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

Modern Wisdom

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  • How Phil Collins Turned Betrayal Into Two Hits
    • Michael Smoak retold how Phil Collins channeled divorce, betrayal, and the painter who slept with his wife into In the Air Tonight and then Against All Odds.
    • Collins wrote on the decorator’s invoice inside the ex-master bedroom turned studio after returning from tour to an empty house. Transcript: Michael Smoak Let me, I’ll tell you, I’ll give a story. Let’s tell you a story about the worst phone call of all time. Shaan Puri You have my interest. Michael Smoak 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 like 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 blet on me there. 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 got two kids together so they’ve moved into this house together this beautiful old farmhouse with the two kids And like 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 here right um and so he uh he has to go on tour um 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 the tour, he’s having a phone call of 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 got 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 i’ve got to There’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 say, hey, we’ll just do a solo hiatus. We’ll all go on solo and we’ll get back together. So he goes to Canada for three months, putting the marriage back together. Flies back 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’s just fuming. So he leaves, goes to his favourite restaurant, orders a ravioli and he’s just staring at this ravioli. He’s starving because he’s not out in days and this ravioli’s staring at him. He’s staring back at the ravioli. He just can’t eat. 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’d slept with the guy who was on his payroll whilst he’s on tour. And he 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 gramps 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 it on my phone i’ll play the song you ready this is the song that he writes You’re shitting me. 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 this- Did you know this story? What’s funny about this story is- Nothing? I’ll see. George Mack Is that a story? We got a banger out of it. Michael Smoak But he- Well, anyway, so while he’s in this house um 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 um what he makes against all odds um obviously becomes a smash on the radio and there’s A guy in manchester who’s listening to the song on loop because 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 um and they end up going out on a date spend all night till 6am they get back together within six months we’re engaged we have three children second child was Me so the whole thing. What? Shaan Puri He goes, yeah. Yeah. With the toothpick. Yeah. Yeah. The second child was me. So yeah. Michael Smoak So what’s beautiful now? That was involuntary. When you re-listen to that Phil Collins. Wait, are you Phil Collins’ son? No. Wait, I got lost there for a second. My dad basically loved that song when he split it with my mom, basically. Okay, okay. Speaker 5 I wasn’t sorry. That’s where you got it. No, no, no, no, no. Boom, down! You know which room that was? Shaan Puri This room. That room became a podcast studio. Still crazy. Michael Smoak So yeah, 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 to the lyrics. Shaan Puri Is he saying something that’s direct or coded for that? Michael Smoak There’s a part in there like, 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. Right. It’s all about him falling in love. Chris Williamson Doesn’t it sound like a breakup song on first listen? But it is. Yeah. Yeah, that’s crazy. Dude, I fucking, it’s such a fantastic one. (Time 0:01:56)
  • Sylvester Stallone Bet Everything On Rocky
    • Shaan Puri described Sylvester Stallone blacking out his windows, writing Rocky in three days, and refusing a huge payday unless he could star in it.
    • Broke and eating canned beans, he even sold his dog, then bought it back for $25,000 after Rocky hit. Transcript: Shaan Puri You guys heard the full uh rocky story the sylvester stallone rocky backstory no 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, faces 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. And 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 shows 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 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 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 permits, 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 three-day bender he had to write the story of Rocky. How insane is that? Michael Smoak Isn’t the guy in the film as well, right? Shaan Puri 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 I didn’t (Time 0:09:04)
  • Why Anti Craving Drugs Might Also Blunt Love
    • George Mack raised the idea that GLP-1 drugs may suppress wanting broadly, not just food cravings, because they affect circuits tied to addiction and romantic craving.
    • Chris Williamson linked that to SSRIs, hormonal birth control, and the wider sex recession by arguing multiple common drugs blunt libido and desire. Transcript: George Mack Have you guys heard about this? I saw this. Do you guys see this? No. This is great. Okay, so we initially thought GLP-1’s lycozempic, trisepatide, and retitrutide 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. GLP-1 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 Yong Yang. Shaan Puri This sparked- The bravery of trying to pronounce that just now? On air? George Mack I think I was pretty close. You are the courageous. You did great. It’s just a fucking dice roll. Shaan Puri But he said it instantly. What is courage but taking action and cheer? George Mack I think 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 because is he ai look at this profile picture oh perhaps i didn’t look that deep why does he have a golden Chris Williamson Is he dead interesting he might be after that tweet because big pharma got him no i’m kidding running a plastic surgery clinic in busan korea i bet he is busy as fuck think about how many Koreans get plastic surgery dude i know it’s crazy oh is he just anti so he’s like he’s very anti glps he’s been hammering this for days and he said that a bunch of physicians that sell glps George Mack 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. Yeah, gambling. So the fact that, like, what is limerence what is attraction you know it’s the same thing it’s this dropping of serotonin it’s massive increase in epinephrine norepinephrine dopamine It’s just rush rush rush rush rush like a very obsessed crush phase um there’s a really interesting thing that’s similar to that uh 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, the pathways that just allow you to feel what’s going on sex, they get muted. Your drive gets, so there’s all of these groups of people who are trying to reignite, re-kickstart. 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 like it is the sex recession is just not a surprise at all it’s just not a surprise like if you’re having sex you’re in the minority if (Time 0:12:32)
  • Why Blanket Advice Backfires On The Wrong People
    • Chris Williamson said advice lands like alcohol, not medicine: the people who most need it often ignore it, while conscientious people overdose on it.
    • MeToo mostly inhibited already-cautious men, while boundary-pushing men stayed unchanged; the same pattern applies to work harder, be sensitive, and self-blame advice. Transcript: Chris Williamson What do you do to improve the situation uh 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 GLP-1s because it’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 a 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 Me Too. Everyone’s terrified. So trying to re-encourage men. I mean, you’ve me do this before, but like the Me Too 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 hit them, they just didn’t take any, took no heed of it. Michael Smoak These are advice hyper-responders, right? Could you explain that? Chris Williamson It’s one of my favorite ideas of yours the advice hyper responder 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 uh 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. 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 uh already pushes you in the direction that you were going previously so yeah It’s a it’s a difficult world to navigate when there’s lots of what’s that navale line um if you take enough self-advice take enough uh personal development advice it all just nets out To zero. Every maxim has an equal opposite. (Time 0:16:09)
  • How Self Improvement Becomes Its Own Trap
    • Shaan Puri highlighted Tim Ferriss’ warning that self-improvement can become an infinite loop of scanning for flaws so you can keep fixing yourself.
    • The balance is progress plus acceptance; pure acceptance stalls growth, but pure optimization keeps you forever dissatisfied. Transcript: Shaan Puri Did you see the Tim Ferriss blog? Chris Williamson He posted, I think today or yesterday. The Ouroboros of infinity. Yeah, exactly. Shaan Puri So Tim Ferriss, who’s helped a lot of people and been a big distributor and receiver of self-help, basically writes this post kind of essentially saying, got to be careful with self-help. But in a pretty personal way, I thought it was kind of an amazing post about 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 problems. 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. Michael Smoak How do you solve the infinite problem? Shaan Puri Well, he actually says it in this. Basically, he’s like, there’s this, like, 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. Chris Williamson Scroll up, Jared. 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 your life’s work pivot. 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. That’s so true. Pick your direction podcast, man. That’s it. (Time 0:22:27)
  • Why Banning AI Advice Probably Won’t Work
    • The group argued AI regulation around legal and medical advice is likely futile because people can compare multiple models and route around limits with VPNs.
    • Chris Williamson said some friends solved decade-long health issues after ChatGPT spotted answers their doctors had missed. Transcript: George Mack This is very interesting. 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 with 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 ten dollars a month for for claude or chat gpt and now suddenly there’s this bill that was like hold on and it’s someone someone commented like web md web md’s been giving people dog Shit advice for 25 years now and they didn’t ever get banned why is this suddenly an issue do you think it’s because it’s kind of personified it feels like a person’s giving it to you i, Chris Williamson 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’s because it feels like you’re talking to another human. The first thing now I always recommend is kind of three-factor authentication. Michael Smoak 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 mistakes seems to go significantly lower. Going back to that New York thing, it feels like, what are you going to do? Like you can’t- How are you going to control that? 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. Shaan Puri There’s a billion users using ChatGPT. It’s like fist fighting the wind. To be like, no, we say no. Garden hose to a forest fire. Yeah, what are you going to do? Michael Smoak 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, that’s true, but also never- The reverse. Yeah, yeah. Never speak to your doctor or your lawyer without first consulting an LLM. Right. And 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. (Time 0:25:55)
  • Why Prediction Markets Feel Smarter Than News
    • Shaan Puri framed Polymarket as a casino for everything where prices can reveal truer probabilities because traders lose money when they are consistently wrong.
    • The same structure invites weird edge cases like assassination-market fears, halftime leaks, anthem timing bets, and latency arbitrage. Transcript: George Mack What is Polymarket? You don’t be on X now. Shaan Puri He just discovered X. I just discovered X, George. George Mack I’m 14 years. He’s going to be like, guys. I’m 68. 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. Shaan Puri Yeah, it’s basically a casino for everything. So you can go bet on anything. That sounds dangerous. They call it a prediction market. It’s kind of like the AOLI versus mayonnaise situation. So it’s like, oh sports betting not legal poly market 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 uh win this this game this weekend but you can also bet on anything like who’s going to win uh 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 this is becoming a deadpool yeah exactly So that’s always been the criticism and it’s like, oh, there’s probably other Good things about it. Like, if you want to know the truth about how likely something is to happen, if you go to the New York Times or any just traditional news outlet, the incentive of the writer is to write a Juicy headline and then maybe 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 accurate predictions. Did they get the election right in 24? Yep. Did they? George Mack And there’s a cash payout for this? Shaan Puri You’re actually gambling. Chris Williamson It’s just gambling, but it’s gambling with a graph. It’s an exchange. It’s very important. It’s gambling, but there’s a graph on it uh which makes it look a lot more like a market yeah yeah what’s your kind of take on it do you think how do you think it’s gonna play out over the next Shaan Puri Few years unstoppable like i think it’s gonna be people love gambling people love predicting things people need the information uh i mean it’s 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 it’s 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 subpoenaed, 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 a hundred percent hit rate on his poly market bets. And what he had realized that, 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 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 arbitrages. Like people are sending people to, let’s say a sporting event because they can relay what happened faster than the the broadcast and faster than the database updates. I swear this was happening in Asia with soccer matches. I swear this was happening there and someone was going over and sending it back. Yeah. It’s like, have you ever read Flash Boys? There was a whole quant trading thing where if you 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 normal Server. And they’re putting fiber through mountains to shave off pennies off of every trade, essentially. Wow. So do gambling laws apply then universally to Polymarket? George Mack When it came out, it’s a gambling affiliate. So we can’t do it in Georgia. There’s basically a loophole. So prediction markets are not considered gambling. They’re like commodities contracts. Shaan Puri So it’s like betting on the future price of soybeans. So they’re 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 everything everything at world events there Chris Williamson 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? Anything. George Mack And we’re calling this, it’s called Polymarket. Market. 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. Michael Smoak It’s just like, this is the same exact thing. Branding, branding. Branding. Every bit of life essentially becomes insider if if you take it further enough wow interesting question like during the halftime show they were like oh is he gonna play this song well Shaan Puri Guess what there’s 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 Chris Williamson Like guess what he was a backup 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 out there with a stopwatch. He videoed it himself because they’re rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsing. And then puts the bet on and wins a fucking shit ton of money because he knew exactly. Shaan Puri And that was legal because he was outside. It was public information. (Time 0:28:30)
  • The Tom Cruise Impersonator Who Broke The Set
    • Shaan Puri brought in a Tom Cruise impersonator who suddenly walked onto set, rattled everyone, improvised with Chris Williamson, and nearly exposed the studio’s nonexistent security.
    • Chris joked that if he had been a mass shooter, everyone would have died because he reached Chris’ ear within seconds. Transcript: Shaan Puri 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? He’s, yes. Put the sound on because the voice is amazing. This is so good. Hey, what’s up? Expect the cock and team. Yeah, I guess just like whatever. So it’s super awkward, right? Woo! Oh, Carter. Wingman for the… I love this. Oh, expect that. Tom, Tom. Hey, good to see you. Speaker 5 Hey, my dastard. You don’t know what it’s like to be out here for you. It’s an upper dawn, right swallowing seeds that I can never fully tell you about. Just help me, help you. Help me, help you. What are we talking about here? Chris Williamson What have you done? George Mack Tom, I’m talking to you We have the best day of my life. Speaker 5 I’m just going to keep getting better. It’s an honor to meet you. I’m going to keep compelled. Good to see you, Dodge. What are you working on, Tom? Deep learning. I’m working on a ton of things. A lot of stuff. Flying inverted, buzzing the tower, all that stuff. Shaan Puri Just really happy to be here. You ever had a new tonic? Speaker 5 I got to read the ingredients first. Yeah, I like all these things, yeah. George Mack Did you put ketamine in this new tonic? Speaker 5 Am I in a K-hole right now? I studied early on. Healtheony, one of my favorites. How’s the church? Church is good. Church is good. Really giving me everything I need. Oh, shoot. That happens sometimes. Miscompose myself. So how’s everyone doing? Shaan Puri So much better than our last five minutes ago. How far down the rabbit hole have we gone? Let’s go deep, okay? Speaker 5 How far are we going to go? Chris Williamson I feel like I’m in a fucking fever dream i feel like i’m in a fever dream anything i feel by the way if you’d been a mass shooter we would have all been dead i have no defensive capabilities George Mack At all you didn’t even yeah holy shit you need to tighten the security in this place how did he get in here have you have any questions for me have you ever met the actual tom oh i did yeah yeah Speaker 5 How was that tom ramon it was very exciting he was going away well you know it was two in the morning. I was with some friends having drinks, and he was having dinner with a big group of people. And I wanted to buy him a bottle of champagne as a way to commemorate after impersonating him for 10 years at a time. Just meeting him for the first time. And the waiter shot me down, said, have you been to the Chateau Marmont? Anyone? No? 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, getting 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 ballet area. Like, literally waiting for me. I couldn’t believe it. So I get up out of my chair, sprint through the whole lobby and the whole hotel. I get there, and he’s there with Jeremy Renner, about to get on his motorcycle at 2 in the morning. And we have this really nice moment. We shook each other. It’s an honor and privilege to meet you. You complete wish of each other. He’s very handsy close talker he’s handsy you know yeah yeah it was very exciting i didn’t go to sleep that night it was definitely a wonderful experience yeah tom we appreciate you being A special guest oh absolutely episode i’ve already stayed my role i’m gonna back off if you need anything from me just let me know you know if you need to learn about you know logic and reasoning I’m here for you okay What a pleasant. I love you too. Bye, child. Beach volleyball tomorrow at 8 a.m. Cheers. Good job. Michael Smoak It’s even the right high. Cheers. Fast fucking play. Chris Williamson I’m gonna get the close-up of the crying. Michael Smoak Where do we go from here? (Time 0:36:37)
  • What Private Search Data Reveals About Human Nature
    • Chris Williamson used porn and Google search data to argue that embarrassing private searches reveal hidden cultural patterns more honestly than surveys ever could.
    • His examples ranged from India’s breastfeeding fetish data to attachment styles, gossip, and the bless-her-heart effect in female intrasexual competition. Transcript: Chris Williamson Indian. Indian. Interesting that you say that. George Mack 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 earlier on today, my husband wants a gaycation for some reason turned up quite high. But 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. Michael Smoak Wow. Before you make a comment, Sean, bring her through. Chris Williamson I think the most… Too complete, this game. Bonnie, come on down. George Mack 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. Of course. Chris Williamson It makes a lot of sense. The sky is blue. So if you look at a map, Pornhub released 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 arc, some fucking Freudian shit going on, or something to do with cows and milk. Shaan Puri Sacred. I don’t know. Yeah i like how you’re like explain your people’s behaviors you speak for the billion indians 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, 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. Straight to the source. Chris Williamson Right. Shaan Puri It’s the closest thing that you can get to acceptable- It might be like, isn’t there like the Freudian thing? Like you, you know, there’s like desire for the mom or whatever. Yeah. George Mack Speak for yourself, Sean. Speak for yourself, Sean. Not that I have the experience, but in early childhood, the Freudian thing is that there’s like that’s your first yeah traction i was reading i’m reading the elon biography and they Shaan Puri Were talking because elon’s had pretty like terrible choice in women or at least like for himself like the relationships have not worked out quite a big sample size he’s the common denominator Yeah fair enough but like he was with amber Heard, and it was a pretty toxic relationship, but they stayed together. They got back together. He was with, I think, Tallulah Riley. He proposed in seven days, and then they got married, divorced. At the divorce proceeding, they start making out and tell the judge they’re going to go ahead with the divorce, but then they move back in together. So he’s done some questionable things. And one of his wives basically said he’s attracted to the abuse because his father was so abusive. And it’s basically like there’s something about love and the intensity of a toxic, abusive relationship that fused somewhere in his body. So when he meets a woman who’s intense and they get into a toxic relationship, he has that anchor to love somehow, parental love in some weird way. Chris Williamson 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 think, well, there have to be some. Anxiously attached people, they have a 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 their hypervigilant for stuff, but they’ll think, should we, do we leave that tiger? 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. 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. Shaan Puri I like that. The secure ones just stay. Stay and burn. Chris Williamson The secure people are the worst. Secure people by far are the worst. They’ve got the best relationships, but they’re the ones that don’t notice the thing and would be burned alive. Yeah. Shaan Puri It’s like a gossip, right? Like gossip is seen as a negative thing to do. Wow. 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 (Time 0:42:54)
  • Attachment Styles Offer Survival Advantages
    • Chris explains anxious attachment gives people hypervigilance for small environmental changes, so they notice subtle threats first.
    • He contrasts this with avoidant attachment: those people exit danger immediately and decisively, leading others to follow.
    • Avoidant types perform better alone, are decisive, and can mentally partition emotion to act in crises (useful for EMTs or emergency responders).
    • The trade-off is anxious people detect danger earlier but may hesitate, while avoidant people act fast but with less sensitivity to nuance.
    • These differences suggest insecure attachment styles can confer clear evolutionary and practical advantages rather than only dysfunction. Transcript: Chris Williamson And you think, well, there have to be some. Anxiously attached people, they have a 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 their hypervigilant for stuff, but they’ll think, should we, do we leave that tiger? 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. (Time 0:47:24)
  • Why Time Compresses As Life Gets Repetitive
    • Michael Smoak argued time speeds up when life becomes repetitive and slows when experiences are novel, intense, or storied enough to stick in memory.
    • He used Henry Molaison’s memory loss, falling-time dilation, holidays, and childhood novelty to show experiential life can feel shorter than chronological life. Transcript: Michael Smoak So there’s a guy called Albert Hine in around about the 1880s. And he is a geologist who’s climbing up a mountain. And he falls 60 feet, right? So from the laws of physics, a 60 feet fall is one, two, boom, and you’re dead. So he, but now he recalls what his experience was like of falling. So he falls and he immediately thinks as he’s falling down um he thinks should i take my glasses off or should i keep them on should i drop my cane or should i uh basically cry for help and He goes oh because i wonder what it’s going to be like when people realize that i’m on this trip 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 um they’re going to all be there and go oh he’s dead then his entire life flashes before his eyes two seconds and he can’t what would be interesting About the story you’d immediately go well this is quackery this is like him potentially making this thing up post hoc but he then spent his entire life like 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 um 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. Experientially. 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 as we’ve been here Time has slowed down um 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’m Interested i don’t know if you guys have actually thought through of like how as you older, do you go about slowing down time and not just waking up 85? Yeah, I have. Shit, everything went. What do you do? We’ll get back to talking in just one second. Chris Williamson 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 learn. 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 Modernwisdom at checkout. That’s functionhealth.com/modernwisdom and modernwisdom at checkout. George Mack 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 and you go, wow. And the sun’s out this morning and it feels warm. And I find that when I bring perceptive or a sensory experience into the present moment and just romanticize your life, as the cliche would call, everything feels more novel. We were having cheeseburgers the other night. I’m just like, how fun is this? You know, we got to watch, I got to watch my friend work out materially so excited about, and now we’re eating a damn good cheeseburger. How good can it get? So, so my, that literally what I wrote about was three things. Michael Smoak Like the 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 um which i think i’ve told on the christmas show but just For people who haven’t heard it before um henry uh is like five years old he’s playing outside 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 has 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 he’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. He always thought he was 27, but now I’m 65, but now I’m at 72. He had some long-term memories. Like he was anchored at a certain time. Exactly, before 27. So it basically begs the question, you have like all the Brian Johnsons 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 … (Time 0:53:07)
  • How Novelty Slows Time And Why Life Compresses With Age
    • George Mack recounts Albert Hine’s 60-foot fall and the common report that time dilates dramatically in near-death moments.
    • He links that phenomenon to his writing about time perception: novelty stretches subjective time, so new experiences make life feel longer.
    • By age ~20 people may have lived half their experiential life because repeated events compress time perception.
    • Practical implication: seeking new environments and novel activities is a way to slow subjective time as you age.
    • George frames this as a theory he’s exploring rather than an established fact, inviting reflection rather than prescription. Transcript: Michael Smoak So he falls and he immediately thinks as he’s falling down um he thinks should i take my glasses off or should i keep them on should i drop my cane or should i uh basically cry for help and He goes oh because i wonder what it’s going to be like when people realize that i’m on this trip 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 um they’re going to all be there and go oh he’s dead then his entire life flashes before his eyes two seconds and he can’t what would be interesting About the story you’d immediately go well this is quackery this is like him potentially making this thing up post hoc but he then spent his entire life like 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 um 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. Experientially. 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 as we’ve been here Time has slowed down um 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 (Time 0:53:30)
  • Romanticize Ordinary Moments To Slow Down Time
    • Try to slow life down by romanticizing ordinary moments and turning routine tasks into playful games rather than waiting for rare big adventures.
    • George Mack savored coffee and burgers; Shaan Puri’s trainer turned a hated DMV visit into a five-star challenge and got ushered past the line. Transcript: George Mack 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 and you go, wow. And the sun’s out this morning and it feels warm. And I find that when I bring perceptive or a sensory experience into the present moment and just romanticize your life, as the cliche would call, everything feels more novel. We were having cheeseburgers the other night. I’m just like, how fun is this? You know, we got to watch, I got to watch my friend work out materially so excited about, and now we’re eating a damn good cheeseburger. How good can it get? So, so my, that literally what I wrote about was three things. Michael Smoak Like the 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 um which i think i’ve told on the christmas show but just For people who haven’t heard it before um henry uh is like five years old he’s playing outside 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 has 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 he’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. He always thought he was 27, but now I’m 65, but now I’m at 72. He had some long-term memories. Like he was anchored at a certain time. Exactly, before 27. So it basically begs the question, you have like all the Brian Johnsons 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 build-up 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. Chris Williamson It’s amazing. 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 best, 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, it’s 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. But yeah, you’ve hit on something I think is super important. Shaan Puri Well, it’s cool because 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, here’s a study or here’s a quote I love. But it’s like, okay, are you doing this? What do you do? 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 it’s super contagious once you just notice the delta. 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 and self-help at all, but you just did all those things. That’s basically him. These guys, like I’ve, I’ve seen him probably five days a week for the last five years. Um, 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 in a fender 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, cause… (Time 0:56:45)
  • Why Drop The Musts Before You Choke
    • Michael Smoak said stoicism often gets misused to flatten joy while still leaving people vulnerable to panic when things go badly.
    • His alternative from REBT was to drop musts and replace pressure with preference, while Chris Williamson condensed safety into I’m okay no matter what happens. Transcript: Michael Smoak Yeah, I mean, we spoke about stoicism a few times where on some regards- Reverse stoicism. Yeah, 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 like lost both of them. All of the downside and none of the upside? Yeah, you’re right. Correct. You’ve insulated yourself from getting too excited. Shaan Puri Are you saying they’re doing it wrong? Or are you saying the philosophy tells you to do that? Michael Smoak I think it’s a little bit of both. Like 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’s a 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 musterbation? Well. Well, not, no, no. I’m assuming you pronounce that. I say it a little differently. As an Indian man, yeah. Shaan Puri It’s when you watch a video of a mom with a- Bring him in, bring him in. Bring in the mother. We’ve got an active shooter. Michael Smoak So basically, it’s a guy called Ellis and he had, it’s like rational emotive behavioral therapy. So it’s like a, it’s like a spinoff 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? It’s- Clutch, like coming through in the clutch? 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. So overthink and underthink. 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 has to go well today or else because as soon as you do that you activate the fight or fight response right and you know it’s like a lot of people that are type a people that Probably listen to this sort of shit um It’s often like 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 goldalock zone between the two, which I think is missed by stoicism almost it’s almost a degree of surrender George Mack 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 yeah 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 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. (Time 1:10:38)
  • How Rowling Turned Rejection Into Momentum
    • Chris Williamson used J.K. Rowling’s rejection story to show that humiliating setbacks can become the force that builds a career.
    • Depressed, poor, and rejected by 12 publishers, she kept pushing Harry Potter until it sold 500 million copies. Transcript: Chris Williamson 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 nineties, 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 or bad luck has saved you from. Fucking money, dude. Shaan Puri She has a great line where she goes, rock bottom is the most solid foundation to build from. (Time 1:15:14)
  • Why The McDonald’s CEO Video Felt Inhuman
    • The group mocked a McDonald’s CEO promo video because he handled a burger like an android and described it as product instead of food.
    • They then ate Big Arch burgers on set while joking that no real customer says consumer or product. Transcript: Shaan Puri You’ve seen the McDonald’s CEO thing that’s been going viral it’s pretty have you been following this? So the CEO of McDonald’s tries to do a 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 you’ve heard about it here it is the Big Arch first of all is this what you thought he’d look like tested all day in portugal europe and in canada i love this product it is so Good i’m gonna do a tasting right now but i’m gonna eat this for my lunch just so you know so here we go 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 orange sauce, and of course, some lettuce. Speaker 5 So, oh, there’s so much going on with this. First of all, let’s try to get this thing. Shaan Puri It’s like me trying to unhook a bra for the first time. If you had my narration. All right. The moment of treat. George Mack It’s barely gone. Speaker 5 Yeah. That is so good. That’s a big bite for a big one. It’s distinctively McDonald’s. Shaan Puri Only McDonald’s could do 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 the 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 going to enjoy the rest of my lunch, but Big Arch, try it you can get it. Sort of cheeses is a great way to describe whatever smells that burger. You know he’s basically like lying when he’s like, I’m going to eat this later off camera, but I’m definitely going to eat this. Yeah, totally. I want to be clear. George Mack I’m going to finish this later. Chris Williamson I do this all the time. That made me feel physically ill. That made me feel physically uncomfortable to watch that. George Mack It’s like watching an android try to be a human. It was very strange. Shaan Puri How did that get out? Like from the lab? Like a lab leak? What do you mean? Like the actual video. Chris Williamson That wasn’t him catching something. Oh, no. Speaker 5 Let’s go. Let’s go. Oh, let’s go. Shaan Puri Ben. Wait, Ben. Look the tie length on Ben. Can we just admire? You may have to turn around. Turn around to the camera. Show the length of the tie. Ben wore his son’s tie. Do we all try the big arch with a McDonald’s CEO bite? George Mack Are you passing? Can you just reenact? Reenact the CEO? Yeah. What was it like he was picking up an active IED? First, yeah. Calls the red wire to the big arch. Enjoy the product, Michael. The product. This is a great product. Wow, this is mechanically engineered. Oh, it’s so wet. It’s so wet. Oh, we all got big arches. It’s so wet. It is unbelievable. All right, I’m going to take a big bite for a big guy. You know that scene in SpongeBob’s Crabby Patty? It’s just the tiniest little bit of… Oh, wow. Oh, it’s medium rare. That’s good. That’s good. I want my McDonald’s beef to be medium rare. Did it maintain the perfect… Good product. Does it still maintain its perfect circular shape? That’s a unique poppy seed. Michael Smoak I’ve never seen a bun like that. George Mack He said, we have sort of a sesame… What do you mean sort of? A sesame seed. I love the way he used the word product. Michael Smoak A good rule of thumb is no consumer uses the word product or consumer. Yeah. Shaan Puri I shall now consume product, everybody. Hello, fellow kids would you like to consume product is it good no yeah how is it how is the big arch action that’s what he should have done if he made me want to eat it but luckily i already Chris Williamson Love a double quarter pounder so this is this is great it’s not that special but yeah basically the ceo decided that he was going to fucking torpedo himself. Yeah. It’s so funny to think, how did that get out? As if that wasn’t meant to be for public consumption. Yes. Michael Smoak Well, I wonder if they, maybe a Machiavellian thing from the social media manager. You think it’s an accidental? I thought that was a promo. Shaan Puri Nobody’s that smart. Jared, throw up the meme I have on the dock of the McDonald’s thing. It’s so funny. I quite like it. When Ben was looking for his McDonald’s uniform, he went on Facebook Marketplace. This is the CEO of McDonald’s right now. Jesus fucking Christ. He goes on Facebook Marketplace and he found somebody who was selling a uniform. And she goes like, oh yeah sure like uh you need it for work and ben was like yeah i need it for work that’s the actual uniform and then well the woman you were messaging was you’re trying To get the uniform and then she looked him up and was 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. George Mack You made that? That’s unbelievable. She ironed on the M. Did she make the tie, too, or did you get that at Baby Gap? That’s the perfect length, man. Shaan Puri I think Ben’s been in uniform waiting for the big arch moment with Tom Cruise in the green room. Chris Williamson There’s fucking Ben in a McDonald’s uniform and Tom Cruise. George Mack This might be like the completely original scenario. This doesn’t exist in any other timelines or realities. That’s correct. Chris Williamson In 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. George Mack 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. Shaan Puri The first of your bloodline to ever do that. George Mack I give that out of 10 on three. Say your rating. Ready? One, two, three. Chris Williamson Seven. Interesting. Michael Smoak Wow. Not bad. It’s okay. Yeah. Chris Williamson A quick aside, there is a stat that genuinely surprised me when I first heard it. 95% of people don’t get enough fiber. Not because they’re being careless, but because hitting your daily fiber target through food alone is actually quite hard. But that’s why Momentus built Fiber Plus. See, fiber isn’t just a digestion thing. It’s the foundation of your gut health, which drives how well you absorb nutrients, how stable your energy is, and how quickly you recover. If your gut isn’t dialed in, everything else that you’re doing is working at a fraction of its potential. Fiber Plus is a three-in formula built to address digestion, gut barrier strength, and blood sugar stability all at once. And this cinnamon flavor is unreal. You might think, fiber, I bet that tastes great. Well, yeah, actually it does. Doubters. I really enjoyed this. Best of all, Momentous Off is a 30-day money-back guarantee. So if you’re not sure, you can buy Fiber Plus. Try it for 29 days. If you don’t love it, they’ll just give you your money back and they ship internationally. Right now, you can get up to 35% off your first subscription and that 30-day money-back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to livemomentous.com/modernwisdom And using (Time 1:16:51)
  • Why Short Absurd Challenges Hurt So Much
    • George Mack described the beer mile as more acutely painful than an ultra because you sprint a mile while downing four beers, one every quarter mile.
    • Chris Williamson extended the theme with absurd feats like a two-beers two-cigarettes two-Rubik’s-cubes speedrun and Ross Edgley eating scalding porridge while swimming. Transcript: Chris Williamson Have you heard of the beer mile? The beer mile? Yes. You must have heard of the beer mile. I won one last year, yes. You won a beer mile? George Mack Beat Devin Levesque in the beer mile at running. Do you want to explain what it is? Can we guess? Yeah. George, what is your guess? What is the beer mile? Michael Smoak You drink beer and run? George Mack During? Before. Directionally accurate. During. So the beer mile is, I wish I 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 exiting all of the beer that I had. So that’s the beer mile. Should we create the big arch mile? Chris Williamson I would do that. Interesting that you talk about the beer mile. How about the two beers, two cigs, two Rubik’s cubes speed run? Yeah. Jared, this is, if you were to look at your kind of elementary version of a physical challenge. George Mack Feels like it now. You know, let’s. Oh, he’s got Ben’s tie. Speaker 5 My time to beat is three minutes, 33 seconds. I can’t remember the warm record, but it’s around a minute 30. George Mack You can see it up here. Speaker 5 Will I beat that? If anything else, but I’m hoping for under two minutes. Also, the up-top camera is dead, so hopefully… Chris Williamson This guy’s just on his patio. Let’s do this. And he’s got the special… There we go. I mean, that first beer is what, four gulps? Nice. Watch him rip this sig. Watch him rip this sig. It is absolutely absurd. How do you even speed smoke a cigarette? Like that. Just like this. That’s, I think technically sprint smoking a sig. Shaan Puri It’s a- Oh, holy shit, it’s working. Chris Williamson Usain bolting that motherfucker. That’s crazy. It is unbelievable. The hair, the suit. It’s really Scott Adams’ talent stock in its purest form, isn’t it? Yeah. Yeah, bear’s interesting, a unicycle’s interesting, but a bear on a unicycle is fucking fascinating. And then two sinks. So there’s got to be a strategy here, right? He starts off with the beer. Shaan Puri He needs the Joey Chestnut double dip. I don’t think you can do it. Chris Williamson I think he must not be able to do it. But look at his cumin. George Mack Oh, but see, he’s doing this. He’s going to be dried up from the cig so he’ll want beer after the second sip. I think that’s the way it goes. Speaker 5 Yeah. I wish they had a shot of his dad crying inside. Watch. Shaan Puri Does he have like a warp on? We need like a live tracker. What’s his strain after this activity? Chris Williamson He’s on track a world record here, right? And he must be thinking the… Well, I guess you’ve got a lot of nicotine in you, but he needs to down the beer quickly. Michael Smoak Is it a world record? This is a world record. This is the new world record. Was he creating the world record? Chris Williamson No, he was trying to beat it. It was 130 something. George Mack I like your idea. We need to get this guy in touch with Sam at Woop. Hands down. Chris Williamson George, there’s tens of them out there doing this. 128-3, dude. Speaker 5 Jesus Christ. Wow. Purpose crazy. Shaan Puri Imagine if he realized the camera wasn’t rolling, the pain. Who is this small Asian kid he just showed? I think he just called someone out. His communist competitor? The former champion? Yeah, that was the former champion that we know well. George Mack Jesus Christ. 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 Cube speedrun. George Mack I did get challenged to do, because I talked about the beer mile and content, I got challenged to do the Filet-O mile, because I’m convicted on the fact that I think the filet-o is the ultimate Fast food sandwich and so i think what i’ll do is i’ll run a quarter mile and every quarter mile it needs to be a swim swim to alcatraz down a filet-o swim down another filet-o mentally i’ll Chris Williamson Already be in alcatraz it doesn’t matter where that’s what uh that’s what ross edgley is great at so ross 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. He 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 realized 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 unbroken, 50 hours that he swam for without touching land, without stopping, 50 hours of swimming. Yeah, 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 motherfuckers swimming so yeah he’s actively eating while striding in the water 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 uh protein shakes and porridge and shit video of this guy didn’t he swim like the entire coastline of iceland or some? The circumnavigated Iceland. Yeah. Ice swimming for this. I mean, it’s the, the mad thing about it is he makes it look so effortless. Like lots of people that do crazy things. Yeah. 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. (Time 1:25:03)
  • How Modern Habits Might Quietly Nuke Fertility
    • George Mack highlighted claims that everyday materials and heat exposure may quietly affect fertility long before people think about reproduction.
    • The examples were polyester underwear allegedly crushing dogs’ pregnancy rates and Chris Williamson using ice packs because sauna heat can suppress sperm. Transcript: George Mack An audit at ernst and young or something this is insane that’s fucking fantastic 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 uh 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 shut up about it. George Mack Okay, do you do? Do you pay attention? Bamboo cotton. I listen to him. I listen to stuff. Shaan Puri What is it, microplastics? That’s the issue or something else? George Mack 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 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 15 nanograms per milliliter to five, 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. Shaan Puri I’m doing the opposite. I’m going to do this as a form of birth control. Rather than a vasectomy, I’m just going to start polyester. George Mack I think I’m speed running infertility and I didn’t even realize it from my underwear and not anything else in my lifestyle. So maybe a good intention. Chris Williamson George, what’s your concern level? Michael Smoak You constantly tell me about the sauna as well, right? The saunas. Chris Williamson That’s why we’ve got Nutsicles in the freezer. You have Nutsicles at the house. Nutsicles in the freezer. That’s a Brian Johnson move right there. Yeah. I’ve been doing it since- Is that a branded thing or you’re calling it that? No, no, no. Nutsicles. They are purpose built. Search, just Google Nutsicles for me, please, Joe. Michael Smoak Yeah, there’s a problem with the guy. Nutsicles? Chris Williamson Nutsicles. The dropshippers are undefeated. Like popsicles, but Nutsicles. Uh yeah they just brian made this really great point which is my uh sperm count went up a lot by me going in the sauna like but it only happened when i iced my they were there on the on the top Left look at those so they’re special pants i don’t wear the pants because the pants are polyester but 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. George Mack Don’t show me the demo, please. Chris Williamson Oh, okay. Is he drinking a beer? Go back. It’s supposed to be for vasectomy recovery or something. Michael Smoak Bring him through. Chris Williamson Yeah. George Mack Amazon Model 30. Chris Williamson If ben comes in with a fucking pair of nutsicles i think we found the hook for the show everything bring him through the viral person shows up and has to answer um 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 Shaan Puri He was putting them in a really cool environment that was helping to foster fucking well that’s why they’re in the sack in the first place right correct i have like we’ve taken them you’re George Mack Talking about some of this come out of the fucking freezer like oh this is a little bit i have a friend who does the face plunge you mentioned earlier to change his physiology to his nuts Shaan Puri Every single morning oh like the nut dunk wait why didn’t you say this when i mentioned the well we had you held a secret close you’re talking about panic attacks it’s yeah i wouldn’t have George Mack Thought ah testicles yes he 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 uh the way it hangs if you will and his sperm count also went up and his member appears healthier and fuller now Chris Williamson Pretty interesting stuff so honestly well i mean between that and sunning the fucking butthole uh 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 yeah that’s exactly right yeah (Time 1:34:57)