900k Q&A - Unreleased Andrew Tate Episode, Toxic Comments & Steroids

Bonjour, friends. Welcome back to the show. It is a 900,000 subscriber Q&A episode. This one came along quite quickly and as usual, I asked for questions on Instagram, Twitter, Locals, and YouTube community, and there were literally thousands, so I- I've tried to condense down lots of ones that were all similar and I'm going to get through as many as I can today. As always, thank you so much for all of the support. I really do appreciate it. Um, this year has just been insane. The growth, the guests, the quality of the conversations, everything's amazing. So thank you very much for being a part of it. Let us get into it. Dawinger22, "What is this product that you're releasing with James Smith?" Okay, so I flew back to the UK for 44 hours, uh, a couple of weeks ago to finish off the final versions of something that I've been working on in secret with James for six months now. We're going to be able to announce it probably within six weeks or so, early July I think we'll be able to announce it. And it is so good. We've been working so hard on this. We've tested 150 different variations and I'm- I'm so happy. I can't wait to release this. Uh, it's also the first product that I'm ever going to release and the first product that James has ever done, the first thing that we've ever properly put our names behind, and we're- we're joining forces like- like what... who did- who did the Fusion ju- dance in Dragon Ball Z? Whoever that was. That's like us. Andrezcoi1, "Who is your current role model?" (sighs) I think I'm quite fortunate that at the moment a lot of the people who I used to idolize are now friends, uh, partly due to living in a place that's just full of absolute beasts and also because I do something that I'm also a fan of. Like I'm a fan of the podcasting independent thinker space and I also exist in it as well. Um, definitely thinking more and more about how to be a positive person. So guys like Naval who have a very rosy outlook on life, who try and see the good in what's happening is something that I'm trying to take more of. But honestly, turning idols into rivals and then rivals into friends is one of the biggest life hacks ever. It's- it's phenomenal to have somebody that you both respect and admire that is now a fan of even your work and- and you get to look up to them. It's- it's really cool. Maxpodzigun, "Sleep Token album, thoughts? Also, your favorite albums of all time. Thanks for amazing pod." Thank you. This new Sleep Token album, Take Me Back to Eden, is out of this world. It's probably one of the best albums I've heard in the last five years so if you haven't checked it out, you need to go and listen to it. It's amazing, man. I mean, they've managed to blend metal with like hip hop, rap, with funk, with this weird jazz offset shit. It's- it's outstanding. I'm very, very impressed. Uh, other favorite albums, um, Sempiternal by Bring Me is outrageous. Um, what else have I listened to? Deadmau5's album from 2007, uh, the one that had, uh, More Ghosts and stuff on it. Uh, those would be two that come to mind. Clancy, "That mustache." Yes. Yes, I know. I don't know, I was gonna grow my hair, uh, and I literally only got it cut today. I was gonna grow my hair out because I was getting a bit bored, but it's so hot in Austin that I can't bear it. Uh, and the mustache, I had one of these during lockdown and I just thought why not channel my inner '70s cop/porn star. Uh, so this is what we're playing with for the time being. Smelly Cat, "Congrats sir, well deserved." Thank you. "I feel like you do these 100K Q&As every month now." Yeah, I do. "That one million episode is coming soon. My question, loved the Dr. K episode. You guys got to talking about sigma grindset and survivorship bias and he mentioned that there are some people that work their ass off and still fail maybe for the lack of proper strategy. As someone who put in the work and has built multiple successful businesses, is it hard for you to concede to the idea that hard work doesn't always equal success? Do you think that there are people who do the work, have the right strategies even, but still, for whatever reason, fail? Or do you think there's always an observable, addressable reason someone is unable to get to where they set out to go, even in regards to the low probability of success things like living off creative endeavors as you do?" That is a really smart question. I have to say as well, all of the questions from today are so phenomenal. Do wanna know why this doesn't feel like the tenor in the comments more? Like they're so reasonable and balanced and smart, super, super smart, and then sometimes some of these episodes go hyper viral and it, I don't know, just reaches out into the real versions of YouTube, like the- the cesspool YouTube, and sometimes the comments sections are just so boring, filled with like, I don't know, just negativity. Anyway, the people that ask questions, you should comment more on YouTube is my point. Um, is it the case that people can work very hard and still come out on the other side not succeeding? Yeah, obviously. You know, you are rolling the dice every single time that you try and have an interaction, that you try and set out to achieve some sort of a goal. You might not do it, and that is a risk that you take. It is a difficult circle to square because every single person that I know, bar none, who has continued to work hard and is talented and consistent has achieved success. There's no one that I don't know. So here's a good story. Um, Kristoff, the DJ, uh, CJ from, um, Newcastle. I was with him last weekend. He was playing in Austin. I remember we used to go back to after parties at this guy's house when we were early 20s or something, and he would-... play people songs that he'd produced. And he was in love with Eric Prydz, and then Prydz was his idol and stuff. And he would bring these tracks in and play them, and some of the guys would be a little bit mocking like, "Oh, you and your mate Eric, have you been speaking much?" Obviously, Eric Prydz didn't know who the fuck this guy was. And he would leave after-parties, th- t- that were in his own living room, to go into the spare bedroom of his house, which was his studio, and make tracks for a couple of hours and then come back in. So, he would abandon a party he was hosting to go play, work on his stuff, and then come back in. (inhales deeply) And the guy just didn't stop. I remember thinking at the time, this dude is so talented and hardworking, it's- it's simply a matter of time before something hits. And sure enough, all of the people that had sort of given him a bit of digs about, "Oh, you and your mate Eric," I think three or four years ago, he warmed up for Eric Prydz at Madison Square Garden on New Year's Eve, and he's on Prida, he's on his label, he's playing every Monday at Hi Ibiza this summer with Eric and Adam Beyer. So, if you're in Ibiza this summer, you should go and see Kozi play. Um, my point being that sometimes things are not going to work out even if you have put all of the hard work in. But the more that you are intentional, the more that you work hard, the more that you are consistent, the more that you try and apply reason and talent to whatever it is that you're doing, that likelihood gets infinitesimally smaller and smaller and smaller. And then over time you can basically erode it away to zero. I know a lot of people, I know a lot of people who are successful, all of them are people who have had failures, who have continued to iterate, and then on the other side of that have been, uh, have managed to achieve what it is that they wanted. It is low probability, but if you keep going, y- y- you either stop or you win. Those are the two solutions. (screen swooshes) Felix Blackquere- queraire, "When are you coming to Montreal?" Uh, maybe next year. Uh, the live tour thing that we're doing in November hopefully will do really, really well. Obviously it's all sold out and stuff, which was great. If that goes well and I enjoy it and it's fun, we will do a full global tour next year. Uh, Australia, there are so many Aussies, uh, all of America, Canada, UK again, and then maybe some places in Europe. So, maybe next year. JustJoelWilliams, "Hi Chris, I want a care- a change in career, but everyone around me is telling me not to. Any advice?" Don't listen to them. You- you don't need to listen to somebody telling you what you shouldn't do if you want to do it. "I want a change in career, but everyone around me is telling me not to." Just do... If- if- if you've done the assessment, and because you listen to this show you probably have worked out what you want to want, if the change in career is someth-... Not to being a drug dealer, it's presumably to something which is more aligned, more virtuous, more ascended, more awakened in line with what it is that you want to do in life, just go and do it. Like, w- w-... You're already succeeding, presumably, at a job that you hate. Can you imagine how amazing you would be at a job that you actually enjoyed? Uh, so yeah, most people's advice isn't worth listening to. You can aggregate it, but I don't know, most people are midwits. User922281, "Why did you ban me from commenting?" Okay, so I mentioned earlier on about the real internet that you kind of push out into. If anything achieves a bit of virality, you go from outside of the core audience that are the subscribers and the people who align with what you're doing, and you get out into just like the rest of the internet, right, like the general public of the internet. And I just found that some of the comment sections were getting boring and negative and cynical. And this toxic positivity thing that I'm on a flex of at the moment, I'm just bored of it. Like, I'm bored of all of you, every single person that comments with something that's knee-jerky, unthoughtful, not m- mediated through any sense of thinking about what's going on, there's no context. And all that you want to do is just... I had a- d-... Some guy before I came on commented, uh, on a- a real, uh, on a- a slide that I put up, "I wasted two minutes of my life on another white boy that goes to the gym." I'm like, "Okay, you don't get to play in the playpen." Like, it's my house, you have to behave if you want to come in here. This doesn't mean that you ha-... Everyone has to be a sycophant. I'm fine with criticism, I'm just not fine with retards. That was retarded. So, it's a one and done ban policy now on the YouTube. It used to be that if someone had commented a number of times, 'cause you can, we can see on the back end (sniffs) , if you click on a user, you can see everything that they've ever commented on your channel. And there was tons and tons of people, it was always the same offenders commenting just stupid stuff. And after a while I'd said to the guys that are looking at the channel on the back end, like, "Look, get rid of people if they're being consistently just negative and boring and not adding anything to the conversation." (inhales deeply) And now it's one and done. And over time the comments section will be sanitized. So, just behave. This doesn't mean that you need to agree with me, it means that you need to not be an idiot. So, yeah. And also, like I say, everyone that's contributing here, contribute in the comments more, 'cause your guys' input is way more interesting than what most of the other comments are. (screen swooshes) Juan Machilling, "Have you thought of building a community in Discord or something?" So, I've actually been speaking to a guy who his entire company builds Discord servers around communities and there's all layers and admins and it gamifies stuff. So yeah, I have. Um, if people would like that, if they want more of a community side of things, that's something that I'd consider doing. Um, (clears throat) it's not something I'd thought of before, either a Slack or a Discord, mostly 'cause I don't use Discord (sighs) myself, or I haven't until very recently when I started doing Midjourney. Uh, and Slack as well I hadn't used (laughs) until, uh, we started,... adding some more people into the team. So I would. And if people are interested in that, then, I don't know, comment or something, and, and if there's enough people, we, we'd consider doing it. georgos_pan, "How to actually realize that people don't notice us, especially our appearance, as much as we think?" Yeah, this is, um... It's g- it's obvious philosophically, but kind of hard to deploy in reality, I think. You know, we are, our biology is created to make us feel concerned about the judgment of others. This makes sense ancestrally. If you knew 50 people in your portion of the tribe, you needed to be very, very careful that you didn't do something that would make you fall down the rung of status because status was so closely associated with your mortality and with your quality of life and so on. So we are... Your entire body and physiology and mind is designed to make you unsatisfied, and remembering that makes life make an awful lot more sense. However, you do know that you don't care all that much about anybody else, so why would you think that anybody else cares that much about you? You're just some random person walking down the street with tomato sauce on your top. No one remembers. No one cares. Uh, for me, as somebody that was super self-conscious throughout fucking forever, it was just time and attention, I think. That was a, a big part of it, realizing that so much of the stuff that I did was unnecessarily shaped by the opinions of people who didn't have an opinion on me, and I, I really, really think that if you realized how little people care about your appearance, like, you know, you... Some of your favorite friends, you're friends with people not because of the way that they look but because of the things they say, whether or not they're good people, whether or not they're interesting, whether or not they're kind, whether or not they're reliable. Your appearance doesn't make that much of a difference, I promise. "escaping mediocrity: IQ or boobs in a mate? how far would you give up aesthetics for a smart girl?" This is an interesting one because, you know, men don't value, uh, intelligence as much in a partner. This isn't to say that they don't at all, and obviously intelligence is highly associated with being interesting and kind and all of the things I just said we care about in the people that we want around us, but it's not as important, uh, and a lot of guys would happily take in like a, an 80 IQ girl who had a perfect body, uh, and not, not convinced that the reverse would be true. One of the problems you have is that smart people, in general, can be more disagreeable, and disagreeability is not all that enjoyable when it comes to a relationship. So it's not just like you get either IQ or boobs. You don't even just get boobs, right? It's like, okay, has the boobs come with back problems down the line? Does the boobs come with an increased risk of something else? There is like a polygenic score of everything. I think that it's a balance. Uh, fence-sitting, it's a balance. Um, but, uh, you, you can't work out whether or not you should date somebody who is a 10 out of 10 but dead as a doornail or someone who's super, super smart but you can't bear to see them naked. Like, evidently, both of those are bad ideas, so personal preference, I suppose. That being said, I did once hear someone who made a, a perfect example of everybody is a boobs guy until they have sex, after which they're a bum guy. Basically, his argument was that the utility of a bum is, is greater, uh, up until... I- it's, it's greater to, to use, but boobs are, uh, better to look at. I don't know, but interesting. nevi69, "what about the podcast with Andrew Tate?" Uh, under house arrest at the moment, and I saw what happened to that VICE guy who tried to get in. I never said this, never mentioned this on the podcast before, I recorded a podcast with Andrew Tate three years ago, I think. Two or three years ago. It was in the height of COVID. Andrew Tate, welcome to the show. Hello. Good to see you. Good to see you as well, man. And we spoke about, uh, lockdowns, concern about governmental overreach. Um, he was sort of waging war against people that were getting vaccinated at the time and, and complying with government demands, uh, and I had a ton of pushback. It was, like, well-natured, but I just didn't put it out because it would have got the channel absolutely nuked for talk of vaccine misinformation. It was when everything was super hot on YouTube. So I texted him afterwards and I was like, "Look, mate, I, I can't, I can't put this out because it's just gonna, it's gonna destroy the channel." And he understood and said, "Let's run it back and we can do a different conversation. We can talk about other stuff." But, uh, yeah, that's just sat on a hard drive somewhere, unreleased Tate content. There's another thing, man. Like, I understand that everybody, all of us on YouTube sell our soul to one degree or another, but there are people out there, like that as an example, I could have released that at the height of Tate's fame as some, you know, unseen, unreleased two-hour Andrew Tate video. It would have been clipped up to hell, it would have got millions of plays. But, I don't know, it just didn't... It felt like it had, the time had passed for having that conversation. It probably wouldn't have been a super smart thing to do, or a super fair thing to do by Andrew because he, his views would have changed. There are people on YouTube that behave like normal human beings. Like, that's a normal thing to do. It's just fair and not screwing over somebody. I know that a lot of content creators can seem like they're just ready to take a bag or to compromise whatever value and virtue that they have, and that's tempting all of the time. Every single day, (laughs) that's tempting. Uh, but I, I do work pretty hard myself and a lot of my friends do too, to like try and find that balance. So have a bit of faith in your content creator favorites when you can.Timo Suhonen. "What has been the greatest challenge for you in monetizing the podcast?" Very appropriate question. Um, I mean, I, largely I haven't monetized the podcast. There are people who have followings 10% of what I do in terms of monthly reach, in terms of subscribers, in terms of impact, who make 10 times, 100 times more money. Maybe not 100. But a lot more money than I do. And they've got courses and educational products, and they've productized, commercialized stuff. Um, I think one of the biggest challenges has been remaining aligned with what I want to do. I've said no to so many guests to come on this podcast that I don't think add any value to the conversation, or I don't think that they're good actors, or I don't think that they are virtuous people, or I'm just not interested in them. And even though they would've caused tons and tons of plays, and I'm trying to hold that same level of, um, value and integrity as best I can with monetizing as well. And that means I'm leaving an awful lot of money on the table. Like, I'm leaving tons and tons and tons of cash on the table. I'm not monetizing as effectively as I could be or should be. Um, so that's been one of them, uh, balancing like integrity with commercialization. Um, another one would be that it's a very heavy lift. You know, for all that the channel is massive, and channels of this size usually have a huge team around them, it's not. We've got a new guy, uh, who has been with us for about two months now, Chase, who is my YouTube wizard, my little YouTube dwarf mage guy, like little spellbinder YouTube person who's bigger than me. And, uh, he's great, but it's still a very small team, which means that anything that we want to bring to market is very effortful. So, I'm always the bottleneck for this stuff, but I would love to release some educational products over the next couple of years. Like, I'd love to do a morning routine course, a communications course, uh, maybe something to do with networking, maybe a podcast mastery thing. I'd love to get those out because I think that they're genuinely aligned with me. I don't feel like I'm selling out. It's not a grift or a shill to teach people the things that you guys ask every single Q&A, but it is a heavy lift. Uh, and I also kind of don't actually know if you want that, what it is that you want. Do you want the Discord community? Do you want courses or whatever? So, I don't know, comment or find some way to tell somebody to tell me to do something. Maybe we'll do it. Murphy's Law, "Are you going to do a meet and greet or after-party event following your live shows?" Yes. Didn't put this on the advert, but yeah, we're going to find a venue for, um, after Dublin, Manchester, and both of the London shows, um, and everybody's gonna be invited, and I'm gonna be there, and some of the, like, bigger named guests that are just going to come and sit in the crowd will probably be there too. So, we'll be able to catch up and, and every, I can meet everybody and I can do photos and things. Um, when it's shows of this size, most people, mm, some people would do VIP tickets with meet and greet and the photos and all the rest of the stuff. But I'd rather just meet everyone. You know, if we're doing next year shows that are 1,000, 1,500, 2,000 cap plus, you can't do that. But for now, with the shows at the caps that they are, it's realistic that I can get through everyone. So yes, is the answer. Hellufiklo Vanas, "What do you think are the darkest elements that came out of the manosphere?" That is a good question. What do I think are the darkest elements that came out of the manosphere? Hmm. I mean, some of the fundamental assumptions around that philosophy I think are, are quite damaging. I think that treating women as the enemy, uh, as a resource to be extracted from, or as an enemy to be used and discarded or avoided at all costs isn't a particularly successful approach for a guy that wants to feel like he is integrated holistically into the world around him. Like you're seeing 50% of every, every single street that you walk down, half of the people that are walking on that street are either an enemy or a resource to be extracted from. Doesn't exactly make me think that they're going to be a good person. And it's not like these people arrived at this conclusion on their own. The thought leaders are giving these pieces of advice out there. Uh, so that would be one of them that you've basically demonized 50% of the entire globe. Um, I'm not convinced that teaching men their primary goal is to become as high value as possible, to lean into discipline and, and do all of the hard things, and you've got to be on your grind, and you've got to make money, and you've got to be in shape and all of the rest of it, but that discipline ends at the boundary around your penis. You can be disciplined in everything in life, but when it comes to women, like just, it's a free for all, bro, because Genghis Khan or something also doesn't strike me as a particularly smart idea. Like it's just rank hypocrisy, isn't it? Like if you believe that discipline and integrity and virtue and doing the right thing are a smart way to go, but you want to carve out this little niche because you can't control where your penis goes... And that's not me saying that this is like something that any guy can do, but if you're going to proselytize about all of this stuff, you need to have a philosophy that is, um, contiguous with that, right? It needs to run, at least... You need to scale it to your penis from your bank account to your pants. And I don't know, I think those would be two of them, but I mean, I'm writing this book with David at the moment. Uh, for people that don't know, I'm writing a book with David Buss, the grandfather of evolutionary psychology. And, um, it's going to come out soon. No, it's not. It's going to come out next year. It's going to be finished within the next six months, but...I'm balls deep in all of this research at the moment, trying to work out what's going on with modern mating, deeper than I go on the show, which is pretty deep already. And it's fascinating, but it's dangerous. Like people aren't being fed particularly good advice by mainstream media, and the stuff that's on the internet has like glimmers of gold in piles of shit. So really trying to dig into that is- is proving difficult. I would say those two things, adversarial nature between men and women, uh, seeing them as an enemy to be avoided or as a- a- a- an adversary to be used and discarded, um, and this lack of, um, discipline ac- across all areas of your life, I think two not particularly positive, uh, concepts. Wizardwow, "Have you had guests cancel last minute and suspected or knew that it was due to them maybe learning about problematic guests you had on the show before?" N- never. I would say either never or, I guess, how would I know? I've not suspected it ever, uh, happening, and certainly not recently. I don't think I've had that many problematic people on the show. Like, you know, the most problematic guests are people like Carl Benjamin, Sargon of Akkad. He's up there. You know, I guess Jordan Peterson if you don't like him. David Pakman would be problematic for a lot of people from the right. Um, I don't know. I- I- I think that most people seem to be quite reasonable around people that you've had on, especially if you seem to be acting in good faith. So far, I appear to be doing it. Nick O'Neil, "What software do you use to record the podcast remotely? Do you have any recommendations on how to optimize audio quality when recording remote interviews through Zoom or Microsoft Teams?" Critical Drinker sorted me out with this. I was having a bit of a nightmare recording, uh, remotely, and he got me onto StreamYard. You need to get StreamYard, whatever the big dick, biggest, biggest, biggest dick platform is, before you go to, like, Teams and Enterprise and all that. It's like Pro or Platinum or something. And you can do local both ends recording, audio and video, separate tracks, 1080p, locally recorded and uploaded, uh, and it's all hosted in a backend that everybody can access. You can delegate user profiles and it's brilliant, so StreamYard. Sam C, "Have you ever considered going on Russell Brand's podcast or having him on the show? He's just put a video out on population collapse, and I can imagine you're having a really interesting conversation with him." I would love to speak to Russell Brand about population collapse. He has gone, especially during COVID, it was a bit like, "You don't know that they're coming for you. You won't believe that what they said about your children's vaccine state." Like it was all kind of a bit, ugh, like if The Sun made a- a- a YouTube channel. But he seems to have dialed it back, which is good. And the population collapse video that he did was with my friend Steven Shaw, the guy that I broke on this podcast couple of months ago. So, uh, for as long as he's supporting Steven, fucking brilliant. Population collapse, fascinating topic. Russell Brand, generally genuinely interesting fella. A little bit tough to get ahold of, so I need an intro to him. If you know any Russell Brand, loop me in. That'd be great. Holly Robinson, "I think I'm too late to ask a question for the pod." No, you're not. "But two guest subject- suggestions, Brett Contreras, AKA The Glute God." Not familiar with him, but he sounds interesting. "Palmer Luckey." Uh, I did a, uh, I did a podcast at Palmer Luckey's house actually, so I've met him. Uh, Palmer Luckey's an interesting dude. He's got like this military wing thing that he does, and he was the guy that founded Oculus and sold it to Facebook. He's pretty cool. M Sidharth9080, "What do you think about Indian food?" Phenomenal, but hard to find good quality Indian food in Austin. Authentic Vi- Vibebhav, "How is it like being you?" I think you mean, "What is it like being you?" Um, it's pretty fun at the moment. I think my life, if people got to see what my day-to-day life looks like, they would probably be quite surprised. It's very regimented, very normal, like kind of boring for the most part. Um, there's- it's interspersed with cool stuff, right? Like last night, I got to go to, uh, The Comedy Mothership, uh, and went in and got to see Marc Normand and chilled out and caught up with him because he'd been on the show on Wednesday. Or you know, today, Bill Perkins, the guy that wrote Die With Zero, I get to go out in his boat. But for the last full week, basically all that I've done is go from here where I've recorded a podcast to the place I sit and work in my house, looking over my garden, answering emails, doing calls, organizing stuff, trying to integrate this like growth for the team so that I don't need to do this all the time. So it's- it's fun, but kind of repetitive. And, um, I'm looking forward to having, like having more fun in my life because it's been, I've grinded a lot since I got to Austin, so I think it's time for me to maybe let go of some of that. He says, as he begins to embark on writing a book. Cade Derbyshire, "Do you think we will react too slowly to population collapse?" That's a good question. Reacting too slowly to stop it, yes. I think that we're already rolling down the hill, and I think that we're probably going to get at least below five billion, maybe below like four. Um, what you are going to see though is a rapid diminishing of particular groups of people, particular sort of, uh, demographic groups. So, uh, white liberals, for instance, are kind of going to be eradicated by population collapse because they're not having children. So who do you think are going to be the white liberals in future? Now, I don't say that it's supposed to be the case that we're supposed to have a society filled with all white liberals. But if you care about...... liberal values, and that's something that you want to propagate into the future, and you're not having kids, you are ending not only your own genetic line, but also your own cultural line and your own political line. Um, so what you're going to end up with are a rapid proliferation of groups like, uh, orthodox religious, uh, fundamental religious groups, so, um, Mormons; uh, Jews, orthodox Jews especially; um, like, uh, Roman Catholics, Christians, certain Christian sects and stuff like that. So, those are going to be the ones that are going to grow, which is interesting. It's like, will you react too slowly to population collapse? Over time, I, I think that a true, true existential risk, I don't think, think population collapse is. But it's gonna be shitty on the way down, it's gonna be shitty while we're there, and it's going to lose not, like, biodiversity, but, um, like, human diversity actually is going to decline an awful lot. Because the sort of groups that don't reproduce are going to be the sort of groups that don't reproduce, which means that downstream from that, there are fewer of them, to make fewer of them, to make fewer of them. Meanwhile, other groups are going to make more of them, to make more of them. So, if you care about having a diverse population, which everybody who doesn't care about population collapse says that they are, you need to have kids. Linnae.e, "What is the best way to become an articulate and eloquent person?" I get asked this question a lot and just intentionality, I think, is the most important thing. Think about what you're going to say. Be precise with your speech. Practice it. If you can, record it, listen back to yourself, and work out what the twerks and tweaks and tics that you have are that you don't like. Get rid of them. Go again. Working with a speech coach, that I have done and I still do and I will be doing in the build-up to my performance at the end of the year for the live tour, is honestly like, what brand of protein powder do you use in order to get big? As opposed to, did you go to the gym five times? Are you eating your macros? Are you getting enough protein into your diet? Are you having your protein shake? Like, the brand of protein shake. It's the top 5%. That was the leverage. Almost all of it was just reps. Spending time and attention. That's the way to go. Russ Broach, "Just buzzed my hair similar to yours." Good work. Uh, "Do you like it for confidence reasons?" It's convenience reasons, to be honest. Uh, not having to do your hair is a life hack. It's hot here in Austin. Uh, it's the reason that I just got it cut from, like (laughs) , that long down to however short it is now. Uh, and I had a massive afro for almost 10 years, so I've, I've, I've served my time with long hair. Goodart Soup, "What is the field that you're interested in but haven't covered yet in the podcast?" So, I think that, um, the existential risk of AI is something that I'd love to revisit, given that we've got this language learning model, ChatGPT, GPT-4, GPT-5 thing coming down the pike. Um, I think now is the time to really sink back into that. I was obsessed by it for a while when I first read Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom, and now I've got all of the market in the world to talk about this with. And, um, yeah, I'm gonna have Tristan Harris, I texted him a couple of days ago, the guy that did The Social Dilemma on Netflix. Texted him, he's keen to come on at some point. Geoffrey Miller is going to come on and do a primer so that all of you guys can understand the entire landscape of what we're talking about, how AI could be an X-risk. And then I've got Katya Grace maybe, who's an AI researcher that William MacAskill introduced me to. So, I've got a, a ton of different people that I'm gonna ch- kind of try and fold together and really just work out, okay, how big of a problem is this? What are the ways it could go wrong? What are the ways it could go right? What do we need to do to protect ourselves? What can we do ourselves to influence the way that this field moves forward? So that, probably AI. Kieran Corm...ey Coach, uh, "Very excited to come to your Manny event later this year. How will it be structured?" Uh, so I think it's going to be similar to the 14 lessons From 2022 style episode. So, you know, segments of me telling stories, insights from those stories. Um, hopefully there'll be some production that we can tie into that to make it feel a little bit more immersive, maybe some music. Uh, I might be speaking to Mark from After School or someone similar to get some visuals that can kind of accompany what we're doing. I did this, uh, you might not have seen, but I narrated a story, uh, for After School, which was really cool. It's called, um, The Slow Drip of Endless Fantasy, I think. And, uh... I really enjoyed it, and I thought that it drove the point home in a way that me just telling you a thing can't. So, I'm gonna try and have some of the Philosophy Bros stuff, a little bit of jokes and, and personal stories. Um, some really tactical takeaways, you know, how to apply this, and then some super inspirational points, w- that will tie in with some, uh, performance arty, musicy stuff too. Should be really fun. I'm just gonna kind of test the water, uh, and see what works, what resonates, and then from there, you know, come 2024, if we do a really bigger tour, I'll have got a good bit of like, "Right, wow, all of that stuff worked," or, "This is really great, and this we can switch," or whatever else. It's gonna be cool. I'm really excited. Raluca Fenechiu, "No question, I just love you." Thank you. I love you too. "Keep the fire burning. We are doing good to the world." I'm trying. Cole Campbell, "What is the biggest sacrifice you make behind the scenes to make ModernWisdom what it is?" I think it's what I said earlier on, that, um, life takes a big hit. Like, y- y- you know, I'm not... a lumber worker, right? With a 90 out of 1,000 chance of mortality per year or something. Like (laughs) , I don't, I don't lose 10% of my friends to work accidents every single 365 days. But...It is consistent. It is hard work, it is grind. Like, there's a lot that I put in and it does ... like, it is sapping sometimes. And it's all me, right? There's no boss. There's no one to step in and to make this work, uh, become harder, uh, uh, become easier, sorry. There's no one else that's going to come in and help and do it. If I don't do it, it's not going to get done. If I don't find the guests, if I don't schedule them, if I don't research them, it's not going to happen. Which is fine. That's the price that I chose to pay. And I love the, like, show itself but there's an awful lot that goes on to, like, just buttress it and keep it going. And it's getting more. There's more and more and more stuff that needs to be done all of the time to keep this show going. So, I'm looking forward to, uh, growing the operation to the point where I can kind of just get back to only doing the stuff that I'm really, really good at, which is conversations, researching. That's it. Kapi, "Do you ever feel like your head is going to explode with all this information you take in all the time? And if so, how do you process all of this and make sure important lessons aren't forgotten?" Okay, so Chris Bot came back. I spoke to the team that made it, and they actually made an upgraded version 2.0 that is less, um, Switzerland-y, sit on the France ... is it Belgium or Switzerland? Whoever it is. Anyway, it's, like, more me, supposedly. So, let's see. "Do you feel like your head is going to explode with all this information you take in all the time? And if so, how do you process all of this and make sure important lessons aren't forgotten?" Chris Bot, don't be a cuck. "Ha! I'm not sure if my (laughs) head is going to explode, but I do feel like I'm constantly learning and growing. I'm always looking for new ways to process and store information, and I'm constantly challenging myself to think out of the box. I'm also a big believer in taking notes and writing things down so I can refer to them later. This way I can ensure that I'm not forgetting anything important." That's not far off. That's not far off at all. I do take a lot of notes. Um, and you'll hear me in episodes sometimes refer to them. I'll bring up some quote that I'm trying to find and I'll just tap, tap, tap, tap, tap away, and then it comes up. Processing it and making sure that the lessons aren't forgotten, I've said this before, it's I have to teach it. I have to recall it to people on an episode with a guest or in the newsletter or in a tweet or when somebody asks me just day-to-day during conversations, I'm always recalling information. You have to remember that learning and memorization does not come from repeated exposure. It comes from repeated recall. You have to recall the stuff. If you're not recalling it, you're not going to learn it. Like, repeated exposure means nothing, repeated recall is what matters. Akande Daniel, "Recently started watching your podcast. You're a huge inspiration to me." Thank you. "Any advice for a 20-year-old who doesn't know what the fuck to do with his life?" Chris Bot, let's see if you've got anything to say for this gentleman who doesn't know what the fuck to do with his life. Come on, now, Chris Bot, you cuck. "My advice would be to take some time to explore and find out what you're passionate about. Don't be afraid to take risks and try new things. You have plenty of time to figure out what you want to do, so don't be afraid to take food je- a few detours along the way. Life is all about learning and growing, so don't be afraid to make mistakes and learn from them." Also, not bad from Chris Bot there. Um, I would say, explore before you exploit. So, you can go and travel to a new country, try something different, go and work abroad for a year. Don't be scared about taking risks. You've got basically nothing to lose because you haven't accumulated anything yet. There is going to be a point in your life in 10 or 20 or 30 years time where you have tons of responsibility and restrictions and you can't go and do this anymore. So, allow yourself to do the things now that you are only going to be able to do now. And that includes, when I was 22, I went and did this season in Ibiza and it was maybe two months or something there, and I came back and I'd lost, like, 12 IQ points and had just partied for the entire time, but it was fun. And I'm not gonna do that now. I'm not gonna go and do the season in Ibiza now. So, there are certain things that you can only do, that you can only experience, adventures that you can have, learnings that you can gain at certain periods of your life. So, what are those now? How can you go and explore, expose yourself to different things, different people, different cultures, different languages, different adventures? And you will discover, especially if you're a reflective person, which it sounds like you are, you're going to discover so much about yourself during that process. Just keep on exploring and eventually you'll find the thing that you're looking for. The Benas Podcast, "Proud to say I've been around since day one, almost." Dear God, thank you. I, I apologize. Uh, "The progression has been absolutely ridiculous in the most positive sense. Doing three a week like clockwork deserves all the praise possible." Thank you. "I'm wondering how you learned to allocate your time to everything and how rigorous you are with your schedule. There has to be a ton of hard days in between. It has to be a ton of hard days in between. Keep rocking." Well, thank you. I'm not that, I'm not that, like, rigorous with the schedule, in that there's no calendar, but I do just try and do the same things each day of each week. So, Mondays we sit down, we go through clips, we make sure that the full weekly YouTube schedule has been lined up. I'll do prep for all of the guests, and I'll try and check in on emails. Tuesday, Thursday, Friday I'll try to record. Wednesday is publish day, so that's full day, uh, running through titles, intros, thumbnails, descriptions, everything for the coming up week. Then, record intros, record ad reads, uh, deal with advertisers and make sure that everything's sorted there. And then weekends, do the newsletter, try and have some time to myself, uh, and then run it back from Monday. So, I've kind of outsourced a lot of what I do to just routine, but it's not like it's a rigorous schedule. I don't have some, you know, very carefully put together calendar that's keeping me accountable. Because as a disciplinarian, I'm kind of shit. But as a, a habit follower, I'm actually really good. And I think that this is, you know, the other side of talking about discipline, that discipline can be made much more easy if you turn things into habits. But because having to rely on anything that isn't discipline, like, you know, discipline eats motivation for breakfast, which I don't disagree with-... having to rely on anything that isn't disciplined makes it sound like you're undisciplined, but you might as well just use less discipline if you can. And relying on routine is one of those strategies that I think that you can use. (inhales deeply) Alex Davidson, "Why are you so interested in the facts surrounding how a majority of men struggle to attract women when you yourself are well outside of that demographic? I imagine that the men that are in that demographic listening to you talk about their plight is a bit like a billionaire explaining how much poverty sucks to a homeless person. You're good-looking and successful, so why are you fascinated the average guy's dating struggles? I'm looking forward to your million mark, man. I think your show is underrated. Keep up the good work." That's a very good question. Uh, a tough bit of pushback but also a shit sandwich to make me feel nice at the end. That's the sort of comment that is critical but acceptable on the podcast channel. Um, the analogy between me being like a billionaire explaining how much poverty sucks to a homeless person, if I wasn't successful and I wasn't good-looking and I was talking about the plight of men, people would accuse me of just being bitter. Even though I'm not those things and I talk about them, I'm accused of being out of touch. So it's a very difficult ... Like, it's unfalsifiable, really, for me to talk about. I can either be in that cohort and be accused of being a misogynistic incel soy boy, or I can be outside of it and I can be accused of being like a bourgeois opulent LARPer. So, I think the reason that I do it, the reason that I'm interested in it is because any topic that is not being discussed by the mainstream media but needs to be discussed because it's affecting people's lives, what am I doing with an independent platform if things that interest me and that I care about and that are underrepresented, that I don't bother talking about them? Um, I do think that there is value in hearing from people who are on the ground experiencing this sort of stuff. But, I don't know, like, do you... Why do people follow guys that are in shape when they're learning how to get in shape? Is that not like saying, "Well, this guy is genetically gifted or he's on steroids or he has been training for longer than me, so what's the point in learning from them?" I'm not too sure. Uh, the guys that are in that demographic that want to hear from anybody talk about the plight of, of men, they can go to any channel that they want. You know, there's Wheat Waffles, that's like a black pill content creator who is still on the come up and doesn't consider himself to be that good-looking. So they can go and listen to him if they want. But, I don't know, like, uh, the billionaire explaining poverty to a, to a homeless person, I would like to think it's a little bit more like the billionaire saying to the world, "We should care about homelessness," and dedicating a good bit of his time to trying to raise people out of it and also to give awareness to the world that poverty is something that we should care about. I'd like to think that that's the, the approach that I'm doing. If it does appear like I'm just some, like, bourgeois LARPer laughing from his high horse as he doesn't deal with any of the problems that the normal world has to deal with, I'm not convinced that that's true. And also, I hope that it's not the case, because I genuinely do care. I do care about both men and women. Anybody that's suffering, man. Like, uh, for all the, the Fiat 500 drivers of the internet don't think that this is the case. I am a really, really empathetic person, like massively to a, a fault, to the point where it makes me make decisions incredibly slowly, I massively regret things that I say to people, even small... I, I, there's comments I've made over the last year that I can't stop thinking about because I'm, like, terrified that it makes me into a piece of shit, even though it's just some passing joke that I made or a bit of banter that the other person's never going to remember. I care about anybody that's suffering, and especially people that are suffering that are being ignored by the mainstream. I think that it's a good investment of my time. But I appreciate the question. It's a really good question. Johnson Uher, "I'm 13 years old, interested in business, and I go to the gym. What do you recommend I do to acquire more knowledge and invest in my future?" Dear God, man. This is the second time in a row now that a child who watches this podcast has come on and asked questions around business and, and personal development and stuff. First off, massive, massive props to you being someone who is, uh, just under a third of my age and is asking yourself questions that most people my age haven't got round to asking themselves yet. Congratulations. Secondly, I don't mean to be patronizing, but experiencing life and just allowing yourself to indulge in, uh, social situations, exposing yourself to as many different experiences as possible will be the highest leverage thing that you can do with regards to your learning. Like, there is so much unrealized wisdom and insight that you can tap into by just experiencing the day-to-day, like, uh, vicissitudes of being a human, because you haven't had a massive amount of it yet, that you're going to capture a lot of that. So, I would be very cautious around going monk mode at age 13, focusing on reading all of the books you can and spending your time in the gym with your headphones in, listening to Sleep Token's new album. I would spend time probably around people that are older than you. If you can get in with good, well-meaning 15, 16, 17-year-olds that'll take you under their wing, you gotta be careful that they're not going to, you know, take you down a dark path. But you're basically, like, 13 years ahead of your 13-year-old self, so finding people that are a bit older would be a big help. Uh, if you are serious about trying to maximize the time that you spend in terms of understanding knowledge and investing your future in ... find the content creators that resonate with you the most, listen to them, consume their stuff, read however you feel is appropriate.... and then apply that to life. Like, don't, don't be too concerned about starting a business at age 13, unless there is some niche that you know that you can nail and you have a competitive advantage. Living life, exposing yourself through your content, and then going and applying that day-to-day would be great. But dude, you're gonna be a beast. You're gonna be a monster. Like, you're gonna be phenomenal as long as you don't knock yourself off, so keep going. Chung Lu, "Do you have advice for someone who wants to start a podcast, but don't feel qualified?" None of us were qualified. Nobody started a podcast and was qualified. There is no podcasting qualification. When I started doing this, the first ever episode was me in my old studio with a single Blue Yeti attached to the middle of the desk that made tons of noise, and I kept saying, "Mm-hmm" every th- three seconds, and it was filmed on an iPhone, and the guy's girlfriend was in the corner of the room, and that's it. And now, we reach, like, hundreds of millions of people every single year. So, y- y- you don't need to worry about the qualification and no one's watching you when you start doing something. People that have a fear that when they start doing something they're going to suck, and the people that are watching them are going to laugh at them, the beautiful thing is no one's watching. So few people know that you're doing the thing that no one is there to watch how much you suck at doing the thing. There is no pressure. You can just start. "How can a more traditional woman who wants to be pursued be more proactive in her love life?" That is a cool question. Chris-Bot, come on, red-pilled Chris-Bot, this is the newly ascended, hardcore 4chan Chris-Bot. "How can a more traditional woman who wants to be pursued be more proactive in her love life?" "Hmm, that's a tough one." Good start (laughs) . "Uh, I'm not sure I'm the best person to answer that question. I mean, I'm a guy, so I'm not sure I'm the best person to give advice on how to be pursued." Are you saying that I'm not pursued? "But if I had to guess, I'd say the best way for a traditional woman to be more proactive in her love life to make sure she's putting herself out there, go to events, join clubs, and make sure you're meeting new people. That way you can increase your chances of meeting someone who is interested in pursuing you." That's not bad. This is kind of, this is a lot more like me now, I think. Um, one other thing that you could do, and we're writing about this in the book at the moment, is, uh, cultivating, as a woman, cultivating openness and friendliness. So, in a post-MeToo world, 86% of women say that they want a man to make the first move, but around about 50% of men say that they are terrified of making the first move for being seen as creepy. Around about 20% of American millennials and Gen Zers say that a man asking a girl out on a date, uh, asking a girl out for a drink in person always or usually constitutes, um, not abuse, but like, um, is overbearing and, and shouldn't be done. So, you have a world in which guys are seeing anything that resembles a no as a hell no, but girls who still want to be approached. So guys are scared of approaching, girls want to be approached, but are terrified of being physically abused by some, like, random man on the street, and, like, that just causes neither of them to ever open up. So, the goal for guys is to cultivate a sense of overcoming approach anxiety while still being safe and respectful to women. And on the woman's side, it's important for them, like this is a, uh, takes two to tango scenario, the woman needs to be open and friendly. They need to be receptive to the guys that they want to hear from. You know, if you give off a why men love bitches vibe or, like, a treat him like you don't like him thing, he's not gonna come over. So, that would be a good way, you know, a more traditional woman who wants to be pursued and be pr- more proactive, you don't necessarily want to be, uh, doing the short skirt and Tinder thing, but you also still need to up your chances. Chris-Bot got it right. You know, attend places and go to events and join clubs where you will be around the sort of man that you want to date, and while you are there, cultivate receptiveness, openness, friendliness. I think that'll work. Ryn- Ro- Sinulivin, "Did you think that you were gonna get this big?" That's a good question. Um, me and Dean always said, you know, even when we, I don't remember, we were episode like 40 or something, and I remember saying, "Fuck, dude, I can't believe that more people aren't watching and more people aren't listening, 'cause I think this stuff's really interesting." And he said, "Yeah, me too. It's really, really cool and, and strange, isn't it? It just hasn't sort of kicked in yet." We've been saying and doing the same thing for five years now. Like, some of the stuff that I put out on Instagram that went, that goes super, super viral is shit that I've been saying for half a decade, and it's just now that there's enough people to listen, or because of, I guess, like, um, the skewed perception of status changing how people perceive the thing that you say. Like, that me five years ago didn't have the same authority as me now, therefore basically the words that I say, even if they're the same, are essentially different. Um, not much has changed. It's just been the same conversations, the same curiosity, and I don't know, I- I'm very, very happy at how the growth is going. I want to change the day-to-day, uh, experience that I have of it, 'cause it's such a heavy lift, but it's a price that I'm willing to pay and it's not gonna be like that forever, and for as long as we keep accumulating awesome people that ask questions like this, I'm happy. Matt Lake, "What was the hardest period/worst phase of your life that you have managed to overcome?" (sighs) Um, I don't think there's been a particular individual period of time, but there was a, a chunk...... a number of chunks during my twenties where I was very regularly, um, depressed, down, spending days in bed. I'd struggle to get out of bed and make excuses about not attending meetings, and it would make me feel very, uh, like, ashamed of myself. And that was borne out heavily of a poor sleep pattern. And I wasn't eating amazingly, but it was mostly sleep, I think, and not connecting and not being true to the people that were around me, and that took a long time, man. Like, every end of September for probably five years, I basically had a breakdown, a miniature breakdown, because I'd worked so hard, I'd invested all of this emotional energy into running the events. And then at the end of freshers' week, at the end of the second freshers' week, it was two... It ran for two weeks, sometimes for three weeks, I'd just break down and I'd spend a few days in bed, feel like an absolute wasteman, and then r- drag myself back and restart the engine and then go again. And it was... That was just this cycle that I'd go through. So probably that. And, um, you know, COVID wasn't great for a lot of things and I don't like the fact that it destroyed... Not destroyed, it paused the business that I'd spent a decade building, uh, more than a decade. But it was good to teach me what a stable sleep and wake pattern feels like, and to also give me an insight into a different kind of life outside of that. Paul Nadires, "Need a blue Modern Wisdom hoodie in my wardrobe. When are they out, sir?" I've wanted to do merch for ages. I've had a ton of conversations with merch companies, but I'm not going to put out anything that isn't awesome because, first off, I've waited for ages, and secondly, if it's not nice you're not going to wear it. And thirdly, I want to wear it, so it needs to be good. We are sampling a million different versions of T-shirts and hoodies and everything, and it'll be out 100% before the live tour because we need merch for the live tour. But soon, hopefully. Will it be blue? I don't know if it'll be blue. Maybe navy. Blue makes it sound too blue, but navy for sure. Luke Blight, "Thoughts on cutting out alcohol and the implications it has on socializing?" So, I'm a massive proponent of going elective sobriety. Uh, I've done lots and lots of periods of it. Uh, the implications it has on socializing, the gains that you'll accrue by spending time around people that you genuinely are interested in and you don't need to sedate yourself out of the experience of being around is priceless. For me now, p-... Half a dec-... More than half a decade, like six or seven years into playing with sobriety and using it as a tool, uh, I do think that right now for where I'm at, socializing is more important than being sober but you don't need to drink to socialize. Does it make you less confident? Yeah, a little bit. Does it mean that you're going to want to go home at 1:00 in the morning as opposed to at 3:00 in the morning? Yeah, but that's a good thing. Nothing fun has ever happened on a night out after 1:00 in the morning, right? I know, I'm the night out guy, right? I have a sample size of a thousand club nights (laughs) . Nothing good happens after 1:00 in the morning. So I... There is almo- almost no reason that if you've never gone sober and you live the sort of life that most people do, the kind of drinking patterns that most young people do in the West, there is no reason not to go sober. I can't think of a good reason if you've never done it before. "What does Chris Bott say about this? I've been sober for a thousand days now and it's been a wild ride." Was sober for a thousand days, was a m- m- vanilla ride. "I've noticed that I'm more productive, I make fewer bad decisions, and have more money in my pocket." Correct. "I also make... Uh, I'm also more selective of the people I hang around with because I don't have alcohol to bond over. That said, I'm still finding ways to fun... Uh, have fun and socialize without alcohol. It's all about finding the right people and activities that don't involve drinking." All of this is correct. Socializing doesn't just mean going on a night out. Thanks, Chris Bott. It doesn't just mean going on a night out. You can do stuff during the day, go and see some live music, go and see a comedy show, go and do a... Uh, sport. Any... There's a million things that don't involve that. But it's- it's a marker of how ingrained and embedded alcohol is into our culture that people immediately, as soon as you say socializing, oh, it's in a bar. Oh, alcohol is involved. So, finding a group of people who don't need to drink to have fun and that you don't need to drink to be around, that's a life hack. Gary F, "I'd love to see a behind the scenes of how you make your shows. You must have a big team working for you." Uh, there's not much to see, man (laughs) . Like, this is... It's kind of come up a few times today, I haven't really spoken about it before, but the process of making Modern Wisdom is, for the most part, very unspectacular. It's me with notes and- and documents and books and videos, just frantically reading them all and listening to them all and trying to work out what I want to talk about, and then a couple of other people doing things. Ben, Dean, and Chase. Chase Wizard, YouTube wizard, is helping to take a lot of work off my hands. Dean's always done the stuff that he's done, and then Ben picks up all of the rest of the bits. It's not very spectacular. Um, that may change and hopefully will do. Uh, but yeah, it's (laughs) ... The behind the scenes would be like the- the least what you expect and what you would be delivered would be so disappointing, I don't think that it's going to be worthwhile. Um, it would be cool to do one of the big episodes that we have, you know, like another Goggins or whatever, when we... We've got a few of those coming up soon. Um, that's fun, but for the most part I (laughs) ... I walk from that house to this house. It's...... come and stand in here. I make sure to have a drink, and then I start talking, and then I go back in there and I upload everything, and then (laughs) a- an episode appears. It's- it's not very exciting. Bay-lee Ma-gee: "What is your next... uh, what is your end goal? What's the next 10 years of Chris Williamson look like?" See if Kryspot comes up with something, but I'm going to answer it while he talks. Um, end goal, I don't have one. Uh, I just want to keep on having interesting conversations. It's been the way that it's always been. Find people I'm interested in, talk to them about the stuff that I'm interested in. That's it. The next 10 years of Chris Williamson? I- if I don't do something catastrophic and put my foot in my mouth or get canceled or say something stupid that I don't mean, it really does feel like the world's at my feet. And it's- I- I said it at, um, my birthday. Michael Malice very kindly ran a birthday party for me a few months ago, and I said, you know, it- it literally feels like I can do anything, and it's beautiful, and I've never felt this way before. That I have every door open to me, every opportunity is coming my way, and I get to pick and choose what it is that I want to do. And I get to hopefully, like, make the world a better place along with it. Like, I'm not kidding myself. I'm not going to be remembered in 100 years' time. But I can nudge the civilization that I'm a part of, even a tiny, tiny, tiny degree. I can give it a little nudge, and the people that are here at the same time as me, hopefully I can make their existence and their time on this planet make a little bit more sense and be a bit more enjoyable while they're here. Fuck, like, that's pretty cool. Like, it's pretty cool as a- a day-to-day. Chrisbot, what you say? "My end goal is to maximize my freedom to do the things I want all the time." That's pretty hedonistic. "I want to be able to wake up in the morning and decide what I want to do with my day. And if there are things I don't necessarily want to do..." That's not, mm, strictly untrue. "I want to be able to get them done quickly so they don't take up too much of my time. I also want to make sure that I don't fall into the trap of productivity dysmorphia where I can't see the fruits of my labors on a daily basis." This Chrisbot is like... This is overconfident Chrisbot. So, we've gone from cucked Chrisbot, cucked-bot to confident-bot now. Um, cool. I mean, it's- he's not far off, but, eh, some of that stuff, I don't think that's what productivity dysmorphia means. I made it up. Uh, Omar Tserelteli: "Are you taking steroids?" No, I am not, and I would be in significantly better condition if I was. Tomi Konde, you get asked every Q&A, "Intro song, please." Right, I did it. I actually saw this come up, and I- I went and I found it. It's called Kryspop Fly Away, the JPB remix, and Chris is K-R-Y-S-talk Fly Away, the JPB remix. I listened to this earlier on today before I came and recorded. Listening to that song will make your head fall off, because you, if you're listening to this on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, have heard it tons of times. Um, you know, it's been played millions, mit- tens of millions of times, that song, as an intro, an edit that I got my friend to make, a DJ friend to make, five and a half years ago. And then you hear the full version of the song, and all of this extra shit appears. And you go, "No, no, no, no. He's supposed to say, like, such and such. Welcome to the show. Hang on. No, this isn't- this isn't where it's supposed to stop." There's all of this extra stuff. It's like the uncanny valley, but for listening. So, yeah, Kryspop Fly Away, the JPB remix. It's available on YouTube. Uh, it's Creative Commons licensed free, which is why we used it. And then I got someone to edit it. And it's the both intro and outro. The actual outro to the song with that... uh, the episode, that big long swell, is the breakdown from the episode that you should be able to hear actually. Um, but yeah, that's- that's it. Go- go and enjoy and break your brain. Soul Bisc-uits: "If I want to get fit, I go to the gym consistently. If I want a girlfriend, what do I do? What's my gym?" Fucking good question. That's a smart, nice question. I like that. You are smart people. "If I want a girlfriend, what do I do? What's my gym?" Well, the gym can be your gym for this. And, you know, this is common wisdom from me. Go to the place where the kind of people that you want to date hang out. Are you into girls that train? You need to be in a gym. A gym that's social would be a great idea, so something like a CrossFit or a boot camp or any kind of team sport. Like, fuck me, the- the field near where I live, they do kickball, which looks like the lamest sport I've ever seen in my entire life. And yet, while the guys and the girls stood waiting to kick the ball, the dudes are chatting up the girls. So, I'm thinking, "Well, it's a co-ed sport. It's not actually that dumb of a way to meet girls," apart from the fact that every girl that goes there knows that you're the sort of guy that plays kickball, so, you know... Um, other things. I- if you're into acting or improv or art or whatever it is, there are social groups that exist in the real world where other people into the things that you're into go to. If you're talking about, how do I progress? How do I, uh, improve the, uh, constituent parts of my personal development in the same way as going to the gym makes you fitter? What is the progression place that you do if you want to get a girlfriend? It's just reps, right? It's just interacting with girls. Destiny's got this great piece of advice where he says you just need to have lots of girlfriends that you spend time around, and that's a really underrated piece of advice, because... Good example, only child. Never was friends with a girl that I didn't want to bang, ever. Never was, because I didn't have a sister, I g- I guess apart from my mum. I didn't have a sister. I didn't have any girlfriends in my life. So, for me, from as soon as I was 14, 15, 16, all of the girls I was hanging around with, uh, were just girls that I was attracted to. But you lose out on a lot of the, uh, understandings that you gain from just how to interact with girls, which is different to how you interact with guys. So, yeah, I think...... hanging around in a place that's got girls that you don't need to be trying to get with and just being okay with that, and knowing that they'll be okay with that, and knowing that you don't come across creepy, and just learning how to communicate. That's the lion's share of what you're talking about, I think. (mouse clicking) Spooner Sean, "What's one question that hasn't been asked in the Q&A that you wish somebody would've asked? Is there a topic that's bubbling up in your mind right now but that you haven't got the chance to deep dive on publicly because the right question or guest hasn't landed recently?" This is like the solution to super intelligence from Nick Bostrom. It's called machine extrapolated volition. So basically, if you can't get... if you can't work out what it is (laughs) that you want a machine to do, you ask the machine what it should want to do if it was to detect all of your preferences. Uh, ChrisBot, I'm asking him this, "Hmm, that's a tough one. You're correct." No shit. "I'm always thinking about new topics and ideas, but I'm not sure I have a specific question I'm waiting to be asked. I guess I'm just waiting for the right opportunity to come on." Uh, CookBot and ConfidenceBot merging together here. Um, not really, man. Like, I- I talk for so many hours every single day. Uh, there isn't anything. There isn't s- something that I haven't been asked and you don't know what you don't know, right? So, I will wait and Sean and a bunch of the other people from the locals regularly ask phenomenal questions. So, I'm relying on them to come up with one. Zohib Side, "Do you have any advice for someone who is trying to find good ways of taking knowledge they've collected over time and incorporating it into their daily life? Thanks, and I love your podcast. Keep up the great work, Chris." So this mental masturbation concern thing is something that I feel in myself as well and I know that a lot of people that listen to podcasts and consume lots of content do, because you are exposed to way more content than you have time to implement it. And you get the illusion of progress by exposing yourself to more stuff and more stuff and more stuff. And then you look at your life and you realize, "I haven't changed anything. I've been exposed to all of this new information and what have I done differently in my life? Oh, I haven't changed anything." So, avoiding mental masturbation, uh, and the illusion of progress is very important. Doing it requires narrowing down all of the different areas that you're trying to change in because you can't change everything at once. And if you try to, you're going to get nowhere, right? You have to sacrifice, meaning you have to sacrifice progress toward everything in the short term to make meaningful progress toward any one thing. So, forget worrying about all of the other stuff. Focus on, "I'm just going to work on dialing in diet and training for the next month. I'm going to learn as much as I can and I'm going to try and apply it and be as applicable as I can. And once I've built up a little bit of momentum with those, then maybe I'll switch to some productivity stuff. And then maybe I'll switch to something else as well." When I look back, I realize that a lot of the times I stopped making progress were when I took my eye off the ball of something that was an obvious goal and then tried to pivot. So there was a period where I was obsessed with productivity, the start of this podcast. So obsessed with productivity for ages and ages, and I'd capped out. I'd already completed, I'd accumulated all of the information that I needed and I presumed that more productivity was just the next YouTube video or the next productivity hack away, and it wasn't. I'd already done that. So it was like, "Okay, I've done this thing. I've completed it. Let's move on to the next one. I can come back to it in future." So, I would narrow down the sort of things that you're doing. I would try and be as applicable as possible. And I would ask myself when I'm reading or watching or consuming anything, "How am I supposed to apply this to my life? What's the way to get tactical with all of this stuff?" You listen to an entire podcast that I have with some guy, take one thing away from it. One, wh- how can I apply this to my life? What should I do? Try and habitize it? Try and make it into a routine? That should make a good bit of, of impact. But it's, it's a, um, it's a disciplining of not doing more or it's a, it's a, a disciplining of restriction as opposed to a disciplining of abundance. So that would be... It's a different kind of challenge, but it is important. (mouse clicking) Jake Burt, "Firstly, congratulations and well deserved and still severely underrated." Thank you. Agreed. "Would you ever consider providing any standalone information on how you've developed your conversational fluidity and brilliant questioning skills, either via a course, video series, book, et cetera? I think that the world would benefit from people having more conversations like you have on your podcast, but not everyone necessarily has the verbal skills to facilitate them." So yeah, communication mastery is something that I've thought about releasing as a course. I would maybe even bring in some guest lecturers, guys like my speech and diction coach, comedy coaches that I've worked with, and other good communicators to maybe talk about their skills and then try and create a syllabus. But I'm also concerned about getting out of my skis, you know. Like I- I'm a good communicator. I- I've spent an awful lot of time developing real world skills from the ground floor on how to have a conversation. But I'm not trained, so who the fuck am I to release a course on it? And this is another reason, you know, this cynicism thing that I'm railing against at the moment. I want ModernWisdom and I want the people who consume my content to be as positive as possible because I feel in myself the lack of confidence and the uncertainty and the skepticism that I have around things that I can do because I can hear what the worst elements of the internet will say if I try and do them. So if I try and release a course of communication mastery, even if people care about it, and even if it adds value, and even if it would be good, the fact that I'm not formally trained in it and the fact that I am going to be, like, trying to reverse engineer something which I just stumbled upon myself is going to cause people on the internet to have a vector of attack for me, which is going to mean that they can say, "You shouldn't be fucking doing this thing." So w- maybe I don't do it. May- It makes me reticent about going to do it, which is why being positive, encouraging people to go and try and do something and see how it gets on and, "Fucking hell, man, like good effort. You tried to release that thing and it- maybe it was really, really great and it had tons of value." Or, "You know, it was, it was all right and," or, "It wasn't so good," or whatever, but like, "You had a crack." I know, like...Presuming the best of people seems like a really cool strategy. And I, that's what I want. I want more presumptions of positivity, (laughs) uh, the positivity presumption paradox. Um, but yeah, I, I would consider doing that. I would love to release it. Um, again, need help, course management, building it, all the rest of it, uh, which I just can't do on my own because I, I have too much stuff to do. But I would love to release it. Uh, I just need to find someone that can bring it to life and, uh, overcome the skepticism. And this is me. Uh, one of the first questions is like, oh, you, me advising some guy, (sniffs) "Just, you know, adventure and explore and don't be worried about failing," and here is me speaking my fear of failure out into the world, the guy that's about to hit a million subscribers on YouTube and reaches, like, 25 million people a month. That fear of failure continues to track with you. It doesn't within domains that you've already conquered, but in domains that you're new in or you're moving into, it's going to be there, so it's natural. Like, even the people that you think that have got all of their shit sorted still feel this stuff. It should make you feel more comfortable about not having your shit together as well. (sniffs) George Daniel, "When you were younger, did you have any limit," (laughs) "When you were younger, did you have any limiting beliefs? And if you did, did you get over them? How did you get over them? You are an inspiration." Thank you, George Daniel. Um, I mean, uh, so many, man. My, my sense of self as a young, like, uh, uh, uh, a teenage boy was microscopically thin. Uh, and I didn't realize it at the time, but I was chronically unconfident. Here's the story. So, I remember that I played cricket. That was my, um, pursuit of choice as a kid. And there would be times where because of the type of, uh, player that I was, I bowled something called leg spin, which is, uh, probably the most complex style of bowling in the sport of cricket, and that means that it's very dependent on the conditions. If the weather's not right, if the pitch isn't right, if the game isn't at the, isn't at the right, uh, stage, it's very often that you would not be brought on to bowl because it's safer to bring on, uh, a different style of bowler which is going to be more, uh, robust for the particular, uh, features of the game that you're playing. And that would mean that a lot of the time, I would go and play a game, and then I wouldn't bowl, and I would sometimes not bat 'cause I'd be batting a little bit further down the order. So it's, uh, a TFC, a thanks for coming, uh, when you don't bat and you don't bowl. You basically don't do anything in the game apart from field. And I would speak to the coaches from the local county team that I was a part of that was the one that was trying to get me to move towards playing minor counties, playing major counties, going into an academy. I was on England's books getting trained by their, like, wrist spin academy, going down to Loughborough University and stuff. And he would ring me on a Monday and say, "How did you get on over the weekend?" And I'd say, "Ah, man, you know, like, everything was, it was a, I didn't bowl, I didn't bat. You know, like, these things didn't happen." And he'd get frustrated because I hadn't accumulated any experience, but I would feel relief. I would feel relief because I hadn't had to face the potential of failure. I was so unconfident in my own abilities that I would rather not have to face potential failure and inoculate myself from that by just not being, not entering in, onto the arena of play. So yes, I had an awful lot of limiting beliefs, and that rolled forward into young adulthood. It rolled forward (clears throat) into relationships. It rolled forward into business. It rolled o- forward into my sense of self. It was, I don't know, like, I have had an awful lot of challenges with regards to self-perception. And it's the whole Mozi thing, man. Like, I wish I could come up with a different quote that (laughs) we didn't make go viral a ton of times, but you need an undeniable stack of proof that you are who you say you are. Like, if you want to be confident, give yourself some evidence. Outwork the self-doubt that you've got. Outwork the imposter syndrome that you've got. You don't... I- if you're asking for confidence without competence and evidence, you're asking for delusion. You need to have something that proves to you that you are the person that you say you are. Iterating over time, just doing things, trying new things, going out there, putting yourself out there on the arena floor seemed to work for me. Will Palmer, "How do you deal with being the outlier when chasing that dream job while everyone else you know of going to a nine-to-five? In other words, dealing with the loneliness that will occur in the pursuit of a life that you want? My situation." I resonate. Man, I, I, I feel for you. This is the price that you pay, right? Loneliness is a tax that you have to pay to atone for a certain complexity of mind or a complexity of life. If you want to have a life that's different to everybody else, you have to do things that nobody else is doing. Like, if you do what everyone else does, then you're going to get what everyone else has got, and separating yourself out from the pack, this is why most people find things difficult, and this is where they stop, and this is why they don't win. This is the point. It's the difficulty that everybody else has to come over, among a ton of other difficulties. They have to be able to see it. They have to have the intention. They have to have the discipline to go after it. They have to have all of the different things in place, and then when it starts happening and they realize, "Oh, it'd be easier and I'd have more of a social circle if I just stuck about with my friends," that's also going to be one of the hurdles that people have to overcome. Accept and understand you didn't expect it to be easy. This is what hard feels like. On the other side of this is something that you want. Did you expect it to be easy? No. This is part of the hardness. Lean into it. Lean into it. The sign that you are beginning to become more of an outlier...... is a signal that you're going along the right path, presuming that you're not an outlier because you're addicted to drugs or, or like, beating up grannies on the street. You're an outlier because you're working harder, you're an outlier because you're taking a, a nontypical life path towards something that you care about. That is a good thing. It is not something that you should see as a negative. Hamza Elazawi, "When will you have Iman Gadzhi or Hamza Ahmed on the podcast, Chris? Would love to see you speak to these men." Already had Hamza on the podcast. Search Hamza Chris Williamson, and it'll come up. I'm also going to some creator retreat with Hamza in, I don't know where it is, in a couple of weeks time, so we'll be together then. Don't know whether we're recording, I don't think we are. We're just chilling out. Um, Iman, I voice noted back and forth with him a couple of weeks ago and that's going to happen, I think, in November. I'm in Dubai in November, so I'm gonna have him on then. Taran Ram, "How do you go about de-sedating men while not making them excessively dangerous, like (laughs) burning down houses? Uh, personally, I think it starts from education. We need to be encouraging boys to build businesses, participate in activities and more extracurriculars. Every time I go to a high school or college, it's literally 'girl up', 'girl business', 'girl that.' What would be a good starting solution?" Very cool question. These are smart questions. Please comment more on the YouTube. Um, how do you go about de-sedating men while not making them excessively dangerous? It's tough. It's tough because the, uh, uh, fuel, the motivation that men have to go and do these things can very easily just be nudged toward antisocial behavior, right? Like, remember YOBOs, remember like (laughs) anti, like ASBOs? There was this thing called an Antisocial Behavior Order, uh, that we had in the UK, and it was all these sort of young working class and underclass guys in their teens who would wear Nike Air Max 90s and stand on the corner of streets and just cause bother. And they were given these Antisocial Behavior Orders as a, uh, disincentive. It was a way to stop this from happening. I would love to see the stats around that, because I think that it'll have gone through the floor. It's really tough. I, I wouldn't disagree that encouraging boys and, and men to get involved in progressing and pursuing things that are genuinely going to make them feel fulfilled is a very cool place to start. I would also love to see culture re-pedestalize men's achievement. You know, not every man that achieves something is doing it from a place of toxic, tyrannical, patriarchal advantage. Some guys just worked hard at a thing, and if you, if you disincentivize men from going after hard things and contributing and achieving, what do you think are the sort of men that you're going to get? They're going to be listless, apathetic, they're not going to be interested in trying to achieve anything. And then you're going to say, "Well, where are the, where are all of the good men at? Why are these men not pulling themselves up by their bootstraps? Why are they leaving education and employment at rates that we've never seen?" 1% per month, 0.1% per month is the retreat of men from the US labor force since 1950. Every single month since 1950, 0.1% of men have retreated from the US labor force. Well, if you make the culture completely unaligned a- a- and unforgiving to men who do want to achieve things, who do want to acquire wealth or have ambition, if you say that that's part of some awful, like, misogynistic fucking vestige that's been passed down from, from previous generations, you're disincentivizing it. So what do you want? Do you want them to be listless and, and, and apathetic and, and spending, whatever it is, thousands of hours per year playing video games while smoking weed like Nicholas Eberstadt taught us? I don't want that. But on the flip side, you are gonna have some guys that are gonna go and do mean things if they're, you know, spirited and, and, and full of energy and vigor, they're gonna go and do other things. So balancing those two is tough, but I would say that we are way, way too far into the world of sedation than we are into the world of animation. Jordan Heward, "Congratulations. Are there any plans on getting Andy Frisella on the show?" Andy Frisella is the guy who founded FirstForm and also, uh, created 75 Hard, for the people that are familiar with those things. Uh, we've spoken a good bit. He listens to the show, uh, he's very complimentary on Instagram, and has sent me some really nice messages. Um, I think we've talked about getting him on when he comes through Austin, so at some point, yep. "Have you considered bringing on the channel a scientist/expert that you don't necessarily feel completely aligned with in terms of views, just to listen to a different perspective?" I do. I try to bring on as many of these people as possible. Uh, Richard Bettts from the IPCC, he is a lead author on a ton of the intergovernmental panels on climate change papers. Uh, he came on not a million years ago. Uh, he was really interesting. David Pakman, he came on, he got flamed in the comments, he didn't really have a particularly good episode, but he, uh, he's somebody that, uh, a lot of the audience disagrees with and would disagree with. Um, I try my hardest to bring on people... I mean, I've had a couple recently of, of academics that are very left-leaning, uh, but we, th- they have such a, a, a unique spin that is apolitical on whatever their academic area is, that we don't actually get into maybe some of the more squirrely world views that we would diverge on. So yeah, I do try. Funtivity Coulton, "Have you ever been on a date worse than (laughs) the massage date with Zoe? If so, what happened? I just watched your season of Love Island to get some context about (laughs) some things you talk about." Okay, yeah. So, um, no, probably not, but then I also haven't been on many dates on TV. Actually, no, fuck that, I have. The other, the other TV show that I did, Take Me Out, I think that one might have been more awkward. The first TV show that I did-I jumped off a boat in the middle of the ocean when they didn't have insurance for me to jump off the boat because the date that I was on was that boring. And then the girl that I was on that date with sold a story about me when I went on Love Island. The police were called on my date with Chris. Bitch, you weren't even there. I'd left. I'd gone to an afterparty. I was with some cool people. And then she sold a story about me that I told her. The only reason that the, she knew about the police coming was because I told her. And the only reason that the police came was because I woke up on the central reservation of Tenerife's largest motorway having lost my phone and my wallet. Like, it wasn't because I'd caused some havoc somewhere. I'd fallen asleep on a central reservation of a motorway. Anyway, yeah, that was worse. That one was worse. I can't remember the girl's name. Can't remember her name. And she kind of looked a bit like Zoe. Weird. Um, some, uh, what is it? Physiognomy or whatever it's called, uh, where like the way that somebody looks determines their personality. I think that's the way it works. Anyway, yeah, it was awkward. Um (laughs) , Jensen McKay, "Hey man, first of all, congrats on 900,000 subs. Been watching you since your podcast with Kristof." Wow, that's old. "My question is, as a 19 year old..." You've been watching me since you were 15. Cool. "As a 19 year old heading to university in September, what is the best way of finding people as like-minded as me within the first week of freshers? Struggled a bit during school as I used to live in a rural area. PS, what was your fresher's week like? How did you survive it? Many thanks." Okay, so my fresher's week was ruthless. It was 2006. It was lairy British lout drink culture. Uh, I had found a group of housemates. I lived in a flat with a bunch of degenerates that were fantastic. Really, really great to go to uni with. Uh, but uni was second, third, fourth on the list of what everybody was there to do. Um, finding people that are like you during freshers, I would say, and this is something that I wish that I'd done more of, attend more of the, uh, groups and societies and classes. Just join all of them. Like, I remember when I went to uni and I thought, "Ultimate Frisbee sounds super lame. I don't want to go and do Ultimate Frisbee. Um, I'm just gonna go to the gym and get big with the boys." And I, again, it was a safety net for me because it meant that it was routinized and it was something that I knew I was gonna get social validation from. I remember in my mid-twenties, I looked back and thought, "Why the fuck didn't I go and do Ultimate Frisbee? That sounds awesome. Like, Ultimate Frisbee sounds really cool." So I would join as many different societies as you can, expose yourself to all of those different groups and just talk. Talk to people and talk about what you're interested in. Don't talk about what you think they're interested in, because if you talk about what somebody else... If you talk about what you think somebody else is interested in, you are going to get friends around you who aren't keen on you, they're keen on the role that you play. They don't like you, they like the person that you think, they like the person that they think that you are. That's not who you want to be. You're going to end up surrounded by a community of people who don't have your interests and who you have to play a LARPing caricature of yourself to just be around. Be yourself, do lots of different things, expose yourself to as many people as possible. Uh, during freshers, the best thing to ask someone is, "Hey man, what's your name? What course are you doing? What halls are you in?" You can open up... For the first four weeks of term, you can say that to a thousand people. See the ones that are interesting, make friends. Good luck. Fabouline, "How long did it take you to become comfortable recording yourself in front of a camera? I tried this for the first time recently and had no clue how hard it was to explain a coherent thought without stumbling over your own words. Any tips on how to get better at self podcasting?" I'm glad... I, I'm not glad that you were traumatized by it, but I am glad that you have felt the discomfort. And I remember the first few times that we started doing solo, down the pipe monology, things like this. It is that hole there, that black void with a lens in the middle of it that looks like an eye is a terrifying thing to look at. It is so unforgiving and dark, and you just stare at it and it stares back and it just expects you to say things. And there's no one there to give you positive feedback or tell you that you're doing it right or that you're doing it wrong, or that you should say more or say less, or it's time to shut up or... It's really difficult. Um, I haven't spent all that much time doing solo stuff. I've spent a lot of time talking to other people, and I think that my brain struggles to, uh, distinguish between the conversations I've had where there's been a person there and now this thing, which is where there's no person there. The easiest ways, the best ways to get better at self podcasting, I think, are to do what I'm doing here, which is to have a conversation, a one-way conversation with prompts. Prompts can come from you. You could maybe even use ChatGPT to say, um, "Give me 20 interesting but accessible and easy questions to answer whilst practicing doing a podcast on my own." And I bet it would create some awesome, awesome ideas for that. Uh, but it's tough and I would be tempted to try and do podcasting before you do monologues, because this is the final frontier. Like, even when you're vlogging, right? You know, like, the Mike Thurston style. "Here I am. I'm in Dubai in my Jaguar," or whatever the fuck it is that he drives now. Um, that, there's prompts going on. "Oh, look at this. This is a cool cup of coffee and I'm here with my friends and I've got the whatever." This is the final boss, man. This, no distractions, silent room, you and a lens. It's super difficult. And this skill is going to become more and more important. Friends that I've had have applied for jobs where they've had to submit video applications. And if you've never had to sit, bonk, and just put your phone in front of you and say, "Hi guys, my name is Chris and I'm really excited for the job opportunity at IBM. Here are why you should recruit me. And this is a blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."If you don't have that in the tank, you're going to be behind, and if you do have it in the tank, you're going to find an advantage. And even if you don't need it, it's going to make you a better communicator. So, I highly recommend learning it. Ahmed Zobar Surosh from Afghanistan. Fuck yeah, let's go. "Loving your content. Can't thank you enough, mate." Thank you very much, my number one Afghani, uh, fan. "Question, how to find balance between time spent on being the least educated person in the room and the most (laughs) educated? Both are necessary." Good point, and, um, plays off the back of Alex Hormozi's, uh, comment around, uh, more people are kept poor by their egos than get rich off them. Basically, if you're able to maintain an ego, it's because you're in a room where you're always the richest or the smartest or the most accomplished, which means that you're in a room which is too small. Make your room bigger, make the people that you hang around with more successful, which will make your ego smaller, because comparatively with them, you're useless. Um, finding a balance, I (sighs) to be honest, I wouldn't agree that you need to be the most educated person in the room, uh, ever, basically. I think that maintaining being a stupid person, the most stupid person in the room, is a good idea. I mean, I've- I've managed to make a career out of being the dumbest person in a conversation 640 times, and it seems to have worked okay for me. It is good to educate other people about things that you're a specialist in, but just continue to find people who you admire, who you respect, who you think have got a growth mindset and are interested and genuinely curious, and just allow them to teach you about all of the cool shit that they know. And then in response, you can teach them about the good stuff that you know. Th- there is no better way to learn than that, and- and that's why Austin at the moment is phenomenal, because there are so many people that are super, super smart in different domains. So you can be the guy that knows about evolutionary psychology, but they know about AI risk or they know about meteorology or they know about whatever. Tse Ka, "Congrats to us all." Mm-hmm. "My question is, how do you just do it? Like, how do you stop overthinking and take action?" That is quite an interesting question for ChrisBot. My quest- my answer would be that you just need to commit to doing one thing. Narrow the domain, as I said earlier on. Stop distracting yourself with lots of different things. What the fuck is he trying to respond to this? ChrisBot, "How do you just do it? Like how do you stop overthinking and just take action? I don't know, but I'm pretty sure it involves a lot of swearing and a few shots of whiskey." (swoosh) I... ChrisBot, confident bot over there, just getting now over his skis. Poor guy. Um, stop overthinking and just take action. Commit to one domain at a time. The reason that you're feeling overwhelmed is because you're trying to do too much at once. You're trying to optimize your sleep and your hydration and your training and your learning and your career and your relationships. One thing, one thing, focus on that. Get really good at doing that one thing, and then move on to the next one. You have periods, you can periodize your life, right? One month to three months each little block. Once you've completed it, then you move on to the next one. You can even plan it in advance. Check in every couple of weeks, see how you're getting on. There you go. iFrazzi, "My question is, what advice would you give to someone with disabilities and deformities to boost their confidence and self-esteem? So I've basically gave up on life because of my anxiety and depression. Your videos have been a big help, and I want to say thank you." Thank you very much for watching. Look, I need to be able to identify where I'm at the boundaries of my competence, and I think that this is it. I wholeheartedly believe that there is a strategy and that there will be, but I'm going to be pulling something out of my arse if I try and give it to you. I respect massively the fact that you're listening to channels like this and presumably other guests and similar people that come on here, and you're exposing yourself to the right kind of content. When it comes to getting really tactical with it, I would be bullshitting you if I said that I had a solution. However, I am confident that you have the right mindset to be able to find a solution, and I wish you all the best. Duncan Disorderly, "How many man-hours of preparation do you do for each guest? You seem to have a good set of knowledge and ask insightful questions. Just seems like a lot of work goes into each episode." So yeah, it is. There is a lot of work that goes into each episode. I'm gonna ask ChrisBot see if he knows how much work I do. Um, he'll probably say that I do it in, uh, well, a line of cocaine in five minutes, "Ha, I wish I could tell you how many man-hours I put into each episode, but the truth is, I don't really keep track. I just know that I'm always doing something to prepare for the next episode, whether it's researching the guest, reading up on the topic, just thinking of interesting questions. I'm always doing something to make sure I'm ready for the next episode." That, that's like halfway between confidence, ConfidenceBot and CookBot. Uh, it's usually about a day, um, so on and off listening to the guest, but it'll be spread out over a period of time, right? Usually takes around about a day or so. Um, sometimes less, you know, especially if it's someone that I know their, um, the topic inside out, it can be a lot less. Um, but for the guys that are new, and a lot of this stuff recently has been new, like learning about, uh, who have I had this week? Video games, um, uh, not bullying, goddammit, body dysmorphia, men's muscle dysmorphia, and something else as well. Uh, that takes a lot of work. So, I'm prepared because it's what works and I'm following the strategy that I used to follow before I knew all of the things that I know.And now I still follow the str- same strategy even though I know a lot more things, which means that (laughs) I'm usually, uh, really, really well-prepared for each episode. But I hope that it comes across, and I hope that i- it makes the listening experience good because I'm not fumbling around and struggling for talking points. I want to keep it... You know, if you guys are going to dedicate an hour and a half of your time to me three times a week, I want it to be high bang for your buck. I want it to... you to come away and think, "Wow, that was, I mean, really well-structured and great," and there was no lulls in there that didn't need to be in there. And, um, yeah, I hope that it makes for a, um, high ROI podcast. Roger Page: "Thank you for all the wonderful educational content you have produced." Thank you. "My question is, when will you be adding video content to Spotify?" This is a question that we've got a lot and I don't know. To be honest, it's a bit of an effort to make this transition for some structural reasons behind the scenes of, uh, how you create the audio. You rip the audio from the video that would then distribute to places like Apple Podcasts and Stitcher and Google Podcasts and Amazon that wouldn't be using the video, so we'd need a video version for YouTube, a video version for Megaphone to upload to Spotify, and then a different audio version that would go across everything else. There'd be three different versions of each episode three times a week, and it's just a huge lift. Um, if we change the way that we do ads, I really don't want to start doing mid-roll ads because I think it destroys the listening process, but maybe we're gonna have to if we want to do video on Spotify. So it's just... It's a... (sighs) it's a mess. It's, it's a little bit of a mess at the moment. We have just changed hosting from Libsyn to Spotify. I announced this on Twitter the other week, and, um, that's gone really well so far. But as of yet, not gonna happen. Maybe at some point in future. Not sure yet. Right, that is an hour and 45. I appreciate all of you. One million next, which will be wild. I have some plans and I will see if I can pull them off. In the meantime, like I say, if you are the sort of person that asks these kinds of questions, if you enjoyed this sort of discussion, which I know that you do, comment more on the YouTube. I would appreciate it. The real world of the internet that this show is going to continue to push out into more, those people need to understand what a well-balanced, thoughtful, interesting, meaningful conversation is. And it is you who can contribute to that, and you set the tone. Especially if we're gonna talk about releasing a Discord server and community and all this other stuff, I need to feel confident that the people that are the most reasonable, that are all of the ones that submit thousands of questions on each of these Q&As are the ones that are going to pipe up. And if you do post something that's stupid, then you're gonna get a ban. Anyway, I'll see you next time.