#776 - 2M Q&A - Private Life, Future Of Podcasting & Becoming Religious

26:21Think about all of the bad scenarios that it's got you into. Let's use alcohol. Think about all of the times that you felt terrible. or think about all of the hours that you've wasted, think about all of the money that you've spent, think about all of the consistency you've lost, the health that you've degraded, the relationships and friendships and stuff that you've hurt by doing it, and then think about what it's costing you now. Like where could you be right now in a different situation if you hadn't done those things? Then looking in the future, what will it cost you in the future? Think about all of the times that you're going to spend the hours, the days that you're going to spend, hungover, looking at the ceiling, hating yourself, that's the pain.

26:53And then you want to ramp it up to 11 by going and reading, looking on the internet for the worst examples of you if you kept doing that thing. To someone that's been a party boy for 20 years and then looked back and has written a diary entry on Reddit or something about what they wished that they changed or how bad that they feel that they'd done it or somebody that's got, you know, a great story about somebody that never actually grew up from being that sort of adult infant, like, hedonic lifestyle thing. And then think about the pleasure. Think about all of the ways that you're going to feel proud about yourself when you make this change about how much better your life's going to be about how much more fulfilled and more time and consistency and energy you're going to have to dedicate to stuff that you care about and how much more proud you're going to feel.

27:33Those two things, if you can front load the pain and if you can front load the pleasure of what would happen if you did the change, that seems to motivate me quite well. And I got that from Awakening the Giant Within the Workbook on Audible by Tony Robbins. It's like 20 years old. Phone, phone, phone, phone, phone. First off, I love your podcast. Thank you. With the recent hit piece of the huberman, are you prepared for a similar type of thing to come your way? Seems like they want to take everyone down in the self -improvement space, much love. Yeah, I think every podcast kind of had, they put themselves into his situation.

28:10The guys that are maybe single and dating put themselves into human's position and the guys that are not maybe put themselves into J -Shete's one. So like, Cubans was private life and J -Shete's was his professional life, you know, a lot of scrutiny and criticism and stuff around that. To be honest, no, I'm not prepared for a similar type of thing to come my way. I wouldn't... That would be very difficult to deal with. And I don't know how you deal with it. I got to speak to Andrew last week. And I mean, he's older of the me and more mature than me and maybe more resilient than me, but if I didn't matter how resilient, you can be God damn David Goggins and that is still going to affect you.

28:53That's still really going to affect you. I think Rogan's solution when the CNN controversy thing was happening was heavy kettlebell workouts, ice plunges and three grams of mushrooms a day. I guess that's one protocol that you could follow. It does seem like there's clamoring from legacy media to take down people that they feel get above and beyond their station. Obviously, there's actual newsworthiness as well, but I think it would be naive to say that people in a dwindling area of public attention wouldn't throw shade or turn their eye toward people in a new ascending side of it in an attempt to try and sort of delegitimize What's happening over I guess our side of the fence?

29:41I don't know. I mean do I need a PR firm? Do I need someone that can give me advice on this? It seems like the more expensive the PR company is the less they tell you to say Like the best ones just say don't respond to keep moving But yeah, it would suck. I really wouldn't like that. Again, you know I said keep my private life private. I very much tried to do that I love being open and honest about learning what I've done in my life but I don't want people like getting into my business. Right? That doesn't make me feel very good. So hopefully it doesn't happen, but that may be a pipe dream. Philm, Philm, Felim Kennedy 6653.

30:20You mentioned in your recent podcast with Eric Weinstein that Latin -right Catholics, one of the fastest growing religious groups in the West, have you, or are you interested in speaking to anyone from that group or have gone to their services. So I don't know much about them. I would love to go to one. If there is one in Austin, I probably should try and find it. I actually went to my first American church service on Easter this year at God damn it. The Ridge Bible. Something God damn it. Anyway, it's 20 minutes away from me here. And it was like a rock concert. It was why it was not what I expected.

31:03I don't know what I thought a Easter Sunday service was, but it wasn't that. So it was cool. I think there's a lot to be said for having ritual, having a sense of community, doing a little bit of self -engry. I came out if it feeling nicely down -regulated. But like look at what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to I'm trying to intellectualize something which is faith to a lot of people But that's because I don't have that faith. I would be interested in going. I don't know what I speak to someone from that group about Although an interesting conversation would be why do you think that lots of people are being attracted to it?

31:38So maybe I will speak to someone from it Lewis hard castle differences you have personally felt since switching from coffee to new tonic good question So the mood change is the biggest thing for me Elthene seems to really help smooth out the jitters that I get from anxiety and this has got like double the dose that you'd have to go to bed on a night time. So when you couple that with the caffeine, it seems to work really well. I just, I feel better. That's one thing that we've never spoken about. We still don't talk about it. The mood improvement, the mood elevation is so great. It just makes you feel good.

32:14And I'm like, if I feel good, then I want to work harder and I'll work longer. Regardless of whether the panax gin saying is helping my omission, commission, error rate, and stress -induced fatigue reduction ratio from rodeo -lerous, it's not necessarily about that, it's about just feel better. And now I associate the taste of it with something that is, I associate drinking that and that flavor with feeling good and being in a good place and going to the gym or sitting down to do a ton of work, or it's nice, it's like a ritual. It's like a flavor -based ritual, she's good. John 9 F, you know, John 9, John Q F 9 N R.

32:58Night time, sash pre bedtime routine. So I really tried to get better at this. 321 is the best method that I found. Three hours before going to bed, stop eating, two hours before going to bed, stop drinking, one hour before going to bed, turn off blue light. The one hour is the hardest one, because a full hour of just reading or listening to an audiobook can actually make me feel more awake. but I've definitely got to like three to 30 minutes. I've managed to get myself to. That's the easiest one. You know, there's a million other things that you can do. I always have a shower in an evening time.

33:28I guess that's just something that's part of my routine. I don't shower in the morning, I shower in a night. Eight sleep, sat on cool, I have a minus three. What else? Naisal strips. What do I use? They called intake? I think they're called intake, nasal strips. the ones that I use. They're like a hard plastic shell that attaches to two tabs that sit either side of your nose. And they're hardcore. They're really good because my nose doesn't breathe too well. I got deviated septum. Read for a bit. Fiction only. Never nonfiction before I go to bed because my mind starts worrying if I don't. That's it.

34:09Magnesium sleep packs from momentus. But even them, I only need to use probably every other night. That's it. Three, two, one. That seems to be the sort of 80 -20. Conor D. When you were younger, did you ever have an internal slash subconscious belief or feeling that you would be successful in your life, not in one specific area, but an innate feeling that you were destined slash driven to do something magnificent with your life? To be honest, man, no, I didn't think so. I was pretty sure that I was a loser and it's still very well maybe. But we all have a very strange experience of our own inner experience, right?

34:55The phenomenal, logical nature of being you is orders of magnitude deeper than even your best friend, even your twin, even your partner that you meet when you're 16 years old and stay together for the rest of your life. You only ever get to see the tiny, tiny, tiny amount of that nature, and you get to see this sort of bottomless depth of yourself. And I think that that can make us all feel like we're special in some ways. We feel like we are unique because the depth of our own insight about ourselves compared to the depth of our insight about anyone else is so asymmetric that how good we not think that there's something different or strange or special or whatever about us.

35:37But when it comes to the successful thing, Destin driven to do something magnificent with my life, not really, I'm a good role model or avatar for the person that was probably pretty unlikely to do anything, and that's not to say that running a podcast is really doing anything, but whatever degree of success I have managed to achieve was not predestined by the way that I came up through school or myself belief or anything like that. Like I've largely stumbled onto it by a combination of

36:16solitude, consistency, resilience, not even resilience. It's like sort of boneheadedness in my routine. Like that's kind of being what's happened and then you sort of come out the other side of it and you go, oh, like we did a thing, a thing happened. So yeah, if you don't have that much self belief, you can still end up at a place where other people think that maybe you've been successful. So I think that's quite a, hopefully that's an inspiring story. Like you can still think that you're going to suck and end up not sucking. So, hooray for us. Steven, and capital letters, Steven, with a lift, your further thoughts on the future of podcasting, I think you've got a great thing brewing with Unreal Engine Powerwall in your latest teaser.

36:58Thank you. feature podcasting. Yeah, this is kind of interesting. I think it's probably going to go in, it could go in so many different directions. Certainly my area of the world, I think it's going to bifurcate into into two when we're looking at how it appears. You're going to have Matt and Shane's secret show, secret podcast thing where it's one camera filmed on like an iPhone with handheld mics on a couch surrounded by Cheetos packets and Bud Light. And then you're going to have 4K, video wall, VR, negative Phil reverse contrast lighting, red cameras, anamorphic lenses, like my side of things.

37:39That being said, I don't think that there's anything that is more or less pure than anything else. There's definitely a legitimate pushback of some people said that the whole point of what we were doing with podcasting was to make it less sort of encumbered and less high friction between the creator. We didn't want to make it feel like it had been molested, right? The conversation was what we were there for and what's all of the fluff that goes around it. And I understand. And I get that too. But like if you can do the thing, if you can do the purity thing whilst adding the visual beauty and great.

38:15But then I also love me some casual bro talk on a couch somewhere that isn't super curated. So future podcasting I would say a lot of obsession over the quality of the guests and the quality of the conversation will be the best direction that anybody could go in. It doesn't matter how it's presented. It doesn't matter how this is presented. I could, We did this one. The first 50 episodes of this show didn't have video. The same thing. I just want an interesting conversation. I think that's what people come for ultimately. So what I know will be the future of podcasting will be quality of the conversation, variety of guests, how engaging are they, how great are they at communicating their points.

39:01And then all the rest of this stuff is just sprinkles on top of icing on top of cake. And that's just like cool to play with. JoJo Persey. Are we cooked as a society? Every day, I think, what the fuck is the point now? Everyone just hates. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of cynicism. I'm going to guess that you spend a good amount of time on the internet because I do think that everyone just hates is the sentiment. It's the cynicism set point that we see online. I would advise you to try and get offline a little bit more. spend some time, uh, IRL with people who don't spend that much time on the internet, and you will find pretty quickly that they're probably, they think that it's fine when probably not cooked as a society.

39:51Everyone doesn't just hate, you know, it's at, uh, an eclipse party yesterday here in Austin. And spent the whole day just having interesting conversations about what's the likelihood that the moon is 400 times smaller, but 400 times closer and what do we think about aliens? Like no one had, no one was hating on anything. There wasn't any criticism, but there's something about the dynamic of the internet that causes people to just get so cynical and cutting and sardonic and zero sum with their mindset. So I don't think we're cooked as a society. Humans are unbelievably adaptable and one of the reasons that I love stories like that one -eyed World War II veteran that I spoke about on Rogan or endurance by Alfred Lansing about Sir Ernest Shackleton's Crossing of the Antarctic or the forgotten Highlander by Alistair Erkhart.

40:44The reason I love these stories is it kind of reminds us about the resilience of humans that you think that we're close to the limit of what we can take, of what how adaptable we are. And then you learn about these sorts of stories and you go, So, oh, there's like 55 degrees of black belts beyond where we're at. So no, I don't think that we're cooked, but I understand why you think that that's the case. And when I spend too much time on the internet as well, I sometimes think that too. So I think touch grass, TLDR touch grass. Sean Curran 2920. Why do you constantly speak? I'm saying and riddles.

41:26Can you not think for yourself? You just play your eyes other people's thoughts. Well, I'll do my best to try and decipher what you mean they're shown. I appreciate the comment that I repurpose other people's content and insights and quotes that is fair. I would say that citing other people's work that has impacted me is probably one of the most like, tributing things that I can do. Here's an awesome insight that I've learned that I think other people would care about and I resonated with it. I'm not convinced that that's plagiarizing. It's not plagiarism if you cite the person. And the other part is that that no one owns the truth.

42:10No one owns the truth. If this insight is accurate about the world, the way that this person presented it, absolutely, that they were the originator of this particular idea, but they don't own the truth. That is the way that the world is, and no one gets to own that. So if I'm aggregating insights from other people and then presenting them, what the fuck What else is my job as a podcaster in whatever this version, this sense making, e spaces? What else should I be doing? If you want me to come up from first principles, ignore insights from other people and come up from first principles exclusively with ones of my own, you're going to get 10%, 1 % of the insights.

42:55So, as long as I'm citing other people and then bringing it into my life and thinking, How does this work for me and how might this work for the audience? I don't understand why that would be something bad, but you know, he just quotes at the people's stuff. Something tells me this question maybe came from social media because like from Instagram or from Twitter, lots of clips get repurposed and by design, the best quotes are the ones that go the most viral. So I guess it does sound like I'm like a jukebox for other people's quotes. But if you actually listen to an entire lesson, a entire episode, I'm probably not doing that and trying my best to not only come up with my own ideas and then meme them so that other people quote me and then I win.

43:35But more than that, to actually try and fold them into a broader conversation. So I don't know about the sayings and riddles. I'm not sure that that bit was me, but anyway, I appreciate the comment. Thanks Sean.

43:52Rachel Deverecheli, how can I date you? Get on Raya. I don't know. Kerenna 7, what would you say is the mission statement of your podcast? So from the very beginning, it was understand yourself in the world around you. And the reason for that was I didn't. I didn't understand myself. I couldn't work out why I believed the things that I did, why I compromised my insights, why I folded at the first sign of social pressure, why other people behaved the way that they did, why they liked the things that they'd I didn't understand myself. I didn't understand the world. And doing that is hard. And I really hope that this podcast helps.

44:35And that's kind of it.

44:39And the reason I like that is a statement. I didn't go to some branding agency. This isn't part of some, like, you know, it's not written on a wall somewhere above a door. This isn't something that we've tried to synthesize down. What's the actual goal of the podcast? It's just a sentence that I kept having come up to me when I was thinking about what I wanted to achieve and given that this show is just an Outgrowth of me That's kind of what it is and I said this in the last episode my obligation is only ever to my own curiosity So guess what right now I'm thinking a lot about emotions So all of you are along for the ride and we're gonna learn about emotions and if emotions aren't for you That's cool.

45:13Maybe you need to pick and choose your episodes over the next couple of months and then oh Chris is on AI I'm an AI guy and it's like, all right, cool. Like fucking into AI you go. But I'll follow my curiosity. The single thread that has held all of it together is understanding myself and the world around you. And I hope that that's something that's useful. Ryan, oh, you're not. How do you handle it when you strongly disagree on a subject with the person you are interviewing? When was the last time I really strongly disagree? Why are you really strongly disagreed with Abigail Shryer, I think, and kind of good chunk of her stuff.

45:48And that was a really interesting challenge for me. I'll break the fourth wall a little bit. I don't like doing this too much because it kind of feels a bit icky and like it's contrived and it's not, but it'll be maybe useful for me to explain kind of what I was going through. Let's say that I ask someone a question. There's a couple of moments during that episode with Abigail where I ask her a couple of questions that are like a bit pointed and probably slightly difficult to deal with. you know, stuff to do with stats or the replicability of certain studies and things like that. And if she struggles, or if any guest struggles for a while, five seconds or maybe 10 seconds, you know, they're sort of floundering, trying to find what it is and they're not too sure or the silence or whatever, I want to step in and save that.

46:37I want to sort of grab a life boy and throw that in to pull them out because I want the conversation to flow nicely and I want them to have fun and I want it to be, you know, engaging and I don't, unlike a destiny or a Shapiro or whatever, like I don't take joy in disagreement in that way. So I will tend to try and like hit some like pulling ejecto seat button to, you know, blow out the roof of some awkward exchange. But on the Abigail episode, I really tried hard to sort of just sit with that discomfort. it. Right, okay. Well, I let her get herself out of this or, you know, with anybody, the Eric Weinstein episode that we had a couple of months ago, where, you know, I fundamentally disagree with his idea about gender and sex, and I think that he's wrong.

47:26So I need, need it to learn to sit with that discomfort. And how do I handle it? And this is, again, trying to make it more tactical for someone who is a bit of a people, please are like me. knowing that it's not the end of the world and being curious about what that sensation feels like as it comes up. Okay, so I feel kind of this, it's like I want to lean forward and it's kind of it's a bit of a ringing in my ears and I kind of get hot in my throat and I feel this desire to sort of lurch forward and pull the person back in like that's kind of how it feels I guess emotionally. Now interesting isn't it interesting that that's the emotion why am I feeling that and where's that coming from and how can I play with that and is it as bad as I'm making it out like is it actually that uncomfortable for me to feel that thing or maybe maybe it's a little bit more.

48:19Oh, and it's not as scary as you start to crack it open and feel it as it comes up and not shy away from it and not treat it like it's something that's scary. It seems to be the curiosity seems to be a really good solve for stuff that you're not happy about and this works for at least so far I found it works for fear and it works for anxiety as well. Here's an emotion that I don't enjoy. It arises inside of me. As opposed to even using the meditation strategy of like noting that it's there releasing and allowing, you go, okay, well let's just sit with this for a moment, not obsess over it, but like, isn't that intract - why am I feeling that?

48:55And where's that coming from? And what might that mean? And is it as scary as I think? And all of these questions, that curiosity helps you to kind of - you're not hiding, You're not intellectualizing in the same way as before, but you're not getting swept away by the emotion too. So, sitting with the curiosity, realizing that it's not your job to save somebody else when you're having a difficult conversation with them, that you can just ask a question and just sit and just leave it. Those are two things, but again, this is like massive work in progress, and I'm still very much a white belt when it comes to the the disagreeability side.

49:30Oliver S, congrats on two million. Thank you. The exponential growth is remarkable and well deserved. Thank you again. Now, modern wisdom has grown to this extent. How has the guest selection process changed? I assume it has become easier to attract the guests you'd like. Here's to 3 million. Cheers, Oliver. Yeah, it has become easier in some ways. It's become easier to get access to most of the guests that I want. There's not really many people now. Nah, that's a lie. That's a lie. I can get up to sort of AA level and then AAA level is still. You need an intro. they need to like you already and be aware of the work that you do.

50:03It's not actually that easy to get the best best best guests in the world on the show. So that's still difficult. One of the problems, I guess that's interesting is there's way more people that want to come on and the If you can't get every person that you want or if you can only get a very small number of the people that you want then most of the choice This simply comes from availability. What is offered to you is what you take. Whereas now I actually need to say no to a few hundred people a week who reach out to come on the show. If we had an outright guest booking process, it would probably be way more.

50:43And then even for the guests that I'm bringing on, I have way more people that I want to speak to than time that I can speak to them in. So I need to triage down. Okay, well this is someone that I want to talk to. But do I want to talk to them so that they make up 1 ,150th of the show's inventory this year? Because that's what it is. I get 150 spots every year to speak to people and I have 2 ,000 people I want to talk to every single year. So How am I? Where does this person rank? Where does this evolutionary psychologist rank with this future? It's rank with this strengthening conditioning coach and I need and how many of these have we done before and what am I interested in at the moment?

51:22So it's great, but a wealth of options isn't always easy to deal with. So I'm really enjoying it. You know, I have a great network of people that send me amazing, unknown, like legends of communication and research and that's great. That's one of the best things I've got. The network of people that send me people that I should speak to is outstanding, but can be difficult to make choices sometimes. Good luck, Wolf. Do you ever think you'll slow down on the episode? Three week is incredible, but how sustainable? Again, it's been sustainable thus far, but do you have an end goal slash exit strategy?

52:04Yeah, it is a lot. I would be lying if I said that it wasn't a lot. And this is one of the other things, you know, to just round out some more criticisms we got about the Straveste stuff. We worked so hard, man. Like, I've done three episodes a week for four years and I've done this show for six and we're not owned by a network. No one helps us with our production. It is all homegrown talent. Every single person that works for us is being recruited by us, is managed by us. Really me. I like that. I like the fact that we didn't get bought out by some huge media company and that makes me feel proud that I've done it.

52:48That being said, there is, you pay for that freedom, you pay for the liberation and the independence you've got with workload. It is sustainable at the moment, but I need to make some changes. I need to get more help. I found myself ignoring my inbox and even my texts and stuff from friend, ignoring them, but feeling exhausted when it comes to replying to people and I don't want, that's not the energy I want to go into my friendships with. let alone, you know, like business transactions or guests and stuff. I want to turn up and be just full of even in my correspondence, I want to be excited to speak to them as opposed to having it feel like a labor.

53:29But you know, to do whatever it is, 750 episodes, think about how many emails. Let's say it takes five to ten emails for each guest to come on. and then for every five guests that come on one or two don't. So it's like 5 ,000 emails, just about that one thing, and then all of this stuff to do with sponsors, all of this stuff to do with production, and all of the... It's a lot. If I can get myself to the stage where I'm not as involved operationally, I could do three a week forever. I would love to do four a week, actually, because that would give me another spot that I could speak to, you know, 2 ,000 people down to 150 a year, or I could actually, oh, 200 people a year, like that's another 50 people I can speak to, which would be great.

54:13But the main reason that I'm not doing that is because of the lift. It's how operationally, how heavy it is. So no exit goal and goal, exit strategy thing. I just wanna keep having conversations with people that interest me. That's it. I do need to make it a bit more less painful behind the scenes, but for now, we're holding on. Main man, Mick, when we getting modern wisdom merch, Good question, main man Mick, and I have had an unmitigated nightmare having that happen. We got ourselves to the like final round kickoff call with this company with a mostly female, mostly West Coast, mostly liberal design team and they had all of the production that we needed.

54:58They had the supply chain that we needed. They had amazing designers. They worked with other big creators and we got to the kickoff call and there was a mutiny. among the team and they said, he's a, I don't know what it was, something big at misogynist, Zena Fob, I'm not sure. He's had people like pick your bad people of choice, Erich Weinstein, Jordan Peterson, whatever. On the show, if you make us do designs for him, we're walking out. Like, that was surprising. Finding out that I am so far beyond the pale. me, Mr. 20 episodes of Lifehack's performative autism and how to go to sleep quicker on a night time, that was a surprise.

55:44So we got set back by that. That was something that threw a bit of a spanner in the works. Hopefully soon, but we have other priorities. Kind of been thinking about like a community thing, but Discord always seems to just Descend into kind of shit posting and low investment content, low investment engagement. So I kind of don't really like the idea of that, but I also know that one of the things that I wanted, like what's so many of the questions that we get so many of the conversations that people have when they send the Q &A's in is like, how do I make other people that are like me? I'm struggling because I feel alone.

56:20I'm in the self -development journey and no one else that I live near is going through it as well. Well, I would love to make something like that. So that kind of seems like more of a priority, but then merch is easy. Like how do you make it, I don't know, how you make a community? Anyway, modern was a merch will happen soon. It would have happened quicker, but checks in the Bay Area don't like me, apparently. Oxy Moron always. Is it a good idea to start a new podcast now with so much competition? I understand why the question's coming from, but I think it is a flawed perspective. You are not starting a podcast to be better than everybody else.

56:59If your goal is to start a podcast so that you can win, you've already lost because the likelihood of you winning by whatever, like to get to my level or above is very, it's very unlikely that you're going to do that. And even more unlikely now than it was in 2018 when I started mine. But if you start a podcast because you want to have conversations with people that you're interested in and to use as a personal growth vehicle, then it doesn't matter if it wins, because you're going to be having so much fun and developing so much that you won't care. And that was what I did. I had no idea. It was a side project while I was running nightclubs.

57:33And I just loved it so much that I didn't stop. The same is the first question, right? The motivation is what gets you started and the routine is what keeps you going. That's how it ends up. So I think it's a great idea to start a podcast if you're interested in starting a podcast. If you're interested in having a big media company that's going to win and make you little money and then you get to go on Rogan or whatever, that's a high -risk strategy. You're going to have to roll a very rare set of dices to make that happen. But if you just want to have fun and learn some stuff then, yes, start one right now.

58:05Rebecca Tiva. What's a belief slash pattern you're done with but struggle to let it go? That is a great question. I have so many. What's one? It's publicly acceptable. I have a pattern that other people's emotional states are my responsibility and this maybe relates to what I just said about being in a conversation where it gets a little bit awkward. If I say a thing and that causes is the other person to feel a degree of discomfort. I feel like I've wronged them or like I've done something bad that I now need to step in and fix and my capacity to make myself the bad guy in any situation is like reality bending.

59:01It's always me that's a bad guy, it's always my responsibility. You can actually hear the genesis of this idea if you go back and listen to the a joker -willing episode. And I basically asked him, he's the extreme ownership guy, right? You know, it might not be your fault, but it's still your responsibility. And I didn't know it at the time, but I was asking the question for myself. It just like, it came, the question came up. I didn't know I was asking it for me. And I said, is there such a thing as taking too much responsibility? And I can't quite remember what he said, but I don't think it was a satisfactory answer to me because I feel like I do.

59:34And I feel like like a good few of my friends do as well, that there's things that we have no right to be responsible for. This isn't our responsibility or my responsibility. And yet, I'll find a way to make it mine. I'll find a way for me to be culpable for something which I wasn't culpable for. Like I ask a difficult question to a guest. You've come onto a podcast that's almost exclusively placid and really nice and I've done my research and it's gonna be a great conversation and all the rest of it. And then like there's one fence for you to get over that's not even got barbed wire on it. And like that's my compulsion.

1:00:08And then in my personal life as well, you know, it's, oh god, if I say something that makes a friend feel uncomfortable, I just castigate myself a days about, well, you're such an awful person. How could you have been so tone deaf? Why didn't you think about that? So that's this pattern and it all sort of ties into a bigger network of people pleasing and this sort of lack of safety around making other people feel uncomfortable because of my uncertainty around whether I know I've got reassurance and sort of security in the group and all the rest of it. So there's a two minute brain dump on some stuff I'm thinking about.

1:00:48Ton in DM, how do you balance wanting to improve upon your faults whilst also leaving room to be human? Perennial question, man. I mean, this, you know, I asked, somehow Harris this, this was one of the most common questions that we got on the live tour that I did last year. This balance between being and becoming, on wanting more and to maximize your time on this planet and to leave it all on the field of play and to crush and high performance and go, go, go and optimize. And I am going to achieve my goals one time in ten. I'm going to have a perfect day, one time in seven. I am not the master of my own destiny.

1:01:26I am not the master of even my own mind or my own actions. And yet I love agency and yet I want to be intentional. But I also know that when I fall short, I don't want to castigate myself. Like this is the perennial question, I think, for, you know, self -improvers like yourself and maybe lots of the people that are listening and certainly me. And it's difficult. It's a challenge. That's the first thing. Like respect this. This is not a small thing. Okay, this is a large challenge. It is the question that most people doing personal growth have to get through. Some things that you can do that have worked for me from a tactical perspective to not just do the wishy washy like pithy quote thing.

1:02:06Tactical stuff. I have posted notes around the house. One of them is on my bathroom mirror, which I usually look at on the morning and the night. One of them says, what went well today? And while I'm brushing my teeth for two minutes on an evening time, I think about all of the stuff that went well today. But you're gonna focus on the stuff that went wrong. You focus on it, the second it happened, you're gonna keep thinking about it. And for two minutes while I'm brushing my teeth, zzzz, whirring away, staring at this post -it note, just thinking like, I really, that morning walk was really beautiful because it was raining and there was no one else out and it was really, I'm really glad that I went to, even though it was raining, I went out for a morning walk and that's something that I should be proud.

1:02:42And I had a great conversation with my trainer and I really sort of sat and listened to him in between sets and I thought I really gave him an interesting piece of insight around that thing. That's great. That helps you to ameliorate this desire for more, more, more because it reminds you what you've already gotten, what you've already done. I think celebrating your successes is another amazing way to do this. The two million things, they're going to the Rangers game to watch them get fist fucked by the Astros. That was great. I'm not going to forget that. We got balloons and we got barbecue and we We went on a bus and we listened like amazing music.

1:03:19And I was with my friends. I'm not gonna forget that. So that I think that celebrating your wins basically is what both of those come to, both in the micro and in the macro. That's a really good self. That seems to work really well for me. But do it's hard. You want everything out of life and you want to allow yourself to enjoy the things that you've gotten out of life. It's tough balance. Raw, damn it. Last time. Last time it tipped up. So tipped up palace is a night club in Newcastle upon time where I used to work. We still run, we, my old company, that my great business partner, ex business partner still does run.

1:04:02We run the Friday night there, parody so. And what was the last time I was there? I mean, dude, I've spent, I must have spent 300 nights in that venue. I hosted with my top off dancing around pouring vodka into people's mouths for three or four years in my early 20s. And then we ran a ton of events there as well. Well, probably, I guess three years ago, probably like November 2021 would have been around about then just before I came out to, what have you been 2020? No, 20 November 2021 would have been around about then. I would have worked a Friday and I would have not known that it would be my last time there.

1:04:47But it was Noah J. Redden throw favorite player on the Texas Rangers, Adolus Garcia, man. I mean, the guy is a walking Dominican man mountain home run machine, and I love him, and I will give myself to him if so asked. Chris Cavalaris, what have you done in extremely low moments of life to catapult yourself out of them? Great question, and I hope that you're not going through one. But if you are, I've been through some low periods. there, what makes them so sort of shameful, at least my low mood periods, was that there was nothing ostensibly wrong with my life. I didn't have any catastrophe. I wasn't going through grief.

1:05:34I wasn't in poverty. I hadn't just lost a family member or got out of a relationship. You know, it was just the weight of existence. And it was some stuff looking back. It was poor sleep and wake cycle, because I was working late so much. And it was an externalized sense of validation and self -worth on the world and a bunch of other things. But at the time, it was like, there's nothing wrong with you. And there wasn't, you compare yourself to like, fucking anybody that's got like real serious problems that wasn't anything. And yet I felt terrible. So the first thing that I did that I tried to do was realize that my shame and my guilt around feeling low.

1:06:12Like, who are you to feel low? There is nothing wrong with you. Look at how broken you are. Look at how feeble, look at how vulnerable and weak and fragile you are to feel this bad about nothing. I had to get rid of that. And that was hard. That was 50 % of the battle was the story I told myself about how atrocious of a human I was, how lame I was for being broken by something that was basically nothing. So that was the first thing. Second thing was it has to start with action. It can't, you cannot get yourself out of a low mood by thinking, like trying to think your way out of overthinking is like trying to sniff your way out of a cocaine addiction.

1:06:54And for me, it was always when I managed to get myself out of bed, you know, and it's this one so stupid, but I've written about this before, like putting one leg on the floor of bed was like climbing to the top of Everest. Like I just don't want to get out of bed. I don't want to move. I don't want to go anywhere. I don't see anyone. I don't have to do anything. Did I cry? Okay, well, what are the component parts of me moving? Okay, so covers need to come off the bed. Now, I need to put one leg out, and then I need to sort of turn myself around. Then I need to put another leg out and it was painstaking step by step to overcome.

1:07:28And again, all the while going, you're so stupid. Look at how silly this is. You don't even have anything wrong with you. Like how how how is it so hard for you to go and go for a fucking walk? Accepting the fact that this is today's battle. So, some days the battle may be a back squat of 500 pounds for three reps. Other days it may be getting out of bed. Today's battle is getting out of bed. And water, walk, good night's sleep, gym session, call with a friend. Those were the five things that I always went to and I think that 90 % of problems can be fixed by doing that. Problem being sleep is one of the fundamental sort of bases of this because it's so much impact your mood.

1:08:07and if you fuck your sleep and wake cycle and if you start napping during the day, and eating shit food, you don't train, you don't go for a walk, you can't be bothered to speak to your friend, and everything's ruined. So for me, get out of bed, get a glass of water, have a shower, go for a walk. Anyone can go for a walk and you can do it, doesn't matter whether it's fucking freezing cold, boiling hot, whatever. Go for a walk, that's a good place to start. And from there you just start to slowly build up, build up, build up, build up. And then when you've got a little bit more distance, it's pointless doing it at the time.

1:08:37When you've got a bit more distance, look back and think, okay, what were the things that I did in the couple of days or the couple of weeks leading up to that period of low mood? When was my last period of low mood before that? Or what are the other periods that I can recall? And where are these things the same? Oh, every time that I work too much in, every time I don't sleep enough in every time that I eat bad food, if I keep doing that for more than about two weeks, I end up feeling like that. Okay, well, if I can stop seeding that mood, I can, I don't need to find a way to get out of it on the other side of it.

1:09:12Maybe the issue isn't that I'm broken mentally. Maybe it's just that I'm sensitive to my inputs and therefore if I change my inputs, I don't need to be worried about what happens on the other end of it. So there's some stuff. Just peer 12. Can you start a dating app so all your unreasonably reasonable subs can meet? God, could you imagine that? What a super race the modern wisdom fan base would be made of. Chris Williamson promotes eugenicist cult polycule. But I'm genuinely thinking about the whole community thing. So maybe I could do that, but I mean it would be, it would be chaos in there, wouldn't it?

1:09:59Maybe I'll put it on the pile. Sir Brickson Cole 72018, where'd you go to place for finding research papers? This is a fucking cool question. I like it. So psych, psychie .org, psysih .org, I'm just like, fucking awesome, like just fantastic breakdowns of stuff. Where else do I go? Cypost, PSY, P -O -S -T, dot com dot org, they have a mailing list. Cypost, freaks. Actually, just go to Cypost. This is obviously only for psychology stuff. I'd say 20 % of the stuff that I talk about on the show comes from Cypost. Just a lot of different sub stacks, like aggregators, Adam Masriani, Rob Henderson, Gwinterbogel, Scott Alexander, Mary Harrington, Louise Perry, Frey or India, Constantine, sometimes.

1:11:01And then where else? Psychology today, also great. Twitter? Good. But do you remember when you were maybe not for everyone, but I was kind of like big into music as still am, but really big into music when I was sort of 14 to 21. And I would just go down rabbit hole after rabbit hole after rabbit hole of who does this band? Oh, who's that singer that's featured on this one band song and who's here band of and oh, he used to be and you just end up you know branching off and finding total hidden gems that you loved and no one else knew about. So it's kind of like getting those bases that I've talked about Cypo, Psych, etc.

1:11:40Psychology today, good Substacks. And then once you're in there just following those through and you just come upon awesome insights. So and that's one of my favorite things to do. Freddo the wheelchair guy. Can you explain all the red pill, black pill, white pill analogies that you constantly use? So I can understand what you mean when you use them. Thanks. Of course, I'm probably going to get this wrong, but this is the way that I mean them. Red pill appears to be supposed to be seeing the world as it is. So it is understanding intersectional dynamics, understanding that men are going to be disposable, understanding that women are going to be protected.

1:12:16Black pill is what they say is the actual truth, which is it's just genetics, bro. It's only how you look. And ultimately you are a genetic dead end if you're not a five out of ten or above. This is all in the dating context and I'll come back around. White pill, there isn't one in dating. When it comes to culture, being red -pilled is being based. It's seeing the world for what it is. Being black -pilled is being nihilistic, and basically having no hope for the future, being white -pilled is being hopeful. So I'm like a card -carrying member of the white -pill community when it comes to the culture stuff.

1:12:50Morgan ZHH. Hey, Chris, how can someone make friends without being needy? That's a cool question, because neediness is kind of a bit of a turn -off, and you can be the most interesting cool person in the world, but if your demeanor is needy, there is something about that that seems too keen. You know what it's like. You meet someone for the first time and they're just a little bit over in tees. You ask, steak or whatever. And I don't know why it is. I should do some research, but I don't know why it is that we have such an aversion to people that are a little bit more needy, even if it just comes across an enthusiasm.

1:13:30And there's something alluring about aloofness. I guess it's like mystique. You know, oh, like you fill in the gaps in their personality with your own speculation. And your speculation often tends to be better than what their actual personality is, which is kind of funny. And yet when someone sort of shows more of themselves to you, which is actually quite an admirable trait, there's something kind of icky about that. Again, I'm trying to, you know, fact check myself in real time as this happens. I try to feel feelings. I would say one good way tactically to do this would be find a thing that encapsulates the friendship.

1:14:13So let's say pickleball, you will bond with people quite quickly at pickleball, but it's not about the bonding, it's about the pickleball thing. So the neediness kind of gets forgotten or even the enthusiasm or the desire to make friends like You have this big buffer which is the experience that you're going through or you're doing it in Probe class or you're doing yoga or you Watercolor painting or whatever it is like you're there for a thing and the friendships come along Alongside that and the advantage you have of doing that is that you pre -select people like you Presuming that you have selected a hobby Which is like the sort of hobby that you would like the other people that are there are also going to be like the sort of person that you would like to be friends with because they've chosen the same fucking hobby.

1:14:55But it is rough. And again, this is why I'm thinking about this community thing. I don't really know. I even know what it is. So many people at the live shows who are like, how do I find more people like the 500 or a thousand people that are in this room? Like I don't really know. But like Reddit's not the place to go for it. It's not that you need more online friends, presumably it's that you need more friends in real life. I would say find a hobby, find a bunch of different hobbies. Like, try one hobby a month for the next six months and just go to improv and pick a ball and crossfit and yoga and watercolor painting and whatever, fucking sound design and do it in a class, make sure it's in a class.

1:15:37And while you're there, just anyone wanna go for a beer afterward and that's it and you'll find making friends pretty easy, I think. nice deheeks is really everything women's fault divorce crime bracket single mothers decline of births high body counts if one out of three young men have no sex why don't they improve themselves but just complain and accuse women interesting questions and fair points I think is is really everything women's fault divorce I think it's more divorces are initiated by women but that doesn't say anything about whether or not they should have initiated the divorce, you know, if their partner is being unfaithful or being abusive or whatever.

1:16:19Crime, single mothers, well, absentee father is a different way to frame single mother and, you know, one puts the onus onto the mother's choice and the other puts the onus onto the father's behavior. Declinive births, I do think that that is at least in part probably more on women. in. High body counts is a really interesting one because obviously the only way that women can have high body counts is if there is a man for them to sleep with unless we're counting all of the lesbian relationships of flings that women go through. So that's a really interesting one because that's one to one, right?

1:16:56It's supposed to force his one to one but the marriage is one to one but the divorce isn't. I don't think women, everything is women's fault. I hope that that's not what the show comes across. I'm hoping this is a hypothetical as opposed to an accusation. I certainly don't think that's the case. The crime downstream from single mothers is a very interesting point to make too, that it is a huge deal. And the framing of... I think the better framing is single -parent households. But when we say that, what we're really meaning is single -mother households, I have no idea what the stats are, but I would guess less than 10 % of single -parent households, a single -fuck, maybe even less than three percent, single father households with the mother being absent.

1:17:40The decline of births, I think, can be laid mostly at the feet of female education and like industrialization as you give women specifically more choices. This is not for me to say whether it's good or bad, but this just seems to be weather day to sort of lies. As you give women more opportunities in life, as you have society becoming more egalitarian, more industrialized women becoming better educated, especially if you fold both control on top of that, both rates decline. They have other things to do with their life, you know, rather than just being mothers. And that means that you get below replacement rate.

1:18:14You want to get below replacement rate in certain cohorts though. So, you know, like the Mormons and fundamental religious groups and the armish aren't suffering with this. If one third of young men have no sex. Why don't they improve themselves, but just complain and accuse women? Well, you know, this is a point I think I've made a bunch of times, which is you can either as a guy sort of rail against female nature or predisposition or choices or current culture or whatever and try and sort of claw down the clouds from the sky or you can try and do something that gets you up above them. And I think that it's a two -way street.

1:18:57I think that there is certainly

1:19:03inflated desires inflated standards that women have now for partners as socioeconomically women arising up through their own dominant hierarchy and competent hierarchy. And that's great for them. more education, more money, but the guys that are kind of being forgotten about, well, if they're struggling, do we not want to kind of help them? Yes, we probably do. Would that help them improve themselves? Yeah, absolutely. But, you know, in the mid -1900s, when we had campaigns that were for maligned or underserved groups, none of those, I'm some of them, but not by anyone that was emotionally intelligent and rational, they weren't pushed back against.

1:19:49It's like, hey, this is a group that's falling behind. We should do something to help them. I don't really see the same sort of initiatives. No one is saying, why aren't we getting young guys to go to university more? Why aren't we getting young boys to achieve better in school? All that happens is autism and ADHD diagnoses and proclamations about how great it is that this percentage of women who came this high in the class or went to an Ivy League school or became a CEO this year. So I think that the reason that men are struggling to improve themselves is that they feel like the decades stacked against them.

1:20:24I also think that it's a pointless exercise to complain about women's preferences, especially when you have your own preferences. is a massive asymmetry. Guys will say women that are hypergamous and choose to date up and across for socioeconomically more successful men than them. That's unfair and they should learn what their true value is and they should stop it. Will also say, I want date a woman that's older than me. So hang on, so you have a preference as a guy for youth, which is a proxy for fertility. That's your preference, but a woman who has a preference for socioeconomic success, that shouldn't be their preference.

1:21:13They shouldn't, that's something that they shouldn't do. So I agree, I think, you know, as with all of these things, it's a two way street. It does take two to tango and it takes two to make the decision about whether or not you're going to tango. And guys have it good in some ways and awful in others, way worse than women. and women have it good in some ways and way worse than men in others. And at the moment, there is a zero -sum view of empathy, which is if we give even an inch to women, that's us taking sympathy away from deserving men. Or if we give even an inch to men, that's us taking sympathy away from deserving women.

1:21:47It's like, can we not fucking chew gum and walk at the same time? Is that not something that we can do? And I hope that we can. And I really try. I'm really, really try. Brought for a year in Deerron. Had this great conversation about how women are struggling in the Gen Z girls mental health. Comments from people saying, with all of the men to date, this is disgusting conversation to have, do you not know how many people are men are killing themselves and so I'm like, bro, we did like 30 episodes on this and you bring it up once about the other side of the fence and that's a huge big deal and ignoring the plight of men, zero some view of empathy and it's stupid.

1:22:24But those people aren't really a part of this audience because you're all unreasonably reasonable. Ray -ray -al -a -con. What type of cheese would you give to fascinate a woman? Oh, that's a great question. You can fascinate a woman with cheese. If you don't follow me on Instagram, you won't know, but you can fascinate a woman with cheese. I think a nice soft cheese would go down well. I don't know whether I'm allowed to use a cracker as well, but I think a nice, a nice soft cheese on a good quality salted cracker. And you leave that out, I think, outside of the front door overnight and you come back and there's a woman there.

1:23:06I think that's how it works. Mason, Pete Ling, 5, 9, 4, 7, how many hours, slash which podcasts do you listen to had times the last few years when I've had a complete unplug from podcasts where my idle time just isn't there, wanted to know if it's the same for you. So yeah, for sure. If I'm super busy, the only shows that I listen to or shows that I need to prep for episodes that I'm doing. So I haven't, I've only just started driving again since coming out to Austin, a single -handedly -capped Uber liquid, the amount of journeys that I've taken. And now I'm back in the car, I'm always listening to podcasts.

1:23:41You know, 10 minutes to the gym, 15 minutes to go to the shops, whatever. And I'm like, just chipping away. But I realized that when I didn't have that, I'd be doing other stuff on my phone that wasn't listening to podcasts because I wasn't, you know, hands weren't distracted and eyes weren't on the road. So yes, for sure, if idle time is down, my sort of leisure listening for podcasting drops too. How many hours a week, including prep for the show, it'll be a lot, and I'll listen quite quick as well. So total content consumed, maybe between 20 and 30 hours, probably of content, I would guess, maybe more.

1:24:14Actually, probably almost certainly more because of like YouTube videos and stuff that I'll watch in between. But for leisure time, it absolutely is up and down with the wind based on how busy I am. And I wouldn't worry. You know, like one of the advantages I think of evergreen conversations, at least that I hope, like they're my favorite kinds of podcasts once I can go back to and listen to even years later, is that it doesn't matter. If you're busy for a while, it just gives you a bigger backlog of things to select from from your favorite shows. So it's kind of cool in that way. Fabulines, 7039.

1:24:48Will you ever do a podcast with Lex Friedman? Yes, I will. He is busy and plugged into robots and worried about Ukraine and I think I'm going to be a bit of a retweeted saying he's having a bit of a rough time a little while ago. I'll get him eventually and it'll be cool. I don't know. I don't think he's guessed it in at least two or three years now. So yeah, maybe I can tempt him back out of the, back out of his hovel. We'll see Ted Wonderlick 2941, if you had to create a dating app, what would it feature that other dating apps currently don't? Super easy, super dangerous video messaging. So I would have the first message that both people send to each other have to be a less than 60 second selfie video message because you would learn so much about that other person's and obviously this is a little bit rough if you're nervous on camera but you would learn so much about that person's mannerisms and the way that they actually lock and their voice and their intonation and what they're interested in and I think it would just speed up the pace of matching and unmatching so much.

1:26:01I've stolen this by the way from Jeffrey Miller. But video, 60 seconds, talk about whatever you want. Maybe use the other person's profile. Maybe you could even have it so that you got to see their profile information. You press the record button and their profile information is kind of at the bottom of the screen. It's almost like queues or questions that you could scroll up and down of while you were recording the video. I think that that would speed up dating, online dating, so much more quickly. That's my billion dollar idea after New Tonic. Sky, Lord, Slay. Where do you see yourself in ten years?

1:26:36I suck with long -term plans, dude. Like I have never been good at them. And I always felt embarrassed because productivity, culture was what I came upon. And you're supposed to have your 25 -year epigraph broken down into five -year marathons and then one -year sprints and 90 -day segments and blah, blah. I just never, I'm never able to plan more than a few years out. I know that I want a family. I know that I can't wait to become a dad. And I know that I would like to do that before I'm 36. Sorry, 46, it should be in 10 years time. With a family having fun. Like, am I in America still? Maybe.

1:27:19Our mom and dad out here with me too. Maybe. Am I still doing the podcast? I hope so. Just having fun. Emotionally aligned, underwear and comfortable in my own skin and happy and paying it forward to someone that isn't just me or fantastic strangers that I care about a lot, but strangers nonetheless on the internet. Miamortals podcast, what gets you excited for the rest of the year? That's a good question. So we've actually kind of got a bit of downtime from a cinemas perspective at the moment, like the big shoots that we do. We have done one cinema episode every Monday since August, which is Bazaarq.

1:28:06It was supposed to be when we first started it, we did the first year that we did cinema stuff, we did five, four, five episodes. Then we've done 25 in the last six months. So So a little bit of downtime from the cinema stuff. Starting to write the book is going to be fun and cool. Nutonic, also fun and cool. I flew out to the Flavor House and we did a ton of flavor testing. I drank six cans in a day, then I had 50 shots of it in a day. That's cool. Like that's firing me up because that's new and different. And to be honest, I'm really kind of excited to travel a little bit more and to dig into therapy.

1:28:49to, I'm finding it fascinating to learn more about myself and it's adding another dimension to the way that I see myself and the world and the things that I learn and hopefully the show too. So I'm pretty excited about all of those things. I know they're not necessarily all that magnificent. But yeah, like the inner work is something I'm actually really looking forward to. Simon Towler, when is Lane Norton coming on the podcast? Among many things, ask him about Deadlift's Sumo. Lane and me have been speaking. He will be coming on soon. He does deadlift sumo, which I'm pretty sure is cheating, but it's okay.

1:29:22He does that cool thing with chalk where he sort of throws it down on the floor, so it's fine. Coff full stone microdairy. Was Newtonic always a drink plans for other products? Yeah, we never intended it. We never thought about it being like a powder or pills or anything like that. The whole point was that you would enjoy the experience of doing it. Taking pills is never fun. It's never been fun for anyone. Even the best pill taker in the world is not enjoying it. And we always wanted it to be this. And I'm very, very proud of it. I'm very proud of what we've achieved. And plans for the product that are other things that the team are talking to us about.

1:30:07But I am a Commodian when it comes to adding in new skews and new lines. I would much sooner just dominate one niche than spread ourselves too thinly. But there are huge opportunities to do that. And that's also exciting. The product development, I get really excited about that and positioning and brand and stuff. We'll see. I want to we haven't got any stock in America for like the third time in six months since we launched we sold out again We need to fix that we need to get more stock and the reason we don't get it is because we keep on predicting Projecting like 2x growth from last time and then it's 4x and it's sold out in three weeks so Plans for the products will come after we've got this product back in stock Scott Matthew one have you ever could ever considered a round table style debate podcast three or four guests?

1:31:02Yes, I have. We were talking very closely about doing this About six months ago maybe a bit longer and I wanted to call it uncommon conversations So it's still be modern wisdom like modern wisdom cinema but uncommon conversations and I wanted to have Three other people plus me that you would never seen a room together. So Andrew Hubemann, Jordan Peterson and Mark Normand and you think like what the living hell happens when those three people, like Mark, no, Jocka Willink with Shane Gillis and Peter Atia. What happens then? Like that's what I want to know. So we did consider it. I wanted to shoot it in a really beautiful way, like our cinema stuff.

1:31:50That makes it so expensive because for every guest that you have, you have all of these different intersecting angles in order to be able to get the shots that you need, then you have the wide, then you have the lighting and all the rest of it. So actually that may be a third one, via on location and then round table. I would be interested in doing that. My favorite group size to go out with is two people, me and another. And I think the show reflects that. Even when there's, but you may have noticed this, there'll be books that have got co -authors. Mo Gaudat, Gaudat, Gaudat, he's coming in the show soon.

1:32:24And he's co -authored this book with somebody else. But I don't want to speak to two people. I want to speak to one person. And I select one author typically from co -authored books. It's been a long time since I had two people on the show at the same time. I just prefer that one -on -one dynamic. It gets kind of messy. And I'm always thinking in the back of my mind, do I need to specifically ask a question to one person? Because maybe they haven't spoken so much. And there's a coordination problem. And it's hard to for scheduling. So one -on -ones my goal. but maybe we'll see if I, we might trial some of those uncom conversations this year.

1:33:00Con McCloskey, tactics to meet quality male friends in your early 30s. Lots of reasons to make some sort of community thing coming through here.

1:33:14It's the same thing that I said earlier on, which is get habits and go to places that have guys like the sort of guys that you want to be friends with at. So if you're into fitness, go to a CrossFit gym, go to play pickleball, go to do soul cycle or barries or whatever it is. If you're into cycling, join a cycling club, or I think this is why run clubs have actually proliferated so much, that it's a glorified social club masquerading as a workout. out. And that would help. I don't know about mixes and conventions and stuff like that. It seems to me that the coolest people, like the real quality people that you want to find are people who have stuff in their life and want friends alongside it.

1:34:07If you go to purpose built cocktail mixes and stuff, all of the stuff at South by Southwest, except for like the cool private, in -by -only stuff, all of the networking events are all weird because everyone's there for the purpose of making friends, which completely catales how you become friends. You bond over a thing and you become friends about that. You don't become friends because you're there to become friends. So I think in habit places that have people like the sorts of people that you want to be friends with, that's the way to do it. Kes Duran, I'm a woman and realized, that's good, and realize recently that my role models are all men, do endocrine differences matter.

1:34:46That is a fantastic insight. I don't think so at all. I do think that we have a death of female role models at the moment. Mel Robbins, someone that I've started getting into, she's great. But you're working much harder to find people that are role models, I think, for both men and women, if you're looking at women. I don't think that the life of a degenerate content creator, self -promoter, seems to lend itself to the female system, as well as it does for men. It doesn't seem to allure or sort of seduce women in the same way. So, no, I don't think that it matters at all. I do think that it would be great if we had more, more, if we add a few more sort of female role models, because that would mean I could bring them on the podcast.

1:35:40But no, I don't think that it matters at all. I think that you can learn an awful lot. But maybe keep on learning from all of the guys and then become a female one yourself. PASSILBA! Why has nine full length episodes disappeared, at least on YouTube? Hmm, they shouldn't have done. So that's worrying. One percent of the library has gone. Please message someone, go on the contact form on the website and tell us which episodes you think are missing. They shouldn't have. We didn't. Unless someone on the team has made a really, really large, huge error, they shouldn't have done. IPGI. What were the improvements and optimizations you made in the past year that led to such amazing growth?

1:36:38I don't know whether you mean public growth or personal growth. I'm going to guess you mean public growth. Proofets and optimites. Yeah, I'm going to guess you mean like channel growth. What did we do? I think it's just compounding, dude. Like I've been having the same kinds of conversations for six years. Thumbnails have got a bit better titles, they've got a little bit better. We got rid of intros, which was, I guess, a kind of a ballsy move. I know that Rogan's done it for forever without the intros, but there's this big trends toward coming up or like on this episode or whatever. And I just kind of got it in my head, I was like, I think that I think it might be bullshit.

1:37:23or at least I don't think it adds anything. And we tested it and people seem to like it, which is cool. It's nice to have your ideas, shock her, it's nice to have your ideas validated by the market. That's good. So more consistent clips, high quality guests, but even when I'm talking high quality guests, that doesn't mean big name guests. At least 50 guests last year, you probably never heard of. Maybe more, maybe half the guests last year, you've never heard of before. A huge number of them are never done podcasts before, ever. I think it's just compounding. And I think it's faith from the audience as well.

1:38:01All right, if Chris says that this person's worth listening to, I'll give it a crack. And that's cool when you've built up enough goodwill where you go, I don't really, I didn't sound like a conversation about therapy for kids. It doesn't really sound like it would be that interesting to me. But, you know, I've got faith that Chris maybe knows what he's talking about. So, well, we'll give it a go. Ah, I really enjoyed that. So that's momentum. Momentum and consistency, I think, is we're just reaping the whirlwind that we sowed a long time ago. Nicholas, affron, affencamp. Oh, fencamp. Would love to hear you reflect on the first few years of creating into the void, what kept you going in the month slash years when the audience was small and growth was slow.

1:38:41What I said at the very beginning, man, I would have done this. I did do this when no one listened because I enjoyed it, because I loved the conversations that I was having. And I found the guests compelling and I was learning about myself and the world around me. And I would have done it if no one listened and I would have kept doing it if no one listened. If this channel was still 20 ,000 people, we would still be making content because I did it when no one listened because I didn't care about the growth. So this is why the niche down dominating niche broadened out from there. to subjugate your own interest in place of what works on the algorithm.

1:39:17It is fundamentally a broken method for advising content creators. Make what you are interested in and it will come across. I am interested in the things that I talk about, so I don't need to motivate myself to have the conversations or to do the reading or to research or to think about the guest or whatever. And that will also mean that if growth slows or stops or it doesn't start for ages, you You don't mind, but you're doing something that you would happily do in any case, creating into the void sucks. But if you keep going and if you keep enjoying the things that you're talking about, people will start to recognize eventually because that's the blue ocean.

1:39:56The blue ocean is following your instincts. The oversaturated awfulness is reverse engineering, what the algorithm wants and what does the audience want to care about. Nope. No, thank you. It's not going to work. and you're gonna hate it. Daniel Hussie, how come you don't post your video to Spotify currently only audio? Will post videos to Spotify in the future? Love the show, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, look, it's a, we get asked this a lot. To be honest, it's kind of like a technical thing on our side because of the way that we run ads and because of the way that we dynamically insert stuff and because of the way that we upload for YouTube and some of the aspect ratios that we use for YouTube and the amount of time that we would need to get stuff up in order for it to be processed, it's kind of just messy.

1:40:49It really has surprised me how much people have seen Spotify podcasting as an audio first platform now. Thinking that when Rogan started his deal on Spotify, no one even thought twice about video on Spotify, and now there's a lot of people that request it. If we did it, it would be a huge lift operationally. And remember what I was saying earlier that any large lift is basically a large lift for Chris. Any large lift for the organization is a large lift for me.

1:41:18We very well make them around to it at some point. There needs to be some more tech that's brought in on the back end on Spotify to be able to make it work the way that I want it to. MegaFellown which is the hosting platform that Spotify acquired that we use. It's just not quite there, but we're not far off. And it's phenomenal. It's the best in the business. But there's a couple of things that I'd love. And then we would need to fix the operation to make it easier. So we'll see. Brads, sure. Congrats. I've been a listener since day one. Thank you. Have you considered diving into and learning more about religious practices?

1:41:53As a devout Catholic, I love what you do and the aims you've incorporated into your life and daily practice. I see a strong correlation. Congrats again. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, like I say, I went, I spent Easter Sunday morning in Bible church and watching a rock band kind of, which was really cool. And yeah, I would learn more. I have to say I was kind of switched off, you know, the kind of old, stuffy, puritanical approach to religion that I saw when I was growing up in the northeast of the UK. wasn't very alluring, didn't sound wholesome or reassuring or faithful or any of those things that you want really from a good religion.

1:42:41And yet now I've grown up a little bit, it seems a little bit different. And I also understand that this is like the classic podcast bro arc of going from rational, extreme rationalist to religious fundamentalist. I don't think in there, but I would be interested in learning more about it. And I certainly think that there's a lot of wisdom I've probably dispensed and maybe a lot of people have as well dispensed at my peril and probably at my disadvantage to by getting rid of not listening to basically split tested wisdom from a ton of different traditions over a few thousand years. So, So yeah, maybe.

1:43:26Jed Davis, for young people, how do you strike the balance of living in disciplined, healthy lifestyle, food, exercise, sleep, making money, friends, whilst also enjoying your youth? Where is the balance and how do you not let the anxiety of perfection stand between you and who you can be? Great question. So the perils of overoptimization, like something that I think about an awful lot, really, Maybe what is the point of doing all of this sacrifice and monk mode and working hard if it's not in service of going out and actually living your life, especially when you're younger, when you can actually deal with the hangovers or you can mend the broken bone or you can afford to waste the time or risk the money because you don't have the dependencies or responsibilities or the family or whatever it might be, it's a balance.

1:44:14It's a delicate blend of the two. I certainly think that treating things in moderation is important. So, you need to have a basis of good sleep, good food, good exercise, good friends. And then you can go and do a period of, I'm going to go traveling. And this is going to be my block where I'm just going to think about having fun. I'm not going to think about making money. I'm not going to think about personal growth. And then you can come back really going to go monk mode. And I'm going to work on my fitness because I need to get, I'm going to grow some muscle mass because I know that once I get past 40, 45, it's going to be really hard for me to grow it now and I found a way.

1:44:44And then I'm going to go and do a party holiday. And I'm going to go and sniff my head off in a beath of for a week. And then I'm going to come back and I'm going to do the thing. Like periodizing to me seems to be the best way to do it. Because what you want to do is basically have a, you know, a perfect uniform distribution of fun and hard work at the appropriate ratio that you need, smatted across your entire week. That's really tough to do. Like to do it and the micro is hard, but to do it to periodize it in the macro is quite easy. You're going to do three months. That's why the six months sober thing worked for me.

1:45:14It's hard for me to go, I'm going to drink four times a year and I will just choose when it's right or whatever. If you say, I'm going to go sober for six months and then I'm going to try drinking and see how I feel about it. That's something that I can do. So I think periodizing is good. I think absolutely the perils of overoptimization, the fact that your fears about not being perfect will kill you more quickly than your imperfections itself, something that you need to know, something that you need to be very cautious of. Also, you're going to get where you're going to go, whether you're anxious about it or not.

1:45:46Like if you're listening, if you're an hour and 50 minutes into this podcast, you are so far out ahead of most people's level of inquisitiveness and attention and focus and drive that one bad night of sleep because you went out to watch a comedy show or because It's a friend's birthday or one piece of chocolate cake at a wedding. It's not the beginning of the end for you. You are distorting reality around yourself. And I don't think that you need to, I don't think that you need to worry. I'll be too anxious about, about that. But it's something that I find myself. I left a party last night. I left a party last night at 9 .30.

1:46:28He's had training this morning. And I'm like, should I stay this party? It's the eclipse day. It's like, you know, to once in a lifetime thing. It's like, well, everything's a once in a lifetime thing. But I'd been there for like eight hours, so that felt like it was enough and it's permanently something that you just That challenged that Debate that you have with yourself. I think it's perennial and I don't think it's gonna go away And I think just like all right I feel like that and just going for that I feel like I'm gonna try I really want to train hard in the morning sure enough had an awesome session today Pretty and I don't regret it.

1:47:00I could have stayed and if I'd felt like I should stay It's like I'm gonna have a dog shit session tomorrow. All right cool. I don't regret it And this is where me and my one ring to rule them all Feelings and emotions. What do you feel? How can you follow that? Is it true? If it's true follow it be good All right, I'm gonna love you and leave you really appreciate you two million subs how crazy Lots of episodes coming out lots more cinema stuff huge guests Ferris ballin at here Gary V if you've got this far you can learn about Gary V as well not in a video wall, but Gary V's coming on What else?

1:47:35That's it, buy newtonic newtonic .com, Sacha Monom wisdom. Alright, love you.