#930 - 3.5M Q&A - Dating Famous People, Naval Reflections, & Marrying Douglas Murray

27:59It's a hundred bucks you should read before you die and you can get it at chriswillx .com slash books. It's completely free and like 300 ,000 people have got it. And a lot of people have asked for a second one. So many people, they actually wrote one. So I've done it. It's finished. So there is another modern wisdom reading list volume two with another hundred books coming. It's with the designer. He'll be putting it together and this will be available. I would imagine End of the month maybe probably before May start of May something like that There'll be a different landing page. It'll be offered to people who are on the other reading list list first.

28:41So I guess sign up, chriswelllex .com slash books, and you'll get 100, and then you'll get another hundred at the end of the month. So yeah, I'm updating it soon. Name some that I would add who is in there that's really cool. From Vikings to Tinder by Mads Larsen. So I've got some stuff in there. I've got poetry in there for the first time. I've got free books, like Mads' book. So most of it is stuff that you would buy, but I've got more shit that's on. I suggest that you listen to one audible as opposed to just being like, and consume it however you So I tried to refine it a little bit more, but I'm happy with it.

29:16It nearly killed me to do it again. Such a mind numbing task to do a hundred bucks all with custom written by me, summaries about why I like them. And then I create my own categories for them. And then I got to reorder them. So I think they'd work in... Yeah, I realized partway through it why I hadn't done it for four years since the last time I did it. But it's done with the designer and you'll get it soon. Chobra. When are we getting the modern wisdom t -shirts? Yes, I know every time I do a Q &A, I give you the same answer, which is what working on it, but we're working on it. And you'll get it soon.

29:50And the first drop will be an exclusive, you know, first edition of what it is we're going to do. It's going to be a slightly adjusted brand, which I adore and I can't wait to release. And I really, really think is one of the coolest things I've done in branding probably since Newtonic. So it's fun. I haven't got, you know, modern wisdom's kind of locked in and I don't get to play about with new ideas from branding. You get to do copy for the episodes and the titles and stuff, but it's not something brand brand new. And this is brand new. So I'm excited. I'm really, really fired up to show you what we're working on, but the answer's not yet.

30:26Maybe within a few months, hopefully. Daniel Hrage, 5218. Do you plan on getting your own pet Jamie like Joe Rogan? That's not nice to call Jamie.

30:43He's a...agentic...strong, independent...woman who has a lot to add. I'd fucking love that guy. He's great. We went to go and see Bill Murray play together at the start of the end of the summer. He's not a pet. He's great. And unfortunately, if you realize how great he is, you will also realize that he is kind of hard to come by to find someone who's got that full skill set. That being said, I'm in the process of trying to find a location in Austin, Texas, to use for a studio. So I'm going to build my first studio here in Austin. Maybe have an office on site, a little office on site too. But mostly it's going to be the recording spot.

31:26I guess, if I could, we're half an hour in. I can break the fourth wall. I got a few ideas for the show, like new things that I want to do. I'm really keen on the idea of having a little bit more of a hang with some of my friends. I love all of the dusty academics that I speak to. I love how tight and lean the conversations are. I love that we get straight into them and there's no fuckery. I love that you know that you're always going to leave with something of value, even if it's a topic that you didn't think you're going to be interested in. I love that the conversation moves forward at a quick pace, but doesn't sound, I hope doesn't sound too sterile or sort of stripped of all personality.

32:09But even I find sometimes when I listen to episodes, I fuck like, there's so much practical applicable stuff in this. I almost feel guilty if I don't start applying it to my life and I don't want this show to always feel like this homework on the other side And I think when it comes to the Q &As, I know that these are some of the most popular episodes that people tell me about the Christmas episode that I do once a year with my friends back in the UK And I just have this sense in the back of my mind that Kind of like giving you guys a palette cleanser every so often and also for me doing multi -guest episodes that's just a little bit more slow pace.

32:54It doesn't necessarily have a tightly defined outcome before the episode begins. I'm going to test some of those over the rest of the year, but the problem is I want to do that. I don't want to be flitting around, building pop -up studios, and doing it with the sort of cinema style that we've done before. It needs to be in a spot that's mine, and we would need to have a Jamie there because it's going to be more complex to be able to piece together and for stuff to get put it onto On it was screen if someone wants to reference it, but I think you'll be seeing more of Jack more of Zack George Mac is also moving to Austin so he'll be here and a ton of other friends humans moving out here brink Howons moving out here, so yeah, I don't know I'm gonna test some of those and having my own pet Jamie will be an important part of that.

33:41So if you happen to have a huge warehouse space in Austin that you want to give me that I can build a studio in. Hooray. Pete could he? You've said that someone who is super successful should be pitted rather than envied why. Much of the time I think we should default to pity rather than envy, not always, but very successful people have been driven to create that world of success by something and looking at them as non -typical outgrowth of probably a pretty sort of mean, uncomfortable childhood requirement to be seen by the world, this requirement need for external validation is not something that you probably want.

34:41I don't think that you would envy most of the richest, most successful people on the planet if you could see the inner texture of their minds. And when you look at them, you should think, holy fuck, what had to happen to that person to cause them to build that business or that body or it's spent so long curating their writing ability or their speaking ability or their singing ability. And yeah, from the outside what you see is a success, but from the inside what you see is the journey that it took to get there and the motivation that started the journey. A lot of the time I don't think that you would pay the price that you need to be the people that you admire.

35:19And, you know, admiration is fine, but it should be tempered. And I think a little bit of pity, especially if you're a happy person, if you're someone who is able to be comfortable in your own skin. Holy shit, you have got, you have got it sorted, you have got the thing that successful people are trying to find.

35:47They're not necessarily a bad default. A click aside, using the internet without VPN today is like leaving your front door wide open and hoping that no one walks in. Websites, apps, and data brokers are constantly collecting your personal information, what you search, what you watch, what you buy, where you are. It all gets tracked and Surfshark protects you from that, it encrypts your internet connection so your activity stays private, even on sketchy public Wi -Fi at airports, cafes, or hotels, and it lets you change your virtual location with a single click. Their clean web feature also blocks ads, Trackers and malware before they even load, so you stay safer and your browsing is smoother.

36:21You can run Surfshark on every device that you own unlimited installs on one account. And right now you can get four extra months of Surfshark for free by going to the link in the description below or heading to surfshark .com slash modern wisdom using a code modern wisdom. A checkout that surfshark .com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom. A checkout. Zachary Sparks 5078. Is it better to hustle in your 20s and 30s to find financial stability and success in your 40s and on or should that energy be directed toward finding a healthy equilibrium early in life even if it means less financial stability in your later years?

36:57Alright Usually I'd give some Equanimous equivocating cave -at -ed fucking answer here. My belief is that you should probably try and bury yourself in your 20s and your 30s. It's okay to push yourself as hard as you can. When you don't have the same level of responsibility, you have the capacity to bounce back from it. You can take bigger risks and move back in with your parents if you need to. all of, I don't think there's ever going to be an easier time to hustle than in your 20s and 30s to find financial success, stability, to build confidence in yourself that you can, if the business breaks down, if the wife leaves you, if everything goes to shit that you've got this demon mode inside of you that you can flick the switch of, I certainly know that, you know, it's very confidence building for me to see what I could do in my 20s.

37:59Now yeah, did I have a healthy equilibrium? No, didn't. I didn't have a stable sleep and wake pattern until COVID. Ever. My entire adult life. The first time I went to bed and woke up at the same time, seven days a week, was COVID when nightclubs were shut down. From the age of 18, and I was 32. So it's not the most holistic, it's not the most healthy, but I think you can front load that pain and that hustle. And I do think that it pays benefits on the backend. Is there some survivorship bias here? Yes, of course, how many people in their 20s and 30s that hustled their arse off and then didn't get to the level of financial success and stability that they wanted and also paid some prices in terms of the health and finding an equilibrium.

38:51Yep, those are gonna be there. But yeah, I get the sense that it's not okay to work your life away, but it is okay to work your 20s and your 30s away. And that's what I did, so totally motivated reasoning. Fabuline 7039, what's your dream podcast set location and who is the best guest you would take there? Dude, I mean, this is total pipe dream, but first podcast in space would just be so fucking cool. You know, like, I don't think it's probably gonna happen in my lifetime, but first podcast, either in some floating vehicle in space or on the moon would just be outrageous. It makes me so fired.

39:39I don't really actually even care if it's me that does it. I just want someone to do it, but I don't know how many other people with people are there about. You went all the way to the moon. Fucking did what? Are you retarded? You were all of the things you could have done. I'm like, yeah, sorry, yeah, fuck, that was bad I do. I've said this thing before, I'd love to do Grimm Hancock, In front of the Pyramids of Giza. That would be, I don't know, just kind of epic. I'm aware that everyone hates him because of his archaeology, the curious ideas and stuff, but that would be one hell of an experience.

40:15So, the pyramids of Giza would be pretty dialed. I'd like to do that.

40:20Mollaniak. And knowing that you do not like to caveat yourself into oblivion about how, of course, women have their own struggles as well, but I'm talking about men right now, do you think there is a level of growth where you would feel comfortable just approaching a men's issue with no caveat and eating the backlash from people who obviously aren't long -time listeners or are just looking to nitpick for the sake of nitpicking. Great question. Yeah. I had it out with Richard Reaves about this. I was kind of sick of this weird land acknowledgement that needs to be done before you talk about men's issues where you have to say, well, we understand that the gluten intolerant community is really struggling and we can't forget about the challenges that women have and people who have got a club foot and so on and so forth.

41:04I don't have to, we've got that all out of the way then we can finally talk about men. It's frustrating to me because the reverse doesn't need to happen. Nobody says, we do know that men are killing themselves at three times the rate of any other group. And we do know that there's half a million more men than women that took their unlights between 1999 and 2020. We do know that men are falling behind socioeconomically at every age level, every class level. But after that, we can finally talk about, no one does that. And it just feels clunky and unnecessary and unsfisticated. Problem is, if you don't do it, so what you're saying is nitpick crowd have a vector for attack.

41:47And I get the sense that if you had reached some kind of narrative escape velocity where everybody knows you and everybody knows what you're talking about and everybody knows that you're coming at this from a good faith perspective. Uh, any criticism would very quickly be rebuffed by fans of yours that were saying, mate, you don't, why are you bringing this up? You know that that's not what he thinks. Joe Rogan N. Word video, uh, Joe did, you got pulled up about saying the N word a lot. It was like five minute montage. Um, and people said, you know, see this is proof that he's the racist, bigoted homophobic, xenophobic, transphobic, whatever that we've known that he was all along.

42:31This is just the tip of the iceberg, but trust us, there's a big iceberg below it. And everyone said, nah, I don't believe you because I've watched 500 hours, even a casual listener of Rogan will have done maybe 50 or 100 hours. I've listened to a lot of him and I don't think he is what you say he is. So you get to this, let's call it narrative escape velocity. I don't think I'm there, especially not on this topic and especially not given the way that I present as like fucking Andrew Tate from Wish. I don't think that I could get away with it. It would be nice, it would be way easier, it would be much more slick.

43:12But I'm starting, I'm trying to cultivate fuck you energy. I am and it's going to be more important over the next few years to be able to have that. Not actively that I don't care about what you think, but that you will fully misinterpreted what I said and go fuck yourself because you know that you did that. And it happens so much, it already is happening and it's super annoying. But I, that's something that I need to build up. The preparedness to not care about the opinions of people who don't understand what I'm doing and don't like me and don't care about making the things that are contributing to the stuff that I'm trying to create.

43:57But it is kind of stupid to think, okay, this person doesn't understand what you're doing. They don't care about you. They don't have your best interests at heart. They're not one of your people and they don't want you to be better. And you are believing in putting faith and stock in what they say about you or to you. Why would you do that? Like they're not impressive people, they're not nice people, they're not people that you respect, they're not people that care about you, they're not doing this to try and make you better, they're simply doing it to try and stand on the shoulders of some supposed error or slip up or smoking gun of yours.

44:37So really when you think about it rationally, when I think about it logically, there's no reason that I should care about it. But something I'm working through. And I guess you'll find out if it gets to a stage where I go, you know, we really need to be worried about Matt and I just jump straight into it. You'll know that I've reached escape velocity. So hold on. Dave Kiz, you mentioned feeling unwell in your last Q &A, how are you feeling now?

45:06Yeah. Yeah, it's all right. And a little better in terms of brain function, which is good. And the roganin of our weekend was formative for me because I felt so shitty going in. I felt so, my brain was so slippery, I call it slippery brain. I had such slippery brain where I wasn't holding on to thoughts. I wasn't recalling well. I wasn't precise with my speech all of the things I really take pride in and I think I contribute well Just weren't there. I was like the fuck sake The very thing that I'm supposed to be good at is has been taken away from me and I didn't I Have no doing of my own all I've done for over 12 months now like 14 months maybe more all I've done is trying to fix my health Unlimited numbers of soreness and cold plunges and phosphatetal coline and glutathione and 25 gram bags of vitamin C IV and blood cleaning treatments in Tijuana and peptides and and Got detox protocols and everything like the list of things that I've done Is huge and I will do I know that a lot of people that suffer with sort of like complex chronic illness and tinnitus and all of the shit that I've even mold toxic, all of the stuff I've talked about.

46:34I know that I kind of, oh, in a way, I do actually feel a little bit of a sense of a debt to be more open about it and be a little bit more of a plant of flag in the ground for how difficult it is so that other people feel a little bit less alone. But I just can't do it while I'm still in the trenches. I'm sorry, I can't

46:56be the person that's delivering this message, hopefully one of hope, that you look at all of the things that I did and I came out the other side while I'm still in it. It's too much for me to juggle. And also something I've learned is that if you tell a sad story about yourself, but that isn't resolution because it's still going on, people don't feel I feel hope, they feel pity, they feel sad for you. And it's not the vibe that I'm trying to give off, certainly not at the moment. So I guess it's a long -winded way at saying, largely, I'm feeling the same. I'm tired, I fall asleep at 8 or 8 .30 pm at night, most nights, my sleep's disrupted.

47:38I wake up not feeling particularly rested. I can't train at more than 50 % capacity. I've got slippery brain, my mood's low. So, but I have bits of respite and the bits of respite are a little bit more controllable now, but I've had so many times where I've thought, oh yeah, I'm out the other side, like this is great, I'm on the up and up. And it was just a brief upward swing before it gets lower to a new all -time low. So we'll see, I got some big treatments coming up over the next couple of months. Hopefully they will have a big impact. I did a sleep study, I did an at home sleep study, the only lab quality at home sleep study that you can do outside of literally going into a sleep lab to do it.

48:24I did that, so that was an assessment. I've done everything to try and work out what the fuck is going on. And it's not over working because for the last six months I dialed back how much I worked. I stopped traveling as much. I did trainings at 50 % all of the things, right? I've covered all of the bases. is, and I will detail it all at some point eventually. But for now, I'm just plotting on.

48:50Hivanagibi 1998. I absolutely loved your episode with the Land of Oton. Thank you. It was incredibly insightful. Is there any chance you'll have everyone again in future episodes? So yes, I emailed him, I think, a week after. We've been emailing for forever. maybe five years, six years, back and forth, back and forth. He was doing it. I think he had some health things. He stopped doing podcasts. He came back. He got rearranged, weren't able to do it. I wasn't going out there. My dates changed. His dates changed. And then we finally got him. And there was a bit of me that thought that was so good.

49:22But fuck this. It was 5 % of the things that I want to talk about. And it went for two hours. So like, I need a lot of time. Okay. I'll hand say emailed him and then said, hey, do those want to say how? So much I enjoyed the episode, how great I thought it was, how impactful I think it is. And he basically said, yeah, I'm ready to run it back when we're in the same city again. So you will be getting more a land at some point soon. JVisionTV287. When you were growing up and building the person you envisioned, how did you go about breaking up those steps into more achievable goals in the meantime?

49:57How did you go about keeping that same fire to improve even when you want everything you wanted to be yet? Yeah, I'm going to give you a probably quite unsatisfactory answer here, which is, I'm really not good at having a long -term plan. I am a good avatar for the person who kind of just focuses on what's in front of them and doesn't have a big picture. I know that productivity wisdom is to have a right, your gravestone and then work it back in tenure periods and then chunk that down into three year sprints and then put that into 90 day goals and then break that into daily actions. I know that that's the way that you're supposed to do it, but it just never really seemed to work for me.

50:46So building the person that I envisioned, I really didn't envision any outcome. What I actually thought was I want to be more mindful and the most direct goal to being more mindful is to meditate. I want to be fitter, I want to be more peaceful, I want to have more gratitude, I want to be able to sleep better, I want to be more consistent, I want to be a better speaker. It wasn't necessarily this sort of destination I was moving toward. It was a very simple outcome goal and just one modality that helps get toward that, which was meditation for mindfulness, it was journaling and formal gratitude practice for gratitude, it was breath work, for nervous system regulation, it was walks, taking a lot of time walking to, you know, work out what was going on inside of my mind.

51:41And keeping the same fire to improve, even when you want everything you wanted to be at. Well, as someone who, although I'm battling through a ton of shit, which is kind of new and novel to me right now, but I guess I have reached escape velocity on at least some of the things that I wanted, a lot of the things that I wanted when I was 28, 29 when I started doing this properly, when I went sober for the first time at 28 and I stopped partying. Oh my god, that was revolutionary. And now I don't think about drinking. And every single thing that I wanted to do, build a meditation practice, blah, blah, blah, get better at speaking, build the business, move to another country.

52:21All of the things that I wanted to do, talking about keeping the same fire to improve even when you weren't everything that you wanted to be as someone who's kind of got to a place closer to where he does want to be, keeping the fire going now is probably harder because what's driving you, like there's such a delta between where you are and where you want to be, so you keep pushing to get there. But God, medalist syndrome is fucking real, dude. Like you arrive. What point do you arrive? And even if you think I haven't arrived yet, I'm kind of close to it. Oh, fuck. What do I do now? For so long, I've been, you know, pushing and pushing and pushing to find this thing.

53:02And then when you get there, why do you need to keep pushing so hard? Reason you did it previously was this desperate need for validation and recognition and to actually make something of yourself. You know, you made something of yourself. Now what? It's a difficult one. So I chose very simple goals that were upstream of lots of things that I wanted to be better in. I wanted to be a more peaceful person. I wanted to be more mindful. I wanted to have a better quality of thoughts. I wanted to be able to think and speak more clearly. And I just did one modality for each of those things and basically didn't stop for about the way the best but now approaching 10 years.

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54:45I want to order a new tonic in Canada, but the shipping costs are equal to the cost of the product. Is there any alternative? Yes, I know. I'm sorry. Fucking international shipping dude is rough with an RTD. You know, this is element. Erna. It's not good. It's not easy. to, it's not easy to do that. We would get a 3PL or a fulfillment center in Canada, the Canadian audience, for this show, at least for my audience, is bigger than everywhere else on the planet per capita except for Australia. So it goes Australia, Canada, Ireland, the UK, the USA, in terms of per capita audience size. I want to get it there, but tonight, man, what you can do in the meantime is use the focus blend, the stick packs or the brain capsules because they'll be way cheaper to ship, which I think will be where most of the cost is coming from unless there's some sort of import duties and fuck knows what's happening with Trump's tariffs, dude.

55:52Maybe everything's going to triple, so stock up while you can. A land tease 94. How long have you been married to Douglas Murray? Yeah, that was awkward. For the people who don't spend much time on Twitter, I, somebody tweeted, if you certain fact, let me see if it's solar. Douglas Murray, husband. Douglas Murray, husband. Images. Yep. Okay, so the top line is Douglas Murray, husband, him and Candaceau. And second image is Douglas Murray and me. Third image is Douglas and Dave Rubin. And the fourth image is, I don't know who that is, Sam Harris is up there. Oh, I'm up there twice. How great. Where it's me and Coleman Hughes.

56:36So that's like an interracial triplet marriage. Yeah, someone tweeted saying that I was his husband and that I was also like of a different name. And I caught tweeted saying it was a skill issue. And then all hell broke loose. So I've been married to Douglas apparently since 2022. You. Tom Chappell wears the glasses from. Okay, these are the ones from Rogan, I'm gonna guess. They are mosquots, they are monochrome mosquots in blush. So Mosquot is a British glasses manufacturer, they do prescription stuff. And I went to Jimmy Carr's Savile Row suit, a menswear store, he owns part of it and we were hanging out and we wanted to go for a coffee.

57:26So I went with him and I saw this pair of pink glasses two years ago. I was like, those are sick. I'm going to buy them. And I have. And they are functionally useless. They don't do any, they're not blue blockers. They don't help downregulate your melatonin. And then I took him off on Rogan and he encouraged me to put them back on and then I'd wore them for three hours. So yeah, mascots in monochrome blush. They've got me in blue. They've got me in green and they're pretty cool and they're super comfortable. But they're not cheap. They're about 250 bucks. So I'm maybe 300 bucks. So go study. JJ Thomas 10, if you could sit down and have a conversation with your 21 year old self, what would you say?

58:11I guess it depends how long the conversation is, but I'd probably just say feel less. So much of my life, especially in my 20s and even still now is driven by this fear, it's driven by uncertainty. It's running away from something that you don't want is running towards something that you do. And that will push you to do lots of great things and maybe become a very impressive person. But it's not the fuel that you want to be using for a long time. So, first off, I would probably say I understand that you don't feel very recognized, very validated, very seen by the world. That's fine. That's not some personal failing of yours.

59:09That's kind of just a byproduct of being a 21 -year -old guy that doesn't quite know what wants yet and is struggling to connect with the people around him. I would say fall in love slowly and break up quickly because much of your 20s, if you're not careful, will be spent in relationships that you should have left sooner for both of your sakes. Don't be guilty about disappointing people. Don't fear the repercussions of putting yourself first. Don't subjugate your desires in order to keep somebody else happy. Don't make yourself unhappy in order to keep somebody else happy.

59:57Buy Bitcoin and do 531. That's what I'd say. Ramo -Pamo. Under what conditions do you feel the most mentally sharp and able to perform cognitive tasks? That's a good question. So I've got a pretty dialed routine now before the big episodes, which is no carbs at all. So bacon and eggs, sausage and eggs, breakfast, minimal caffeine earlier in the day, maybe one coffee on a morning. Go and train moderately hard but not super hard so RP seven, RP eight, then I want to be a little bit hungry and then I want to have probably one new tonic about an hour before and then sip on a new tonic throughout whatever it is that I'm doing.

1:00:49And if I get all of that in and I've got sunlight my eyes and gone for a walk and I've been moving, I'm pretty fucking dialed and that can last you can hold on to that as long as I keep the new tonic levels up, I can hold on to that for probably about four hours and then it starts to become psychotic after that time because I'm I'm you'd fighting this tension between fatigue and stimulants but more stimulants aren't necessarily fixing the fatigue that's just making them stimulated. Yeah.

1:01:24JD fits. Do you create for yourself or for your audience? That's a good question. And unfortunately, it's probably the biggest middle finger I create for myself. This show has always been a thinly veiled autobiography. Whatever it is that is on my mind, whatever it is that I'm dealing with, whatever it is that I'm interested in, what's happening to me, professionally, personally, much of that is the inspiration, not everything, obviously. But much of that is at least the beginning, it's sort of the spark of the direction that I take to show in. I fell in love with evolutionary psychology because I found it really insightful about understanding the sort of why you are the way you are.

1:02:15It's really sort of seeing the source code of human behavior, at least from a sort of conditioning sense. And then obviously that gets coded into genes.

1:02:25That was a huge part of understanding me, because I wanted to. There was a big period where I was into productivity. So I was just rinsing through every productivity guy, David Allen coming on and get Tiago Forte, Peter Akis, getting all of the big names and productivity to help organize my things, three GTD process, and what's the best email client I should be using? It's just me, and I think the best, sure, there are some artists, creators out there who can make content for an audience and really enjoy the process. But for me, the more that I don't follow my own curiosity and the more that I don't make it for myself, the less I enjoy it and the less successful it is.

1:03:17So I genuinely think, and maybe again, this is just Stockholm Syndrome, I genuinely think that the best way to serve you guys is to just follow my own curiosity because I'm not that much of an outlier, I'm not that different. I think a lot of the challenges that I face and a lot of the interests that I have are really representative of those that any other thoughtful, sensitive person has. And that means that if I follow my instincts, some non -zero portion of other people are also interested or care about this thing that I'm thinking about. and it gives me a unique insight because everybody has access to what the audience says.

1:04:02Every other creator, thinker, artist, songwriter, whatever, they all have access to what are the trends that are going on online. Everyone can see what's happening on Twitter. Everyone can ask chat GBT what the most searched terms are on Google, right? So that means it's a very ununique body of work and not necessarily accurate, but if you follow what you do, I think that really elicits a unique fingerprint and one that absolutely resonates. And even if it doesn't, you pursued something that you found interesting. And the more that I try and reverse engineer what will click, what will resonate?

1:04:48Well, maybe I should be doing the Q &A, maybe I should have someone asking me the questions on the Q &A. Maybe the Q &A should be done live, or maybe I should be streaming on Twitch or whatever. And if it doesn't speak to me, not doing it is the best strategy, because even if it would be optimal, even if it would be better in some way for audience growth, if it doesn't speak to me, it's not going to be authentic. And there's always this tension, right? Everybody shows up. And you show up differently when someone else steps into your room versus when you're on your own. So when it's audience, there's all of these perverse incentives and trying to be 100 % to yourself is essentially impossible.

1:05:26But you can get closer and closer to that and you can also get further and further away and you train yourself in either direction. So for people that are wanting to create a body of work, you need to play the game. You absolutely need to play the game. There is a game to be played. There are mechanisms in place, growth loops that you need to take advantage of. So you do need to play the game, but you need to know that it's not about the game. Play it, but it's not about it. I think that's really important, and that's a strategy I'm holding on to. Sean Spooner, millions of people now have an idea in the head of who they think you are, but it's still just you.

1:06:01Do you ever feel any pressure to live up to that imagined ideal even when you're having a tough week or going through your health challenges? Yeah, I mean, this is kind of actually what I was just talking about that With the Rogan he walked into room. There's this fucking reality distortion field that appears around him There is this sense of performance that everybody has even if it's just you talking to someone else over dinner It's very difficult to be unencumbered. It's a good definition I think of who your best friend is you know most people after the age of 15 don't really have a best friend maybe, but I think a good way to define your best friend is the person that you can speak to with the least amount of filter.

1:06:44And that gets more and more insulted, the bigger and bigger the audiences, and the tighter and tighter the feedback loop. So, you know, if you're a comedian or a singer or something and you're on stage, fuck, like you're seeing this feedback loop immediately, it's so dopamine -y. At least with what I do. There's a little bit of lead time and I don't see people immediately. Now, in some ways, that's crap because I get no motivation from positive feedback other than, you know, nice comments, which is good, please send more. But it's also less perverting, I think, in many ways. I do, I have been trying increasingly over the last four months or so, I think, since the beginning of the year, I've really, really been trying to lean into just being me as much as possible, whatever that means, whatever fucking means to be yourself.

1:07:39I'm really, really trying to do that, opening up about health challenges. Somebody asks me a question that I don't know. On stage, I was at this health summit thing this weekend and I gave it a chat. Someone asked a question from the audience and it was like, hey, there's like a thousand people looking at me and I'm going to give the answer that I know no one wants to hear, but I don't have an opinion on that, which is just so unsatisfactory, but it was true. I don't have an opinion on quantum energy and vibration consciousness. So I can't remember. The question was something to do with that. I'm like, perhaps I'm surprising.

1:08:15This isn't my area of expertise. I don't have an opinion on that. So I'm trying to release that pressure to live up to some imagined ideal. Now, I definitely don't want someone that cares about the show to meet me and be like, like, hey, he was really fucking unimpressive, dude. Like, he was so, but I don't, I think at least as far as I can see, getting to the stage that I have now and actually being able to hold on to some sense of humanity is kind of like a superhuman task. And this is an experiment. I'm going to continue to try and be open. Jesus Christ, I let out a tear, let out a single tear on a vlog a couple of weeks ago.

1:08:59So that was real. It was true. It was how I felt at the time. And I get the sense that if I don't have to live up to some imagined ideal, my longevity and loving what I do will be greater because I'm not going to feel puppeted by ventriloquized by a group of people that I've never met, even if the ones that I love. Matthew Belinger, how long did you contemplate podcasting before starting? How long did you contemplate newtonic before committing? It took six months. Contemplating podcasting before running it is the back end of 2017 and then I launched it in February of 2018. The name took a while, the logo took a while, the strategy took a while of how I was going to launch it.

1:09:50How long did I contemplate newtonic before committing? The committing thing was actually relatively easy, but the building before launching took 12 months. So I am as anyone who's ever worked with me will attest to painfully pedestrian in pre -launch and then kind of unrelentingly rapid in post -launch. So I kind of have this Dr. Jackal Mr. Hyde thing where I want everything to be absolutely perfect up until the point at which it gets shipped. And then once it's shipped, I try and iterate very, very quickly. It seems to work for me. I do have a sort of perfectionist streak to me and sort of an obsession with detail, which is good in many ways.

1:10:34And I think, here's my theory. There are certain things that you need to get really, really right once and then you rinse and repeat it. So the can design for Newtonic, I was kind of tyrannical. When it came to that, because this is the thing for the fucking rest of time. There is no getting this most of the way there. It needs to be perfect. It needs to be perfect now. It needs to be perfect in five years time. It needs to be perfect when we exit the business. It needs to be perfect. And the same thing with Mon and wisdom. Me and Dean worked once he came on board after a couple of months. So fucking hard.

1:11:18Diling in the colors. Diling in the sets. This is how we wanted to work. This is how we want the pacing of the cuts to be everything. But once we've done it, you've got a signature style and you can sort of run that forward. So, um, decision latency is a big deal. But I think we're talking about sort of preparedness or launch latency here as well. I would hazard a guess that most people in the audience probably need to make decisions more quickly, launch more slowly and iterate more quickly. So, So stop fucking about not doing the thing and commit to a thing as an experiment. Spend a good amount of time preparing it, getting it right, dialing in whatever the structure is, the brand, the style, the format, whatever it is that you're going to do.

1:12:03And then once it's launched, go really, really fast and hard. So at least that's what it works for me. Stefan Ović, how to deal with the anxiety when you're working hard versus the depression when you're taking it easy?

1:12:20That's funny. How to deal with the anxiety when you're working hard versus the depression when you're taking it easy. Dude, it's tough. I mean, like your calendar is a lovely way to assuage your deep feelings of insufficiency, right? It's an anesthetic that sort of smooths over your need for validation. It keeps you busy. And then when you start to take it easy, you start to ask yourself questions, but you're right when you're in the midst of calendar life. There is this sort of rush, but this rush comes along with a fear, and I think that's the anxiety that you're talking about. Look, I have found that periodizing is the easiest way to do this.

1:13:06That basically humans are absolute creatures. So if you put a packet of biscuits, orios in front of me. You say, you can either eat all of them or you can eat none of them. Easy task. If you tell me I can eat two, go fuck yourself. Like I'm not, I can't, it's impossible. No one has ever in the history of the world has ever just eaten two orios. They've eaten all of them or they've eaten none of them. And I think that the same here with the working hard versus taking it easy thing. Shock, horror, they used to be a thing called weekdays and weekends. ends. And you would tend to work on weekdays and not on weekends.

1:13:43That's not a bad model. I think if you know that the working hard will come to an end and that they're taking it easy will come to an end and that the working hard will come. I think that the anxiety and the depression both get ameliorated, they get smoothed out a little bit. If you know that they're time bound, it's not going to be like this forever. And that allows you hopefully to lean in harder to your work because, ah, get rest on Friday evening. And it allows you to actually enjoy your relaxation because you go, I'm back at it. I'm back at it on Monday or whatever. Whatever cadence you want to work at.

1:14:19You can do this. You can do this in one month on one week off. You know, whatever it is that works for you. But I would maybe try periodizing. One, uh, B, what's your five year goal and what's ultimate goal in life. Dude, I said it before, I suck at this long term planning thing. I know I want to be a dad, I know I want to start a family. I know that I really want to fix my health.

1:14:52I want to keep on learning about myself and the world around me and I want to keep doing the show and I want to keep writing. That's kind of it. Everything else will fall into place. I've got a good, most of us do, I really think that, and maybe this is just because I've gone round the house is so much with being deliberate, especially with the health shared and the productivity and the last seven years. Our instincts are such good guides once you've sort of boxed them in a little bit. The certain things that you need to learn to avoid, like fucking gambling, just don't bother fucking about with gambling, right?

1:15:31It's kind of pointless. Same thing goes for heroin and trying to vent and all. Like, there's certainly a drinking to get rid of your problems using stimulants to wake up on the morning and using sleeping pills to go to bed on a night. You know, there's some real red areas. Once you've boxed those off, once you've started to structure yourself a little bit, you're in your, you know, I think this is probably something you're gonna struggle to achieve before you get into your 30s. But once you've been deliberate for a long time, you can start to ease off the deliberateness and have a few very small sort of broad goals, or a few very big broad goals, sorry, the direction that you're going in, a small number of them.

1:16:09And just allow these trained instincts, I suppose, or you would say maybe curated instincts to just kind of carry you through. So you would say, I want to keep traveling, I want to live a life of adventure, I want to have novelty, I want to contribute to something that I care about. Who doesn't want that? Who the fuck doesn't want that? Everybody wants that. So I don't think that you need to think about it. And I think that actually by thinking about it, sometimes you stick a middle finger up at the fact that you can look after you, you're the sort of person that can deal with change and with unpredictability and with circumstances that you didn't plan for really well.

1:16:46And you probably don't need to plan for them in advance and that's again I'm speaking to me right this is me speaking to me because I'm someone that likes control I like things to be planned I like an itinerary I like things to be laid out and I know increasingly I've become more free -flowing and more at ease with that not being the case. Zane Butler who's on your next Mount Rushmore of podcast guests? Yeah well Well, I've actually had to turn it from Mount Rushmore into the Infinity Stones from Avengers because John Peterson, Sam Harris, Alander Botan, Naval Ravikan, Joe Rogan, right? Five. And I've got four.

1:17:34And then after the episodes that I did with Rogan, the day after he texted me and said, I really enjoyed the chat blah blah blah, so bullshit about the chat. Don't forget that we need to get an episode done on your podcast. I was like, cause I asked him two and a half years ago, maybe three years ago now, on his show, really appreciated this man. I've gotta get you on the show at some point and he was the one that brought it up. Like I wasn't gonna bring it up again. So once I get that and I do that snap and 50 % of every living creature dies, I don't know what to do. Do you make another one? Do I make a second?

1:18:13I guess I've got another hand. So I can make another glove, get another five infinity stones, but I kind of don't know who would be on there. Ryan Reynolds was on there forever, and now he's like the most hated person in the world. I guess he's on the shit list. I don't know. I really do have a bit of gold medalist syndrome at the moment, especially after the Navale thing. Like, how the fuck am I supposed to top that? not that you need to, right? I need to be better, bigger, more expensive, fancier, anything, longer, more insightful, denser than need to be. It was beautiful and then it was done.

1:18:51But when you start to think in terms of goals, outcomes, mount rush -mores, you're like, fuck, well, it's a pretty good one. I put mine up against pretty much anybody else's. Carlson Hoffman, what was the hardest part about being broke when you first started from a mindset perspective? Can you guess that you mean money broke here, unless you mean broken mindset wise, which I was both. Yeah, I had, I think the poorest I ever was was when I was 20, 20. and I remember I spent my last 10 pounds on petrol to drive from Edinburgh to Glasgow to see Underoth play on my own because they were my favorite band and I think they were doing they're only chasing safety and dividing the Great Line back to back so I went to go see a band I went to go see a Christian metal band that I love and I drove back and I remember looking at the fuel gauge and thinking that's all the money that you have.

1:19:53Then you just spent it to go and watch a fucking band play. And I had a friend that was staying with me who had been used to being poor for longer than I had. And I remember him saying he just had, he just instantly, like, as if it was so natural to him, it was really kind of disturbing. He just said, uh, don't worry, man, like I'll just go and steal some food from the shop. And I was like, We're at the stage where we need to fucking steal food. Now, the difference was I was probably too proud to message mum and dad and say, hey, can you send me £100 please so I can eat this week? Because I was doing this placement year from university and we weren't getting paid until the events were done.

1:20:39This is one of the problems with running events that all you do is spend money, spend, spend, spend, spend, spend, spend, spend. And then finally you get this big injection of cash and you repay yourself. That means that if you're running low personally on liquid capital to be able to actually keep the fucking lights on keep the food in your mouth you end up in a You end up in the situation. She's pretty ugly. So I don't know it's it was it kind of sucked I guess but I there was a bit there was something liberating about it as well It was as close to financial rock bottom as I'd got But I did have faith.

1:21:18I've never really had money worries. Existentially or psychologically. And it's also not a very big part of my life. I don't really care that much about money. I like nice things, like I like nice coffees and I like being able to fly to places and not think about the dinner bill. I really don't care that much about about money, which is something I'm very grateful for because I think some people are kind of cursed with a high materialism set point. But the hardest thing about being broke when he first started from a mindset perspective, actually with the show, I had to take a step back. So I was going to have to let go of the business that earned me all of this money.

1:21:56This is now a decade and a bit later, 31, 32. COVID happens. I'm like, okay, I need to make this decision about whether or not I'm going to go back to doing the nightlife thing or try and talk to people on the internet and make it into a job. But there's something cool about having nothing to lose. Homosy talks about this. He says, you know, someone that's got nothing to lose is very dangerous because that they can do anything. The situation can't get worse. So yeah, I guess wasn't being broke sucked, but I actually kind of liked it for a very short period of time. I'm sure that I would have fucking hated it if it had been protracted.

1:22:35Thickman 17, PS Brown on the pod win. Good question. PS Brown is the author of red rising and a fucking legend. He actually DMed me the other day. So we've been in contact for maybe three years. I reached out and just said how much I loved the series and I'd love to bring him on at some point. And then I must have mentioned red rising on an episode. Maybe I said it to Naval or maybe I said it on Rogan. I said it on some big episode over the last few weeks. And he DMed me again. It's been a while I think I was left on red or maybe even left unread a couple of times and I didn't want to push. I'm like, you know, he's ball -steep and writing this hugely complex fantasy series and there must be so much pressure on him.

1:23:21He doesn't need this podcast to reaching out and chirping and going, excuse me, can you come to Austin? Any message you said, him, and thanks for shouting the books out. Sorry, I've not been in touch. It kind of balls deep in the writing thing, but I'm still down when the time is right. So we'll get to, I think we've got him. I think actually he can be, PS Brown can be on the New Mount Rushmore. And the New Mount Rushmore is not going to be about sort of the biggest names. It's going to be about the people, the sort of niche underground winners. So PS, you can take the first spot on the next, the next infinity stone is going to be PS Brown.

1:23:58I wonder who gets the middle finger. It's kind of an important one, I think. Hank, health and fitness, how do you balance introspective thinking and learning, but not overthinking? Fucking perennial problem, dude. It is... It's the golden mean of this. You need to do enough reflection to be able to actually work out what to do, but if you get stuck in too much reflection, it's trapping and you don't end up actually doing anything. It's tough. So it's a balance that you find over time. It is something that you end up coming into land with age, at least for me. I've got better at balancing the thinking and learning whilst not being paralyzed thing.

1:24:46It's also fixed by being busier. And I know I'm kind of like the anti -busy guy at the moment. Your calendar is a better indication of your wealth than your bank account. Blah blah blah. like your productivity obsession is killing your productivity stuff. I'm very Joe Hudson Pilled and C. Bum Pilled at the moment. But as even at this level of busyness, as you get busier, it squeezes out the inefficiencies in the way that you operate because you just don't have fucking time for them. Like you don't have time to scroll on Instagram that much. You don't have time to worry about whether or not this is the optimal diet or that's the best way to organize your email inbox because you just need to eat and fucking send emails.

1:25:29So you stop. And in my experience, creating constraints through pressure, through busyness, through time, duration, you know, when does this need to be submitted by? That's a good way to stop yourself from overthinking. You just need to ship it. So avoid Parkinson's work expands to fill the time given for it, put some deadlines in place and just sort of hold on. Keep on being deliberate about stuff, but eventually you will come into land at a right balance because you will either survive and thrive or you'll die. There's the only two that you're going to end up either being kicked out the side of whatever project you're trying to do because you couldn't come to a balance of it in which case it's no longer a problem, or you will, and you will end up with a perfect balance.

1:26:20And almost everybody that I know that's kind of of this world, this degenerate personal growth, self discovery, wisdom, bro wisdom thing, almost everybody gets it right. Like, in fact, I can't think of anybody that doesn't. So you'll be fine. Hi, Pat. No. What was the process like getting the O1 visa? Can you go into a bit of detail? It's long. It is, I submitted a 700 page, three -inch thick portfolio of every high relevance statusful guest that had been on the show. Two independent news stories showing that they were a person of note within the industry, and then for each of those news sites or sources, an independent verification showing that the news site was one that had high circulation.

1:27:16So this tree, branching tree of who it is, I've spoken to, proof that they're important and proof that the thing that said that they were important is a note. And that just rinse and repeated that. I submitted it again. the start of this year. And this was the last one plus the new one. So this one was twice as I don't know I didn't even see it how big it was once it was printed off. But yeah, I mean, forests have come down to create the O1 visa process. I used an attorney, a lay hatch Philipa, I think throughout over New York, LEH, AACH, Philipa, F -I -L -I -P -P -A, I think, Leach Philipa. And they were great, really, really good.

1:28:08Mike, I think he was the owner there, was phenomenal with me, was phenomenal with me. When I started doing this in 2020, and he was phenomenal with me, the next time that I did it too. And then you fly to an embassy, after you've submitted, you go back and forth, you do all of these things, you submit this special form, and then there's other one and then the website is so archaic, backward, and then you go to an embassy, but it can't be an embassy in the US and you don't want it to be an embassy in somewhere that's popular because the wait time is forever. So you end up in places like El Salvador or Guatemala where I did my first one or Kingston Jamaica where I did my second one.

1:28:44And then you stand in a massive line with people that are, you know, from countries that don't have great passports who don't, I can't necessarily get into the US. They're wanting to be workers, they're wanting to be, they're wanting to visit family, they're wanting to see, you know, friends dying, dying relatives and stuff. And you're there going, yeah, I talked to people on the internet and I'd love, I'd really like you to extend this visa that allows me to basically lop in and out of the country a lot. So yeah. Anyway, I'm going to love you and leave you. This This is 3 .5 million people on this channel is berserk and I hope that it's not too sad to see somebody that you listen to whining about the health, but I am getting through it and I genuinely do appreciate everybody reaching out and saying nice things.

1:29:32And the live show, the US Encounter Delive Tour is going to be announced within the next couple of weeks, including all of the dates, pre -sale tickets, chrysalumson .live. If you want to sign up and be the first person to know about when those are and where you can get tickets and then The new reading list will be out soon and that is a lovely little treat me Person dying we're all dying. I'm dying more quickly person who's dying quickly Spent a week Bearing himself writing this new reading list and now it's with the designer. So be grateful. Let's see you next time