s to find financial stability and success in your 40s and on, or should that energy be directed toward finding a healthy equilibrium early in life even if it means less financial stability in your later years?" All right, uh, usually I give some equanimous, equivocating, caveated fucking answer here. My belief is that you should probably try and bury yourself in your 20s and your 30s. It's okay to push yourself as hard as you can when you don't have the same level of responsibility. You have the capacity to bounce back from it. You can take bigger risks and move back in with your parents if you need to. Um, all of... I, I don't think there's ever going to be an easier time to hustle than in your 20s and 30s, to find financial success, stability, to build confidence in yourself that you can if the business breaks down, if the wife leaves you, if everything goes to shit, that you've got this demon mode inside of you that you can flick the switch of. Uh, I certainly know that, you know, it was very confidence-building for me to see what I could do in my 20s. Uh, now yeah, uh, uh, did I have a healthy equilibrium? No, didn't, uh, I didn't have a stable sleep and wake pattern until COVID, ever. My entire adult life, the first time I went to bed and woke up at the same time seven days a week was COVID when night clubs were shut down, from the age of 18, and I was 32. So it's not the most holistic, it's not the most healthy, uh, but I think you can front load that pain and that hustle, and I do think that it pays, uh-... benefits on the backend. Is there some survivorship bias here? Yes, of course. How many people in their 20s and 30s that hustled their ass off and then didn't get to the level of financial success and stability that they wanted, and also paid some prices in terms of their (laughs) health and finding an equilibrium? Those are gonna be there. But yeah, I get the sense that it's not okay to work your life away, but it is okay to work your 20s and your 30s away. Um, that's what I did, so totally motivated reasoning.

18. 37:16 – 38:26

    Dream Podcast Set And Guest

    1. CWChris Williamson37:16

       Faboulline7039, "What's your dream podcast set/location and who is the best guest you would take there?" Dude, I mean, I ... this is total pipe dream, but first podcast in space would just be so fucking cool. You know, (laughs) like, I- I don't think it's probably gonna happen in my lifetime, but first podcast either in some floating vehicle in space or on the moon would just be outrageous. Makes me s- makes me so fired up. I don't really actually even care if it's me that does it, I just want someone to do it, but I don't know how many other people would (laughs) be bothered about this. Like, "W- well, you went all the way to the moon." "You fucking did what? Are you retarded?" You re- of all of the things you could've done. And like, yeah, sorry, sorry. Yeah, fuck. That was a bad idea. Um, I've said this thing before, I'd love to do Graham Hancock, uh, in front of the pyramids of Giza. Um, that would be, I don't know, just kind of epic. Uh, I'm aware that everyone hates him 'cause of his ar- archeology spurious ideas and stuff, but that would be one hell of an experience. So pyramids of Giza would be, would be pretty dialed. I'd like to do that.

19. 38:26 – 43:05

    Topics With A Caveat

    1. CWChris Williamson38:26

       Molaniak, "In knowing that you do not like to caveat yourself into oblivion about how, of course women have their own struggles as well, but I'm talking about men right now, do you think there is a level of growth where you would feel comfortable just approaching a men's issue with no caveat and eating the backlash from people who obviously aren't longtime listeners or are just looking to nitpick for the sake of nitpicking?" Great question. Yeah, um, I had it out with Richard Reeves about this, that I was kind of sick of this weird land acknowledgement that needs to be done before you talk about men's issues where you have to say, "Well, we- we- we understand that the- the- the gluten intolerant community is really struggling, and we can't forget about the challenges that women have and people who've got a club foot," and so on and so forth. And after we've got that all of- out of the way, then we can finally talk about men. Uh, it's frustrating to me, uh, because the reverse doesn't need to happen. Nobody says, "We do know that men are killing themselves at three times the rate of any other group, and we do know that there's half a million more men than women that took their own lives between 1999 and 2020. We do know that men are falling behind socioeconomically at every age level, every soc- every, uh, class level. But after that, we can finally talk about..." No one does that and, um, it just feels clunky and unnecessary and- and unsophisticated. The problem is if you don't do it, the so what you're saying is nitpick crowd have a vector for attack, and I get the sense that if you had reached some kind of narrative escape velocity where everybody knows you and everybody knows what you're talking about and everybody knows that you're coming at this from a- a good faith perspective, uh, any criticism would very quickly be rebuffed by fans of yours that were saying, "Mate, you don't, why are you bringing this up? You know that that's not what he thinks." Joe Rogan N-word video. Uh, Joe did, got pulled up about saying the N-word a lot. It was like a five-minute montage, um, and people said, "You see, this is proof that he's the racist, bigoted, homophobic, xenophobic, transphobic, whatever that we've known that he was all along. This is just the tip of the iceberg, but trust us, there's a big iceberg below it." And everyone said, "No, I- I don't believe you, because I've watched 500 hours..." Even a casual listener of Rogan will have done maybe 50 or 100 hours. "I've listened to a lot of him and I don't think he is what you say he is." So you get to this, let's call it narrative esca- escape velocity. Um, I don't think I'm there, uh, especially not on this topic, and especially not given the way that I present as, like, fucking Andrew Tate from Wish. Um, I don't think that I could get away with it. (scoffs) It would be nice, it would be way easier, it would be much more slick, but ... Uh, no, I- I'm starting, I'm trying to cultivate fuck you energy. I am. And it's going to be more important over the next few years to be able to have that, uh, not actively that I don't care about what you think, but that you willfully misinterpreted what I said and go fuck yourself because you know that you did that. And it happens so much. It already is happening and it's super annoying, but I, uh, that's something that I need to build up, the preparedness to not care about the opinions of people who don't understand what I'm doing and don't like me and don't care about making the things that are contributing to the stuff that I'm trying to create. Um, but it is kind of stupid to think, okay, so this person doesn't understand what you're doing, they don't care about you, they don't have your best interests at heart, they're not one of your people and they don't want you to be better, and you are believing and putting, uh, uh, faith and stock in what they say about you or to you. Like, why? Why would you do that? Like, they're- they're not impressive people, they're not nice people, they're not people that you respect, they're not people that care about you, they're not doing this to try and make you better, they're simply doing it to try and stand on the shoulders of some supposed error or- or- or slip-up or, uh, smoking gun of yours. So really, when you think about it rationally, when I think about it logically...There's no reason that I should care about it. Uh, but something that I'm working through, and I guess you'll find out. If it gets to a stage where I go, "You know, we really need to be worried about Matt," and I just jump straight into it, you'll know that I have reached escape velocity, so hold on (sniffs)

20. 43:05 – 46:55

    Chris' Health Update

    1. CWChris Williamson43:05

       . Dave Kiz, "You mentioned feeling unwell in your last Q&A. How are you feeling now?" Uh, yeah, um, it's all right. I'm a little better in terms of brain function, which is good, and the Rogan and Naval weekend was formative for me because I felt so shitty going in. I felt so... My brain was so slippery. I call it slippery brain. I had such slippery brain, where I wasn't holding onto thoughts, I wasn't recalling well, I wasn't precise with my speech. All of the things that I really take pride in and that I think I contribute well just weren't there. And I was like, "For fuck's sake, the very thing that I'm supposed to be good at is... has been taken away from me," and I didn't... I have no doing of my own. All I've done for over 12 months now, like, 14 months, maybe more, all I've done is try and fix my health. Unlimited numbers of saunas and cold plunges and phosphatidylcholine and glutathione and 25-gram bags of vitamin C IV and blood-cleaning treatments in Tijuana and peptides and, and, uh, gut detox protocols, and, like, everything. Like, the list of things that I've done is huge, and I will do... I know that a lot of people that suffer with sort of, like, uh, complex chronic illness and tinnitus and all of the shit that I... EBV, mold, toxic blood, all of the stuff I've talked about. Uh, I know that I kind of owe... In a way, I do actually feel a little bit of a sense of a debt to be more open about it and be a little bit more of a... plant a flag in the ground for how difficult it is so that other people feel a bit less alone. Um, but I'm... I just can't do it while I'm still in the trenches. I'm sorry. I can't be the person that's, you know, delivering this, this message, hopefully one of hope that you look at all of the things that I did and did... I came out the other side, while I'm still in it. It- it's just, it's too much for me to juggle, and also something I've learned is that if you tell a sad story about yourself but there isn't resolution because it's still going on, people don't feel hope. They feel pity, and they feel sad for you, and it's not the vibe that I'm trying to give off, certainly not at the moment. Uh, so I guess that's a long-winded way of saying largely, I'm feeling the same. Uh, I'm tired. I fall asleep at 8:00 or 8:30 PM at night most nights. My sleep's disrupted. I wake up not feeling particularly rested. I can't train at more than 50% capacity. I've got slippery brain. My mood's low. Um, but I have bits of respite, and the bits of respite are, uh, a little bit more controllable now. Uh, but I've had so many times where I've thought, "Oh, yeah, I'm out, I'm out the other side. Like, this is great. I- I- I'm on the up and up." And it was just a brief upward swing before it gets lower to a new all-time low. So, uh, we'll see. I got some big treatments coming up over the next couple of months. Hopefully, they will have a big impact, and, um, I did a sleep s- I did an at-home sleep study, the only lab-quality at-home sleep study that you can do outside of l- literally going into a sleep lab to do it. Uh, I did that. So that was an assessment. Really, I've done everything to try and work out what the fuck is going on. Uh, and it's not overworking because for the last six months, I dialed back how much I worked. I stopped traveling as much. I did trainings at 50%. All of the things, right? I've covered all of the bases, and I will detail it all at some point (laughs) eventually. Um, but for now, I'm just plodding on.

21. 46:55 – 47:54

    Will There Be Another Episode With Alain De Botton?

    1. CWChris Williamson46:55

       Hivanagibi 1998, "I absolutely loved your episode with Alain de Botton." Thank you. "It was incredibly insightful. Is there any chance you'll have him on again in future episodes?" So yes, I emailed him, I think, a week after. Uh, we've been emailing for forever, maybe five years, six years, back and forth, back and forth. He was doing it. I think he had some health things. He stopped doing podcasts. He came back

    2. NANarrator47:20

       (laughs)

    3. CWChris Williamson47:20

       It was kinda... He got rearranged, weren't able to do it. I wasn't going out there. My dates changed, his dates changed, and then we finally got him. And there was a bit of me that thought, "That was so good, but fuck, there's..." (laughs) Like, it was 5% of the things that I want to talk about, and it went for two hours. So like, I need a lot of time, okay, Alain? So I emailed him, and I said, uh, "Hey, dude, I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed the episode, how great I thought it was, how impactful I think it is." And he basically said, "Yeah, I'm ready to run it back when we're in the same city again." So you will be getting more Alain at some

22. 47:54 – 51:54

    Achieving Our Aspirations

    1. CWChris Williamson47:54

       point soon. JVisionTV287, "When you were growing up and building the person you envisioned, how did you go about breaking up those steps into more achievable goals in the meantime? How did you go about keeping that same fire to improve even when you weren't everything you wanted to be yet?" Yeah, I'm gonna give you a... (sighs) probably quite an unsatisfate- unsatisfactory answer here, which is I'm really not good at having a long-term plan. Uh, I am a good avatar for the person who kind of just focuses on what's in front of them and doesn't have a big picture. Uh, I know that productivity wisdom is to have a... write your gravestone and then work it back in 10-year periods, and then chunk that down into three-year, uh, sprints, and then put that into 90-day goals, and then break that into daily actions. I know that that's the way that you're supposed to do it, but it just never really seemed to work for me. So building the person that I envisioned, I- I really didn't envision...... any outcome. W- what I actually thought was, "I want to be more mindful," and the most direct goal to being more mindful is to meditate. I want to be more... I want to be fitter, I want to be more peaceful, I want to have more gratitude, I want to be able to sleep better, I want to be more consistent, I want to be a better speaker. Um, it wasn't necessarily this sort of destination I was moving toward, it was a very simple outcome goal, and just one modality that helps get toward that, which was meditation for mindfulness, it was journaling and, and formal gratitude practice for gratitude. It was breath work for nervous system regulation. It was walks (laughs) , taking a lot of time walking to, you know, work out what was going on inside of my mind, and, um... Keeping the same fire to improve even when you weren't everything you wanted to be yet. Well, as someone who, although I'm battling through a ton of shit, which is kind of new and novel to me right now, but I guess I have reached escape velocity on at least some of the things that I wanted. A lot of the things that I wanted when I was 28, wh- 29, when I started doing this properly, when I... You know, I went sober for the first time at 20- 28 and I stopped partying. Oh my God, that was revolutionary. Um, and now I don't think about drinking and e- every single thing that I wanted to do, build a meditation practice, o- blah, blah, blah, bl- get better at speaking, build a business, move to another country, all of the things that I wanted to do, uh, talking about keeping the same fire to improve even when you weren't everything that you wanted to be yet, as someone who's kind of got to a place closer to where he does want to be, keeping the fire going now is probably harder because what's driving you? Like, there's such a delta between where you are and where you want to be, so you keep pushing to get there, but gold medalist syndrome is fucking real, dude. Like, you, you arrive. At what point do you arrive? And even if you think, "I haven't arrived yet, but I'm kind of close to it," like, "Oh, fuck. What do I do now?" For so long, I've been, you know, uh, pushing and pushing and pushing to find this thing, and then when you get there, w- why do you need to keep pushing so hard? The reason you did it previously was this desperate need for validation and recognition and to actually make something of yourself. Oh, you made something of yourself. Now what? It's a difficult one. So, uh, I chose very simple goals that were, uh, upstream of lots of things that I wanted to be better in. I wanted to be a more peaceful person, I wanted to be more mindful, I wanted to have, um, a better quality of thoughts, I wanted to be able to think and speak more clearly, and I just did one modality for each of those things and basically didn't stop for about, the very best b- now approaching 10 years, and here we are.

23. 51:54 – 53:07

    International Shipping Fees For Neutonic

    1. CWChris Williamson51:55

       PaulIrish1165, "Chris, I want to order Nutonic in Canada, but the shipping costs are equal to the cost of the product. Is there any alternative?" Yes, I know, I'm sorry. Fucking international shipping, dude, is rough with an RTD. You know, this is LMNT and, uh... It's not good. It's not easy to... It's not easy at all to do that. Um, we would get a 3PL or a c- a, a, a fulfillment center in Canada. Uh, m- the Canadian audience for this show, at least for my audience, is bigger than everywhere else on the planet c- per capita except for Australia. So it goes Australia, Canada, Ireland, the UK, the USA, in terms of, uh, like per capita audience size. So I want to get it there, but it's a nightmare. Um, what you can do in the meantime is use the focus blend, the stick packs, or the brain capsules 'cause they'll be way cheaper to ship, which I think will be where most of the cost is coming from, unless there's some sort of import duties. And fuck knows what's happening with Trump's tariffs, dude. Like, maybe everything's gonna triple, so stock up while you can.

24. 53:07 – 54:09

    Marrying Douglas Murray

    1. CWChris Williamson53:07

       Atlanties94, "How long have you been married to Douglas Murray?" Yeah, that was awkward. Um, for the people who don't spend much time on Twitter, s- I... Somebody tweeted, "If you se-" In fact, let me see if it's still there. Douglas Murray husband. Douglas Murray husband images. Yep. Okay, so the top line is, uh, Douglas Murray husband, him and Candice Owen. Second image is Douglas Murray and me. Third image is Douglas and Dave Rubin. The fourth image is, I don't know who that is. Uh, Sam Harris is up there. Uh, oh, I'm up, I'm up there twice. How great. Wait, it's me and Coleman Hughes, so that's like an interracial triplet marriage. Um, y- yeah, someone tweeted saying that I was his husband and that I was c- also like of a different name. Uh, and I quote tweeted it saying that it was a skill issue, and then all hell broke loose. So I've been married to Douglas apparently since, well, 2022.

25. 54:09 – 55:10

    Chris' Glasses

    1. CWChris Williamson54:09

       Tom Chappell, "Where's the glasses from?" Okay, these are the ones from Rogan, I'm gonna guess. Uh, they are Moscots. They are monochrome Moscots in blush. So Moscot is a British, uh, glasses manufacturer. They do prescription stuff. And I went to Jimmy Carr's Savile Row suit, uh, menswear, yeah, store. He own- owns part of it, and we were hanging out and we wanted to go for a coffee, so I went there with him, and I saw this pair of pink glasses two years ago and I was like, "Those are sick. I'm gonna buy 'em." And I have, and they are functionally useless. They don't do any... They're not blue blockers, they don't help downregulate your melatonin. Um, and then I took 'em off on Rogan and he encouraged me to put them back on, and then I wore them for three hours. So, uh, yeah, Moscots in monochrome blush. They've got 'em in blue, they've got 'em in green, and they're pretty cool and they're super comfortable, but they're not cheap. They're about...... 250 bucks, so. Or maybe 300 bucks, so

26. 55:10 – 57:13

    Advice To Chris' Younger Self

    1. CWChris Williamson55:10

       go study. JJTHOMAS10, "If you could sit down and have a conversation with your 21-year-old self, what would you say?" I... I guess it depends how long the conversation is, but I'd probably just say, "Fear less." So much of my life, especially in my 20s and even still now, is driven by this fear. It's driven by uncertainty. It's, um, running away from something that you don't want as running towards something that you do. And that will push you to do lots of great things and maybe become a very impressive person. Uh, but it's not the fuel that you want to be using for a long time. So, first off, I would probably say, "I understand that you don't feel very recognized or very validated or very seen by the world. That's fine. That's not some personal failing of yours. That's kind of just a byproduct of being a 21-year-old guy that doesn't quite know what he wants yet and is struggling to connect with the people around him." I would say, "Fall in love slowly and break up quickly, uh, because much of your 20s, if you're not careful, will be spent in relationships that you should've left sooner, for both of your sakes. Um, don't be guilty about disappointing people. Don't fear the repercussions of putting yourself first. Don't subjugate your desires in order to keep somebody else happy. Don't make yourself unhappy in order to keep somebody else happy. Buy Bitcoin and do 531." That's what I'd say.

27. 57:13 – 58:34

    Chris' Pre-Recording Routine

    1. CWChris Williamson57:13

       RAMOPOMO, "Under what conditions do you feel the most mentally sharp and able to form co- perform cognitive tasks?" That's a good question. Um, so I've got a pretty dialed routine now before the big episodes, uh, which is no carbs at all, so, uh, bacon and eggs, sausage and eggs breakfast. Um, minimal caffeine earlier in the day. Uh, maybe one coffee in the, uh, on a morning. Go and train moderately hard, but not super hard, so RPE 7, RPE 8. Um, then I wanna be a little bit hungry, and then I wanna have probably one Nootonic about an hour before, and then sip on a Nootonic throughout whatever it is that I'm doing. And if I get all of that in and I've got sunlight in my eyes and gone for a walk and I've been moving, I'm, I'm pretty fucking dialed. And that can last, can hold onto that, as long as I keep the (sniffs) Nootonic levels up, I can hold onto that for probably about four hours, and then it starts to (laughs) I start to become psychotic after that time. Because I'm g- I'm- y- you're fighting this tension between fatigue and stimulants. But more f- more stimulants aren't necessarily fixing the fatigue. Uh, they're just making me more stimulated. Um, yeah.

28. 58:34 – 1:03:06

    Who The Modern Wisdom Content Is For

    1. CWChris Williamson58:35

       JDFITZ, "Do you create for yourself or for your audience?" That's a good question, and unfortunately, probably the biggest middle finger, uh, I create for myself. Um, this show has always been a thinly veiled autobiography. Um, whatever it is that is on my mind, whatever it is that I'm dealing with, whatever it is that I'm interested in, um, what's happening to me professionally, personally, um, much of that is the inspiration. Now, not everything, obviously, um, but much of that is the- at least the beginning and sort of the spark of the direction that I take the show in. Um, you know, I- I- I fell in love with evolutionary psychology because I- I found it really insightful about understanding the sort of, the why you are the way you are. It's really sort of seeing the source code of human behavior, at least from a- a sort of conditioning sense and then obviously that gets coded into genes. Um, that was a huge part of- of understanding me because I wanted to. There was a big period where I was into productivity, so I was just rinsing through every productivity guide. David Allen coming on and g- Tiago Forte, Peter Akkies, you know, getting all of the- the big names in productivity on to help organize my Things 3 GTD process and- and, you know, wha- what's the best email client I should be using. Um, it's just me, and I think the best... Uh, sure, there are some artists, like, creators, uh, out there who can make content for an audience and really enjoy the process, but for me, the more that I don't follow my own curiosity and the more that I don't make it for myself, the less I enjoy it and the less successful it is. So I- I genuinely think, and maybe, again, this is just Stockholm Syndrome, I genuinely think that the best way to serve you guys is to just follow my own curiosity because I'm not... I'm not that much of an outlier. I'm not that different. I think a lot of the challenges that I face and a lot of the interests that I have are really representative of those that any other thoughtful, sensitive person has. And that means that if I follow my instincts, some nonzero portion of other people are also interested or care about this thing that I'm thinking about. And it gives me a unique insight because...Everybody has access to what the audience says. Every other creator, uh, thinker, artist, songwriter, whatever, they all have access to what are the trends that are going on online. Everyone can see what's happening on Twitter, everyone can ask ChatGPT what the most searched, search terms are on Google, right? So that means that it's a very un-unique body of work, and not necessarily accurate. But if you follow what you do, I think that that really elicits a unique fingerprint, uh, and one that absolutely resonates. And even if it doesn't, you pursued something that you found interesting. And the more that I try and reverse engineer what will click, what will resonate... Well, maybe I should be doing the Q&A, maybe I should have someone ask me the questions on the Q&A. Or maybe, maybe the Q&A should be done live, or maybe I should be streaming on Twitch or whatever. And if it doesn't speak to me, not doing it is the best strategy, because even if it would be optimal, even if it would be better in some way for audience growth, if it doesn't speak to me, it's not going to be authentic. And there's always this tension, right? Everybody shows up in... You show up differently when someone else steps into your room versus when you're on your own. So when it's audience, there's all of these perverse incentives, and trying to be 100% yourself is essentially impossible. But you can get closer and closer to that, and you can also get further and further away, and you train yourself in either direction. So, for people that are wanting to create a body of work, you need to play the game. You absolutely need to play the game. There is a game to be played, there are mechanisms in place, growth loops that you need to take advantage of. So you do need to play the game, but you need to know that it's not about the game. Play it, but it's not about it. I think that's really important, and that's a strategy I'm holding onto.

29. 1:03:06 – 1:06:38

    Ways Chris Is Trying To Become More Authentic

    1. CWChris Williamson1:03:06

       Sean Spooner, "Millions of people now have an idea in their head of who they think you are, but it's still just you. Do you ever feel any pressure to live up to that imagined ideal, even when you're having a tough week or going through your health challenges?" Yeah. I mean, this is kind of actually what I was just talking about, that, um, with the... Rogan, he walks into a room, there's this fucking reality distortion field that appears around him. Um, there is this sense of performance that everybody has, even if it's just you talking to someone else over dinner. It's very difficult to be unencumbered. That's a good definition, I think, of who your best friend is, you know. Most people after the age of 15 don't really have a best friend maybe, but I think a good way to define your best friend is the person that you can speak to with the least amount of filter. And that gets more and more insulted the bigger and bigger the audience is and the tighter and tighter the feedback loop. So, you know, if you're an, if you're a comedian or a, a, a singer or something and you're on stage, fuck, like, you're seeing this feedback loop immediately. It's so dopaminey. Uh, at least with what I do, there's a little bit of lead time and I don't see people immediate-... Now, in some ways that's crap because I get no motivation from positive f- feedback other than, you know, nice comments, which is good. Please send more. But, um, it's also less perverting, I think, in many ways. Um, (sighs) I do, I have been trying increasingly over the last four months or so, I think since the beginning of the year, I've really, really been trying to lean into just being me as much as possible, whatever that means, whatever it fucking means to be yourself. Uh, I'm really, really trying to do that, opening up about health challenges. Somebody asks me a question that I don't know. Someone, uh, on stage, I was at this health summit thing this weekend and I, I gave a, a chat. And someone asked a question from the audience and I was like, "Hey, there's like 1,000 people looking at me and I'm gonna give the answer that I know no one wants to hear, but I don't have an opinion on that." Um, which is just so unsatisfactory, but it was true. I don't have an opinion on quantum energy and f- vibration consciousness or... s- I can't rem- the question was something to do with that. I'm like, perhaps unsurprisingly, this isn't my area of expertise, um, I don't have an opinion on that. So I'm trying to release that pressure to live up to some imagined ideal. Now, I definitely don't want someone that cares about the show to meet me and be like, "Hey, he was really fucking unimpressive, dude. Like, (laughs) he was so..." But I don't... I think, at least as far as I can see, getting to the stage that I have now and actually being able to hold onto some sense of humanity is kind of like a superhuman task. And this is an experiment. I'm gonna continue to try and be open. Jesus Christ, I let out a tear, I let out a single tear on a vlog couple of weeks ago. So, that was real. It was true. It was how I felt at the time, and I get the sense that if I don't have to live up to some imagined ideal, my longevity and, uh, loving what I do will be greater because I'm not going to feel puppeted by... ventriloquized by a, a group of people that I've never met, uh, even if they're ones that

30. 1:06:38 – 1:09:19

    Turning Business Ideas Into A Reality

    1. CWChris Williamson1:06:38

       I love. Matthew Bellinger, "How long did you contemplate podcasting before starting? How long did you contemplate Newtonic before committing?" Uh, it took six months contemplating podcasting before running it. It was the back end of 2017, and then I launched it in February of 2018. Uh, the name took a while, the logo took a while. Um, the strategy took a while, of how I was gonna launch it. Uh, how long did I contemplate Newtonic before committing? The committing thing was actually relatively easy, uh, but the building before launching took 12 months. So I am...... as anyone who's ever worked with me will attest to, uh, painfully pedestrian in pre-launch and then kind of unrelentingly rapid in post-launch. So I kind of have this Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde thing, where I want everything to be absolutely perfect up until the point at which it gets shipped, and then once it's shipped, I try and iterate very, very quickly. It seems to work for me. Uh, I do have a per- a sort of perfectionist streak to me and sort of an obsession with detail, which is good in many ways, and I think... Here's my theory: there are certain things that you need to get really, really right once, and then you rinse and repeat it. So the can design for Newtonic, w- I was, uh, n- kind of tyrannic- well, uh, just tyrannical, um, when it came to that, because I'm like, "This is the thing for the fucking rest of time. There is no getting this most of the way there. It needs to be perfect. It needs to be perfect now. It needs to be perfect in five years' time. It needs to be perfect when we exit the business. It needs to be perfect." And the same thing with Modern Wisdom. Uh, me and Dean worked, you know, once he came on board after a couple of months, so fucking hard at dialing in the colors, dialing in the sets. "This is how we want it to work. This is how we want the p- the pacing of the cuts to be," everything, but once we've done it, you've got a signature s- style, and you can sort of run that forward. So, um, decision latency is a big deal, uh, but I think we're talking about sort of preparedness or launch latency here as well. Uh, I would hazard a guess that most people in the audience probably need to make decisions more quickly, launch more slowly, and iterate more quickly. So, uh, stop fucking about not doing the thing, and commit to a thing as an experiment. Spend a good amount of time preparing it, getting it right, dialing in whatever the structure is, the brand, the style, the format, the whatever it is that you're going to do, and then once it's launched, go really, really fast and hard. So at least that's how it works for me.

31. 1:09:19 – 1:11:39

    Maintaining A Balance To Help Anxiety And Depression

    1. CWChris Williamson1:09:20

       Stefanovich, "How to deal with the anxiety when you're working hard versus the depression when you're taking it easy?" (laughs) That's funny. How to deal with the anxiety when you're working hard versus the depression when you're taking it easy. Dude, it's tough. I mean, like, your- your calendar is, uh, a lovely way to assuage your deep feelings of insufficiency, right? It's an anesthetic that sort of smooths over your- your, um, uh, need for validation, um, because it keeps you busy, and then when you start to take it easy, you start to ask yourself questions. Uh, but you're right. When you're in the midst of, uh, calendar life, there is this sort of rush, but this rush comes along with a- a- a fear, uh, and I think that's the anxiety that you're talking about. Uh, look, I have found that periodizing is the easiest way to do this, that basically humans are absolute creatures. Uh, so if you put a packet of biscuits, Oreos, in front of me, and you say, "You can either eat all of them, or you can eat none of them," easy task. If you tell me, "Oh, you can eat two," go fuck yourself. Like, I'm not- I can't. There's- it's impossible. No one has ever, in the history of the world, has ever just eaten two Oreos. They've eaten all of them, or they've eaten none of them. And I think that the same here with the working hard versus taking it easy thing. Shock, horror, there used to be a thing called weekdays and weekends, and you would tend to work on weekdays and not on weekends. That's not a bad model. Uh, I think if you know that the working hard will come to an end and that the taking it easy will come to an end and that the working hard will co- I think that the anxiety and the depression both get ameliorated, they get smoothed out a little bit, if you know that they're time-bound, and it's not gonna be like this forever. And that allows you hopefully to lean in harder to your work because, "Oh, I get to rest on Friday evening," and it allows you to actually enjoy your relaxation because you go, "Yeah, I'm back at it. I'm back at it on Monday," or whatever, whatever cadence you want to work at. You can do this, fuck, you can do this in one month on, one week off. You know, whatever it is that works for you, but maybe try periodizing.

32. 1:11:39 – 1:14:17

    Is It Necessary To Plan Long Term Goals?

    1. CWChris Williamson1:11:39

       Wannab, "What's your five-year goal, and what's your ultimate goal in life?" Dude, I said it before. I suck at this- at this long-term planning thing. Uh, I know I want to be a dad. I know I want to start a family. Um, I know that I really want to fix my health. (laughs) Um, I want to keep on learning about myself and the world around me. And I want to keep doing the show, and I want to keep writing. That's kind of it. Uh, everything else will fall into place. I've got a good... And most of us do. I really think that, and maybe this is just because I've gone round the houses so much with being deliberate, especially with the health shit and the productivity and, you know, the last seven years, our instincts are such good guides once you've sort of boxed them in a little bit. There's certain things that you need to learn to avoid, like fucking gambling. Just don't bother fucking about with gambling, right? It's kind of pointless. Same thing goes for heroin and tranq and fentanyl. Like, there's certainly g- drinking to get rid of your problems, using stimulants to wake up on a morning, and using sleeping pills to go to bed on a night. You know, there's some real red areas. Once you've boxed those off, once you've started to structure yourself a little bit, you're in your... You know, I think this is probably something you- you're gonna struggle to achieve before you get into your 30s. Uh, but once you've been deliberate for a long time, you can start to ease off the deliberateness and have a few very small sort of broad goals, uh, few very big broad goals, sorry, the direction that you're going in.... small number of them, and just allow these trained instincts, I suppose, or you would say maybe curated instincts, to just kind of carry you through. So you would say, "I wanna keep traveling. I- I want to live a life of adventure. I want to have novelty. I want to contribute to something that I care about." Who the f- like, who doesn't want that? Who the fuck doesn't want that? Everybody wants that, so I don't think that you need to think about it. And I think that actually by thinking about it, sometimes you, um, you stick a middle finger up at the fact that you can look after you. You're the sort of person that can deal with change and with unpredictability and with circumstances that you didn't plan for really well, and you probably don't need to plan for them in advance. And that's m- again, I'm speaking to me, right? This is me speaking to me, because I'm someone that likes control. I like things to be planned. I like an itinerary. I like things to be laid out. And, and now increasingly I've become more free-flowing and more at ease with that not being the case.

33. 1:14:17 – 1:16:15

    Chris' Mount Rushmore Podcast Guestlist

    1. CWChris Williamson1:14:18

       Zane Butler, "Who's on your next Mount Rushmore of podcast guests?" Yeah, uh, well, I- I've actually had to turn it from Mount Rushmore into, uh, the Infinity Stones from Avengers, because Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, Alain de Botton, Naval Ravikant, Joe Rogan, right, five. And I've got four, and then after the episodes that I did with Rogan, the day after he texted me and said, uh, "R- really enjoyed the chat," blah, blah, blah, some bullshit about the chat, um, "Don't forget that we need to get an episode done on your podcast." I was like... 'Cause I'd asked him two and a half years ago, nearly three years ago now, on his show, "Really appreciated this, man. I've gotta get you on the show at some point." And he was the one that brought it up. Like, I- I wasn't gonna bring it up again. So once I get that and I do the (snaps fingers) snap and 50% of every living creature dies, I don't know what to d- I- maybe, do you make another one? Do I make second a- I guess I've got another hand, so I can make another glove, get another five Infinity Stones, but I kind of don't know who would be on there. Ryan Reynolds was on there for forever and now he's, like, the most hated person in the world. Um, I guess he's on the shit list. I don't know. I think I have to c- I, I really do have a bit of gold medalist syndrome at the moment, especially after the Naval thing. Like, how the fuck am I supposed to top that? Not that you need to, right? I- it didn't need to be better or bigger, more expensive, fancier, anything, longer, more insightful, denser. Didn't need to be. It's like, it was beautiful and then it was done, um, but when you start to think on, uh, in terms of goals, outcomes, Mount Rushmores, you're like, "Fuck, well, it's a pretty good one." Like, I'd put mine up against pretty much anybody else's.

34. 1:16:15 – 1:19:46

    Starting From The Bottom

    1. CWChris Williamson1:16:15

       Carson Hoffmann, "What was the hardest part about being broke when you first started, from a mindset perspective?" Gonna guess that you mean money broke here, unless you mean broken, uh, mindset-wise, which, uh, I was both. Um, yeah, I had, I think the poorest I ever was was when I was 20, 20, and I remember I spent my last £10 on petrol to drive from Edinburgh to Glasgow to see Underoath play on my own, because they were my favorite band and I think they were doing their Only Chasing Safety and Dividing the Great Line back to back. So I went to go see a band. I went to go see a c- Christian metal band that I love. Uh, and I drove back and I remember looking at the fuel gauge and thinking, "That's all the money that you have and you (laughs) just spent it to go and watch a fucking band play." Uh, and I had a friend that was staying with me who had been used to being poor for longer than I had, um, and I remember him saying, he- he just ha- he just instantly, like as if it was so natural to him, it was really kind of disturbing, he just said, uh, "Don't worry, man. Like, I'll just go and steal some food from the shop." And I was like, "We're at the stage where we need to fucking steal food?" Now, the difference was I was probably too proud to message Mum and Dad and say, "Hey, can you send me £100 please so I can eat this week?" Um, because I was doing this placement year from university and we weren't getting paid until the events were done. This is one of the problems with running events, that all you do is spend money, spend, spend, spend, spend, spend, spend, spend, and then finally you get this big injection of cash and you repay yourself. That means that if you're running low personally on liquid capital to be able to actually keep the fucking lights on or keep the food in your mouth, uh, you end up in a, you end up in a situation which is pretty ugly. So, uh, (sighs) I dunno, it's, it was, it kind of sucked I guess, but I, there was a bit, there was something liberating about it as well. It was as close to financial rock bottom as I'd got, um, but I- I did have faith. I've never really had money worries, d- existentially or psychologically, and it's also not a very big part of my life. I don't really care that much about money. I like nice things, like I like nice coffees and I like being able to fly to places and not think about the dinner bill, um, but I really don't care that much about, about money, which is something I'm very grateful for because I think some people are kind of cursed with a high materialism set point. Uh, but hardest thing about being broke when you first started from a mindset perspective. Th- uh, actually with the show, uh, I had to take a step back, so I was gonna have to let go of the business that earned me all of this money. You know, this is now a decade and a bit later, 31, 32, COVID happens and I'm like, "Right, okay, I need to make this decision about whether or not I'm gonna go back to doing the nightlife thing or try and talk to people on the internet and make it into a job." Um, but there's something cool about having nothing to lose. Hormozi talks about this. He says, you know, someone that's got nothing to lose is very dangerous because the, they can...... Do anything. The- you- your situation can't get worse. Um, so yeah, I guess. Wasn't ... Being broke sucked, but, uh, I actually kind of liked it for a very short period of time, although I'm sure that I would have fucking hated it if it had been protracted.

35. 1:19:46 – 1:21:13

    Will Pierce Brown Make A Podcast Appearance?

    1. CWChris Williamson1:19:46

       (sighs) Thickman 17, "Pierce Brown on the pod when?" Good question. Pierce Brown is the author of Red Rising and a fucking legend. Um, he actually DMed me the other day. So we've been in contact for maybe three years. (inhales) Uh, I reached out and just said how much I loved the series and that I'd love to bring him on at some point, and then I must have mentioned Red Rising on an episode. Maybe I said it to Naval or maybe I said it on Rogan. I said it on w- some big episode over the last few weeks, and he DMed me again. It's been a whi- I think I- I was left on read, or maybe even left unread, uh, a couple of times, and I didn't wanna push. I'm like, if y- you know, he's balls deep in writing this hugely complex fantasy series and there must be so much pressure on him. He doesn't need this podcaster reaching out and chirping him going, "Excuse me, mate, can you come to Austin?" Uh, and he messaged and said, "Hey man, thanks for shouting the bucks out. Uh, sorry I've not been in touch. Um, kind of balls deep in the writing thing, but, um, I'm still down when the time is right." So, we'll get to... I think we've got him. I think... Actually, he can be... Pierce Brown can be on the new Mount Rushmore, and the new Mount Rushmore is not gonna be about sort of the biggest names. It's gonna be about the people, the sort of niche underground winners. So Pierce, you can take the first spot on the, the next, uh, the next Infinity Stone is gonna be Pierce Brown. Uh, I wonder who gets the middle finger? It's kind of an important one,

36. 1:21:13 – 1:23:49

    Balancing Introspective Thinking Whilst Preventing Overthinking

    1. CWChris Williamson1:21:13

       I think. Hank Healthandfitness, "How do you balance introspective thinking and learning but not overthinking?" Fucking perennial problem, dude. Uh, it is... I- (sighs) it, the, the, it's the golden mean of this. You need to do enough reflection to be able to actually work out what to do, but if you get stuck in too much reflection, it's trapping and you don't end up actually doing anything. It's tough. So, (sighs and coughs) it's a balance that you find over time. Um, it is something that you end up coming into land with age, at least for me. I've got better at balancing the thinking and learning whilst not being paralyzed thing. Um, it's also fixed by being busier, and I know I'm kind of like the anti-busy guy at the moment. Your calendar is a better indication of your wealth than your bank account, blah, blah, blah. Like, your productivity obsession is killing your productivity stuff. I'm very Joe Hudson-pilled and sebum-pilled at the moment. But, as... Even at this level of busyness, as you get busier, it squeezes out the inefficiencies in the way that you operate because you just don't have fucking time for them. It's like you don't have time to scroll on Instagram that much. You don't have time to worry about whether or not this is the optimal diet or that's the best way to organize your email inbox, 'cause you just need to eat and fucking send emails. So you stop. And, (sighs) in my experience, uh, creating constraints, uh, through pressure, through busyness, uh, through time, duration, you know, when does this need to be submitted by, that's a good way to stop yourself from overthinking. So you just need to ship it. So, avoid Parkinson's Law, work expands to fill the time given for it. Um, put some deadlines in place and just sort of hold on. Keep on being deliberate about stuff but eventually you will come into land at a right balance because y- y- you will either survive and thrive or you'll die. Those are the only two... Like, you're gonna end up either being kicked out the side of whatever project you're trying to do because you couldn't come to a balance of it, in which case it's no longer a problem, or you will, and you will end up with a perfect balance. And almost everybody that I know that's kind of of this world, this degenerate personal growth, self-discovery wisdom, bro-wisdom thing, every- almost everybody gets it right. Like, in fact, I can't think of anybody that doesn't, so you'll be fine.

37. 1:23:49 – 1:26:23

    Process To Getting A O-1 Visa

    1. CWChris Williamson1:23:49

       Hi, uh, Patno. "What was the process like, getting the O-1 visa? Can you go into a bit of detail?" (sighs) Uh, it's long. It is. I submitted a 700-page, three-inch thick portfolio of every high-relevance, statusful guest that had been on the show, two independent news stories showing that they were a person of note within the industry, and then for each of those news sites or, uh, sources, uh, an independent verification showing that the news site was one that had high circulation. So it was this tree, this y- y- branching tree of who it is I've spoken to, proof that they're important and proof that the thing that said that they were important is, uh, of note. And that, just rinsed and repeated that. I submitted it again, uh, th- the start of this year, and this was the last one plus the new one. So this one was twice as t- I don't know, I didn't even see it, uh, how big it was once it was printed off. But yeah, I mean, I've... Forests have come down to create the O-1 visa process. Um, I used, uh, an attorney, uh, Lehach Philippa, I think they're out of New York, um, L-E-H-A-H-C-H Philippa, P-h-i-l-i-p-p-a, I think. Lehach Philippa. Uh, and they were great, really, really good. Um, Mike, I think who's the owner there, was, was phenomenal with me, was phenomenal with me when I started doing this in 2020 and he was phenomenal with me the next time that I did it too. Um, and then you fly to an embassy after you've submitted, you go back and forth, you do all of these things, you submit this special form and then this other one, and then the website is so archaic and backward, and then you go to an embassy. But it can't be an embassy in the US and you don't want it to be an embassy in somewhere that's popular because the wait time is forever. So you end up in places like El Salvador or Guatemala, where I did my first one, or Kingston, Jamaica, where I did my (laughs) second one. Um, and then you stand in a massive line with people that are, you know, from countries that don't have great passports, who don't- uh, can't necessarily get into the US, and they're wanting to be workers, they're wanting to be, they're wanting to visit family, they're wanting to see, you know, friends dying, dying relatives and stuff. And you're there going, "Yeah, I talk to people on the internet and I'd love- I'd really like you to extend this visa that allows me to basically larp in and out of the country a lot," so (inhales deeply) yeah.

38. 1:26:23 – 1:27:18

    Outro

    1. CWChris Williamson1:26:23

       Anyway, I'm gonna love you and leave you. This is awes- it's 3.5 million people on this channel is, is berserk and I hope that it's not too sad to see somebody that you listen to whining about their health, but I am getting through it and I genuinely do appreciate everybody reaching out and, and saying nice things. And the live show, the US and Canada live tour is gonna be announced within the next couple of weeks, including all of the dates, pre-sale tickets, chriswilliamson.live if you want to sign up and be the first person to know about when those are and where you can get tickets. And then, the new reading list will be out soon, and that is a lovely little treat. Me, person dying, we're all dying, I'm dying more quickly, person who's dying quickly spent a week burying himself writing this new reading list and now it's with the designer. So, be grateful. I'll see you next time.

Episode duration: 1:27:18