#1078 - Studio Launch Party - Indian Fetishes, Betting on Wars & Tom Cruise

Summary

Modern Wisdom #1078 - New Studio Launch Party

Indian Fetishes, Betting on Wars & Tom Cruise
Date: March 30, 2026
Host: Chris Williamson
Guests: Sean, George, Jared, Tom Cruise Impersonator, brief appearance by “McDonald’s CEO” (Ben)

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Episode Overview

This unique, freewheeling launch of Chris Williamson’s new studio breaks away from structure, embracing an informal roundtable bursting with stories, experiments, thought-provoking discussion, and plenty of comedic detours. The episode careens through fascinating anecdotes (from Phil Collins’ heartbreak to the origins of Rocky), viral internet phenomena, tech commentary, human psychology, pop health, and ends with a surreal studio party featuring a Tom Cruise impersonator and sampling of the new McDonald's “Big Arch” burger.

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Table of Contents

1. Funny Opening & “In the Air Tonight” Origin Story
2. Creativity, Catastrophe, and Burst Songwriting
3. The ‘Rocky’ Origin: Stallone, Dogs & Grit
4. Modern Drug Trends: GLP-1s, Love, and Society
5. Attachment Styles & Evolution
6. Novelty, Time Perception & Storytelling
7. Advice Hyper-responders & Self-Help’s Trap
8. Internet Oddities & Betting on World Events
9. Playfulness, Stoicism, and Unusual Self-Help
10. Viral News, Indian Porn Fetishes & McDonald’s CEO
11. Challenging Physical & Mental Feats
12. Rapid-fire UK & Florida Man Stories
13. Underwear & Hormones: Polyester, Dogs & Infertility
14. Memorable Quotes & Moments
15. Notable Timestamps

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1. Funny Opening & Phil Collins Anecdote

• Misophonia and Pet Peeves (00:00–01:46)
  Quick jokes about food noises and the phenomenon of misophonia.
  Sean: “If I hear you eat cereal next to me, I’ll try to break your neck.” (00:35)

• Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight” Tragedy (01:52–07:17)
  Jared narrates the heartbreak and lost love that led Phil Collins to write "In the Air Tonight"—his wife left him for the painter he’d hired (5:00).

  • Collins wrote the song on the painter’s invoice, made “Against All Odds” too, and this music led to people reuniting—including Jared’s own parents (“The second child was me.” – 06:54).

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2. Creativity, Catastrophe & Burst Songwriting

• Dolly Parton wrote both “Jolene” & “I Will Always Love You” in a single day (08:21–08:49)
• “Splish Splash” written in 20 minutes; Beatles recording bursts (08:57–09:04)
  Chris: “She wrote them in the same day… that was a good writing day.” (08:49)

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3. Rocky Origin: Stallone & The Value of Struggle

• Stallone’s Dog & Script Sacrifice (09:04–11:36)
  George tells how Stallone wrote "Rocky" in three days, sold his dog when broke, demanded to star in the film, and bought dog back after movie’s success.
  George: “He ends up paying 25 grand to get his dog back… this three day bender to write Rocky.” (10:48)

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4. GLP-1s, Lust & The Coming Desire Drought

• Drugs like Ozempic (GLP-1s) dampen not just appetite but also romantic desire (12:13–15:59)
  Sean shares research that GLP-1 drugs dampen “wanting” circuits—including love. Twitter storms ensue.
  Chris: “60 million people are now on anti-desire drugs and it happened in the blink of an eye…” (13:19)
• SSRIs and Permanent Sexual Dysfunction (15:00–16:01): Discussion on how SSRIs can permanently blunt sex drive, especially if used during puberty.
• Modern Sex Recession & Social Trends (15:49–16:01):
  Chris: “GLPs and SSRI it is. The sex recession is just not a surprise. If you’re having sex, you’re in the minority.” (15:59)

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5. Attachment Styles, Evolution & Hidden Advantages

• Anxious/avoidant attachment—survival, marketing, and specializations (46:35–49:34)
  Chris explores the evolutionary upside to every attachment style, using the “smoke in the room” experiment.
  Chris: “The anxiously attached noticed smoke first, the avoidant were first out the door every time…” (48:38)
• Benefits to “flaws”: detectives vs. SWAT (48:56–49:34)

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6. Novelty, Time & Memory Games

• Why time speeds up, and how to stretch it (53:00–66:02):
  • Story of a man who loses short-term memory after brain injury—"lived to 82, but only experienced life as a 27yo" (57:47–58:59)
  • Tips to slow time: Seek novelty, create stories, savor sensory moments, be childlike (“How damn good is this cup of coffee?” – Sean, 56:50).
  • Five-star DMV story: “How do you have a five-star DMV experience?” – George’s trainer turns errand into a life game. (62:26–66:02)

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7. Advice, Self-Help, and the Personalization Problem

• “Advice Hyperresponders”—Self help lands unevenly (17:13–18:55)
  Chris: “Advice doesn’t land evenly… the people who really need to take it are unchanged, the people already overdosing on it take too much.” (17:17)

• Tim Ferriss’ “Ouroboros of Infinity” and self-help as an addiction (22:23–23:53)

  • Chris, quoting Ferriss: “Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. I say this after 20 years… turns out I was over-optimizing.” (23:53)

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8. Predictive Betting & Internet Trends

• Polymarket: Prediction Markets (Betting on Wars, Elections) (28:17–30:58)
  • Market for world events, infamous for “assassination markets” risk, also more accurate than pundits.
  • Funny stories of real arbitrage—guy making $3M betting with Vegas sportsbooks’ timing lag (31:55–32:18).
  • George: “Polymarket is basically only people with skin in the game betting on an outcome… closest thing to accurate predictions.” (29:31)

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9. Playfulness, Stoicism & Romanticizing Life

• Childlike Play, Savoring Experiences & Dogs/Kids/Dead People (66:16–68:36)
  • “Dogs, kids, and dead people” are the people George wants to learn from—dogs for love, kids for wonder, dead people for wisdom (books).
• Stoic “Reverse Stoicism” — Only Numbing the Good (70:44–71:35)
  • Jared: “A lot of people insulate themselves from getting too excited but still crash on the bad. Now you’ve lost both.”
• Musturbation (REBT) — The tyranny of ‘musts’ (71:48–73:33)
  • classic cognitive therapy: disasters happen not from hope but from telling yourself “this must go well.” Give yourself an “out.”
  • Chris: “I’m okay no matter what happens.” (74:05–76:24)

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10. Fetishes, Fast Food, and Bizarre Internet Memes

• Indian Fetishes: Breastfeeding Porn, Google autocompletes (42:54–45:24)

  • India’s top “my husband wants…” Google autocompletes focus on breastfeeding him.
  • India’s #1 porn category is breastfeeding—Chris and George riff on cultural explanations.
  • Chris: “You speak for them billion Indians…” (44:52)
  • George: “We don’t get divorced, so you just go straight to the mom.” (45:00)

• Viral CEO Moments: McDonald’s Big Arch & Ben’s Uniform (77:08–82:34)

  • Segment with “McDonald’s CEO” awkwardly demoing the Big Arch, real and parody breakdowns, Ben in costume.

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11. Beer Miles, Rubik’s Cubes & Stomach-of-Steel Feats

• Beer Mile: Chug and Run (85:05–86:02)
  • Drink four beers over a mile run (“more painful than a marathon”).
• 2 Beers, 2 Sigs, 2 Rubik’s Cubes in 1:28 (86:02–88:13)
  • Viral “talent stack” videos—Chris and team marvel at the world record pace.

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12. British & Florida Man: Strangest News

• “Mental UK Headlines” (91:46–92:06): News stories only possible in the UK—bird covered in curry!
• Florida Man Birthday Challenge (92:09–92:52): Giggling at the randomness (“Florida man rescued after trying to ride a hamster ball to the Bahamas”).

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13. Underwear, Hormones & Icing

• Polyester Underwear Kills Dog Fertility (95:17–98:03)
  • Odd science: “Polyester creates an electrostatic field that disrupts hormone production.”
• Nutsicles and Sperm Count (98:03–99:02)
  • Chris reveals “nutsicles”—frozen packs to reduce groin temperature, referencing Brian Johnson’s odd rituals.
  • Chris: “Honestly, if Ben comes in with a hair of nutsicles, I think we found the hook for the show.” (97:38)

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14. Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “If I hear you eat cereal next to me, I’ll try to break your neck.” – Sean (00:35)
• “Second child was me.” – Jared after long Phil Collins story (06:54)
• “That was a good writing day.” – Chris (Dolly Parton writing two hits in one sitting, 08:49)
• “Advice doesn’t land evenly—it sort of distributes more like alcohol than like medicine.” – Chris (17:16)
• “60 million people are now on anti-desire drugs and it happened in the blink of an eye.” – Chris (13:19)
• “How do I have a five-star DMV experience?” – George (62:31)
• “Dogs, Kids and Dead People. That’s who I want to spend time with and learn from.” – George (67:56)
• “I’m okay no matter what happens.” – Chris (Most loved intention, 75:01)
• “You speak for them billion Indians.” – Chris, referencing Indian porn stats (44:52)
• “Polymarket is basically a casino… but with a graph.” – Chris (30:12)
• “Polyester underwear on dogs tanked their progesterone 90%... 100% cotton if you want babies.” – Sean (95:17)
• “If Ben comes in with nutsicles, I think we found the hook for the show.” – Chris (97:38)
• “In a thousand universes, only one where Ben was dressed as a McDonald’s guy next to a Tom Cruise impersonator…” – Chris (82:14)

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15. Timestamps for Key Segments

| Topic / Moment | Timestamp | |-------------------------------------------|------------| | Misophonia & pet peeves | 00:00–01:46| | Phil Collins’ heartbreak story | 01:52–06:53| | Dolly Parton’s double songwriting day | 08:21–08:49| | Rocky’s origin & selling the dog | 09:04–11:36| | GLP-1 drugs and dampening desire | 12:13–16:01| | “Advice hyperresponders” self-help | 17:13–18:55| | Tim Ferriss: self-help as a trap | 22:23–23:53| | Prediction/Polymarkets & exploits | 28:17–32:18| | Attachment styles & hidden strengths | 46:35–49:34| | Novelty, memory, and the passage of time | 53:00–66:02| | Five-star DMV mindset | 62:26–66:02| | Dogs, Kids & Dead People wisdom | 67:56–68:36| | Indian breastfeeding porn stats | 42:54–45:24| | Beer Mile & “talent stack” videos | 85:05–88:13| | Underwear, polyester & hormone health | 95:17–98:03| | Nutsicles and sperm-count biohack | 98:03–99:02| | Mic Drop: Ben in uniform & Tom Cruise | 77:08–82:34|

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Overall Tone & Language

The episode is free-spirited, deeply humorous, and often irreverent, alive with tangents and playful ribbing. Even as the group discusses serious or scientific topics, they maintain a tone of wonder, skepticism, and open camera-breaking banter.

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“The only path to success… is the one you just don’t leave.”
– Sean (25:04), on compliance, discipline and personalizing your routine.

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For New Listeners

This episode is a showcase of the wit and warmth of Chris and his friends—a chaotic blend of wisdom and absurdity. More than an interview, it’s a launch party brimming with stories, psychological frameworks, counterintuitive advice, live experiments, and a parade of strange internet phenomena. If you want to understand why people like Modern Wisdom, this is a sampler platter for both mind and meme.

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Skip the intros, ignore the mattress ads, and jump right into the madness for a taste of the new Modern Wisdom studio’s spirit!

Transcript

[Chris Williamson]

Hello, people, big news. I'm on tour in Australia, but I couldn't wait to share the brand new studio and a brand new episode style with you. There's no rules, no structure. It's just me hanging out and I'm bringing some friends with me. Enjoy the episode. See ya. What's that thing? There's a thing that people have where they hate the sound of like misophonia.

[Sean]

I have it real bad.

[Chris Williamson]

No way, dude.

[Sean]

If I hear you eat cereal next to me, I'll try to break your neck. It's the worst.

[George]

Don't all women have this? Excuse me. Every woman I've ever dated has. Again.

[Chris Williamson]

I saw this video of some guy that's got one of those big tubes and it makes a.

[George]

So that kills you.

[Sean]

But it's worse, dude. Like a. Like when people do the mukbangs with their microphones. Oh, the visceral rage. Like I. You know that they're eating into a JBL microphone.

[Chris Williamson]

Who is the. You don't know that psyoped everyone.

[George]

That's crazy.

[Chris Williamson]

Who was the king mukbanger that psy upped everyone?

[Sean]

Oh, Nikado. Avocado.

[Chris Williamson]

Yes. Thank you.

[George]

Did he die?

[Chris Williamson]

No, he lost all of the weight.

[George]

He lost all of it.

[Jared]

Really?

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, he's like the inverse Joey chestnut.

[George]

Yeah, well, he ballooned.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. And then. And did it.

[Jared]

Wow.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah.

[George]

But he got like peak fat and then had peak views on that one video of like. Yeah, and look what happened to my life.

[Chris Williamson]

And he was filming it all in

[Sean]

the background, but he was losing weight the whole time, so the videos were old and he was like crashing out and crying and obese. And then all of a sudden he just shows up, it just 200 pounds lighter. And he's like, hello, I have changed. And it was the weirdest fucking video ever.

[Chris Williamson]

Really? Like has on the back of your neck. This guy's maybe a psychopath stand up type.

[Sean]

Like they cloned him for something.

[Chris Williamson]

It was crazy. It was fucking wild. All right, what do you got?

[Jared]

I want to hop straight in.

[Chris Williamson]

I do. Okay, show me what you've got. Let me.

[Jared]

I tell you. I'll give a story. Let's tell you a story about the worst phone call of all time.

[George]

You have my interest.

[Jared]

Okay, so it's picture this. We're going to go back to 1970s Surrey in England. There's like a beautiful old farmhouse called Old Croft. And a musician has just moved in and he's in a band and they've just had their first top 40 song. So it's at that point of a musician's career where either this is like, we're about to take off, or we had that, like, one blip and we da. And he's just mortgaged, like, the most insane house for, like, his wealth size, like, way above his income because he's betting on his future success. And he's like, this is the childhood sweetheart dream. He met his wife when they were 11 years old in drama class and they've got two kids together. So they've moved into this house together, this beautiful old farmhouse with their two kids, and he's managed to get the deal on it. So it's slightly cheaper than he can afford, but it's still way too expensive. But the whole thing needs a whole paint job. It's like the whole building needs a load of different work. Kind of like this stuff. Yeah, right. So he has to go on tour, go try and crack America to see if he can pay for this house. So he's kind of leaving the house. There's painters there that are doing everything up and he's kind of saying goodbye to his family. And as he's saying goodbye, he doesn't know if this is going to be the last time he sees this house or if this is going to be the new family home. So he goes on tour for a year and surprisingly, the tour goes really, really well. So he's basically going to pay for this mortgage and at the end of a tour, he's having a phone call with his wife and it's not going well. And she basically confesses, whilst he's been away, she's been having an affair. And, like, his heart just drops. He's like, who? So he starts thinking of whether it's like a singer or somebody else in the band. The guy she was having the affair with was the painter he was paying for the house. So he, like, go. He just loses his mind. He ends up flying back from the tour, tries to win her back. The not only can he not win her back, she basically says, I'm taking the kids and I'm leaving to Canada. So he sits down the band and he says, well, I think the band's over. Like, I've got to go. Like, it's no remote work, I've got to go. I'm going to fly to Canada and try and put my marriage together. So the band said, hey, we'll just do a solo hiatus, we'll all go solo and we'll get back together. So he goes to Canada for three months, putting the marriage back Together. Flies back to them. Three months later, it's completely failed. And the only place he has to stay is. He goes back to this old house. And he says. He walks in and he says, the paint was still wet with the man who cuckolded me. So he got. He can't. So he's just fuming. So he leaves, goes to his favorite restaurant, orders a ravioli. And he's just staring at this ravioli. He's starving because he's not eating days. And this ravioli is staring at him. He's staring back at the ravioli. He just can't eat. He goes back to the house. It's just this old derelict house that he's made all this money and paid for. But his family are no longer there. So he starts drinking. He's calling her, and she's ignoring his calls in Canada. He starts drinking, he's calling her, and finally he goes, well, I've got to start channeling this thing. So he decides. He looks at the master bedroom, that she slept with the guy who was on his payroll whilst he's on tour, and goes, well, you know what? This is going to become my new music studio. So he starts, like, channeling all the energy that's coming up. And as he's, like, in the moment, he grabs the invoice from the painting and decorating company that slept with his wife and he writes a song on it. Okay, so should I play. I've got on my phone. I'll play the song. You ready? This is the song that he writes.

[Sean]

You're shitting me.

[Jared]

So that's how Phil Collins wrote In the Air Tonight. It's on the invoice of the painter that slept with his wife. And what's interesting, what's fun about, you know, this story. What's. So what's funny about this? This story is nothing.

[George]

Hold on. Saddest story.

[Sean]

We got a banger out of it.

[Jared]

But he. Well, anyway, so whilst he's in this house or in this new music studio that he's created, he then is in a fugue state, writes Against All Odds, which goes on to win a Grammy. So he makes that song. Then Against All Odds, the next day. What's interesting about the story, the funny part is he makes Against All Odds, obviously becomes a smasher on the radio. And there's a guy in Manchester who's listening to the song on loop. Cause he split up with his partner five years ago. His girlfriend five years ago. So he's listening to this song, thinking about her, sees her at a bus station, and they end up going out on a date, spend all night till 6am they get back together. Within six months, we're engaged. They have three children. Second child was me. So the whole.

[Chris Williamson]

Whoa.

[Jared]

So the whole thing.

[George]

He goes. Yeah, yeah. With the toothpick. Yeah, yeah. The second child was me. Are you. Hold on.

[Jared]

So, yeah. So when you. So what's beautiful now when you re. Listen to that Phil Collins.

[George]

Wait, are you Colin's son? Yeah. Did you.

[Jared]

No, no, no, wait.

[George]

I got lost there for a second. No, no, no. My dad.

[Jared]

My dad basically loved that song when he split up with my mom.

[Tom Cruise Impersonator]

Basically.

[Sean]

Okay, okay.

[Chris Williamson]

That's where you got.

[Sean]

No, no, no, no, no, no.

[George]

Boom. Dad, you know which room that was? This room. That's why that room became a podcast studio. Yeah.

[Sean]

Okay. Still crazy.

[Tom Cruise Impersonator]

So.

[George]

Yeah.

[Jared]

Fucking. But what's crazy is when you re. Listen to that song. I think that song's incredible. Anyway, it still holds up 50, 60 years later, but when you now re. Picture him in that old master bedroom where it all happened, and the lyrics, often when you go back and listen.

[Sean]

Yeah.

[McDonald's CEO]

What is he saying?

[George]

Is he saying something that's, like, direct or coded?

[Jared]

There's a part in there like, if you gave me if you was drowning, I would not lend a hand. And it talks about you've been smiling or. Wipe that grin off your face.

[Chris Williamson]

Right.

[Jared]

It's all about him falling.

[Chris Williamson]

Doesn't sound. It sound like a breakup song on First Lesson, but it is. Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy, dude. I fucking. It's such a fantastic one. What was it that we found out the other day that Dolly Parton wrote. Two of her fucking biggest Google. What two songs did Dolly Parton?

[Sean]

Jolene.

[Chris Williamson]

Jolene and fucking, like, working 9 to 5 or something in the. In the same day. She wrote them in the same day.

[Sean]

Fucking crazy.

[Jared]

Wow.

[George]

There's a bunch of those examples of these bursts. These bursts where, like, I think the Beatles famously did this, where they recorded, like, a fucking album in a day, or they did, like, they had, like, this insane burst of their greatest hits in a very short about 5.

[Chris Williamson]

What was Jolene and I will always love you.

[McDonald's CEO]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Wow. In the same day. She mentioned in interviews that she wrote them during the same songwriting session and later joked, that was a good writing day.

[Jared]

Wow.

[Sean]

So nonchalant.

[Jared]

I. I think Bobby Darin's Splish Flash

[Chris Williamson]

was written in 20 minutes or something like that.

[George]

Have you guys heard the full Rocky story? The Sylvester Stallone Rocky backstory?

[Chris Williamson]

No.

[George]

Oh, this is insane. You know, this One. So Sylvester Stallone wants to be an actor. And, you know, but he's got this, like, birth defect. So when he was born, I think the doctors, they did something. That's why he has that crooked smile. So he had like a medical, almost like a malpractice issue when he was born. That messed up his face. But he wants to be an actor. He talks kind of funny, face is kind of funny. So he's not getting any roles, Keeps going to casting auditions. No role, no role, no role. So he says, all right, if I can't get casted in somebody else's movie, I'll write my own. So he goes to his house, and again, like, sort of in that fused state, he basically does two things. He paints all the windows black. He's like, I'm not leaving this house. I don't even want to know if it's night or day until I finish the script. He hates writing, so he's like, I just got to do this fast because I hate writing. So in three days, he writes the script for Rocky. And he has and the story of Rocky, which is like, this average guy wants to be a boxer, but it's not really happening for him. It's a story of him wanting to be an actor, but he just chose boxing because it's more like physical. Like knockout punch. It's easier for the audience to understand, but it's his story. And so then he goes and he pitches the script. And people are like, actually, the script is pretty good. He's like, awesome. And they're like, we'll buy it. It's like, great. He's like, and I'm Rocky. And they're like, no, no, you're not Rocky. We'll buy the script, but you're not Rocky. And so he has an offer, I think for a million dollars or something like that, which at the time was a lot of money. And he turns it down. He ends up taking, I think, 25 grand or some ridiculously low amount of money for the script. But he gets to be Rocky, and he's struggling to make ends meet. He literally, he's like eating like canned beans. He ends up selling his dog because he can't feed his dog. So he's like, his dog was his only companion in the world. He goes, he sells it to a guy and gets like a couple hundred bucks for his dog. And then it's just like, fuck. He's just literally rock bottom. To film Rocky, he basically films the whole movie on like a million dollar budget, handheld camera, no Permit sneaking into things. They film Rocky that way, okay? Rocky becomes this huge hit. He basically gets this money. He goes and he. First thing he does, he goes back and buys back his dog. The guy doesn't want to sell it to him. He's like, I love this dog. And he ends up paying 25 grand to get his dog back. And then that was basically the start of Sylvester Stallone's story was this like three day bender he had to write the story of Rocky. How insane is that?

[Jared]

Is he the guy in the film as well?

[George]

And that was part of the deal. It was like, I'll give you 25 grand and you get to be a cameo in the movie. And he's in the movie. Rocky. The guy he's like, by the liquor store is the guy who he sold his dog to.

[Sean]

I. I didn't know any of that. I didn't know that.

[George]

Isn't it better than the actual story

[Chris Williamson]

of was George

[Sean]

Sylvester Stallone is George's dad.

[Chris Williamson]

Oh, it does. Yeah, you've got the nose for it.

[Jared]

Have a go at you.

[Chris Williamson]

That's right. He is.

[Jared]

Have a go at you. Your big four arms.

[George]

That's true.

[Sean]

So in prep for this episode, when you told me what the. The theme was of adult show and tell, I got on every X for the first time in, I don't know, a year. I never used that platform. Gold mine. What the.

[George]

What the hell? What the are you about to show us? Twitter as the thing you found you brought.

[Sean]

I found this beautiful new app. It was bought by a prominent billionaire, I think. No, it. I don't know how, but the algorithm was so curated to me, despite me not using it because of, I think the one off articles that my friends send me. And one of the articles he sent me was, I think, I think I've got it in there under GLP1s nuke the ability to love. Have you guys heard about this?

[George]

I saw this. Do you guys see this?

[Sean]

Super interesting.

[George]

This is great.

[Sean]

Okay, so we initially thought GLP1s lycozempic, tirzepatide and retatrutide just reduced food cravings. Now, we know they work for alcohol, cocaine, gambling, and other addictions too. But do you know what runs on exactly the same circuit? Falling in love. GLP1 receptors sit in the exact same brain regions that light up when you're in love. The insane thing about them is that they don't just suppress appetite, they suppress wanting in general, including romantic craving. Another person, something like 60 million people are now on anti Desire drugs and it happened in the blink of an eye. I predict in the coming years we will see people on these drugs be less able to fall in love. We will also see them fall out of love or be unable to feel it. In relationships that were previously great. If your girlfriend or boyfriend started taking GLPs and your relationship started failing, there's a good chance that's why this sparked. I went back to. What was his name? Can you scroll up a bit? Dr. Shin Yon. Shin Yong Yang. This.

[George]

The bravery of trying to pronounce that just now on air. I think I was pretty. You are the greatest.

[Chris Williamson]

Great. That was just a fucking dice roll.

[George]

But he said it instantly.

[Sean]

What is courage but taking action? I think the this. I went back to his Twitter today to find this. Holy shit. He created a storm in his mentions of people coming after him for this

[George]

because is he AI. Look at this profile picture.

[Sean]

Oh, perhaps I didn't look that deep. Why does he have a golden brow?

[George]

Is he dead? Interesting.

[Sean]

He might be after that tweet because Big Pharma got him. No, I'm kidding.

[Chris Williamson]

Running a plastic surgery clinic in Busan, Korea. I bet he is busy as fuck. Think about how many Koreans get plastic surgery. Dude.

[Sean]

I know it's crazy.

[Chris Williamson]

Is he just anti seem like he's very anti GLPs.

[Sean]

He's been hammering this for days and he said that a bunch of physicians that sell GLPs came after him because they're shareholders and it's all part of the big scheme. But there's basically. I think this is rooted in theory and it makes sense theoretically if it acts on the same dopaminergic pathways. But the very concept of the fact that it doesn't just kill your appetite, it just kills your drive in general. It just gives you the dopamine fill without having to do anything.

[Chris Williamson]

It works for more stuff than just food, which is pretty interesting. It seems to work on weed. It seems to work on behavioral addictions. Alcoholism, gaming.

[George]

Gambling.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, gambling. So the fact that what is limerence? What is attraction? It's the same thing. It's this dropping of serotonin, it's massive increase in epinephrine, norepinephrine, dopamine. Rush, rush, rush, rush. Like a very obsessed crush phase. There's a really interesting thing that's similar to that PSSD, post SSRI. Sexual dysfunction. So when people are on SSRIs, their sex drive can go down. But if you take them for a long enough period, or if you take them especially during puberty, and increasingly more young people are getting them prescribed when they're young. This can lock in for the rest of time. You can get genital numbing, like the pathways that just allow you to feel what's going on during sex, they get neutered. Your drive gets. So there's all of these groups of people who are trying to reignite re kickstart their own. They're probably the ones that are watching the fucking BDSM port. They need to escalate. But yeah, between that and hormonal birth control for women driving down their sex drive and making them choose guys that they wouldn't be attracted to if they weren't on it, and GLPs and SSRI it is. The sex recession is just not at all. It's just not a surprise. If you're having sex, you're in the minority.

[Jared]

If Keir Starmer calls you up and says, we're going to make you chief sex officer, what do you do to improve the situation?

[Chris Williamson]

Well, you can't pull people off SSRIs because some of them need it. And even if they don't need it, they're going to rebel. So that wouldn't be good. Can't pull people off GLP1s because that's also going to be pretty bad. And maybe they were going to die soon too. I think co ed spaces dating should be allowed at work. Obviously there's always going to be some blast radius of side effects that happen. You're going to get in trouble because there's going to be some guy that doesn't take no for an answer and is blowing through boundaries in the wrong way. But I think a big part of it is making guys braver because guys were already pretty timid and approaching women. Now post MeToo, everyone's terrified. So trying to re encourage men. I mean, you've heard me do this before. But like the MeToo instruction of men, don't be pushy with women. Only landed with guys that were already nervous with women. The dudes that were blowing through boundaries and really needed to have the me too revolution, like hit them, they just didn't take any. Took no heed of it. These are advice hyper responders.

[Jared]

Could you explain that? It's one of my favorite ideas of yours, the advice hyper responder.

[Chris Williamson]

So advice doesn't land evenly. It sort of distributes more like alcohol than it does medicine. The people who really need to take it are unchanged, while the people that are already overdosing on it take too much. So think about the advice to just Work harder. The lazy person who spends all of their time on the couch, they're unchanged. They don't even see it apply to them. Whereas the person who already believes like they're not working hard enough, that pushes them to work even more, take more responsibility. The girl who believes that everything is already her fault decides that she needs to bear even more of the burden and carry bags that aren't hers. When the person who points the finger elsewhere just again coasts past it unchanged. The instruction for men to open up and be more sensitive. The existing sensitive guys who are already kind of opening their hearts far too much and crying at things that they shouldn't do, they take that as an indication that they're already emotionally insufficient. Whereas the stoic boomer just, you know, no impact at all. So it's one of the problems with giving blanket coverage advice. It's why on the show and with everything that I write now, I'm so much more hesitant about saying this works for everyone. And it's almost always caveated with. If this sounds like it applies to you, it probably does. But then you've got the advice hyper responder thing, which is maybe it just confirms your fears. Maybe it already pushes you in the direction that you were going previously. So, yeah, it's a difficult world to navigate when there's lots of. What's that naval line. If you take enough self advice, take enough personal development advice, it all just nets out to zero.

[George]

Every maxim has an equal.

[Jared]

I actually think that's useful in a way, because when you have two people that you deeply respect that are completely the opposite, you almost go. It's like two things pulling you in that direction. You kind of stay still as a result. Like, one of my favorite stories of all time was it's the greatest tennis match of all time. That's what it's called. And it's Novak Djokovic versus Rafael Nadal. It goes on for five sets. I think it's about seven and a half hours. There's a rain break in between. I think Nadal takes the lead, Djokovic takes it back. Nadal takes the lead. There's a tie break that's about 70 minutes long. Like, one tie break is 70 minutes long. They finish the game, and I think it's 1:40am And Djokovic just collapses. And there's a part, there's this amazing part in Djokovic's biography where he's talking about discipline and he's talking about this is what it takes to win. And he's describing how in the aftermath of the game, he sat in the dressing room exhausted, and he's not had any sugar because he's been so disciplined and so focused, because this is what it takes. He's not had any sugar in, I think it's three years leading up to this. So he allows himself, like a tab of chocolate on his tongue, and he lets it melt. And he says, I stopped then immediately, and I was back preparing for the next tournament. And what I love about this story

[George]

is he didn't even chew it.

[Jared]

He didn't even shoo it. Just let it melt. Just let it melt. Because this shows you what it takes, the discipline. Meanwhile, Australian Open, three years later, Roger Federer wins, and he eats ice cream every single night. And it's like, oh, there's Djokovic, there's Federer. And it's not that either of them were wrong. They kind of just did what worked for them. And that's why I kind of like collecting completely opposite pieces of advice. So, for example, Stephen King wrote his entire novel or all his work, just raw dogging it. He would just turn up, cup of coffee, stare at a blank screen, make it happen. J.K. rowling used a spreadsheet for the whole of Harry Potter. So it's just.

[Chris Williamson]

There's a handwritten spreadsheet. I've seen that.

[Jared]

Yeah, there's a handwritten spreadsheet. So there's like just different approaches. And when you get to the top of any craft, you'll notice that you'll have. It's same with investing, right? Warren Buffett does almost only invest in things he'll understand, reads everything. And who's the guy who does it all via algorithms, like Jim Simons, like Renaissance Capital, everything by our algorithms. Both billionaires, multiple times over. It's really interesting going, oh, now I have to pick my own way.

[Chris Williamson]

Well, it's so idiosyncratic, right? Like you don't know what it is that's going to work for you.

[Jared]

The irony is the one thing that they all have in common, often, is that they have nothing in common, is that they've kind of done what worked for them. That's the one thing that they actually share.

[Chris Williamson]

I think the underlying principle is compliance, that you have to find something that you can comply to. And that is why it's so idiosyncratic. Like, it has to be different, because if you couldn't comply to it, you're not going to see the results. Consistency is super important. So if Djokovic had tried Nadal's approach, or Nadal had tried Federer's approach, that wouldn't have worked by design. But wasn't it Djokovic that said I just like hitting the ball? Yeah, that seems like kind of counter to the robotic approach. That doesn't seem that fun.

[Jared]

Well that my friend Billy has a an amazing story about this. The just like hitting a ball one was when he was, he was about to quit. He was like fifth in the world. Spoke to his coach and gets into that whole I just like winning the ball and then he goes on this tear and becomes number one. But the actual like discipline when it came to his diet was, was specific to him. Whereas Federer ice cream every night.

[George]

Well, I had one to show on the advice self help advice thing. Did you see the Tim Ferriss blog he posted I think today or yesterday.

[Chris Williamson]

The Ouroboros of infinity.

[George]

Yeah, exactly. So Tim Ferriss, who's like helped a lot of people and been a big distributor and receiver of self help, basically writes this post, kind of essentially saying gotta be careful with self help and. But. But in a pretty personal way. I thought it was kind of an amazing post about like if you go through this loop, the type of person who wants self help, they want to be happy. And so they try to fix a problem to make themselves happy, but in order to fix the problem, they're constantly searching and trying to fix the problem

[Sean]

has nuts.

[George]

And so this post is amazing. It's basically just like the act of self improvement can lead to that sort of infinite cycle of searching for problems to solve, to improve, and then you just sort of get addicted to the medicine in that way.

[Jared]

How do you solve the infinite problem?

[George]

Well, he actually says it in this. Basically he's like, there's this. You need both. If you just have radical acceptance of your situation, you go nowhere and you will ultimately not be happy with your own lack of progress in life. But if you only chase progress and never take acceptance to either weaknesses, flaws, imperfections in your life and just be able to sit with them, then you'll constantly be moving and trying to make progress to make yourself happy, but you won't be happy ever. And so that's such a. Scroll up, Jared.

[Chris Williamson]

That's such a fucking good line. The older I get, the more I think that self help can be a trap. Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. I say this after around 20 years of writing self help and a lifetime of consuming it. Bro, this is the fucking. Do you know there's two types of pivots that white podcasters make? Bless you. One is The God pivot. And the other one is the renunciation of all of our lives. Yeah, it's the. Turns out I was over optimizing. The other one is. Turns out that I just needed to give it all to Jesus. Those are the only two. Pick your direction. Pick your direction. Podcast man. That's it.

[Sean]

I chose the second one.

[Chris Williamson]

Hey, I went to youth thing. I heard the other night.

[Sean]

Keegan told me.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, What'd you think? I was praising, man. No, it was nice. It's crazy.

[George]

What is this?

[Sean]

He went to a Tuesday night young adult service at a church at Austin Ridge Church.

[Chris Williamson]

So young adult and didn't sneak in. Permitted up until age 40.

[Sean]

Yeah, you said I went to the kids thing. I was like, interesting.

[Chris Williamson]

Well, I mean, is it wrong?

[Sean]

Yeah, I think everyone's our age.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, I mean, I didn't ask for ID, but fair.

[Jared]

How old are you again? 23.

[Chris Williamson]

Correct. I'm 35.

[Sean]

You were right about what you said, by the way. I love that line of thought you just brought up about the. The choosing which works for you in self development. One of my favorite quotes is from Dr. Stan. Efforting compliance is the science. It's the same way that people get jacked in the gym doing Mike Mentor's low volume approach versus someone going to the gym six days a week and doing 20 sets. If they just don't stop, they're going to get jacked. The only thing, the only path to success is the one you just don't leave.

[Chris Williamson]

Find the one that you enjoy.

[Sean]

Find the one that you enjoy. So this is interesting. This is another. I'll never get off X. What have I been missing? This is exactly like must have been how my dad felt when he discovered Facebook reels. And then I was like, why is dad still in the bathroom? 45 minutes later he's laughing at some bullshit meme. It's so funny. I banned from answering legal and health care questions. This is very interesting. I don't. I don't know what truth or validity there is to this because this is on X. But breaking New York bill would ban AI from answering questions related to medicine, law, dentistry, nursing, psychology, social work, engineering and more. And so there's this narrative of I wish I had the. I had someone who captured the quote and basically said something where now we've gotten to the point where you can get for free what the Experts are charging $400 an hour for, and suddenly it's restricted and controlled upon. I don't know where the breadth and depth of this regulation and this bill will go. But it's an interesting thought that now readily available information is completely free or at most, what, $10 a month for. For Claude or ChatGPT.

[Chris Williamson]

ChatGPT.

[Sean]

And now suddenly there's this bill that was like, hold on. And it's someone, someone commented like, WebMD. WebMD's been giving people dogshit advice for 25 years now and they didn't ever get banned. Why is this suddenly an issue, do you think?

[Chris Williamson]

It's because it's kind of personified. It feels like a person's giving it to you. I mean, you'll have done this before that. Your AI gets it wrong and then you start like shouting at it. You try and discipline it. How could you have done that? You're like, okay, I just need to. You never did that with Google. You never said to Google, how could you have done this? I think it feels like you're talking to another human.

[Jared]

The first thing now I always recommend is kind of three factor authentication. So I'll never just speak to one LLM, I'll speak to three of them. And I notice if I go via three, the odds of them making a mistake seems to go significantly lower. Going back to that New York thing, it feels like, what are you going to do? You can't.

[Sean]

How are you going to control.

[Jared]

First off, it's just New York are always like crazy for regulation like this. That never happens, never passes, or never actually actualizes. Even if they do immediately, people are going to vpn. We live in the world of the vpn. These regulations just are going to have absolutely no impact. Apart from headlines.

[George]

There's a billion users using ChatGPT. What are you going to. It's like fist fighting the wind to be like, no, we're going to. We say no garden hose to a forest fire. Yeah. What are you going to do?

[Jared]

When AI first kicked off, there was all the talk about hallucinations and it's definitely gotten a lot better. And the original line was never speak to an LLM without first speaking to your doctor or your lawyer. And now my line is like, that's true.

[Chris Williamson]

But also never the reverse.

[Tom Cruise Impersonator]

Yeah, yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Never speak to your doctor or your

[Jared]

lawyer without first consulting an ll. The amount of people I know personally that have fixed health conditions, that they've been working with a doctor for 10 to 20 years. That ChatGPT is just one shotted in one is incredible.

[Chris Williamson]

You see that speaking of polymarket, polymarket took down the will and nuclear war breakout this year betting market because there was way too much trading Volume happening around. What's going on in Iran.

[Jared]

Oh, wow.

[Sean]

What is Polymarket?

[George]

You know, but on X, he just discovered. I just discovered X, George. 14 years, 68. I don't know.

[Sean]

I don't know what Polymarket is.

[Chris Williamson]

Do you want to describe it, Sean? I don't even know how to fucking say what it is.

[George]

Yeah, it's basically a casino for everything. So you can go bet on any dangerous. They call it a prediction market. It's kind of like the aioli versus mayonnaise, like situation. So it's like, oh, sports betting, not legal. Polymarket betting on a sport event. Legal somehow. And so basically you can go. So you can bet on who's going to become president, you can bet on who's going to win this, this game this weekend, but you can also bet on anything, like who's going to win or like, you know, will there be a strike? Will this guy be the president in a month? And so you can bet on basically any outcome. And the criticism of prediction markets early on was they become assassination markets because you create this huge incentive to just say, will this guy be around? And if I want money, it ends up becoming a bounty.

[Sean]

It's just becoming a deadpool.

[George]

Yeah, exactly. So that's always been the criticism and it's like, oh, there's plenty of other good things about it. Like if you want to know the truth about how likely is something to happen, if you go to the New York Times or any, like any just traditional news outlet, you know, the incentive of the writer is to write a juicy headline and then maybe have they have their opinion. But Polymarket is basically only people with skin in the game betting on an outcome. So if you're wrong consistently, you will lose money. If you're right consistently, you'll have a bigger bankroll on polymarket. So over time it becomes the closest thing to like accurate predictions.

[Chris Williamson]

Did they get the election right in 24?

[George]

Yep.

[Chris Williamson]

Did they?

[Sean]

And there's a cash payout for this. Like you're actually gambling.

[Chris Williamson]

It's just gambling, but it's gambling with a graph.

[Jared]

It's an exchange, which is very important.

[Chris Williamson]

It's gambling, but there's a graph on it, which makes it look a lot more like a market.

[George]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jared]

What's your kind of take on it, do you think? How do you think it's going to play out over the next few years?

[George]

Unstoppable? Like, I think it's going to be. People love gambling. People love predicting things. People need the information. I mean, it is growing like Crazy right now. I don't know if you saw. There's actually a funny story. I think I have it on my sheet if you don't pull it up. But there was this man and woman apparently getting divorced. This might be a fake news AI, by the way. Like, the story is almost too good to be true, but they're. They're getting divorced. The man worked part time in a warehouse, but suddenly started driving, like a BMW. And the wife was like, can you. She asked her lawyer, like, can you just. Do you have a way to check, like, how could he afford this car? And basically he did, like a forensic audit and, and subpoena, like, kind of subpoenaed his digital wallets. And they basically found that this Guy had made $3 million over the last year with a pretty much 100% hit rate on his poly market bets and what he had realized. And so she was now going to be entitled to 3 million, half of $3 million. But the guy fighting it in the courtroom was like, well, this is not an asset. It's a strategy I'm running, a strategy that's allowing me to win. So the judge was like, okay, what's your strategy? And he basically was like, well, I just realized that the Las Vegas sportsbooks would update and the market I was betting on wasn't updating fast enough. And so I would just bet the new odds. Even if the thing didn't happen, it was going to always match the, like, new odds. And so he's like, I was just arbitraging that. And so he had, like, they audited his bets and it was just all green, basically. And so there's a lot of people that have found these little arbitrage. It's like people are sending people to, let's say, a sporting event because they can relay what happened faster than the broadcast and faster than the, like, the database update.

[Chris Williamson]

This was happening in Asia with soccer matches. Yeah, I swear this was happening there. And someone was going over and sending it back.

[George]

Yeah, it's like, have you ever read Flash Boys? There was like a whole, like, quant trading thing where if they put your server close to the New York Stock Exchange server, you could get your trade in before the guy who was doing it through a sent like a normal server. And they're like putting fiber through mountains to, like, shave off pennies off of every trade, essentially.

[Chris Williamson]

Wow.

[Sean]

So do gambling laws apply then universally to polymarket when it came out? It's a gambling affiliate. So, like, we can't do it in Georgia.

[George]

There's basically a loophole. So prediction markets are not considered gambling. They're. They're like commodities contracts. So it's like. It's like betting on the future price of, like, soybeans. So they're regulated by the same people who do like the commodities markets. And so that's how they've been able to get around this.

[Chris Williamson]

Everything, Everything.

[Sean]

World events.

[Chris Williamson]

There is no. Oh, it's so much smaller than world events. Like, what color is the Gatorade going to be that gets dunked over the head of the coach at the Super Bowl?

[George]

Anything.

[Sean]

And we're calling this. It's called Poly Market. And it's. It's. This is like when someone says, what do you do for work? And they go, I'm a sanitation engineer. He's a fucking trash guy. This is the same branding, branding, branding.

[Jared]

Every bit of life essentially becomes insider trading if you take it further.

[George]

Wow.

[Jared]

Interesting question.

[George]

During the halftime show, they were like, oh, is he gonna play this song? Well, guess what? There was like 400 backup dancers. And so it was very. They're getting caught because it's like, suddenly this wallet comes out, puts 32 grand on this one obscure market. And it's like, guess what? He was a backup dancer.

[Chris Williamson]

Did you see the guy who stood outside of the stadium in the days preceding it, timing how long the national anthem was going to be? And he was like, out there with a stopwatch. He videoed it himself with a stop because. Rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsing. And then puts the bet on and wins a fucking shit ton of money. Because he knew. Exactly.

[George]

And that was legal because he was outside. It was public information.

[Chris Williamson]

He was one of those radio telescope listening device things like tuning in. And sure enough, we need a close

[George]

up of just his face during this discussion. The whole discussion. We take a picture in. Picture cam of his face. Okay, so each of those explanations.

[Chris Williamson]

Okay, so, polymarket.

[Jared]

Yeah.

[George]

Did you guys see the super bowl streaker guy? His. His YouTube channel?

[Sean]

No.

[Chris Williamson]

He put meta ray bans on, right?

[George]

He did. So this guy. This video is incredible. I don't watch many YouTube videos, but I watched all 30 minutes of this video.

[Chris Williamson]

Hang on, how many? He's been training.

[George]

He's fucking training.

[Sean]

Agility drill.

[George]

No, no. It's so funny though, the length.

[Tom Cruise Impersonator]

So.

[George]

So this guy did it before and he's like, I'm gonna do it again. 23 days. And this is basically a training montage of like a bank heist, but it's just streaking at the Super Bowl.

[Jared]

Wow.

[George]

So he's doing agility drills, and he shows pictures of the security cars, which, you know, they look like event security. And he's like, you think they can stop me? As he's doing, like, a shuttle drill on the.

[Sean]

This is brilliant. Creating. This is like he's training for the combine.

[George]

Yeah, exactly. And so he. And then if you skip forward, he's like, on seat geek, looking at the, like, 3D images of which seat is optimal to jump. Like, how high is the rail? How deep is the fall? And then he has a decoy, so he has his friend do it with him. The friend jumps first. Everybody goes to tackle him. And then he jumps second and gets a free run. This is the run. That's the friend.

[Jared]

Oh.

[Chris Williamson]

So.

[George]

And then he goes second while they're.

[Chris Williamson]

No way.

[George]

He's a fallen soldier. And then this guy. You think you can stop me?

[Chris Williamson]

Shake and bake.

[Sean]

And then he's like, in the metals, get.

[George]

This is like Madden right in the meta.

[Tom Cruise Impersonator]

And then

[George]

he gets taken down by. By. By an actual player.

[Chris Williamson]

That's unreal.

[Sean]

What's the penalty for something like that? A ticket? Because it's a misdemeanor.

[George]

No, he goes to jail. So he goes to jail for the night. But he knew that because it happened last year. So he's like, I got to remember to piss before I got to eat because I don't want to. You know, like, he's like, planning for his jail visit, and at the end, he basically respawns like, it's gta because the comes back when he's leaving the jail. And all of this was to promote his, like, stock tips platform or something. But he got, like, over a million views on.

[Chris Williamson]

If you could have bet on yourself on Polymarket.

[George]

He did.

[Tom Cruise Impersonator]

He did.

[George]

He did. Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

He knew what the fine was. And then he bet on himself.

[George]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

And he did it.

[Sean]

Odds of a streaker at the Super Bowl.

[George]

He didn't want to, like, confirm it, but they're, like, pretty sure him and

[Sean]

his friends made a crazy bag off this.

[George]

But isn't that crazy? Isn't it, like, just insane what YouTube will? It's like, show me your incentive. I'll show you your outcome. It's like YouTube is basically like, do the craziest shit.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah.

[George]

So then people do exactly the craziest

[Chris Williamson]

shit that he trained for. It is unreal.

[George]

Did you guys see this? You're on X, but you're not on. Are you on TikTok?

[Chris Williamson]

Okay, he is TikTok.

[George]

There's a TikTok that I thought was just super funny. It's Tom Cruise. There's this Tom Cruise impersonator. And what happens is this guy invites him over to his house. He basically hires the Tom Cruise impersonator. But not for a party or a corporate event. Just come over to my living room. And so I don't know. Have you guys seen this?

[McDonald's CEO]

He's.

[Sean]

Yes.

[George]

Put the sound on because the voice is amazing.

[Sean]

This is so good.

[George]

Hey, what's up? Respect the talking team. Yeah, I guess just like whatever. So it's super awkward.

[Tom Cruise Impersonator]

Right.

[Jared]

Wingman.

[George]

I love this.

[Tom Cruise Impersonator]

Do expect that, huh?

[Chris Williamson]

Tom.

[George]

Tom.

[Jared]

Hey.

[George]

Good to see you.

[Tom Cruise Impersonator]

Hey, my dastard. You don't know what it's like to be out here. For you is that Arpit dawn provides. Swallowing seeds that I can never fully

[George]

tell you about to just help me help you. Help me help you.

[Tom Cruise Impersonator]

What are we talking about here?

[Chris Williamson]

What have you done, Tom?

[Sean]

We had the best day of my life.

[Tom Cruise Impersonator]

Just going to keep getting better.

[Sean]

It's an honor to meet you.

[Tom Cruise Impersonator]

Good to keep compelled.

[Jared]

Good to see you, dad. What are we talking about?

[Chris Williamson]

Stoicism. What are you working on, Tom?

[Tom Cruise Impersonator]

Deep learning.

[Jared]

What are we.

[Tom Cruise Impersonator]

I'm working on a ton of things. A lot of stuff. You know, flying inverted, you know, buzzing the tower, all that stuff. Just really happy to be here.

[George]

You ever had a new tonic?

[Tom Cruise Impersonator]

I got. I got to read the ingredients first.

[Jared]

Yeah, I like all these things.

[Tom Cruise Impersonator]

Yeah.

[Sean]

Did you put ketamine in this new tonic? Am I in a K hole right now?

[Tom Cruise Impersonator]

I studied Rolio L. Theani.

[Jared]

One of my favorites.

[Chris Williamson]

How's the church?

[Jared]

Church good?

[Tom Cruise Impersonator]

Church is good. Really Giving me everything I need. Oh, shoot. That happens sometimes. Miscomposed myself. So how's everyone doing?

[Jared]

Are we going down?

[George]

So much better than I was five minutes ago. How far down the rabbit hole have we gone?

[Jared]

Let's go deep.

[Sean]

Okay.

[Tom Cruise Impersonator]

How far are we gonna go?

[Chris Williamson]

I feel like I'm in a fucking fever dream. I feel like I'm in a fever dream.

[Tom Cruise Impersonator]

How do you think I feel, by the way?

[Chris Williamson]

If you'd been a mass shooter, we would have all been dead. I have no defensive capabilities at all.

[Jared]

It's a little sneaky.

[Chris Williamson]

Holy.

[Sean]

You need to tighten the security in this place. How did he get in here?

[George]

Have you any questions for me?

[Jared]

Have you ever met the actual Tom?

[Tom Cruise Impersonator]

I did, yeah.

[George]

Met him?

[Jared]

Yeah.

[Tom Cruise Impersonator]

How was that Tom?

[Chris Williamson]

Ramon?

[Tom Cruise Impersonator]

It was very exciting.

[George]

He was blown away.

[Tom Cruise Impersonator]

Well, you know, it was two in the morning. I was with some friends having drinks and he was having dinner with like

[Jared]

a big group of people.

[Tom Cruise Impersonator]

And I wanted to buy him a bottle of champagne as like a way to commemorate after impersonating him for 10 years at the time, just, you know, meeting him for the first time. And the waiter shot me down, said, have you been to the Chateau Marmont, anyone?

[Jared]

No.

[Tom Cruise Impersonator]

In la. Iconic, iconic landmark hotel. But now it's like a different, different kind of place. Like a special, like solo house kind of membership club. But tried to buy him a bottle of champagne. The waiter shot me down, said, you'll be banned and I'm going to be fired. So I just couldn't approach Tom Cruise. But my girlfriend at the time said, there's no way in hell you're leaving here tonight without meeting him. So she was really adamant about it. So he leaves two in the morning. I'm having drinks with my friend. We're getting more, progressively more drunk, right? And everyone's gone. It's just Jimmy, my friend Jimmy, myself and Donna in the garden of the Chateau. It's a restaurant. And she ends up leaving to go to the bathroom. And Jimmy gets a phone call from Donna saying Tom Cruise is waiting for me in the valet area. Like literally waiting for me. I couldn't believe it. So I get up out of my chair, I sprint through the whole lobby and the whole hotel. And I get there and he's there with Jeremy Renner about to get on his motorcycle at 2 in the morning. And we had this really nice moment. We shook each other. You know, it's an honor and privilege to meet you. You complete wish you every time. He's very hands me close talker. He's handsy, you know?

[Jared]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tom Cruise Impersonator]

It was very exciting. I didn't go to sleep that night. It was definitely a wonderful experience. Yeah.

[George]

Tom, we appreciate you being a special guest.

[Tom Cruise Impersonator]

Oh, absolutely. I've overstayed my.

[George]

Wow.

[Tom Cruise Impersonator]

I'm gonna back off. If you need anything from me, just let me know.

[Jared]

Know.

[Tom Cruise Impersonator]

If you need to learn about, you know, logic and reasoning, I'm here for you.

[Jared]

Okay.

[Sean]

What a pleasure. I love you too.

[Tom Cruise Impersonator]

Hey, beach volleyball tomorrow at 8am

[Jared]

the right. Hi. Fuck.

[Chris Williamson]

I gotta get the closeup of the crying.

[Sean]

Where do we go from here?

[Jared]

I mean, how do you think audio listeners feel?

[George]

The big question. The big question.

[Chris Williamson]

Get a studio. They said it won't drive you insane.

[George]

They said the mass shooter line had to do something special completely.

[Chris Williamson]

If that guy had a sidearm, he

[George]

was everybody in here in three seconds

[Sean]

after the door open.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, he moves fast. Hey.

[Tom Cruise Impersonator]

Damn.

[George]

I was telling the guys. I was like, I was Like, I want to do this. I think it would be fun. Just do something different. And they were like, like, you know, we don't want to throw Chris off his vibe for the first episode. I was like, I don't know, I think I'm going to do it. I think we're going to do it anyway.

[Chris Williamson]

I think that's part of the vibe. Holy fucking shit. We're like, it might work, but just don't touch Chris. And he went straight for the handshake.

[Jared]

I was like, oh fuck.

[Chris Williamson]

Just fucking rugby tackles me to the ground. Jesus fucking Christ, dude. Oh, okay, look, you know, sleep matters, but let's be real. Most nights you're probably not getting the sort of sleep that's actually restorative. 8 Sleep Pod 5 fixes that. It's a smart cover that you throw over the top of your mattress and that actively cools or heats each side of the bed up to 20 degrees. They've even added a temperature regulating duvet and pillowcase so you and your partner can sleep at your preferred temperatures, covered head to toe like some temperature controlled mummy. Plus it's got upgraded sensors that run health checks when you're asleep, tracking things like abnormal heartbeats and breathing issues and sudden HRV changes. There's a built in speaker for white noise. The autopilot feature learns your sleep patterns, makes real time adjustments to improve your sleep. It even detects when you're snoring and lifts your head a few inches to help you breathe better. That is sleep is clinically proven to add up to an hour of quality sleep per night. And best of all, they have a 30 day sleep trial so you can buy it and sleep on it for 29 nights. And if you don't like it, they will just give you your money back. Plus they ship internationally. Right now you can get up to $350 off the Pod 5 by going to the link in the description below, by heading to eightsleep.com modernwisdom and using the code ModernWisdom at checkout that's E I G H T-Sleep.com ModernWisdom and Modern Wisdom A checkout to get you back for that sian. What's your heritage?

[George]

Indian.

[Chris Williamson]

Indian. Interesting that you say that.

[George]

Seamless transition.

[Chris Williamson]

Seth Stevens Davidowitz, ex data scientist at Google wrote a very famous book called Everybody Lies Analyzed. Google autocomplete search frequency data for phrases beginning with My husband wants. Across the world, queries are relatively common. My husband wants sex all the time. My husband wants a divorce. My husband Wants a threesome. I searched it earlier on today. My husband wants a gay cation. For some reason turned up quite high. But in India. In India, the most common completion was, my husband wants me to breastfeed him. This pattern appeared far more frequently in India than any other country. In India, searches about breastfeeding a husband appear roughly as often as searches about breastfeeding a baby.

[Jared]

Wow. Before you make a comment, Sian, bring her through.

[George]

I think. Two can play this game.

[Chris Williamson]

Bonnie, come on down.

[Sean]

I think the most shocking part about that was after you relayed that bomb drop of a statistic. I look at Sean and he goes, yeah, like, it's.

[Chris Williamson]

Of course, it makes a lot of sense.

[Sean]

And the sky is blue.

[Chris Williamson]

So if you look at a map, pornhub release, all of that. They've got a good data science team, which you might not expect, actually, but pornhub have got a great data science team. If you look at the most popular types of porn across the world, varies country to country, the absolute outlier is India with breastfeeding porn. And I'm fascinated to work out why. I think maybe it's something to do with the sort of overbearing mother thing. Redemption junction arc, Some fucking Freudian going on or something to do with cows and milk.

[George]

Sacred.

[Chris Williamson]

I don't know.

[George]

Yeah. I like how you're like, explain your people's behaviors.

[Chris Williamson]

You speak for them billion Indians.

[George]

Well, I think it's basically our version of the stepsister genre. Right. Like, that's basically the. I think in America, it's like, it could be a man and woman. Hook it up. But what if she was his stepsister or stepmom? It's like, there's always, like, a step. Whatever. In India, we don't really get divorced, so there's not really a step. There's not really a step thing. So you just go straight to the mom. That's my explanation.

[Sean]

Right to the source.

[Chris Williamson]

Right. It's the closest thing that you can get to.

[George]

It might be like, isn't there, like, the Freudian thing? Like, you. You know, there's like, desire for the mom or whatever.

[Sean]

Yeah. In early childhood.

[Chris Williamson]

Speak for yourself, Sean.

[Sean]

Not that I. Not that I have the experience, but in early childhood, the Freudian thing is that there's, like. That's your first.

[George]

Yeah.

[Sean]

Attraction.

[George]

I was reading. I'm reading the Elon biography, and they were talking because Elon's had pretty, like, terrible choice in women or at least, like, for himself. Like, the relationships have not worked.

[Chris Williamson]

He also had quite a big sample size he's the common denominator here.

[George]

Yeah, fair enough. But like, he was with Amber Heard and it was like a pretty toxic relationship, but they stayed together, they got back together. He was with a. He was with, I think, Tallulah Riley. They got married in. He proposed in seven days and then they got married, divorced. At the divorce proceeding, they start making out and tell the judge they don't. They're going to do go. Go ahead with the divorce, but then they move back in together. So he's done some like, questionable things. And one of his wives basically said, like, he's attracted to like, the abuse because his father was so abusive. And it's basically like he. There's something about like, love and the intensity of a toxic, abusive relationship that like, fused somewhere in his body. So when he meets a woman who's intense and they get into like a toxic relationship, like, he has that anchor to love somehow, like parental love in some weird way.

[Chris Williamson]

So I was like, I found out some interesting stuff this week about insecure attachment. So avoidant attachment, fearful avoidant and anxious attachment. There's different types of attachment styles. And about 50% of the population are securely attached. About 20% are anxiously attached. About 20% are avoidant attached. Sorry, 5% are fearful avoidant, which is both. And about 25% are anxious avoidant. What you think is most people that have an insecure attachment style, they're not happy with it, they want to change it. They would much sooner not be pushing people away that they want to get close to or worried that someone's going to leave them, that maybe they feel like they're overreacting to their absence too much. So I was interested to work out what the evolutionary advantages are that are conferred on people by being anxious or avoidant. And you'd think, well, there have to be some anxiously attached people. They have much keener sense of paying attention to small differences, changes in the moments, changes in environment. And there was a great study done where they brought people into a setting and they'd already done an attachment style quiz prior. So they understood the different attachment styles in the room. And then a computer would slowly blow a little bit of smoke out as if there was a fire that might be about to start. What's fascinating is the anxiously attached people were the ones who noticed the smoke first, but the avoidantly attached people were the first ones out the door every single time. And the argument here is that the anxiously attached people are able to pay attention to small changes. They're the ones that will be scrutinizing they're hypervigilant for stuff, but they'll think, should we. Do we leave that tiger? Like, do we think it's getting closer? Is it. The avoidant people are like, I'm fucking out of here. And everybody then follows after them. So one of the cool things that the avoidantly attached people have is a competitive advantage. They work better on their own, they're decisive, but they're really good at being in calamity because they're able to actually partition a bit of their brain off. So if you were an emt, if you were dealing with some horrendous car accident, some car wreck, and you just need to get the job done, you almost need to sort of put one bit of your brain off to a side. You need to be, okay, compassionate, it's not time for you now. Whereas a more anxiously attached person would struggle somewhat more to do that. And I think what's cool about it is we tend to not look so much at the advantages conferred by stuff that we feel are shortcomings. And this is a really good example here of, sure, maybe you wish that you weren't worried that your partner's going to leave you all the time, but this is why you're amazing at marketing copy or at paying attention to brand. Or, for instance, if you were a police unit, you would want the SWAT guys to be avoidant and the detectives to be anxious. And it's just. I think it's really interesting to think about how different psychological makeups give you both benefits and costs. And that's a cool study about it.

[George]

I like that the secure ones just stay.

[Chris Williamson]

The secure people are the worst. Yeah, secure people by far. They've got the best relationships, but they're the ones that don't notice the thing and would be burned alive.

[George]

Yeah, it's like a gossip, right? Like, gossip is seen as a negative thing to do. That's like, that's a. That's a trait you should try to get rid of. It's like, well, why does. Why did gossip survive evolutionarily? It's. Well, it's actually incredibly important. I can't vet 150 different people in a new tribe, so we need gossip to quickly spread about each person's reputation for me to, like, survive in any large group. So gossip is actually incredibly important if you're going to be in any sort of social tribe. But it's seen as this, like, really negative behavior that you should stop doing. You know what I mean?

[Chris Williamson]

You know what? Venting is so somebody that is able to couch gossip under concern for another person. So there's an effect in psychology called the bless her heart effect. And it really only happens among women, not so much among men. So they brought women into a lab and they had a confederate, as they're called, so that the person that's a part of the study come in, although they didn't know it. Two versions. First version, the woman is dressed very provocatively and looks sort of well put together, like, quite sexy. In the second version, she looks like a mess, like, not a sexual rival at all. So how much of a sexual rival is this particular woman? That's what they were controlling for. And in both versions, this woman comes in and says, I slept with two guys last night, and I don't really know what's going on. And, like, I'm not really too sure about this thing. And then later on, she would leave the room. And what you find is that the woman that she said it to, if she was dressed provocatively, more likely says tells somebody else. They gossip about what's going on. But the type of gossip is what caused. They called it the bless her heart effect. The type of gossip is couched under concern. So, George, I'm just so worried. I'm really, really worried about Christina. She's just sleeping with all of these guys, and I'm so worried that she's going to get hurt. And the reason that you do that is that if anybody ever pulls you up on it, it's like, well, look, Christina, I was just like, I'm sorry. I'm just worried about you.

[George]

I'm looking out for you.

[Chris Williamson]

I'm just so worried about you. And implicitly, it says me, right? I would never. Right? No, I wouldn't. I could never. That would never be what I would do. Also, I'm pro social. Look at how much I'm looking out for. But also, she slept with two fucking guys last night, by the way. And, yeah, it's just the bless her heart effect gossip thing is pretty fucking.

[George]

And what do they say about the other woman?

[Chris Williamson]

They were less likely to share it all. They were less likely? Yeah, because she looked like she was down on her luck. She didn't look like a sexual rival. It's an enforcement mechanism for intrasexual competition among women. That's the way it works.

[Sean]

Didn't you have a lady on recently? You had a discussion about malicious nature within females.

[Chris Williamson]

A full two hours of it, yeah. Danny Solikowski. She's a beast. But the fact that the Internet hasn't got Angry at that episode just shows how much female privilege there is. Well, she can say all of that. Everyone goes there and finds all of the problems with it. Yeah, it was. It's fascinating. Dude, this is just a big promotion

[Sean]

and masterclass on how to hang on to all your traumas and actually don't change. No, stay avoidant, stay anxious.

[Tom Cruise Impersonator]

Life.

[Sean]

Life's better this way. Yeah, don't do the work.

[Chris Williamson]

What if a computer gets set on fire? It's very important.

[Sean]

You need to hang on to that thing that made you not have committed relationships so you don't die in a fire. Yes, of course.

[Jared]

Naturally, time has flown by during this podcast, which brings me on to my point about time.

[George]

The king of transitions.

[Sean]

Amazing segue.

[George]

Phil Collins grandson is on it right now.

[Chris Williamson]

Sylvester Stallone's stepson.

[Sean]

You're so percept of the environment. Are you anxiously attached?

[Jared]

There needs to be an award for worse transition. So there's a guy called Albert Hein in around about the 1880s, and he is a geologist who's climbing up a mountain and he falls 60ft, right? So from the laws of physics, a 60ft fall is 1, 2, boom, and you're dead. So, but now he recalls what his experience was like of falling. So he falls and he immediately thinks, as he's falling down, he thinks, should I take my glasses off or should I keep them on? Should I drop my cane or should I basically cry for help? And he goes, oh, I wonder what it's going to be like when people realize that I'm on this trek, that I'm dead. Should I let them know, like, this is happening. Then he starts thinking about the lecture he's going to give next week and how they're going to all be there and go, oh, he's dead. Then his entire life flashes before his eyes two seconds. And what would be interesting about the story, you'd immediately go, well, this is quackery. This is him potentially making this thing up post hoc. But he then spent his entire life chatting to other people that have had this experience of falling off things from builders to different climbers. And lots of them mirror the exact same thing. That just as you're about to die, your dilation of time slows down so much. It's one big thing I've been writing about of late, around how do we go about slowing down the speed of time or changing time? And if you could find it on my Twitter, Jared, if you search George Mac, Janet's Law, about how time compresses with age and it's kind of this idea that you've experienced according to this theory, which I don't think is necessarily true, but according to this theory, you've lived half of your life by around about the age of 20.

[Chris Williamson]

And experientially.

[Jared]

Experientially, particularly because children. The reason why time feels so slow as a child is everything is new. So that's one of the arguments of how you slow down time is. For example, once we've been here, time has slowed down to some extent because we've been doing something new or you're in a new environment, but by the time you've been doing it 300 times, things go so much faster. But I don't know if you guys have actually thought through of like how as you get older, do you go about slowing down time and not just waking up. 85.

[Sean]

Yeah, I have.

[Jared]

Everything went. What do you do?

[Chris Williamson]

We'll get back to talking in just one second. But first, tell me if this sounds familiar. You train regularly, you eat reasonably well, maybe you even supplement. You feel fine, but you're just kind of going off vibes. Most people have absolutely no idea what's going on inside of their body, which is why I partnered with Function. Function gives you access to more than 160 advanced lab tests spanning hormones, heart, health, metabolic markers, inflammation, thyroid nutrients, liver and kidney function. It even detects early signals linked to more than 50 types of cancer. To put that in perspective, your typical annual physical might test about 20 markers and function runs over 160. And this isn't just numbers dumped into your inbox. Every result is reviewed by clinicians, abnormal markers get flagged, and you get clear explanations and a personalized protocol with actionable next steps so you can actually do something about what you learned. Best of all, you test twice a year, and everything lives in a simple dashboard. You can just track trends over time, make sure that you're moving in the right direction. Normally, this level of testing would cost thousands through private clinics. With function, it is $365 a year. That's $1 a day to know what's actually happening inside of your body. And right now, you can get $25 off bringing it down to 340. Get the exact same blood panels that I get and save that additional $25 by going to the link in the description below. By heading to functionhealth.com modernwisdom and using the code. Modern wisdom a checkout. That's functionhealth.com modern wisdom and modern Wisdom a checkout.

[Sean]

I mean, this Sounds incredibly rudimentary. And it's such a cliche take, but I think it's cliche because it's true. Yeah. There's a reason that cliches exist is I think things feel slower when you make an intention to over romanticize them. Like how one of the things I heard a friend say is, is how good can it get? How good, God, can it get? Like the cup of coffee. How damn good is this cup of coffee? And it forces you into the present over something seemingly minuscule. But if that coffee was bad, you'd notice it, right? Because you want a decent cup of coffee, and then if it's horrendous, you get pissed off. So why not notice? Wow, this is the perfect temperature. It's just bitter enough, but a little sweet. And then you look up, you go, wow. And the sun's out this morning, and it feels warm. And I find that when I bring perceptive or sensory experience into the present moment and just romanticize your life, as the cliche would call, everything feels more novel.

[Jared]

Yes.

[Sean]

So we were having cheeseburgers the other night, and I'm just like, how fun is this? You know, we got to watch I got to watch my friend workout material he's so excited about, and now we're eating a damn good cheeseburger. How good can it get?

[Jared]

So. So my. That literally what I wrote about was three things. So, like, the original story, that's part of it is it comes at it from a different angle, but it's essentially this boy called Henry, which I think I've told on the Christmas show, But just for people who haven't heard it before, Henry is, like 5 years old. He's playing that side on the streets of Connecticut, and a cyclist doesn't see him, clatters into Henry, knocks him unconscious, and his life becomes a bit strange. He starts having seizures, but by the age of 27, he's having 20 seizures per day. And he's desperate to fix it. He's trying everything that he can, and this is during peak experimental brain surgery. So he goes forward, volunteers, and wakes up, and he basically gets delivered some good news, some bad news, some awful news by life. So the good news is that the surgery's largely fixed his epilepsy. The bad news is that he won't remember the good news because of the awful news. And the awful news is that it's destroyed his ability to form new memories. So Henry lives from the age of 27 to 82 the same day because he only can remember things in two Minutes, increments and then it disappears. So he meets his psychiatrist for the first time every day. But the most disturbing thing about Henry was he would look in the mirror each day and be confused why the reflection looks so old because he's just forgotten everything.

[Chris Williamson]

He always thought he was 27. But now I'm 65. But now I'm 76.

[George]

Yeah, some long term memories like he

[Jared]

was anchored at a certain time exactly before 27. So it basically begs the question, you have like all the Brian Johnson's of the world, which I think are great, like the longevity people. But very few people talk about time longevity because in theory Henry lived a long life. He lived till 82. Or did he die at 27? And it's such an important part of memory. And the three things that I concluded when I was looking at the research for it. There's a great book called Time Expansion Dilution, I believe that goes into this more in depth. But number one is novel experiences. So doing new things. Number two is around both two and three are kind of what you said rolled into two different things. So two is like trying to create stories. So what's interesting is you don't remember your social media feed from yesterday. You can barely remember a tweet from yesterday, despite the fact you scrolled past so many novel things. But you can remember a movie from two years ago. Because we like character arcs, we like purpose, we like emotion, we like a buildup. So thinking about your kind of day or life into a story, like what would the hero do next? And then the third one was very closely tied to what you said to, which is like this Japanese concept which I'm going to butcher, but called like ichigo ichi, which is essentially this idea that every moment, even if it is a recurring moment, because you're not going to be able to novel max every single day. But even right now, we're all this exact age that we are in the studio for the first time. So whenever you look for the specific details exactly like you did there, time itself does begin to slow down. It's amazing.

[Chris Williamson]

The novelty thing is such a huge part. I mean, I wrote about this seven years ago badly, and then again 18 months ago, slightly better. And the two things, novelty and intensity, were what I sort of landed on. And you're right, it is really, really important. People don't want to miss their lives objectively arrive, but subjectively not feel it. And this thing, this sort of sense of stuff rushing past, I think it's something that's particularly felt by People that are optimizers, because by virtue of optimizing, you find what works and then you rinse and repeat it. That's what routine is. And the problem with that is it actually compresses time together. My favorite example of this is your drive to work. Your drive to work is something that you've done 500, 1,000, 2,000 times throughout your life, throughout that one job, that one office. Can you tell me anything unique about that drive? It's compressed into basically a single memory, except for that one day when it was icy and the car skidded backward. Well, what's that? That's novelty and intensity. And it's also called the holiday effect. Why is it that holidays seem to stretch out? I think about this trip I took to Africa nearly a decade ago with an ex girlfriend. And I can remember the squeak of the leather shoes of the porter and the ornithology book, this weathered ornithology book that he was carrying. And the steps down the steps were rickety and he, the bellboy offered to carry my bag, but I felt bad so I took, I can't remember the fucking 16 digit number on the front of my credit card that I've had for fucking three years. Why? Well, because novelty and intensity. And the more that I think people can just try and ratchet that into their lives. And it's strange because if you have too much novelty, you end up with chaos and you don't actually gain any of the benefits of consistency and reliability. Yeah, there's no compounding because the environment changes so quickly that you can't get any in there.

[George]

Right.

[Chris Williamson]

But yeah, that you've hit on something I think super important.

[George]

Well, it's cool. Cause like, who lives it? Because I see all this advice, right? Whether it's on X or it's in podcasts, and it's like, you know, here's a study or here's a quote I love, but it's like, okay, what do you, Are you doing this? How are you, Are you doing that? What do you do? Like, I like your burger example. And then if you can find somebody in your life that actually lives that way, it's like a game changer because super contagious. Once you just notice the delta, like if I sit next to you and I notice that you sit differently or that you eat differently when we go in order, it's very apparent to me when my peers do something different than me. And so for me, like my, my trainer is a guy who basically is like, imagine never having listened to any of the podcasts at self help at all. But you just did all those things. That's basically him. These guys. Like, I've seen him probably five days a week for the last five years, and it shows. And also he. I've never seen him have a bad day. Like, not even like in a bad mood. I could be late. He can get defender bender. Never, never seen this guy rocked. And so that's kind of like seeing a billionaire, but for mood, it's like, what? I don't know what that is, but that's incredible. You have a lot of good mood. How do you do this shit? And he tells me, because I'm noticing, like, what does he do differently? He's always playing little mind games, little mini games. So I've told the story once before on our podcast, but people have come up to me, like years later mentioning, like, I love that story about your trainer. And it's this DMV story. I don't know if I never told you, but he had to go to the dmv. So he comes to my house and he's like, dude. He's like, today's the day. I'm like, what's today? And he goes, I've been driving for the last two years with an expired license, and it's been this low underlying anxiety every time I drive of what if I get pulled over? I've got this expired license. And he's like, I've just been avoiding going to the DMV because DMV is terrible. He goes, so today I did something different. Basically he went on Yelp and he went to go, look, where is the dmv? And you know, it has like, Google has like star ratings or Yelp has like ratings. So DMV is basically like the lowest rated venue on Yelp. And so it was like one and a half stars. And he goes, how do I have a five star DMV experience? So he just asks himself a new question, creates a game out of it. And so he's like, okay. He's like, I can't go there and expect them to give me five star hospitality. He's like, I'm gonna go as a five star customer. So he just changed his mindset. He's like, I will go as a five star customer, and I think I'll have a five star experience. So he's. He goes, he parks. He walks in with a little pep in his step. He holds the door. He's not trying to rush in line. He's like, you guys all go, yeah, yeah, Go, I'll be behind you. And one of the women that he let in, actually, she was working there. She was just doing a shift change. He's joking around with her, sort of flirting with her on the way in. This sort of like big old lady at the dmv. And so she's like, what are you here for, honey? And he's like, I gotta get my license. I've been driving without it, you know, expired for two years. And like, today's the day. It's gonna be amazing when I get this license. I'm gonna feel so good. And she goes, you know what? Come with me. Takes him front of the line, gets him the thing he's supposed to do a driving test. She just signs off on it, gets him his license. He ends up having this five star experience at the dmv, which was kind of like running the four minute mile or something. It's like this, like, if you can have a great experience at the dmv, you can have a great experience in any condition, right? Like, I don't need to achieve X to have great experience. And so his 5 star DMV has stuck with me because now you can play that game pretty much any. I'm going through TSA right now. How do I. Like, how do I have five star? What if I was James Bond? And how I kind of smoothly went through this versus just dragging ass like I normally do. And I found that that's like novelty without being like, today I need to go on this new hike, new vacation, new thing, because that's hard to do and most people can't do it. What I like is he brought the novelty into like the everyday. And you become sort of invincible when you do that.

[Chris Williamson]

He romanticized his DMV experience.

[Sean]

Correct. That's exactly what he did.

[Chris Williamson]

Which is different to you who tries to romance your DMV experience.

[Sean]

Yes. I hit on the lady who's giving me the license and it works every scene.

[George]

Come on now.

[Sean]

You know what? That's a beautiful to. To make it practical. That is a beautiful example of something you alluded to earlier, which I think some is a summation of what you so beautifully wrote about, which is being childlike. In the Bible, God calls us multiple times to have childlike faith, to be like children in everything that we do. And somewhere along the way we grow up and we start taking everything so seriously. And to say, you said earlier, you said, you know, just wait, when you have a kid and everything's novel, you can spin this and they're like, Whoa.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah.

[Sean]

Because everything is.

[George]

That was Disneyland right there. Exactly.

[Sean]

That, that, that's like. That's why I think it's so important. In the Bible is the ultimate self help book. It's such good advice. Just be childlike in everything that you do and that pulls you into the present moment. Huberman did a minisode recently on the importance of play in longevity and how as we get old, we just stop playing and stop moving in that way and we die from that. And in my life lately, I've just been like the curious six year old inside of me again.

[Chris Williamson]

What did we do in the park the other day?

[George]

We played, we threw the ball, we walked past.

[Chris Williamson]

I know that you used to have a basketball in front of you on your pod. We did a pod. And he was just a mini leather basketball.

[George]

Always have this little ball.

[Chris Williamson]

He was just tossing it around.

[George]

It was so fun.

[Chris Williamson]

And we were walking through the park and some dog must have just left a relatively good conditioned tennis ball. Like, okay, we're turning around and spend 15 minutes just unloading on our rotator cuffs.

[Sean]

I'm still.

[George]

Did you hear that? Was that audible?

[Sean]

But that. It was. It was such a just little kid, young boy moment. Because at the same time, Chris and I are walking and we both see the ball and I bend down. As I'm bending down, Chris goes, yep. And we didn't have to say anything. Yep. And we immediately started playing. Toss.

[Chris Williamson]

Yep.

[Sean]

It just burned 20 minutes. And it was just so fun.

[George]

I have this phrase, Sorry, I had this phrase called dogs, kids, and dead people. And what is that? It's basically, that's who I want to spend time with and learn from. Because you want to learn about, like, unconditional love. Be with a dog. Right? A dog is like, loyal. It's a great friend. It's a great pet. Right. Then kids are just like childlike wonder about everything. And the dead people is like, rather than spending my time consuming tweets and tiktoks that people put 20 seconds into, it's like this guy put 20 years of his life into this book. Like, go, go hang with the dead. You'll, you know, it'll be better for you. And so just hanging, changing who I hung with, with kids, dogs, and dead people was like a pretty big game changer for, you know, overall enjoyment.

[Jared]

Who's your favorite dead person that you've discovered?

[George]

Who's my favorite dead person? I discovered right now. I'm hanging right now. Like I told you. I was reading this, like, stoicism book and so, which is like, whatever, pretty cliche, but there's a guy who wrote a book that basically summarizes like, here's what Aristotle was saying, here's what Socrates is saying. Then this guy was all about suffering to prove himself. So he kind of lived a pretty tough life. This guy was doing this and they exiled him to this island. It's basically like a walk through all the stoics. And it's pretty cool because it summarizes all of them and like the slight nuances of the different schools of thought that they had because they were basically all influencers. And so one guy had this school of thought he influenced. He got all these people behind him and then this other guy branched out, spun it off and was like, yeah, it's that, but without the suffering. It's way more fun over here. And then they all got really popular and so on and so forth. And so they're all dead now. But learning from their, you know, their philosophies obviously is so valuable.

[Chris Williamson]

A quick aside, most people think that they're dehydrated because they don't drink enough water. Turns out water alone isn't just the problem, it's also what's missing from it. Which is why for the last five years, I've started every single morning with a cold glass of element in water. Element is an electrolyte drink with a science backed ratio of sodium, potassium and magnesium. No sugar, no coloring, no artificial ingredients, just the stuff that your body actually needs to function. This plays a critical role in reducing your muscle cramps and your fatigue. It optimizes your brain health, it regulates your appetite, and it helps curb cravings. I keep talking about it because I genuinely feel a difference when I use it versus when I don't. And best of all, there's a no questions asked refund policy with an unlimited duration. So if you're on the fence, you can buy it and try it for as long as you like. And if you don't like it for any reason, they just give you your money back. You don't even need to return the box. That's how confident they are that you'll love it. And they offer free shipping in the US right now. You can get a free sample pack of elements most popular flavors with your first purchase by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinklmnt.com ModernWisdom that's drinklmnt.com

[Jared]

Modernwisdom yeah, we spoke about stoicism a few times where on some reverse.

[Chris Williamson]

Reverse stoicism yeah.

[Jared]

Where like. So, for example, a lot of the time, what I've noticed with people that get into stoicism, they almost have like reverse stoicism. So when things go well, they'll use the stoicism to keep it in. And then when things go bad, they just lose the shit. So it's like now you've lost both of them.

[George]

All of the downside and none of the upside.

[Chris Williamson]

Correct. Correct. You've insulated yourself from getting too excited.

[George]

Are you saying they're doing it wrong or are you saying the philosophy tells you to do that?

[Jared]

I think it's a little bit of both. My dad always gave me this great piece of advice, which is whenever something goes well, try and think how down you'd be if it didn't go well, and at least enjoy it that much. So even if you are going to have your downs, at least have your ups. And I guess my concern with stoicism, at times it's a little bit. I don't know, it's a little bit dry or it makes people a little bit more numb, which I don't particularly like. There's a great. Speaking. I think he's dead now. He wrote this in the 50s. Have you heard of musturbation? Well, not.

[Sean]

No, no. I'm assuming you.

[Chris Williamson]

I say it a little differently as an Indian man. Yes.

[George]

It's when you watch a video of

[Chris Williamson]

a mom with a.

[George]

Bring him in, bring him in, bring in the mot.

[Jared]

Got an active shooter. So basically it's a guy called Ellis, and he had. It's like rational emotive behavioral therapy. So it's like a spin off of cognitive behavioral therapy. And essentially his idea, I think it's lovely, is that he basically has like a very, very small rule. He goes, everything's fair game. Apart from you can never use the word must to yourself. Or like, this has to happen. And what I've actually realized with a lot of things with myself is you almost. Because you try so hard and you put so much pressure on yourself that you end up. There's two things. There's either choking, which is when you overthink, when you think too much in the moment, like an athlete that can't throw the basketball shot. Or there's. What's the opposite of choking?

[George]

It's clutch, like coming through in the clutch.

[Jared]

No, there's panicking. So panicking is when you don't think at all and you just do something reckless. So like scuba divers that will just grab the oxygen when they know they shouldn't do It. They can see themselves, but they do it overthink and. Exactly. So Rebt, essentially this masturbation idea, he essentially has this concept which you can basically say anything about yourself, desire anything, but never say, oh, this podcast has to go well today or else. Because as soon as you do that, you activate the fight or fight response, and you notice a lot of people that are type A people that probably listen to this sort of shit. It's often an extreme statement. So you can still say, I really want this to go well. It's not like stoicism, where it's like, whatever happens, happens. None of it matters because you kind of lose a little bit of the edge. But you just, I really want this to go well today, and even if it doesn't, I'll be okay. And it's just that little bit at the edge that just gets it in that perfect, like, Goldilocks zone between the two, which I think is missed by stoicism.

[Sean]

It's almost. It's almost a degree of surrender behind the intention, Surrendering to the experience and being fully open to whatever comes up, but hoping it goes a certain way. My friend Nick Comadina has this great quote. We live in a universe that what we run from chases us and what we chase runs from us. So if you're constantly. If we sit down like, God, this has to be a banger. It has to be a profound conversation. It would be the opposite of all of those things. And Tom Cruise probably never would have walked in, but we just sat down here to shoot the shit, and it's been a blast. It's a degree of surrender with an intention or hope that it goes a certain way, but also giving into the experience.

[Chris Williamson]

I did this emotions retreat with Joe Hudson in September, and it was 12 hours a day for seven days on a flower farm in Santa Rosa of just very, very deep, very difficult emotional work. And you had to write an intention before you went in. And this intention would go on this huge piece of paper, and we'd be writing loads of stuff, and it was on the wall and everybody could see what it was that you'd written throughout the week. And some people's intentions were really big and really grand. And I felt so. Felt really stupid. I was kind of ashamed of mine because it felt so small and it felt so silly. And by the end of the week, I'd just completely fallen in love with it. And it was my favorite definition of safety now, of emotional safety, of feeling like you're enough, of feeling like you belong, of feeling like you're supposed to be there. And it was, I'm okay no matter what happens. And that sense of this goes well, this goes badly, the power goes out. It doesn't. Tom Cruise comes in, Bonnie Blue, like, whatever goes on, I'm okay no matter what happens. And just that, again, that sort of sense of relaxing. It's a little bit of Jhana, the meditation technique that me and George are playing with at the moment. But on the good luck, bad luck thing, I came across a quote that I'd already seen a bunch and I wrote about it this week. Cormac McCarthy, you never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from. And there's this line, I told this story to George this week and he was able to work out who it was, but it's fucking fantastic. So in the mid-90s, there was a single mother living in near poverty in Edinburgh. When she left her first marriage, it wasn't a quiet parting. She's described the relationship as abusive. She fled to Portugal with her baby daughter and a suitcase that contained the early chapters of a book that she was working on. At one point, her ex husband hid the manuscript, trying to prevent her from leaving with it. She was clinically depressed and contemplating suicide. She couldn't afford to heat her flat properly, so she pushed a pram to cafes to write while her daughter slept. The manuscript was rejected by 12 publishers. That's 12 people telling her in different ways that it wasn't good enough. The rejection wasn't abstract, it was survival level. If the book failed, so did her last attempt at building a life. The humiliation of those refusals became momentum. J.K. rowling went on to sell 500 million copies in the Harry Potter series globally and became richer than the Queen. You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from. Fucking money, dude.

[George]

She has a great line where she goes rock bottom is the most solid foundation to build from.

[Chris Williamson]

Arthur Brooks has got this line where he says, psychology is biology and basically you can't try and trick. What's your thing about trying to think your way out of overthinking is like trying to sniff your way out of cocaine addiction.

[George]

It's so fucking banger, George. That's good.

[Chris Williamson]

What do you got?

[George]

Have you guys seen the. You've probably all seen this. You've seen the McDonald's CEO thing that's been going viral. It's pretty insane. Have you been following this? So the CEO of McDonald's tries to do a promotional event for the new Big Arch, which kind of worked because it went viral, but not for the right reason. So I don't know if you've seen this. Check this out with.

[McDonald's CEO]

You've heard about it. Here it is, the big arch.

[George]

First of all, is this what you

[McDonald's CEO]

thought he'd look like, tested already in Portugal, Germany, Canada. I love this product. It is so good. I'm going to do a tasting right now, but I'm going to eat this for my lunch, just so you know.

[Jared]

So here we go.

[McDonald's CEO]

Holy cow. God, that is a big burger. We've got a very unique kind of sesame poppy sort of bun on it. We've got two quarter pound patties, a delicious big arch sauce, and of course, some lettuce.

[Jared]

So.

[McDonald's CEO]

Oh, there's so much going on with this. First of all, let's try to get this thing.

[Jared]

I don't even know.

[George]

It's like me trying to unhook a bra for the first issue. If you had my narration to see

[McDonald's CEO]

those kind coming out. All right. The moment of truth.

[Sean]

Barely gone.

[George]

Yeah.

[McDonald's CEO]

That is so good. That's a big bite for a big one. It's distinctively McDonald's. Only McDonald's could be this type of burger. But it also is unlike anything else on our menu. It's a delicious product. You know, you've got sort of cheeses and the gooeyness, but those crispy onions as well gives a nice texture. And of course, we've got the pickles. So I'm gonna enjoy the rest of my lunch. But big arch, probably when you can

[Sean]

get it, sort of cheeses is a great way to describe whatever's on that burger.

[George]

You know, he's basically like lying when he's like, I'm gonna eat this later off camera, but I'm definitely gonna eat this.

[Sean]

Yeah, totally. I wanna be clear. I'm gonna finish this.

[George]

I do this all the time.

[Chris Williamson]

That made me feel physically ill. That made me feel physically uncomfortable to watch that.

[Sean]

It's like watching an Android try to be a human. It was very strange.

[Jared]

How did that get out?

[George]

Like from the lab. Like a lab leak. What do you mean?

[Tom Cruise Impersonator]

Like the actual lab.

[Chris Williamson]

That wasn't him catching something.

[George]

What the.

[Sean]

Oh, no.

[Jared]

This guy. Oh.

[George]

Let's go, Ben. Wait, Ben. Look at the tie length on Ben. Can we just admire here? You may have to turn around. Turn around to the camera. Show the length of the tie. Ben wore his son's tie.

[Sean]

Do we all try the big arch with the McDonald's CEO bite?

[George]

Wait, wait. Are you passing? Can you just read?

[Jared]

Reenact.

[George]

Reenact the CEO.

[Sean]

Yeah. Was it like he was picking up an act IED. Calls the red wire to the big arch.

[George]

Enjoy the product, Michael. The product.

[Sean]

This is a great product. Wow. This is mechanically engineered.

[George]

Oh, it's so. It's so. Oh, we all got big arches. It's so wet.

[Sean]

It is unbelievable. All right, I'm gonna take a big bite for a big guy. You know that scene in spongebobby Krabby Patty?

[Chris Williamson]

The tiniest little bit of.

[Jared]

Oh, wow.

[Sean]

Oh, it's medium rare.

[George]

That's good.

[Sean]

That's good. I want my McDonald's beef to be medium rare. Did it maintain the perfect good product on this? Is it still maintain its perfect circular shape?

[George]

That's a unique poppy seed. I've never seen a bun like that.

[Sean]

He said, we have sort of a sesame pie. What do you mean sort of a sesame seed?

[Chris Williamson]

I'm ready.

[Jared]

I love the way he used the word product. A good rule of thumb is no consumer uses the word product. Or consumer.

[Sean]

Yeah.

[George]

I shall now consume products, everybody. Hello, fellow kids. Would you like to consume product?

[Jared]

It's good.

[George]

Yeah. How is it? How is the big arch?

[Sean]

Actually, that's what he should have done if he made me want to eat it, but luckily I already love a double quarter pounder, so this is. This is great.

[Chris Williamson]

It's not that special, but yeah, basically the CEO decided that he was going to fucking torpedo himself.

[Sean]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

It's so funny to think, how did that get out? As if. As if that wasn't meant to be for public consumption.

[Jared]

Yes. Well, I wonder if they maybe a Machiavellian thing from the social media manager.

[Sean]

You think it's an accidental. I thought that was a promo.

[George]

Everyone's smart. Jared, throw up the meme I have on the doc of the McDonald's thing. It's so funny. I quite like it.

[Jared]

It.

[George]

When. When Ben was looking for his McDonald's uniform, he went on Facebook, Marketplace. This is the CEO of McDonald's right now.

[Chris Williamson]

Jesus fucking Christ.

[George]

The. He goes on Facebook Marketplace, and he found somebody who has. Who was selling a uniform. And she goes like, oh, yeah, sure. Like you need it for work. And Ben was like, yeah, I need it for work.

[Chris Williamson]

That's the actual uniform.

[George]

And then, well, the woman you were messaging was. You were trying to get the uniform. And then she looked him up and was like. Like, it doesn't look like you work at McDonald's. And she got creeped out and did not give him the McDonald's uniform. So he had to make his own.

[Sean]

You made that?

[Jared]

My wife made this One.

[Sean]

Yeah. That's unbelievable.

[George]

She ironed on the M. Did she

[Sean]

make the tie too, or did you get that at Baby Gap? It's a perfect length, man.

[George]

I think Ben's been in uniform waiting for the big arch moment with Tom Cruise in the green room, this band

[Chris Williamson]

in McDonald's uniform, and Tom Cruise.

[Sean]

This is, this is might be like the completely original scenario. This doesn't exist in any other timelines or realities.

[Chris Williamson]

In a thousand, a thousand universes, there's only one where Ben was dressed as a McDonald's guy next to a Tom Cruise impersonator waiting to give us the food.

[Sean]

During the break. I said, oh, can I get a napkin? Tom Cruise spilled new tonic on the table. Now that's a sentence that's never been said before.

[George]

The first of your bloodline to ever do that.

[Sean]

I give that out of 10. On three, say your rating. Ready? 1. 2. 3.

[Chris Williamson]

7.

[Jared]

Interesting.

[Chris Williamson]

Wow.

[George]

Not bad.

[Chris Williamson]

It's okay.

[George]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

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[Sean]

Yeah, I think if it breaks a seven. It's not coming from McDonald's. Except for the filet o fish. I will die on that hill. Best sandwich and fast food.

[Chris Williamson]

What do you think they're trying to achieve? Is this just. Every company CEO now needs to do self branding.

[George]

Just build a personal.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, yeah. Everybody needs to have a personal brand.

[George]

Yeah. I don't know. He's been basically only in front of shareholders. You can tell. And this was like this big coming

[Sean]

out party and only in front of reptilian people.

[George]

It's a freaking lizard, man.

[Sean]

Dude.

[George]

If I was ever on the fence

[Sean]

about that conspiracy, he just proved it.

[George]

Yeah, but like if Zuck. It took 20 years for Zuck to do this transformation.

[Chris Williamson]

Right.

[George]

Do you remember when he was also a lizard? He literally had like a thing where you could find this. Where he was like, I was a human. I am a human. I am a human. Right. He literally was doing that. The sweet baby rays. And now he's just swagged out and awesome and like cool.

[Chris Williamson]

That's what happens. You get four figure testosterone. Everything goes well. All right, how about I tell you about this? Have you heard of the be a mile?

[George]

The Beer Mile.

[Chris Williamson]

Yes. You must have heard of the beer.

[Sean]

I won one last year.

[Chris Williamson]

Yes, you won a Beer Mile.

[Sean]

Beat Devin Levesque in the Beer Mile at running.

[Chris Williamson]

Do you want to explain what it is?

[George]

Can we guess? It's. Yeah, George, what is your guess? What is the Beer Mile?

[Jared]

You drink beer and run during.

[George]

Before.

[Sean]

Directionally accurate.

[George]

During.

[Sean]

So the Beer Mile is. I wish I was being facetious when I said this. I think it's more painful than any marathon or ultra I've run because it's such an acute pain for such a short time. So the goal of the Beer Mile is simple. You run one mile and every quarter mile you have a beer. So over the course of one mile, you drink four beers. So the gun goes off. Beer one, quarter lap. Beer two, quarter lap, three, quarter lap, four. There's a great photo, I wish I'd known you bringing it up of me. We'll call it an action shot. Immediately after crossing the finish line on all fours, just. Oh, just exiting all of the beer that I had. So that's the beer.

[George]

Should we create the big arch mile?

[Sean]

I would do that.

[Chris Williamson]

Interesting that you talk about the B mile. How about the two beers, two cigs, two Rubik's cubes, Speedrun?

[Jared]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Jared, this is if you were to look at your kind of elementary version of a physical challenge.

[Sean]

Feels like it.

[George]

Now you know, let's oh, he's got Ben's tie.

[Chris Williamson]

My time to beat is 3 minutes, 33 seconds.

[Tom Cruise Impersonator]

I can't remember the world record, but it's around a minute 30. You can see it up here.

[Chris Williamson]

Will I beat that for me?

[Jared]

I noticed, but I'm hoping for under two minutes.

[McDonald's CEO]

Also, the top camera is dead, so

[Chris Williamson]

hopefully this guy's just on his patio.

[Jared]

Let's do this.

[Chris Williamson]

And he's got the special.

[George]

There we go.

[Chris Williamson]

I mean, that first beer is what, four gulps?

[Sean]

Nice.

[Chris Williamson]

Watch him rip this cig. Watch him rip this thing. It is absolutely absurd. How do you even speed smoke a cigarette like that?

[George]

Just like this.

[Chris Williamson]

That's, I think, technically sprint smoking king of Sig. It's.

[George]

Holy shit, it's working.

[Sean]

He's usain bolting. That.

[George]

That's.

[Chris Williamson]

It is unbelievable. The hair, the suit.

[Jared]

It's really Scott Adams's talent stack in its purest form, isn't it?

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, yeah. Bear's interesting. A unicycle is interesting, but a bear on a unicycle is fascinating. And then two sigs. So there's got to be a strategy here, right? He starts off with the beer.

[George]

He needs the Joey Chestnut double dip.

[Sean]

This makes.

[Chris Williamson]

I don't think he's. I think he must use regular to do it. But look at his. Look at his Cuban.

[George]

Oh, but see, he's doing this.

[Sean]

He's gonna be dried up from the Sig, so he'll want beer after the sex.

[Chris Williamson]

I think that's the way it goes. Yeah.

[Jared]

I wish they had a shot of

[Chris Williamson]

his dad crying inside watching this.

[George]

Does he have, like a whoop on? We need like, a live tracker.

[Sean]

What's his strain after this activity?

[Chris Williamson]

This is. He's on track for a world record here, right? And he's just. He must be thinking the prep. Well, I guess you got a lot of nicotine in you, but he needs to down the beer quickly.

[Jared]

Is it. Is it a world record?

[Chris Williamson]

This is a world record. This is the world record. This is the new world record.

[Jared]

Was he creating the world record or was.

[Chris Williamson]

No, he was trying to beat it. It was 130something.

[Sean]

I like your idea. We need to get this guy in touch with.

[Tom Cruise Impersonator]

Come on.

[George]

Woo. Yeah. Hands down, George, there's tens of them out there doing this.

[Chris Williamson]

128. 3. Dude.

[Jared]

Jesus Christ. Wow. Imagine if he realized the camera wasn't rolling. The pain.

[George]

Who is this small Asian kid? He just showed.

[Chris Williamson]

Just called someone out.

[George]

Competitor. Former champion.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, that was the former champion that we know. Well, Jesus Christ.

[Sean]

That was Something.

[Chris Williamson]

Well, yeah. I mean, that's what you've got to do next. The two beers, two Sigs, two Rubik's

[Sean]

Cube speedrun I did get challenged to do because I talked about the Beer Mile in content. I got challenged to do the Filet O Fish Mile because I'm convicted on the fact that I think the Filet o fish is the ultimate fast food sandwich. And so I think what I'll do is I'll run a quarter mile and

[George]

every quarter mile, swim, swim to Alcatraz down a filet of fish. Swim down another filet of fish.

[Sean]

Mentally, I'll already be in Alcatraz. It doesn't matter where we swim.

[Chris Williamson]

That's what Russ Edgley is great at. So Russ was the first guy to swim around the UK. He did it in nine months, something like that. And he swam six hours on, six hours off for nine months. It was just biphasic sleeping. Six hours on, six hours off. And I had him on the show 18 months ago. And I was trying to work out, like, what the fuck is it with this guy? He's jacked. He's got this sort of never unhappy fucking mentality, which is kind of crazy. But what is it really that causes him to be so good? And I realize it's the fact his digestion system, like his capacity to digest food. For instance, he swam the longest river in Canada. I think he's done the longest river swim on unbroken. 50 hours that he swam for without touching land, without stopping. 50 hours of swimming.

[Jared]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

So delirious. He tried to do it in Italy and got hypothermia, then tried to do it in America and got hypothermia and then tried to do it in Canada and did it. He was so cold that the best way that he could heat his body was with piping hot porridge. Like burning, scalding hot porridge that he just ate. And it warmed him from the inside, like wearing a hot water bottle. And I realized he's able. I don't know about you. If I eat something, I have to be upright. If I try and lie down, it's so fucking uncomfortable, I don't want to burp. It's awful. He's able to do it while swimming. Not only is he fucking horizontal motherfucker's swimming.

[Sean]

So, yeah, he's actively eating while striding in the water.

[Chris Williamson]

No, he'll stop and tread water and they'll throw like a banana on a bucket and he'll just fucking force a banana down and pour protein shakes and Porridge and shit.

[George]

There's a video of this guy I need to see.

[Sean]

Didn't he swim, like, the entire coastline of Iceland or some shit?

[Chris Williamson]

The circumnavigated Iceland, yeah. Ice swimming for this. I mean, it's the mad thing about it is he makes it look so effortless. Like lots of people that do crazy things.

[George]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

It's not that Rubik's Cube thing. That is hilarious, right? Watching Ross do it. It's just business as usual. If you've done it twice a day for nine months. Just business as usual. He's a fucking freak. It's crazy.

[Jared]

Well, you know the only thing I was gonna do. We've had, like, a lot of America chat and not much British chat. You two Yanks dominating things, so.

[George]

Hell yeah, we do.

[Chris Williamson]

Let's go, baby.

[Jared]

That's such a difference in reaction immediately we have a fiscal dumpling the European

[Sean]

mind could never comprehend.

[Chris Williamson]

The fuck is a Columbia? We don't know either. Okay. We don't use it.

[Jared]

So I've got one of my favorite accounts called Mental UK Headlines. So it's just different, like mental shit that's happened in the uk. But it's like it's a specific type of mentalness that would only happen in the uk. So I was thinking, can you give

[Chris Williamson]

me like, the gong?

[Jared]

Do you like the news station?

[Chris Williamson]

Gong Bong.

[Jared]

Grandfather banned from US holiday after accidentally ticking terrorist box on visa form

[Chris Williamson]

Bong.

[Jared]

Rescuers learned that the exotic bird that they found was actually a seagull covered in curry.

[Chris Williamson]

Sean, that must have been you.

[George]

That's a good one.

[Chris Williamson]

Have you ever googled your birthday and Florida man?

[Sean]

Oh, yeah.

[George]

No fucking.

[Chris Williamson]

What's your birthday?

[George]

April 25.

[Chris Williamson]

April 25. Florida Man. Florida man in Google, please.

[Jared]

Adolf Hitler died that.

[Chris Williamson]

Ah. How do you know that? Why do you know that?

[Jared]

Just know that.

[Chris Williamson]

A Florida man was rescued after trying to ride a Hamster. Wow.

[Jared]

Oh, 25th or 20th. I love it.

[George]

No, that's right.

[Jared]

That's right.

[George]

20th century, not Hillers.

[Jared]

No, I know.

[Chris Williamson]

Okay, good. There we go. Open that up.

[George]

Try to ride an inflatable balloon to the Bermuda Triangle. Nice.

[Chris Williamson]

Hamster ball to the Bahamas. Wow, that got more extreme. Go back. A Florida man was rescued after trying to ride a hamster.

[George]

Oh, see, that's respectable.

[Chris Williamson]

Ball to the Bahamas.

[Sean]

Ride a hamster was definitely exciting, but

[George]

in a different way.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, look at that at the bottom. Orlando's first. First free STD testing and treatment clinic.

[Sean]

Amazing.

[Chris Williamson]

Hook up with us. No judgment, no cost, just care.

[Sean]

Only the first one.

[Chris Williamson]

How Fantastic.

[George]

All right, Orlando Weekly. We need to subscribe.

[Chris Williamson]

Okay.

[Sean]

Yeah, mine is Florida man arrested after dumping heaps of dirt on girlfriend's car. Heaps is an interesting word. How much is constitutes the arrest? Heaps.

[George]

There's a hilarious Reddit post on angry girlfriends. This girlfriend went and posted in the Am I the asshole? Subreddit about her boyfriend Jerus. If you could pull this up, it's

[Jared]

am I the asshole?

[George]

Yeah, am I the asshole? He's been raiding every meal she cooked for him for, like, secretly for over a year. And she got a clim. She got a glimpse of the spreadsheet and took a secret photo and posted it on Reddit. Like, am I overreacting basically to this spreadsheet? And so it'll be like, you know, spaghetti and meatballs, 7.7. And yeah, this is the screenshot. So she took this.

[Chris Williamson]

Zoom in.

[George]

Yeah, you got to zoom in. That's where the magic is. There's really two incredible things in this screenshot. The first is the rating system and the count. So she's made spaghetti and meatballs 282 times. The rating is 7.7. The average rating, 7.5. So, you know, she did a little above average this time. But the trend, three arrows up. Like, the stock market, spaghetti and meatballs are doing well, but then all the women in the comment section are just ripping them because he's also got like, AI open asking how to grow his calves. It's like all the women are like, well, tell that little bird calf bitch that he needs to do this, this, and this.

[Chris Williamson]

To increase your calf size, you must combine training that targets both the gastroc and the soleus, the deeper, flatter muscle in daily life. They're normally fatigue resistant, specializing in techniques. Fucking hell. What was the lowest rating? Average. Overall? I'll see.

[George]

She's good.

[Chris Williamson]

Chicken tacos, 6.9.

[George]

Chicken stir fry, six on. Oh, yeah, they average six and a half there.

[Chris Williamson]

That's not good.

[George]

That's a tough dish, though.

[Sean]

He has to, like, work an audit at Ernst and Young or something. This is insane.

[Chris Williamson]

That's fucking fantastic.

[Sean]

So glad you brought up Excel spreadsheets because I found something on how dogs can't get pregnant because of underwear. And I am terrified of this. Have you guys ever given any attention to this, the whole underwear thing, cotton clothing and how it's a big part of the health and wellness world.

[Chris Williamson]

Austin Floyd's massive on it. He won't shit up about it.

[Sean]

Okay, do you do. Do you pay attention?

[Chris Williamson]

Bamboo, cotton. I listen to him I listen to stuff.

[George]

But is it microplastics that's the issue or something else?

[Sean]

I think we're all effectively as we sit here nuking our nuts. That's what I've gathered from this study. So a study on Twitter from, from the never controversial account Carnivore Aurelius says ladies, you need to be wearing cotton underwear. Now this is targeted at women, but there's evidence for males as well. Polyester underwear on dogs tanked their progesterone 90%. Which earlier we called out the ethics of studies and how we can't do them anymore. Do we draw the line at making dogs infertile through human underwear? Polyester underwear on dogs tanked progesterone 90% from 50 nanograms per milliliter to 5 and 75% of them couldn't get pregnant. Polyester creates an electrostatic field that disrupts hormone production. 100 cotton only if you want babies. I have never paid any attention to this now and I don't think I own a single pair of cotton underwear. I thought this was fascinating.

[George]

I'm doing the opposite. I'm going to do this as a form of birth control.

[Sean]

I think, I think I'm.

[George]

Rather than a vasectomy, I'm just going to start polyester.

[Sean]

I think I'm speedrunning infertility and I didn't even realize it from my underwear and not anything else in my lifestyle. So maybe a good incentive.

[George]

George, what's your concern level?

[Jared]

You constantly tell me about the sauna as well. Right, the saunas.

[Chris Williamson]

That's why we've got nutsicles in the freezer.

[Sean]

Yeah, you have nutsicles at the house.

[Chris Williamson]

Nutsicles in the freezer.

[Sean]

That's a Brian Johnson move right there.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, I've been doing it since.

[George]

Is that a branded thing or you're calling it that?

[Chris Williamson]

No, no, no. Nutsicles. They are purpose built. Search. Just Google nutsicles for me please.

[Jared]

Joe, There was a problem as a guy who owned a store.

[Chris Williamson]

Nutsicles.

[George]

The drop shimmers are undefeated like popsicles.

[Chris Williamson]

But nutsicles and yeah, they just. Brian made this really great point which is my sperm count went up a lot by me going in the sauna. But it only happened when I iced my there were they on the top left. Look at those. So they're special pants. I don't wear the pants because the pants are polyester four and a half pounds. But I do just use the irony of that. I know, but I just pop those on the outside. Oh, I don't want to see the fucking Person.

[Sean]

Don't show me the demo.

[Chris Williamson]

Okay. Is he drinking a beer?

[George]

Go back.

[Chris Williamson]

It's supposed to be for vasectomy recovery or something.

[Jared]

Bring him through.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. Amazon Model 30. Honestly, if Ben comes in with a fucking hair of nutsicles, I think we

[George]

found the hook for the show. Everything.

[Chris Williamson]

Bring him through.

[George]

The viral person shows up.

[Chris Williamson]

Don't have to answer.

[George]

Bring him on now.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. Basically, Brian couldn't work out whether or not his sperm count went up because sauna is great for his body or because he was icing his balls for 40 minutes a day. So it might actually have just been the fact that he was putting them in a really cool environment that was helping to foster fucking.

[George]

Well, that's why they're in the sack in the first place, right? Correct.

[Chris Williamson]

You're taking this. Come out of the fucking freezer like, oh, this is a little bit.

[Sean]

I have a friend who does the face plunge you mentioned earlier to change his physiology to his nuts every single morning.

[Chris Williamson]

Oh, like the nut dunk.

[George]

Wait, why didn't you say this when I mentioned the Facebook? Well, we had you held a secret close.

[Chris Williamson]

You're talking about panic attacks.

[Sean]

I wouldn't have thought. Ah, testicles. Yes.

[Jared]

He.

[Sean]

Every morning for many years now, he has dunked his nuts in a. And I was like, but how do you. I didn't ask for the demo, but he literally just sits down into an ice bowl every morning for about two minutes. And he said he's noticed difference in the way it hangs, if you will. And his sperm count also went up.

[Chris Williamson]

Up.

[Sean]

And his member appears healthier and fuller now. Pretty interesting stuff. So.

[Chris Williamson]

Honestly. Well, I mean, between that and sunning the fucking butthole, I guess it's. You can go from one to the other. You could. That's basically contrast therapy, but just for your fucking groin, eh?

[George]

Yeah, that's exactly right.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. Boys, I appreciate you being here. First one in the new studio, some technical issues and all the rest of it. I hope everyone enjoyed Tom Cruise and everything else. I'm really excited. Thank you for being. This feels like a. Like a real special moment to be able to do this for the first one. So go to McDonald's, get yourself a big arch, and we'll see you next time. Boys. Yes. We did it.

[Sean]

Amazing.

[Chris Williamson]

Let's fucking go. All right.

[Jared]

Dinner. I'm late for dinner. Dinner.

[Chris Williamson]

Love you.

[Jared]

All right.

[Chris Williamson]

I get asked all the time for book suggestions. People want to get into reading fiction or nonfiction or real life stories. And that's why I made a list of 100 of the most interesting and impactful books that I've ever read. These are the most life changing reads that I've ever found and there's descriptions about why I like them and links to go and buy them. And it's completely free and you can get it right now by going to ChrisWillX.com books that's ChrisWillX.com books.