#998 - Zack Telander - Everything You Want Is On The Other Side Of Cringe

Zach Talender, welcome to the show.

It's been a while

since I have

been on this show.

You've been busy.

I have been busy, dude.

I've been very busy.

I just want to say also that this is a perfect representation of

you and I, like the autism architects

and then like the degenerate kind of cowboy.

Wayland Jennings figure figure out.

Yeah, I'm trying to subliminally change people's music choices through what I wear as a t-shirt.

I don't think it's working.

I don't think anybody is listening to any of the bands.

I feel like they are.

I don't know.

Yeah, but I'm not going to give you, I'm not going to allow you to be the only person that wears a band t-shirt in here.

That's true.

I bought this purposefully for this.

Oh, nice.

Yes.

I do love Wayland Jennings.

Sick.

Everything you want is on the other side of cringe.

Yeah.

So

I saw,

actually,

I made this post about cringe.

And a lot of times people say, if you want

to like defeat cringe, you just have to, it's like a muscle you have to flex.

You just have to keep going for whatever it is and like learn how to take failure.

And it's almost as if failure and cringe are kind of like aligned.

But my nuanced take was it from it was the people who are calling you cringe or like the critics, like everyone has hopes and dreams everyone

you know it's not like there are some people who are born and they're just like i don't want to do anything with my life ever right but the critics and the people calling you cringe essentially what they're doing is saying like oh you're pursuant of some sort of hope and dream

how dare you

and so at some point in their lives they had to make a decision uh I'm not going to pursue my hopes and dreams because that is quote unquote cringe, which I found super interesting.

And so in this video, I just, all I said was like,

you know, the only times that the critics or the people calling you cringe can access their hopes and dreams is when they're sleeping.

So then when they wake up, just make sure they keep watching you pursue yours.

And it's like,

for me, that

adds another layer on top of what you typically hear, which is just like, keep moving, keep, keep going, push, like fail so you can get better at failing, stuff like that.

Yeah, it seems like there's something to do with earnestness and sincerity and sort of ironic speech in here.

So I think when people are speaking ironically, there's a distance

between you and your speech.

So being sincere sort of carries a type of vulnerability with it.

So you're saying, this is my position.

This is something that I believe in.

Whereas when everybody is always being ironic, And I think that identifying something as cringe is like the non-engaging way of being ironic.

Like saying that's cringe is the same as the exact same as saying, oh, that's good.

But that's the same sentence.

Right.

Right.

And I think

you have this sort of distance between your beliefs and your statements.

Like you don't actually put your beliefs out there.

You make statements about stuff that's typically critical.

And then you have your beliefs, but your beliefs are yours.

And nobody ever actually gets to interact with those.

And by not putting your beliefs on the line, you can never be cringe.

This is one of the

interesting asymmetries.

It's one of the reasons that I think critic or what's called the critique sphere YouTube channels have done so well because it's very difficult to do a criticism of a critique sphere video because it's two levels of irony.

Yeah, yeah, right.

That person didn't mean that thing.

They're there to take the piss.

You can't take the piss out of someone taking the piss unless they try to take the piss in a sincere way.

But nobody ever does that.

Nobody ever says, you know, this just didn't speak to me.

It really didn't didn't speak to me.

I didn't feel anything.

It's like, oh, God, you can do a criticism of that kind of thing.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Irony is the song of a bird who's never left its cage.

I saw that quote.

What's that mean?

It's basically somebody who's never gone out and done anything or, you know, they use irony as the weapon, as the song that they sing.

You know, the people calling others cringe, they use ironic.

They use that as like a, it's like a force field as well as a weapon to attack others.

But it doesn't allow you to actually move forward because you're never opposing anything yeah you know what's wild though is like on social media you do find that if you

engage in kind of that in an authentic way like i've been rewarded for it being like oh that's cringe or or like being on the side of the critic I've been rewarded for it.

And this is something that I'm actually super interested in is being able to do two things at once, almost two opposite ends of the spectrum.

And I wanted to talk to you about this because this happened like almost directly after having my daughter.

It was, it's this idea of like,

it was like gratitude maxing, but at the same time, being dream pilled for you Gen Zers, right?

So at the, at one end of the spectrum, you have ultimate gratitude for everything that in your life.

And in a certain extent, that could equal being content with what you have.

And then on the other side, you're not content really with anything because you have your head in the clouds.

You're dreaming.

You're hoping.

And what I've kind of been able to do recently and what I've been, what's helped me a lot is like both.

I tell myself every day, like, I know what I want in the mute in music.

Like I know, and I'm going really hard at it, harder than ever before.

I'm not doing this kind of like half in, half out thing.

I'm really going hard, but at the same time, there are moments that I'm like super grateful for.

And specifically, it's funny.

I have this picture.

It's like you and I went to Nando's a couple weeks ago, and it was just like you holding a Fanta.

And it's like, I'm super grateful for that

on so many different levels.

Once, it's my best friend, we're having Nando's.

Two,

a wonderful nectar

comes

out of a machine when you press a button and you just get to enjoy that.

I mean, come on.

How could you not be grateful for that sort of thing?

Right.

Another example of this.

Charlie, my daughter wasn't going down to sleep, not very easy.

It was just like,

it was a brutal night.

But Caroline and I got Frezas, which is our favorite Mexican food.

You've had it before.

We got it delivered.

We had margaritas.

We put on Stand By Me.

It's an American classic movie.

And we clinked glasses.

And I looked at her and I go, this is it right here.

This is amazing.

This is, honestly, if this is our base level, like we're all right.

And I think it's really important for moments like that to just say those words.

Two things that I would say is this rules.

And this is it.

And I feel like when you and I were living together, we did that quite a bit.

Well, yeah, we had a little caption, which was, these are the golden years.

Like, we're going to look back in however long when we've got tons more responsibilities and go, dude, you remember when we used to live on South Sixth Street?

You remember?

And we'd just fuck about in the cold plunge and we'd get up and we'd make some videos and then we'd order fucking Papa John's on a Saturday and watched like red zone.

That was it.

Those were the golden years.

And I think you're right.

It's a difficult balance.

It's probably one of the most

common perennial challenges that people who listen to this show bring up at the live shows that you're doing.

Come and see me and Zach live around the US and Canada.

Dates are available at ChrisWilliamson.live.

That's right.

One of the most common questions is basically,

I want to achieve big things in my life,

but my pursuit of something great makes me feel a lack in the present.

Right.

And that makes me miserable.

And I know that the present moment, or I've heard that the present moment is kind of all that really matters.

And I feel like I am borrowing,

I am spending joy that could be achieved right now in order to try and cash it in at some point in the future.

And I'm worried that I've kind of got my priorities wrong.

But I also know that I don't want to let go of my drive and moving toward goals.

It's just, if I had to suggest anything, it's use your senses.

Well,

that's a little bit bigger, but I would say use your senses, like grounding and those sort of, you know, those things, right?

And like, I swear to God, like, my brain is just,

how are we going to make our dreams come true all day, every day?

That's my dream.

My head doing it.

I'm going to push back a little bit.

Yeah.

How much of this is the fact that you've had a kid?

How much of this is

I brought a life into the world?

How old now?

Three months?

Ten weeks and three days.

Okay.

Give me credit.

That's not far off.

No, no, no.

Two and a half months.

Yeah.

How much of this is

I'm a new dad.

I'm watching this human that I made slowly get bigger and smarter and all the rest of it in front of me.

How much of it is that?

I have purpose in a way that I didn't previously, that not only am I now providing for a wife, which is relatively recent wife,

long-standing girlfriend, now even more recent child.

And all of this is just, oh,

this is what it was for.

Yeah, well, I, I, well, that's good criticisms, Chris.

Very astute criticisms on your, on your side there.

Uh, I would say it is

always been in me to kind of like be a space cadet that focuses on like really little things.

So I was on a run.

This was while Caroline was pregnant.

I remember I was on a run.

I even took a picture of it.

I saw a North American swallowtail, which is one of my favorite butterflies, on the side of the road.

And it was obviously wet, so it couldn't fly.

So I picked it up and I put it on the fence and I took a picture of it.

And I was like, wow, that is amazing.

And it's like that, that took little things.

Yeah.

And that took me being a weird kid that, like, maybe not weird is the right answer, but like,

I love the little things.

Like, I live for the little things.

So, to loop this back, I think a lot of this is what would quite easily be castigated on the internet as being cringe.

That

I,

I think, felt a little bit of shame for quite a while at taking pleasure in small things

like that.

That the fact that

non-grand,

relatively insignificant, very normal things could give me sort of like a cozy sense of joy.

That that was a comment on how small my life was.

Like, oh, that's what made your day.

Like, how unimpressive, how feeble, how, how, how non-majestic must your life be that seeing a butterfly or getting to have a really nice cold glass of Fanta, or the one that I use as this example, which always works for me.

If I throw my gym towel, the little hand towel I take to the gym, if I throw it and it goes into the laundry basket without touching anything from across the room, I'm like, that was fucking sick.

That was sick.

And I just, I think I had a lot of shame.

I still do have a lot of shame around that because there's this sense that life's supposed to be very impressive.

Okay.

And it occurs on a stage.

And then I do think that I have kind of

an inner cringe critic that isn't me, but is some

imagined third party who's very sardonic, who

doesn't really earnestly engage with anything.

And I hear them

making a comment around

what i like and that causes me to not like what i like so much anymore yeah i think

that

that happens to everyone okay but it's like

you have to you have to be like how

even even just like evolutionary human things bro

if you are thirsty and you take a drink of water you're like oh my god the miracle of water right that feeling right there is like really crucial

and what what i for sure have seen you do like we've gone to we go to a japanese restaurant and i remember being like chris this sushi is amazing make

say that it's amazing or something you know what i mean we can't we can't the miracle that went through getting this unbelievable piece of fish to your my plate at what was that restaurant?

I was somewhere here in town.

Soto.

Yes.

Yes.

And it was like literally from Japan 24 hours ago to our plate.

I'm like, you know, it's shit like that that like you really got to just somehow be like, what, what is the joy that I'm feeling and why do I feel it?

Like, oh, and then just reverse engineer the process that got you that feeling.

And like, you'll be like, wait, this is amazing, dude.

So you're trying to remind yourself of the miracle of modernity.

Of course.

Yes.

And

yes.

And like these simple pleasures that are just crazy.

Like I pressed a button on a box that I don't know how it works and my favorite Mexican food showed up.

I pressed another button on another box and I had every movie possible.

It sounds great, but we habituate, right?

That's exactly what.

Of course.

And I, but we also, it's, we also look past.

It's like, how could I enjoy this when I'm, when I haven't reached my goals yet?

You know, when I find that to be the worst is when we go to watch comedy shows, and it's usually me and you.

And I always find myself

hoping for the next comedian.

And that's not to say the comedians we're watching are bad, although some of them are, but I'm always thinking, oh, but the next one, and then the next, and then the next, and then, and before I know it, I've nexted my way through

an eight-person comedy set, and then we're done.

That's a perfect, would it be analogy for life?

The next, what's next?

Yeah.

But I'm, but I'm, I mean, I say all of this as if I'm some guy who just like appreciates everything in life.

I wake up, my eyes go open.

I go, what's next?

Like, that's the first thing.

Like,

what's next?

How am I, like, in music?

How am I going to make this happen?

You know?

So it's not like it doesn't exist.

You just have to, I feel like

you have to fight.

Like, it's two different things fighting and you have to place your money on both.

And like, neither of them are ever going to win.

And the fight's never going to stop.

It's like, yeah.

I think there's definitely a lot of pain in the resistance of that, of thinking, why can't it just be the case that I can take gratitude in the moment for the things that I love whilst also pursuing my dreams?

And you probably just need to say, well, I'm not wired that way.

Basically, nobody is wired that way.

In my experience, the people who are the most effective, as in, you know, successful objectively, external metrics of success, are the ones who have the most turmoil internally.

And that might not be true for every single person, but for the most part, it is.

And the reverse is true.

The ones who have the most inner peace, that are the most chill, that are the most happy with themselves, are the ones who aren't going to try and fill some internal void with external accolades because the internal void isn't as big.

And I

just,

in some ways, you don't even get to choose.

I think you have to say, well, this is kind of the way that I'm wired

to a degree.

I am a

out-facing person i am a very in-facing person i'm sort of peace or goals and okay

given that this is the setup let's just step one stop resisting the fact that i pursue things yes yeah yeah and that i wish i had more peace so that's what i'm saying though is like you need to work the other thing concurrently even though they might detract from each other

you still can do it

it's a battle you just it's like you're like uh sort of goals bisexual.

Yeah, you just non-monogamy.

But honestly, all of these dualities that we could think of.

Like, you have to put equal chips into both, I think.

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i want to i want to go back to that irony thing i was watching a an essay from joe folly unsolicited advice he's been on the show fucking awesome guy and uh he's got this great line he says to profess an honest belief in anything especially something open to challenge, is a pretty exposing thing to do in the public square.

And he's talking again about his issue with ironic speech, that it allows you to care less about things or at least seem like you care less about things.

And it doesn't force you to actually engage with any information earnestly, right?

Earnest being the bravery to take your emotions seriously.

And it is insincere.

And my issue, I think, with how much ironic speech there is at the moment online and accusations of cringe, that was why that really spoke to me.

The problem that I have with so many things being called out as cringe, like everybody's cringe radar is fucking hyper-achieve.

The issue I have with it is that it dissuades everyone from being sincere.

So I, Chris, I truly believe that the comment section has like changed humanity permanently.

If

because what right now this discussion between you and I, if this was televised in like 1998,

we would be more sincere, even though we're still performative and we'd still have a filter on it.

We would be more sincere.

And the only reason we would is because there's no chance of anyone else kind of like coming back unless they're on the network as well.

All right.

Okay.

One of the three channels that are available.

Yes.

And so, so,

bro, I left a comment on something.

It has 65,000 likes from a fucking comment.

That's insane.

That's like, you know,

what that says is like somebody's response to somebody who's working out their true self can be ironic.

It can be critical.

It can call it cringe.

It can just make, as long as it's contrarian, whatever, just a quick little response can equal or have more value than the actual original person's response.

Well, that's what getting ratioed is, right?

Yes.

yes getting ratioed is somebody coming in and it's very rare how many times in history has it happened where someone's got ratioed with a reply that says this is so lovely i'm so glad you did this and meant it yeah right that's not possible it's never happened it's always it's always negative it's always the controversy but do you see how like that is fundamentally changes like how we can do this how we can make this happen it feels like there's someone watching you at all times.

You're kind of, you're, you're thinking to yourself, is this, I mean, everybody's goal, everyone's goal should be to not turn into a meme.

Like, you should, if you can thread yourself through life without trending on Twitter for becoming a meme at some point, well, there's that thing, you know, everybody on the internet, everyone's going to be famous for 15 minutes, fine, but just not for something

that's super, super meme-y.

So, how would you advise, let's say there's a cringe hyper-responder out there, somebody who sort of really feels the scrutiny of others' opinions, maybe more than they think that they should, or so much that it's

becoming restrictive and constraining to them.

What would you say to that person?

Just be sure of what you want to say.

Like be sure.

Like

what I see a lot of times in podcasts

is that people might learn very

surface level things and then they just kind of bubble off how conversations usually work.

Just bubble off, bubble off.

And all of a sudden, you're now taking a stance on something.

The Ukraine.

Yeah.

Climate change.

Exactly.

And you're just, the thing is, like, it's not

that you need to understand that the comment section is going to exist, that, that the response world is going to exist.

So like

by kind of just bubbling off into this world.

like you can get into some serious trouble.

Okay.

So understand where your domain of competence ends.

Sure.

Right.

Yeah.

And, you you know, this is, this is the, I, I, like, podcasting is scary.

It really is because

this is how, you know, we, when we get locked in this room, we can just keep talking, keep going.

And we can

just,

yeah, like, I could start a business.

I just have to do this.

And like, you know, someone would be like, these guys are idiots and they're teaching people or whatever.

I do believe like you have to be able to pontificate on things.

You have to be able to wonder and to explore ideas with your friend

but you can also get into trouble by you know and you can be cringe and all those things so for that person that's not to say that there is no such thing as somebody who is wildly unaware of their own detachment from the world uh for instance andy elliott

right

very difficult to look at him now maybe in the world of sales i haven't done a deep dive maybe in the world of sales he's a goat or something it doesn't seem like that's that's the case.

But from the outside, like a lot of that stuff, getting people up on stage to say, have you got a six pack?

My wife's got a six pack.

I'm indicted in a million lawsuits from the past about all of this stuff.

You

are flying very, you're like the Icarus of cringe.

You're flying very close to the sun.

In order to be able to do that and pull it off, it's going to, it's going to be really, really, really hard.

Yeah.

Even if you're squeaky clean and super legitimate.

And if you've got a huge fucking criminal history, that's going to be hard.

So one thing that you said there was about people kind of getting out over their skis.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's this idea called the Oxford manner, which is the ability to play gracefully with ideas.

And it's

letting someone...

A similar idea from Eric Weinstein is the accuracy budget.

So basically,

the internet is sort of because of its eye of Sauron toward cringe, and especially toward hypocrisy or people getting things wrong.

I like that eye of Sauron.

That's great.

Do you remember when Huberman mistweeted about

percentages?

He stacked up percentages over time and did a tweet about it.

Yeah.

He miscalculated the way that the maths worked.

And he still gets that brought up now.

This is a doctor who doesn't know how,

supposedly the leader of the longevity movement who doesn't understand how to do a fucking percentage.

That's one thing.

which is supposed to be, oh, this is the tip of the iceberg and shows that he's, you know, he doesn't understand anything below that.

The issue that I have with the idea of an accuracy budget is if you're never allowed to play gracefully with ideas, which is to talk in public about something that might be true or might not be true, and you're given a little bit of latitude, you're given some breathing room before people say, Oh, you know, that's wrong.

And you go, hey, hey, hey, just let's hang on a second.

May not be an expert at this.

And the line, unfortunately, is so difficult to delineate between

is this person

a

it's it's topical as well chris so if this person is discussing like if you and i are discussing like our favorite sandwiches and i get in over my skis because i start talking about meatballs and stuff and i you know they come from italy or whatever that's not a big issue but if you're getting out over your skis and you're talking about cultural relativism or moral relativism and you start going real hard

That's when people are going to be like, hey, man,

context or not, you're a fucking idiot.

You know?

And that's where, like, okay, you can take the response of,

what is it, post and ghost, totally, but you have to have a finger on the pulse to know what, what and what to not talk about.

Experts only, the position of only people who have

credible qualifications and an illustrious history within this particular area are permitted to speak on it.

Yeah, so the problem with that ultimate,

I disagree with that.

You know, it is a sliding scale as well

because then who determines what is the determining factor on who's an expert?

And how far does that go?

There's a difference between.

Oh, I have my doctorate.

Oh, you have your doctorate?

Like,

you know, it depends if you're Saudi Akhan.

Hey,

hey, now.

There's a difference between being an expert and expertise, right?

Right.

You know, you can have, you don't have a music qualification.

No.

No formal music qualification.

You do have yours as like sport, SNC, like bullshit.

Not bad at music, right?

Pretty good at music.

Right.

Could probably explain to someone how to put a track together.

So it's, it's two things.

It's ideas and action.

So if somebody

has really good ideas and takes action a lot,

that builds expertise.

If somebody just has good ideas, that's completely meaningless.

You could tell me what you think would make a good song over and over again.

And it might be good if I went out and I did that.

But if you never went out and you never did that, those ideas are meaningless.

Would you, is this not sort of counted by somebody that's a coach?

You say, well, you haven't won any fucking world record.

No, but he's exactly.

So the goal is he's, it's not, there's multiple different ways that a coach, a coach is,

what have you done for yourself?

So have you at least tried to make a journey of improvement in your own performance?

Whatever that is, and the answer should be yes.

There's the

second one is, what have you done for others?

And then, again, that is not actually world titles, any of that.

It's just visual representation of improvement.

So, in the sport of weightlifting, which I'm well versed in, if you have gotten someone's total up 20 kilos in like two years, like that's a level of expertise.

Okay.

And then the final one would be formal or informal education.

Who have you worked under?

Who's mentored you?

What certifications do you have in those things?

And that's the trifecta right there.

All of those things, like if you want to expand beyond that, it's like, okay, well, if you want certain aspects, like we can go further, like that's that's the umbrella three.

So I think that works in a sporting situation.

So coaches.

Well, give me another one.

What?

If you're talking about contribution to ideas, like somebody that comes up with novel, interesting, accurate insights about the world.

So that is awesome.

And

the actors,

whoever's going to take the action, can take those ideas and run with them.

But that doesn't make the person who gave the idea an expert.

No.

Right.

Wouldn't an expert have to be some sort of practical

applicable.

Imagine Alex O'Connor didn't have his degree in philosophy,

but came up with a really lovely

description, a really lovely summary of how emotivism works.

I believe the breadth of what he's done outside of what he did in Oxford, was it, is so massive that you take away the Oxford.

What if it's the first time ever?

The first thing ever.

Yeah.

And he's like, you know, someone just slides.

Well, be prepared.

I mean, you're not going to.

Debut single, right?

You know, that first idea happens to be a fucking.

Well, what if somebody who does know emotivism?

What if somebody who's like an absolute G at understanding that sees it and goes, this this is brilliant?

Right there, I feel he is now like.

So you're still having to rely on people within credibility.

Because something has it's like nothing can exist without outside understanding of that thing.

Does that have to be from people that have got credibility, though, in that way?

Or can it not just be, wow, this like this really improved my life.

This understanding improved one million completely unqualified normies lives.

But there's your qualification right there.

Okay, but that's not coming.

This is my point.

This is my point.

That at no point in that transaction has there been an expert that's had

the gatekeeping on that.

So then, so again, those three prongs, it probably hits one or two of them.

And it doesn't hit the final one,

which

is good.

And it's good enough, but I don't think that people are going to like it.

You know what I mean?

I do get it.

I think it depends on what side of the internet you're coming from.

Dude, a good idea is a good idea.

I swear, it it doesn't matter.

Like I take, if someone writes well in my, like again, my comment section, I don't know who the fuck these people are.

And if they write well and I'm just like,

I don't care.

I don't care what they've done, who they are.

That was great writing.

And now I feel better because of it.

You might as well be an expert in my mind.

But like this totality of understanding and like

being an expert or being qualified, like that takes a little bit more.

And that's kind of a

got it again, another sliding scale of like.

My main concern is that there is this sort of experts-only approach.

If you do not have the formal qualification and the illustrious history behind you, well, can we give an example?

Because I have one.

Sure.

You and I talked about it all the time.

Was it Eric Weinstein on your podcast?

Oh, the one that CoffeeZilla brought up.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes.

You and I, okay, I really want to talk about it.

I'll explain this.

This is a good point.

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modern wisdom.

Coffee's got his second channel, Voidzilla, and this is forever ago now, a couple of years ago, I think, when it was much smaller.

And Eric Weinstein commented on what do modern women want.

And he said,

I don't think that the Marlborough man, which was showing his age,

is kind of the classic hyper-masculine perspective that most women are looking for in a partner.

And

Coffey took this and said, Eric Weinstein, managing director at TL Capital, PhD in pure mathematics.

What the fuck do you know about what women want?

Fair, completely fair, right?

If you take the surface level perspective of experts only, if you do not have credibility in your history and formal qualification, and if you're getting over your skis, interestingly, that's the same conversation that I bring up, the idea of an accuracy budget and experts only.

Right, right, right.

Difference being, Eric has been married for 20 years to a woman, and his daughter's 19 years old.

So perhaps he is actually

slightly educated and incentivized to really really understand.

I'm on the same side as you, but I wouldn't even acknowledge the argument from the beginning,

from the point of being like, what's Eric's credibility to speak on this?

And then you go, well, here's his credibility.

I go, who are you to question?

Like, it's a conversation.

It's a conversation.

You said, you asked him the question.

You said, what do you think the modern women want?

And he's kind of like playful about it.

He wasn't like,

he wasn't like red-billing everyone.

He was just equivocating.

Yeah.

He's just chatting.

Seem like they're like the Marlborough.

Exactly.

He didn't even remember he said that.

So I wouldn't even come at it and be like, well, he does have a wife and kid who's, you know, it's like, I wouldn't even go that far.

I'd be like, what the fuck?

He's allowed to talk about potentially what modern women want.

So the problem with that argument, he's potentially allowed to talk about what modern women want.

Right.

Feels very flimsy.

on an internet.

Of course, it is super.

On an internet that is hyper-obsessed with pointing out hypocrisy, cringe, people getting out over their skis.

And this was why the accuracy budget thing I think is really good.

And unfortunately, it'll never exist.

But imagine that everybody,

everybody in the world, you could even have, but especially people that talk online, everybody had kind of like a

bank account of some kind.

And when they contribute in areas that they know well and fairly represent the truth or the best of the evidence, the best of our understanding, and they sort of move the conversation forward in that way, or they'd sort of replay existing parts of the conversation in a way that represents them fairly.

That's good.

That kind of adds to the budget.

What this allows them to do is to withdraw from that budget when they want to play with ideas that they're a little bit less certain about.

Right.

And what I like about this is that it doesn't dissuade people who are maybe coming in from slightly different fields, different domains, from going, huh?

I just learned this thing.

I just learned this thing in economics.

And I actually think that that really applies to what we're seeing in the modern dating market.

Or I just learned this thing in AI.

Yeah.

And I actually think that that really explains what's going on with China right now.

Right.

So, okay.

Yes.

This, this is a crucial point that so many things have similarities and so many things are analogous.

And this is like,

I hate to bring it back to the hustle culture, bros.

They love analogies.

They love them.

You and I love analogies.

And it's like, but if you end up using this analogy for something, people are going to go apples to oranges, blah, blah, blah.

Like they're going to start freaking out on it.

But, you know,

it is, it's, people want to just, which foam finger am I grabbing today?

Which side are you on?

Like, what are you an expert in?

And that's it.

That's, that's the end of this whole thing.

And it's just, it is, it is flimsy to say, well, you should be allowed to talk about certain things, but then when you say the wrong thing, well, you shouldn't have talked about it.

It is, it is strange that this sort of freedom of speech crowd are one of the first to jump down people's throats if they get something slightly wrong.

It's well, actually.

But that's also, that is the internet.

It's more important to be correct, or it's more important to correct someone than it is to be corrected.

Or to be correct.

Sorry.

That's a good way to put it.

Everyone wants to correct you.

They don't care if they're

if you're right or wrong.

This is the reason that ironic speech is protection, right?

That if you're the person pointing out other people's flaws, you don't have that eye of

the second second level doesn't work.

Exactly.

You're like, hey, hey, hey, look, I'm here as an arbiter.

Don't worry.

I'm here as an arbiter of truth, and I will help you to find out who the grifters and the shills are.

I actually asked, I'll ask you.

What is a

good, what is your best definition of the word grifter?

Well, I would say or shill.

Yeah, for me, it's charlatan.

It's usually

a fraud, but somebody who

claims to have absolute answers for things.

It's usually somebody who is giving you very clear and concise

one-size-fits-all answer.

I think that's a good one.

That's usually it.

I think that's a good one for Charlotte, and at least the best one that I've heard for Grifter and for Shill.

Grifter, somebody espousing believes that they do not truly believe themselves.

So like, I say this thing, but I don't believe it privately.

Right.

That's a grifter.

Yep.

And a shill is somebody who is trying to sell a product or service that they wouldn't use themselves.

Okay.

Would you say that a shill has been bought by said product or something?

There has to be some sort of monetary exchange to

maybe they're doing it for stickers.

Yeah, I think those are great.

You could shill for the Democratic Party because it makes you look good.

You're not gaining monetarily, but you might be gaining in terms of status.

Okay.

And Grifter, I guess, Grifter and Shill kind of interchangeable.

Shill feels a bit more like about capitalism and selling shit, and Grifter feels a bit more about about ideology and ideas, but I've probably got this wrong.

Anyway, what I really like, because I tweeted this ages ago, I was like, hey,

people use this word a lot.

Tell me, people who use this word, what is your best functioning definition of this?

And I went through hundreds of replies, and they were all a fucking mess.

And there was one dude that got somebody

advertising or selling a product that they would not use themselves.

I'm like, okay, there.

We have a nice framework.

And I think that's pretty good.

Right.

That's pretty good.

Yeah.

The problem that you have is because so many people on the internet are grifting and shilling, the sensitivity of everyone's radar has got turned up so much that you get pattern matched incorrectly all the time.

Yeah.

And then the

like it is

constraining to the way that everybody behaves because you think, well, fuck.

Like if I if I do this, if I say this thing, like for instance, when I do the ad reads reads for modern wisdom, I'm always thinking, even if this is true, this sounds like something.

Dude, this is like, this isn't true.

Have you ever been pulled over by a cop and you're, you're totally not doing anything wrong?

And you're like fucking nervous?

That's literally how, that's what this is, bro.

It's, it's, it's, uh, yeah.

Oh my God, I've done this.

This is so funny because this has happened to me so much.

Like, like, I like, I do believe in this thing, guys.

I swear to God.

And now that I'm arguing that I do believe in it, you guys now for sure

feels all like a shield.

Okay, one time, Augie, and I, uh, we were at this girl's boutique opening.

Like, she opened this boutique,

like, clothes store in Chicago.

It's since been shut, you know.

Her daddy paid for it.

Augie and I showed up, both wearing Hawaiian shirts,

uh, about

two bottles of rose deep.

We showed up and we were just the life of the party, you know, just, and it was, you know, this grand opening, all this stuff.

We were making jokes and all this stuff.

We left, had a great night, whatever.

My buddy Hank calls me on the phone.

He goes, hey, what's this?

I hear about you and Augie being gay together.

And I'm like, she drank rose and walked away from the ghost and went to the church.

I was like,

what are you talking about?

He's like, yeah, you know, Olivia was like, uh you and augie were acting all gay together at and i'm like i i was like now come to think of it we were acting pretty gay you know and now i'm like dude i first off i swear i'm not gay and saying that sentence made me feel gayer

you know what i mean so i just stopped i was like look sure

Sure.

You know, come to think of it, we were pretty gay on that day.

And I would have suspected the same thing.

But, you know, it's just this

denying the thing that you know you aren't

might make you, you know, more not complicit, but like make people be a little not.

The lady doth protest too much.

Exactly.

Okay, so another one that you've been talking about recently is cool.

Right.

What makes something cool?

What's your best sort of working model of cool and how it works?

So the actionable thing about cool is like not talking.

Seriously.

Some of the coolest guys in Austin actually don't talk.

You and I are patently uncool because of how much we speak.

Right.

That's true.

That's it.

I mean, that's that's it.

We could go down everything, but it's like, I talk too much.

I think too much.

You hear me on this podcast?

I'm just babbling.

Not cool.

It's not cool.

So I just, I don't try to be cool.

You know, it's the same thing.

Like, I'm in music.

I cannot, if I try to be cool, I might be cringe, you know, if I try to be something I'm not, I can't, I can't, I gotta just be my authentic self.

I gotta talk, I gotta worry about things.

That is very insightful.

So there was a study done very recently, it came out about a month ago, about what makes someone cool.

So I'm going to take you through it.

You can jump in whenever you're ready.

Early writing on coolness described it as emotional restraint.

being calm, composed, and unbothered.

This view rooted in the metaphor of temperature and emotion, so coolness, right?

Coolness as a sign of self-control and mastery.

Nice framing, right?

Not bad.

Yeah.

They did a study of more than 5,000 people in 12 countries.

Each participant was asked to evaluate non-famous people that they considered cool, not cool, and good or not good, and rate them on 15 values and personality traits, extroversion, autonomy, warmth, conscientiousness, stuff like that.

Across the 12 countries, so huge range of cultures, different people's cool gets described in really similar ways.

And you're talking like Africa, Western countries, Eastern countries.

And what it suggests is that the meaning of cool has changed.

And it's a way to identify and label people with a specific psychological profile, right?

Because if it wasn't, they wouldn't converge on what cool means based on here are a bunch of different psychological profiles.

So

cool people are outgoing and social, so extroverted.

They seek pleasure and enjoyment, so they're hedonistic.

They take risks and try new things, so they're adventurous.

They are curious and open to new experiences, open.

And they have influence or charisma, powerful.

And perhaps most of all, they do things their own way, autonomous.

So extroversion, hedonism, power, adventurousness, openness, and autonomy.

Those six things.

Does that comport?

To a certain extent, extroversion, hedonism, power, adventurousness, openness, autonomy.

You and I talk about this I think rare just being scarce

if you're too available I mean this was uh I saw a really awesome clip from one of the guys from Suicide Boys awesome rap group and he was saying you know we we couldn't tell anyone in our hometown that we were good they saw us buying menthols at the you know the quick mart on a Wednesday.

So we couldn't be like, dude, listen to our music.

I swear it's good.

They're like, yeah, whatever, dude, fuck off, you know?

But to

people in Russia, we were the suicide boys.

We were cool as shit.

You know, it's you're

a cheeseburger in your hometown and you're a steak elsewhere type of thing.

That is a level of cool.

And it's like rarity, something we don't see.

Aloofness.

Yes, aloofness.

So this is why you see like, how come Denzel Washington doesn't have an Instagram?

Because if he did, it would only detract from his cool.

So, you know, this is where, like, somebody at your status, like, might start playing with cool, meaning aloofness and all that.

The problem is, if it's not who you are as a person,

like we said.

I'm getting to that.

I'm getting to that.

So that thing that you said before about authenticity, that bits in here too.

But I do think you're right.

I think that.

We talk too much, dude.

Aloofness, distance.

It allows people to sort of suck in speculation and the speculation is cool.

Sleep token.

President.

President's an even better example.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, dude, let's take it even more Americana here.

The new chick at your school, the new chick shows up at your school.

She's hot.

She's cool.

She's different.

She's new.

You, then by like second semester, you're just like, yeah, oh, that's Sarah.

Yeah.

Fuck.

Yeah.

Boring.

Okay.

So this is, I said before that there was a difference between cool and good, right?

So they're asking, cool, not cool, good, not good.

And it's interesting because you'd think, okay, are cool people good?

Like intuitively, you think, no, but why?

What's the difference between somebody who is cool and somebody who's good?

So cool people were more likely to be described as extroverted, hedonistic, powerful, adventurous, open, and autonomous.

So I think just to break that down, extroverted, outgoing, very good.

Hedonistic, like, yeah, I can see that too, like sort of short-term pleasures.

Powerful, yeah, you need to have that in order to be able to sort of enact your influence.

Adventurous, yep, also true.

Open, adventurous and open, very much so, like doing new things, trying new things, being creative and autonomous, doing things their own way.

So I think that makes sense.

Good people, on the other hand, were more often described as conforming, traditional, secure, warm, agreeable, universalistic, conscientious, and calm.

So this is like a cozy, reliable,

relatively predictable.

but hardworking person.

And I think one of the reasons that good and cool are different, apart from the fact that there's only like a tiny little bit of crossover, kind of in autonomous, conscientious area,

is that the problem with cool people is they're unpredictable.

They're unpredictable because they're so extroverted, adventurous and open and autonomous.

Yeah, they do their own thing.

Yeah.

How the fuck are you going to be able to predict what they're going to do next?

This is exactly why Sleep Token breaks convention when it comes to, and why they're cool.

They're cool because they do seem to be doing things their own way.

well this is this is marketing this is the you know cultural industrial process through all of it is how can we make how can we popularize cool because like essentially

again we say like cool is underground different rare scarce okay so how do we make that popular because that's just like the opposite they did this with um like the hippie movement in the 60s they did this with

i mean essentially if you think of Nirvana, like Kurt Obain,

to a certain extent, that's why he killed himself, was because like it, he was incredibly depressed about what Nirvana became.

It became the exact thing that they didn't want it to be.

And like, that's, it's a counterculture, basically popularizing a counterculture, which could be...

Counterculture is usually pretty cool.

Well, you had a good example of this represent George Eaton's clothing company.

The Owner's Club, which is that little thing, left breast and then the big back print, was becoming so ubiquitous and so worn across the UK that it was maybe going to go the way of Burberry.

You know that Burberry was won by Chabs in the UK?

Did you hear this?

No, I didn't.

Do you know what Burberry is?

It's got kind of like a crosshatch pattern with the sort of beige background.

I don't know why.

I have no idea why.

But for most of sort of the 2000s to the early 2010s,

Burberry was won by Chabs in the UK, and it was kind of a status symbol, presumed.

I don't know where the fuck it came from because when you actually think about the positioning of Burberry, it's like a classic British brand.

It's trench coats, high-collar trench coats.

It's very formal.

But anyway, they cottoned onto it and ran with it.

I think you have seen the same to a degree with Stone Island, except for the fact that Stone Island is actually made for football hooligans, right?

It's like padded jackets and sort of

crew neck jumpers and stuff that kind of fits the aesthetic a bit more.

Burberry was a bit more interesting.

Anyway,

represent owners club.

And I said this to George.

I was like, mate,

I see a lot of people wearing owners club.

Like, hooray for your bottom line.

But are you concerned about overexposure?

And he said, yeah, we're killing the range.

You can no longer buy it starting in whatever month.

He's like,

it's gone.

We're going to do it because there is such a thing as too much exposure if you want to be cool.

And I think it's interesting what you've added in here, because I do think that that's a dimension that's missing when it comes to cool.

How

ex-eroded, hedonistic, powerful, adventurous, open, and autonomous,

aloof for that.

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Why

would you rather have a cool friend or a good friend?

I would much sooner have a good friend.

Okay, so why is it that regularly we choose to sort of push to one side, unless we're very mindful, right?

If we're a little bit more juvenile or immature, we push to one side things that are good in place of things that are cool.

Like what's the allure?

And there's an interesting insight here that says

coolness and goodness are related, but they're not the same thing.

Your grandma might be a really good person, but that doesn't necessarily make her cool.

The distinction matters because it helps explain why we admire people for different reasons.

One attribute, only one attribute, which is being capable, right?

So, power on one, and I think conscientiousness on the other, was seen as equally cool and good.

And I think that the interesting thing about being capable is that if you're unable to be capable, you can't enact your will into the world.

How can you be cool if you're at the mercy of the world?

And how can you be good if you can't push back against the world?

So, I was like, huh, okay, that's pretty interesting.

And the final bit that loops to what you said, if you want to be cool, authenticity matters.

Previous research shows that trying to be cool usually doesn't work.

Trying to be cool usually doesn't work and can cause someone to lose status in the eyes of others.

With wealth, people tend to respect it more if they believe that someone worked hard to earn it.

So you can think silver spoon versus self-made millionaire.

Coolness works differently.

If people think you're trying to be cool, you lose credibility.

That's because coolness is about autonomy, originality, and being unconcerned with fitting in.

And the fact that so many cultures agree on what makes someone cool suggests that coolness may serve some sort of shared social function.

So it's kind of adaptive in a way, right?

The evolutionary build side of this.

The traits that make people cool may make them more likely to try new things, innovate new styles and fashions, and influence others.

These individuals often push boundaries, introduce new ideas in fashion, art, politics, or technology.

They inspire others and help shape what's seen as modern, desirable, or forward-thinking.

Coolness in this sense might function as a kind of cultural status marker, a reward for being bold, open-minded, and innovative.

It's not just about surface style, it's about signaling that you're actually ahead of the curve and that other people should pay attention.

But the authenticity thing is a big part.

And I thought that was so funny.

We love people that are self-made millionaires, hate people that are trying to be cool.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Authenticity is a wild one, isn't it?

Because it's like you need status to show off that your authentic self is worthwhile looking at, at least like in content creation or whatever.

Like somebody's authentic self, like no one could care about seeing it.

There's lots of people that are authentic, but don't have any status, so they're not respected for their authenticity.

Right.

It's one, you know, it is an amalgamation of a bunch of things as well.

There are like juggernauts in music that are like getting older.

You know, you have Beyonce, Jay-Z,

Taylor Swift, and even like the weekend.

Rick Beatto had a big thing on this.

It's like the room for cool to come up and take over.

It's just like, it's much like

we're much more corporatized with our pop artists now.

And it seems as like that.

What was the, what are some of the last breakthrough artists

that were written off the back of cool, in your opinion?

Oh, man.

Well.

Like current breakthrough artists.

I mean, Billie Eilish is super cool, I think.

But she's a juggernaut.

And she's been around.

Breakthrough is not due to being cool.

Right.

I don't know if I don't know.

Red Clay Strays?

I wouldn't even say they're...

I'm talking huge.

Sure.

Look, it's like

Bob Dylan was just cool, dude.

Like, I don't think a Bob Dylan could exist now.

And

it's just too, like...

The world is just too like corporate.

And like, like, I hate, I don't want to sound like a hippie on this, but like the process of growing from an independent artist to

becoming uh a bob dylan is just too difficult really i would have or it's too it's too different i would have thought that the market would have just rewarded whatever the market wants that gatekeepers that is true gatekeepers are there but if you can say hey

put me in a fucking spangly blue unitard and let me do a backflip off this fucking Benson boon sign

people are gonna People are going to like it.

Then they'll go that way.

Or if they say, we're not going to tell you our names,

they're going to go that way.

It used to be like, man, I heard this band is really good.

We got to go check them out.

And like, it would be a record label or an AR guy from a record label or something to go check them out.

Like, they don't have to do that anymore.

They just check TikTok, see who's trending.

So then now the filter is like, okay, well, who can put together the best video?

for that sort of potential to exist.

Well, because the route to success

has been sort of narrowed down through this one aperture, which is attention online, right?

That's it.

Like, what was the last, I don't even know what this is, the last band that came up the old way by playing live gigs with no online presence simply doesn't exist.

Yeah.

You mentioned like Rachel McAdams is another good example of this, but Denzel Washington, two big film people that don't have Instagram.

Name me the biggest band on the planet that doesn't have Instagram.

Oh, wait.

It doesn't exist.

It doesn't exist.

It doesn't exist.

It can't exist.

I'm sure that there's an outlier that's going to make

my fucking hat.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But largely, the point being, promotion is the name of the game, eyes, attention.

That is how you grow and move through the industry.

So

it is, in that way, that makes sense because

if the only sort of path to success is squeezing yourself through attention online,

there are only so many ways that you can do that.

The rules of the game game online are more compressed than they are when you're just listening to a song and saying, Do I like this thing or not?

Or going to see a show live and saying, Was that good or not?

As opposed to,

did

this particular video or post manipulate the small number of levers that work the algorithm in a manner to be able to get them to gain attention?

Right.

So it's like taking something from 4K to 360p or you full color to black and white.

There's only a few ways to do it, yeah.

And people can try and be innovative.

Like the world of brand at the moment, all of the biggest brands, Newtonic included,

the photos are all like, here's a thing that's going on, and oh, there's a product over there.

Here's a thing that's going on, and oh, there's a product over there.

Because the world of sort of front-led marketing has kind of died.

Yes.

And now it's all about lifestyle marketing.

It's like, what's the life that you live alongside this product?

Yes.

And

it's just the game that you need to play.

play.

Yeah, I, the,

so the typical kind of music thing is to

do a performance online, you know, and then post that.

But if you have a song coming out, you can keep doing performances of your song like pre-save here, check out my new song and all this stuff.

Already tired just saying that.

It's like boring, you know?

And I've, I've done a bunch of live performances on my Instagram and only one or two of them have like broken through.

I've probably done 40.

It's like countless hours of trying to like just play a song and here, listen to my stuff.

And like two of them have broken through.

So I one time made just bullshit videos on things that I was thinking.

Like, I don't know, just nonsense for 30 days.

And I got 19.9 million views, gained 30,000 followers.

Not one of them had to do with music.

It was just me talking about life.

And people were like, I like that, blah, blah, blah.

You know, so that window is so much easier to grab people's attention.

It is really difficult to.

The problem that you have, and it's great, and congratulations for fucking crushing it on Instagram, but

you now need to somehow convert those people that came for the vibe into a viewer.

And here's the thing.

I'm not even going to try.

I'm just going to say, if you guys want it, here it is.

Because

I can't make people do anything.

You can't make anyone do anything.

But, but

the few that go, they're going to be like, damn, this is really good.

And I have had a lot of that.

There's a line between

how much are you growing whatever it is that you do.

We used to do this in nightlife where the cool kids from around town or the hot girls or whatever, they're the ones that you want at the launch of your new event.

And you'd be befriending them and, you know,

asking them if they want to go for coffee or like checking in about how their fucking football team or like whatever, like some bullshit that you don't care about to then cash in the favor that you've built up, this sort of social equity that you and this person have accrued, or that you feel like you've accrued with this person by doing favors for them, or whatever.

And then you want them to bring their 15 hot girl friends to this event that you've got that's launching on Friday night at fucking Tupped Up Palace in Newcastle or wherever.

And that was very tit for tat.

I think that it made me see a lot of marketing and sort of that side of social dynamics is very transactional.

It was kind of a little bit like being a stripper, a little bit like being a stripper, like an OnlyFans.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But that, and what you're doing here is basically the same thing.

It's just a much longer game with no, you're not asking someone to come to the nightclub at the end of it.

And I think when it to sort of loop it all back to authenticity,

what people can fall in love with is somebody like Dry Creek Dwayne.

Right.

That Wrangler guy that I had on the show about a year ago.

And he is somebody who is so authentic, or the Rizzler, right?

Better example.

We were waiting for him to come up, weren't you?

The Rizzler.

Why is that kid interesting?

Because it seems like he's being himself.

And when did it get cringe when they started doing like

dance videos and stuff?

Yeah, it felt like it was contrived.

Like, I want to watch this

32 BMI

12-year-old.

I want to watch him do goofy.

Just be him.

I don't want to see him do brand partnerships.

Yeah, he's charming, charming, and silly.

And like,

and

going to die early.

And I want to, like, I mean, this needs to be an intervention.

Yeah.

That would be sick.

What an arc that would be.

The Rizzler weight loss arc.

Hitting the LGBT.

Did you see Serena Williams got loads of stick?

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, because of her.

Man.

I mean, I don't even.

She looks great.

Say what you want.

She looks great on a Zempic.

Fucking stacked abs and everything.

Yeah.

I mean, she's got insane genetics.

She's got the best genetics.

Yeah.

But also has always been a

thicker girl.

Yeah.

But there's been a ton of muscle underneath that.

Whatever, you know, so then

she's...

Black sunny website.

Yeah, so like

you take a GLP-1 and you're always been a jacked person, you just have a little bit of extra body fat, you look great.

But if you take a GLP-1, you've never worked out a day in your life, you look terrible.

Horrible.

Awful.

Disgusting.

Yeah.

You look awful.

I mean, look, that's the biggest takeaway has been that most people

who have an issue with people losing weight through GLP-1s are not fat.

People that have actually done the work the natural way because they feel like they're being threatened.

Right.

Like fat.

You would think, you could imagine a different world where it was.

Well, see, but this, this is why, this is why performance matters more than everything.

You know,

you could, you can, I know this is gonna, again, this is gonna, like, what's your 5k, bro?

Like, what's your, can you like go up a set of stairs without huffing and puffing?

Can you just walk around?

Like,

yeah, you, you took a bunch of GLP ones to lose, you know, 30 pounds, but like, are you capable physically?

And the answer is no, you're not.

So it's like, I still am, you know, that's, that's at least what people could hang their hat on, who did it the right way.

That's true.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, performance will always have to be at the forefront of weight loss, in my opinion.

That's because in order to achieve a calorie deficit without GLP1s, you need to create the deficit through moving more as well, as opposed to just eating.

And it's likely going to be a better process and a more fulfilling process if that added movement has performance metrics attached to it.

Oh, I'm lifting more weights this week, or like my

mile time has gone down, these sorts of things.

There's something happening inside other than just fat loss and actually a little bit of a

scale.

And actually probably a little bit of bone density losses.

Yeah, I mean, the most healthy way to go about this is to just say

the weight loss or looking better or feeling better is just secondary to your performance increase.

Well, in that case, does this make an argument that people who are already training should be the ones that go for GLP ones the most.

Maybe.

Sure.

Because they already understand what it is to do the things that mitigate the muscle loss and the bone density and all the rest of the stuff.

I mean, yeah.

I mean, the, the,

the question then is, is like, you know, performance enhancing drugs as well.

It's the same thing.

I'm pretty sure are GLP1s allowed in sport?

I don't even...

Yeah, I don't know.

I should know that.

Because like, that would be a huge game changer.

Do you want me to go move down a weight class?

Oh, for sure.

Or anything that requires lower body weight, which is like running

yeah many different sports

like lower body like run a marathon lose 10 pounds run a marathon again it's like gonna be easier the second time do you know magnus midpo

yes the rock climber fuck me i was watching him do the norseman which is this

extreme triathlon i think it's a maybe a 5k swim 140k bike ride and then a marathon at the end of it but the elevation change

is fucking absurd, right?

And the water, you jump into the water at four in the morning and it's in a freezing lake and wherever the fuck.

Wait, I uh Fergus did this.

Maybe.

The Norseman, it's cold.

Yeah, and you can choose different paths depending on the weather.

Have you seen that one?

I don't think this is the same.

They both suck, but like you have to, it depends on like where the clouds are because like you literally can't see it.

No, no, no, no, it's not this one.

This one, this one, the first 160 people

that get past this point get a black t-shirt because they have to do what's called Zombie Hill, which is the steep incline at the very end.

And the remaining people get a white t-shirt.

Anyway, I just watched, I mean, that rock climber guy, I've studied being served as shit online.

He is a fucking freak.

There is nothing he can't do.

French Foreign Legion, selection process, walked it, trained for 14 days.

He trained for 14 days to do the Norseman.

Came in 79th out of hundreds of people that had been training for over a year.

And they did his VO2 Max as a part of this thing.

VO2 Max came in at 59.

Holy shit.

592 is crazy.

Yeah, because he's probably late 30s, right?

Yeah.

Age is a huge, huge factor for VO2.

59.

They were like, elite issues.

I got to get mine tested, bro, because

I've been chirping my comments section, show VO2.

VO2 Max.

Just show VO2, bitch.

I mean,

it's a pretty base response, you know, like what's your total was my previous one response, and now show VO2 is another one, too.

You haven't done your VO2.

No, I got to go do it.

But I do think, like, we can do it at Neutrobolt.

Yeah, no.

Eric will do it.

Yeah.

Kind of nervous for that.

I fear that I would suck a lot.

Is it so?

VO2, is that built through

low-end Zeon 2 stuff or no, no?

There's different tests, but they always peak.

Always increase.

In terms of building it, in terms of the work that you do to build it, is it both your

slow runs and your fast runs?

Again, I'm way out of my

accuracy budget yeah give me that accuracy budget baby okay but i would imagine it's everything it's like an amalgamation of stuff but i do think that like okay the nordic four by four thing norwegian four by four

the idea of like threshold pace and then like

not full recovery, but like damn near full recovery and then threshold, like it's just that threshold work, just getting your heart going and pumping just constantly without fully maxing out.

And like, cause once you fully max out, the session's over, you know, and I'm talking fully, full, like session's over.

I asked Andy Galpin about this because what I'd been doing was threshold.

So

I'm right in saying threshold is like just pulling below anaerobic, right?

Sure.

Yeah.

It's, it's like

not completely killing yourself so that you basically can't come back from it and holding the highest average pace that you can for four minutes.

three minutes off, four rounds of that.

So four on three off, four on three off, four on three off, four on three off.

Assault bike is by far, for the people that want to try it, assault bike is by far the easiest way to do this because you don't have to start or stop anything.

You don't have to get on or get off anything.

You can speed up and slow down as much as you want.

And Rhonda Patrick, when she came on the show, said that

this reversed two decades of heart aging in the study that this was done on two decades of heart aging is done.

And I think it was once a week in untrained individuals for one year, one or two years, once a week.

So it's like 104, either 52 or 104 sessions.

And that's the effect.

But I spoke to Andy Galpin.

He was like, no, no, no, no.

I want you to end yourself as fast as possible and then try and hold on.

End yourself, like spike that heart rate as high as you can

and then just hold on.

And then he said, when the second one comes along, it's like, you can do the same thing, but it's just going to be lower.

And then the third one comes, you can do the same thing and it's going to be lower.

It might, it, what, what you might run into is kind of if it

the same thing occurs.

Like you, the breadth of intensity over the course of the session might be the same.

You know, it's like going to be higher peaks.

Yeah.

Or you're just your performance goes down, but you had a way high performance in that first bout.

So the later bouts are worse.

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What have you learned from running for 100 days?

Oh, dude, I have a great analogy for this.

I was thinking about this on the way here.

It's like showing up to a classroom.

So your mind is the class of kids.

Let's say like 16-year-old kids.

And you show up and you're the substitute teacher.

Those kids are not listening.

They're like, fuck you.

You can't even be like, all right, guys, put your phones away.

They're like, nah, fuck you, dude.

That's your first run for me.

My mind was like, this is terrible.

This is terrible.

This is the worst thing ever.

We're going to stop.

And I'm like, oh, you know what?

Screw it.

Like, we'll get out of class early.

That was day one, you know, day 50, you're like, phones are away.

Kids are still interrupting.

You're kind of able to like get out the work that needs to be done, but the kids are still not listening.

By day 100 today.

which is amazing.

I already did mine.

It's like,

you can look at the kids and be like, all right, we're doing what we need to do.

And everyone's like, yeah, I know.

And they look up and they're like, can we get our phones out?

And you're like, no.

What do you mean by the kids?

What are you?

It's like, that's your mind being like, this is so annoying.

I really don't want to do it.

It is a distinct, this is why I truly believe like

when I say the word, run, go for a run, or running,

almost universally the response is, oh, God, no.

No way.

Because when you start, your heart rate goes up, your muscles fatigue, and you want to stop.

Period.

You just want to.

If you're on a bike, you can sit and you can go a little bit slower.

You know, rower, you're sitting.

You know, it's something distinctly about running that is just brutal in that way.

And so

my approach to this, and I have since, I think it's a million views.

I was like, guys, I'm a running influencer now.

And I call it gaslighting yourself into becoming a runner.

Essentially, if we look at what running is, it's hopping from one foot to the other, other, just doing that.

So, what I want you to do is as little effort as humanly possible, hopping from your left foot to your right foot, and then doing that in succession.

Really minimal effort.

Now, we're just going to lean forward a little bit and move forward.

I don't give a shit what your pace is.

I don't care at all.

I want you to do that for 20 minutes.

And, like, accidentally, you're going to run like a mile and a half.

And you'll look at me and you'll be like, I have not run over 400 meters in two decades, bro.

I go, exactly.

This is what it is.

So I started and I was just like, I'm just going to see if I can hop for 40 minutes.

I didn't even look at how far I ran, but it was always over like two and a half miles or whatever.

And I just kept doing that over and over again.

And then someone would be like, hey, do you want to run with me?

I'd be like, I'm not very good, but yeah.

And I would go and I would die because I could try to keep up with them.

And it's just like, you just constantly over, you're overreaching and you're coming back.

And I'm just a noob.

I don't know what the fuck i'm doing dude like i'm i'm new to this but i had to eliminate my ego entirely there was no pace there is no zach the runner there's no gear that i have to buy there's no nothing it's just hop from one leg to the next for 40 minutes why is running taking off so much at the moment do you think i think um

influence, you know, I

would be remiss if I said that I'm not hopping on a trend.

But the reason I started was I had this idea I was taking a shit.

And I was like, hey, it'd be really cool to run a mile in 10 minutes and then tomorrow try to run it in 950.

And then the next day of 940.

That's why I started posting.

And that's why I started running every day.

And today is the hundredth day of doing that.

Not the mile thing, obviously.

I gave up on that 22 days in and just continued to run and continue to post.

But the reason why I think it's trending is,

yeah, influence, like just, it's, it looks cool.

The bodies are cool that are doing it.

And we could get into the hybrid thing too.

Um, but the reality is you're taking this aspect of fitness that everyone, once you go to the gym and once you grow muscle, you're like, this aspect of fitness, I'm genuinely not going to like the cardio aspect.

The, the, and it's a, hugely important scientifically, like it is the biggest, you know, you've had, if you talk to Peter at Teon here, that's his thing too.

It's like, uh, CRF, cardiorespiratory fitness is like the most important thing, period.

Um, also having muscles as well.

And once you have muscles, you're like, I don't want to do this.

So, what the runners have figured out, or the people who want to run, is like we have hacked our brains into like kind of like competing to get better times and to see how far we can run.

And now we have this aspect of our fitness that is now taken care of because we're

legitimizing it in our mind if that makes sense

it's helped me for sure i'm in the best shape that i've been in in years uh because i'm like i want to see if i can get my 5k time down

you know and i just train the shit out of my upper body and like i normally would it feels a lot like the hybrid thing is kind of come and gone already i'm not sure maybe

i think you know i think fewer people post about high rocks and more people post about just running yeah

that that

it's hard to know like what what's happening in subculture am i being exposed to exactly like tiny corner of the internet yeah yeah but i will say this like the the hybrid shtick that everyone loves to hate on is like oh so you're a shitty bodybuilder and you're a shitty runner and it's like oh look at fonts our boy ian right he's not a he's what everyone wants to look like him okay takes his shirt off everyone goes yeah that's that's pretty fucking solid right there So right there, bad bodybuilder says who.

Okay.

Then he posts like his strava.

It's like eight miles at a 608 mile pace.

That's really

good for,

you know, an average runner or a shitty runner, as everyone says.

So it's like, okay, well,

that is a guy who's a gym bro who has now hacked his way into like getting his cardio in and maintaining leanness.

Has the fake natty debate come for running yet?

Ooh, I don't know.

I didn't see it.

Because you can't really fake your Strava thing unless you're going to jump on a bird fucking skid.

You did 22 miles an hour for a lot of this run.

But I'm just wondering, because the only anchor that I have for this is the world of bodybuilding and fitness.

And

the equivalent would be, well, his physique versus his physique, this particular trend, performance-enhancing drugs, age, all of this stuff.

But the running community, I guess.

Well, running is an Olympic sport, so there's going to be doping.

Like at the highest level, there's going to be doping.

And then at amateur levels, sure, you know.

And

that's, this is how like Icarus started, was amateur level doping is like huge because amateur races are huge.

Amateurs love to go as hard as they can.

You know, it's like they're a yuppie during the day.

They're just like working on the computers, day day trading, and then they're like, can't wait to post their Stravas, you know, and go try and beat their homies in marathon stuff.

They're just hyper competitive people.

So naturally, PEDs are going to fall right into that.

And that's how Icarus started.

People like forget that.

Like it was not initially a

documentary to expose.

the Russian doping plan.

It was a documentary to see, he was like, I wonder if I can like get my time to be better by

getting

supervised drugs.

It just so happened that Rodchenkov was his supervisor, who was like the linchpin of

Russian doping.

And it ended up being an incredible documentary because of it.

I love that documentary.

He did a second one, right?

But it wasn't like a series.

I don't know.

The dude that did it went on to go and do a second one.

Yeah, it's

I've been watching Tour de France Unchained.

on Netflix.

And there's three seasons of this.

It's basically Drive to Survive the Formula One thing, but for Tour de France.

Bro, it's so fucking compelling.

Like,

that is

so hardcore, what those guys do.

It is unbelievable.

Yeah, isn't there like a stud right now?

There's a couple of, there's a Taddy Pogacha, who is one, and Jonas Fingergaard, who are the kind of the two

guys that are trading back and forth.

One of them had a really bad fall.

over the last 12 months and then came back, I think that was the Giro d'Italia, and then didn't have a long time to turn himself around, ready for the tour, and just struggled.

But yeah, these guys are freaks.

And it's a sick, disgusting sport cycling.

Yeah.

To see the reason that I really, really like it is that the

protracted

suffering story is really compelling.

In a way that drive to survive, or even Thor Bjornsson just broke the deadlift record again.

Right.

Super impressive, 510 kilos, just keeps going up, unbelievable.

But there's no story.

There's no story around the pursuit.

All of the story is in the preparation of the pursuit.

When you're watching

Unchained, Tour de France, on Netflix, it is

like it's so.

How about, I mean, let's go simple with it.

How about the art of traveling through space and time, like on a cycle?

These guys are up in like like beautiful Italian Alps, cruising through Switzerland.

Of course, it's, it's poetic.

And it's like, it's been poetic.

You mean that Thor sniffing fucking nose

straight?

Yeah, like just sitting like, I can't, I shouldn't move because I need to deadlift today.

So I'm just going to sit and eat food and then I'm going to deadlift.

Like, yeah, it's not as romantic,

remotely as romantic.

And just thinking of like, bro, 70s Tour de France racing is like the most poetic shit ever some guy like smoking a cigarette like getting a bike ready for this guy's like are you ready for the race tomorrow like you know what i mean like in somewhere in fucking milan or whatever that is romance

we're gonna race tomorrow it's a bigger race

you know well it's either that i love dude this that or 2000s well you want to get me fired up in lands you want to get me fired up on shit it's like romanticism of things that may have no romanticism around it what whatsoever For instance, Billy Strings, you know, Billy Strings?

No.

So there's a style of guitar.

It's bluegrass

and it's kind of flat picking.

So you like almost pick every note.

You do a lot of hammer on.

So you go like, doo doo doo, you know, and you hammer on, pull off.

But a lot of, you know, these guys would be great in metal.

In fact, Billy Strings, I think, was just on a fucking metal tune, which is amazing.

But he was talking, I think it was on Theo Vaughan, and he's like, I did meth

and I stayed up for two, three days playing guitar.

That was it.

That was all I did.

I don't think I went to the bathroom.

I don't think I did anything but play guitar.

And I was like, did this just make meth romantic?

Am I just like, you know what I mean?

Like, if there is a story, I'm just a story bitch.

You know what I mean?

Anything, anything like that.

Like, cocaine can be romanticized.

Well, certainly some of the stories that you hear about that, like when you hear Charlie Sheen, right?

He's just got this new series that's coming out at the moment.

And

I feel like I've seen clips from that.

Yeah.

But he was, you know, I was banging seven grand rocks and finishing them.

You're like, you're like, good story.

That's cool.

I mean, until your life falls apart, that's cool.

Right, right.

But no, you are right.

There's certainly something about

it feels a little sterile now to have everything so dialed.

Yes.

Yes, bro.

This is like

the, there's a meme about, we can talk about running again.

It's like, there's the, the like, just got into running, pretty good at running.

And then like the badass runner.

And the badass runner is like same shoes from 1996, like shitty shorts, like Casio watch and just like some shitty hat.

It's like, I don't know, dude, I just ran like a 230 marathon.

I don't know, whatever.

That's romance right there.

We love that.

And it's, you know, to go back to the tour, it's like, well,

we can't science everything.

It just always comes back to suffering, which is so romantic.

I'm going to put myself through hell.

And then it's going to feel awful.

And everything's going to be telling me no.

And I'm going to keep saying yes and yes.

That was one of the reasons that the Kip Choge

2 breaking 2 thing was awesome, but.

Actually, a little bit less awesome than it should have been.

He had people he was drafting off of.

And a Tesla in front of him that he was pacing off of and lasers on the floor and they'd

done specific genetic testing to work out precisely the falloff of glucose in his muscles and this is the mixture that's at this point and this is the mixture that's at this point.

And that's sick.

And it's basically exciting in its own way.

It's treating a human like a Formula One.

Like an engineering project to be mastered.

And that's really beautiful.

But

I don't know whether you would necessarily look at it.

Again, Chris, this is another duality.

We have practicality and we have the fucking story, dude.

And

so much of this podcast and so much of what you do is like demands practicality.

It demands optimization.

It demands all these things.

But at the end of the day, bro, the way I know you, the way that you think is,

it's up in the cloud.

Like you,

yeah.

And you, it's like you feel like you're in a movie.

And, you know, things can uplift you in a way.

Like looking at your vlogs from your tour shows, those are not, that's not optimization.

That's just

love and

like the hero's journey.

And we all have to dig into that.

And so much of

the content in everything that we're wrapped up in all the time is like, here's the best way to do this.

Here's this, this, this, this.

And it's like, at the end of the day, just shut the fuck up.

Let me just feel this story.

And at least believe in something that might not even exist.

Is that not the lure of somebody like a David Goggins or a Cameron Haynes?

Sure.

Sort of a blunt instrument that's kind of I don't really

I saw Truitt do the Leadville 100.

Yeah.

And he does this video.

And he's talking about how he's got, are they called drop bags, maybe?

Or grab bags or something.

It's the aid station prefabricated this much.

glucose and this bar and this other stuff.

And he's they're already made like little pack lunches, I guess, for your run.

And they're at each of the different stations or whatever.

And

his dad had left, Cam had left, and didn't have anything.

And he said, yeah,

dad left the house and he didn't have any drop bags.

He'll probably just go to a gas station, like pop in and just find, like, see if there's anything there that he likes to look off.

And like some beef jerky and

RX bar or something.

Yeah.

Yeah, I just thought, I think that that is part of the allure.

But even within that, people are so quick to jump on the cringe thing, right?

Because that's yeah, but results.

Yeah, but results can beat the shit out of that.

Fuck that off totally.

But that's a good, that is a good point.

Results are so underrated, it's crazy.

There's a fucking salve.

Yeah.

Cringe.

Shut the fuck up.

Here's my results.

Fuck off.

I mean, that's the same thing as the sleep token stuff, right?

That you say, who are these fucking homos in masks?

Yeah.

What are these fucking theater kids doing in masks?

They are theater kids.

That's great.

Okay, yeah.

But results.

Yeah.

Same as Noah from Bad Omens.

Yeah.

You go, I mean, yeah.

Too aloof.

You don't talk enough.

I want to see more forward-facing stuff.

And you go,

we break records all the time.

We're like big at one of the biggest rock bands in the world.

Do you, where, where do you feel

like you could improve as far as

just where, where do you feel like you could improve?

How about that?

How about that for a question?

I'm going to flip the script on it.

Well, endless list of things.

If we stay on topic, then

I think I would be significantly happier and significantly better at the things that matter most to me if I cared less about the opinions of others.

A lot of, yeah, but bro, you don't realize how little you care about people's opinions because I see it.

And this is, this is the thing.

This is my job is to be like,

for instance, your TikTok, dude, there was a video where I'm not kidding you, there were thousands of comments just bro, so fucking bore in your TikTok, bro.

And you're like, oh, I forgot I had a TikTok.

Yeah.

That you don't know how little you actually care.

It's easy, but that's easy to do when you're, that's, there's a difference between not caring and being ignorant.

Okay.

I was ignorant.

Right.

Had that ever, I mean, this is a great, a great example.

I'm glad you brought that up.

When that happened, and it's happened a lot, when that one happened,

the first thought in my head was, how silly for me to care about this Furor

fucking meltdown that's happened on this stupid little platform that I don't even, you know, like, how silly?

Yeah.

And then immediately my next thought was,

oh,

that's all of them.

That's all of them.

That's all.

That's the whole thing.

But had it happened, had it have happened on my YouTube, or had it have happened in my Spotify comments, had it have happened as a response to my email that I sent at fuck.

If it was in my email inbox, right?

The one that that I sent Three Minute Monday out from,

then I would have been, oh, oh,

I've done gone fucking fucked myself here.

So, okay, you may disagree, but

not fully, not fully,

caring less about, or at least

fearing the sort of judgment stuff

would make a big difference because I think there's lots of things that I like the idea of doing,

but for fear of

looking silly, for fear of criticism, for fear of getting it wrong.

I don't move as quickly as I should do.

I take, I'm very sort of deliberate, which is good because it means that I kind of rarely fail at most decisions that I make.

But it also means that I'm leaving so much on the table by going so slowly with things.

And there's levels to this game, right?

Like I'm comparing myself to people that move really, really fast and break shit all the time and other people who might move more slowly, whatever, whatever.

So that would be one thing, I think, sort of the opinions of others.

This is kind of associated to it, but the bravery to

the bravery to believe that you've sort of got the support of

people, even if you're not continually putting stuff in front of them.

So like continuing to be prodigious at like the pace that stuff goes out, you know, quarter of a million words written on the newsletter over the last five years, and that goes out every single Monday, and the pod, and all the rest of this stuff.

But because

there is a little bit of a hamster wheel that you get on with regards to that, which I love.

A big part of the reason there's 150 episodes a year is because I want to have 150 conversations.

And if I drop down to two a week, I only get 100, and that's a lot less, and that sucks.

I want to have this many conversations, but

you don't get to do the aloof thing.

Right.

At what point do you think that you

will have the results that you want, that you can step back and

not try less hard, but

work less hard?

I don't know what that means.

Like, I understand that means that maybe means publish fewer podcasts, but that means for me, I have to have fewer conversations.

And

that would, that's like 100 a year?

100.

I get 100.

So each person's 1%.

Yeah, that's a lot.

That's hard.

That's like for me, because that's what I've got used to it.

And so much of it's anchoring buyers.

You know, you look at

guys that do one episode a week, and that's one, one week is 2% of their whole inventory for the whole year.

And I'm like, oh, my God, unbelievable.

I do like that you're doing like these live events because that can,

it's the big push.

It's a big spike.

Like, I got to do something extra.

I got to push myself a little bit.

So that's, that's actually a really good point.

I am a creature of routine, as you know.

And

that has been a huge benefit.

And I think that people who don't have routine will regularly have their lunch eaten by people that do because

there's basically nothing that you can achieve in this world that doesn't require consistency.

Even the greatest one-hit wonder, like Gangnam style or whatever the fuck.

I bet that guy had spent, or whoever wrote that song did not just do it out of thin air yeah the construction of that particular fucking cultural moment sure was not just conceived of overnight and then published the next day that's not the way it works

however if you're the sort of person who has a disposition i like routine i sort of get into this it becomes

the groove that you sink into quickly becomes like a valley that you can't climb out of and you get locked into ways of operating ways of thinking but how does that make you feel then like if it if it's interrupting your, your, you, it's interrupting the very person you are.

Do you feel like do you feel like you're okay?

You know what I mean?

Do you feel like like, do you ever feel like you're swimming in deep waters because of the amount of work that you're doing or the amount of

sometimes sometimes I do.

It doesn't get super overwhelming.

It hasn't gotten the most overwhelming it was was last year.

Last year was the most overwhelming.

This year's been overwhelming for a different reason because I've been trying to have two jobs at once, one which is my job and the other which is fixing my health.

But last year was the sort of closest I came.

There's a vlog from LA when I do all these episodes back to back to back to back to back in the fucking car garage.

And I'm in between two of these episodes.

I've got my head sort of resting.

My eyes are resting in the heels of the palms of my hands.

And

I was like, yeah, that guy's

that's too much.

That's, that's, you're sort of pushing too hard.

But on the flip side of that,

this is the perennial question that we sort of started with.

People want to really fucking, I want to make a dent in the world.

I really want to make a dent in the world.

And I want to enjoy my time too.

And how do I find this balancing act?

It's a silly pursuit, though, trying to make a dent in the world, but you do it anyways.

Everyone does.

So Frank Zappa, there's a really interesting interview.

I don't know who was asking the question.

I think it might have been either like Barbara Walters or Katie Couric.

They're like, how do you want to be remembered when you die?

And he's like, what?

I'm dead.

You're talking about, I don't, there's no remembering.

There's no me.

And he died.

I mean, he, he like knew he, this was a premonition he had.

And I saw it and I was like, oh, that's, you know, the, that's the reality of this whole thing.

Oh, yeah.

If there are, if by making a dent that sounded like leave a legacy, that is not what I meant.

Yeah.

I simply meant I want to feel like I happened to life.

And that when I get to look back, I'm like, fuck, like, yeah, like I did a thing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I really did a thing.

And there is a mark that was left as opposed to me kind of just coasting through.

All that being said,

you're right with what you say about

doing the live show sort of rips you out of the

hamster wheel.

It rips you out of that sort of

regularity.

It's the reason that, you know, I was in, I basically lived in New York for a month, last month, and then went and did

London straight from there.

Then I'm back.

Then I'm back to London for the health conference.

Then I'm doing the roast of Andrew Hume in LA.

Then I'm doing Tony Robbins.

Then I'm back.

And then we're on tour.

And that's the

final third of this year is just fucking trips to the UK, LA and tour.

That's it.

Yeah.

So imagine you have a theater full of people.

They're all bright, bright-eyed, and ready to watch you.

And they're there to listen to you.

And you finish up, and it was great.

You finish up and you go, you guys, this experience that you had, me talking to you, didn't matter because my eyes are on my future and I want to make a dent in the world.

That's what they offer.

It's like, you could, you would never say that.

You know, we live in a digital space where you, you can have an impact on people and a comment will come.

thousand comments will come holy shit chris oh my god even in you know but because

maybe it happened so much and maybe your eyes are set on the next, what's next, what's next, these

people

that are coming up to you, that is, these are, this is like the ultimate

gratitude max that you need to work on.

So low impact.

This is, this is one of the things I think that we see, one of the reasons that you see creator burnout online.

And it's so strange to look at whatever percentage of primary school children want to be a YouTuber or a content creator or an an influencer or whatever for a job.

And you are going out of your way to pick a job which has

a really huge asymmetry between the level of gratitude that people think they will have before they get into it and the level of gratitude that people have when they do get into it.

So

there's a few examples like this.

New Orleans, a place that is one of the most fun for me to visit, that is one of the least enjoyable that I would like to live.

pickleball one of the most fun to play that is one of the worst to spectate right things that from the outside are different george max got his call of duty versus war yeah thing right what does call of duty looks like being in a band being in a band from the outside looks fantastic yeah you're on the road you get to have loads of fun you're playing in front of crowds people sing your songs all the rest of it from the inside you don't have a routine your sleep's all over the place your health's fucked you get to eat a square meal and your relationship is in the toilet like that that's the reality of it call of duty versus what.

One of the things that when you look at, and it's a unique category, right?

Because it's swallowed up so many other umbrellas of other bits of work.

Musicians are also content creators and fucking news anchors are also content creators and poets and, you know,

it is the least,

in many ways, the most sterile and least gratifying

form of having a massive amount of impact in terms of your positive feedback.

And that's not to say that I or anyone, you, anybody else that's sort of in our circle, are ungrateful for how fucking amazing it is that people love what we do, but that for how much people love what we do,

the level of felt sense is just so.

We did, when I was doing the tour with James two years ago, when we did our first live tour, we played to 350 people in Edmonton, right?

And it was fucking freezing cold, like actually freezing, freezing cold.

We went outside to this porter cabin thing, and there was pizza, actually quite nice pizza, and and warm

diet

sprite.

Warm diet, I remember warm diet sprite and pretty good pizza.

And then I went out and I did my half hour and I came back and James did his thing.

And that was so fun.

And I remember the drum and bass DJ that came on after us.

And I remember,

and the same thing just is not true in the same way.

And I think that humans, the way that we're built to feel gratitude and imbibe memories and like encode the shit that we've experienced is much more visceral and felt and impersonal.

Yes.

Right.

In fact, I have a great example of this.

Do you remember meeting me at the bar here?

And I was like, bro, some, I went up.

I went up to the bartender.

I said, do you guys have any non-alcoholic beers?

And they're like, actually, we don't.

I was like, that's fine.

I'll just just get a rambler.

He comes up and he goes, I love your music.

This one's on the house.

And you showed up after it.

And I was like, what do you mean you love my music?

Like, he's like, what do you mean?

What do I mean?

I'm like, well, do you follow me on Instagram?

He's like, no, dude, I just saw your music on Spotify.

I recognized you.

That had never happened to me before, ever, ever.

I took a picture of that Rambler.

You showed up and I told you about it at that moment.

That is,

if that's not gratitude, I don't know what is.

And that is an interpersonal relationship right there.

That is

reaching out and touching them.

And that, yeah, that I say that.

Actually, I say that about the influencer thing, but I have to assume that authors,

you know, you spend all of this time writing this big treatise thing, and this is forever.

This is fucking hunchback of Notre Dame.

This is everything, right?

And you write this big tome, and then it goes off and it gets printed.

And people read it, buy it.

You see the money, and then maybe charts or whatever, and maybe you even see sort of tweets and all of this stuff back and forth.

But these people have spent hours, hours immersed in this very interactive relationship

between what you put and them, and their

the unique thing about reading, it's the only pursuit really that you can do now as a recreation that is a it's a mono pursuit.

So while doing it, you can be doing nothing else, right?

Right, Even rolling Brazilian jiu-jitsu, you can be thinking about your fucking relationship.

Yeah, right.

While you're reading, unless you're doing that thing where you're scanning the words and then you just have to go back, but that's not reading.

You can't do anything else.

You can't do anything else.

So it's a really unique.

This person's like lived, or you, you, the writer, the author, is lived inside of this person's fucking mind.

Like it's some weird harassment.

It's why, bro, it's why I pursue music so hard.

And

I love,

you know, it's like the guy who does those sculptures, the sand sculptures, or not even sand sculptures, like ice sculptures, things that just go away.

Beauty, people, you admire the beauty, but the fact that there's a time limit on it makes it even more beautiful.

Bonnie Blue, time limit on it.

Your 10 minutes are up, sweetheart.

I got 900 to go.

No, so like playing.

Playing for people who don't know who I am,

who are like, oh, this is awesome

in that moment, and then they just leave and never think of me again.

Like, I actually think that's amazing.

I think that's awesome.

How much less awesome would it be if that was just on Shuffle on Spotify or was on the radio or was a thousand times less?

Yeah, because you don't get to see the, for those 3.5 minutes while you're playing the song, you don't get to feel the positive reinforcement.

So, yeah, I think it's

a huge missing uh component um that sense of sort of positive reinforcement to the thing you got to reach out and touch grass yeah yeah well you got to touch grass but you have to reach out and shake hands with people

you have to holy shit yeah zach talender ladies and gentlemen where should people go check out all the shit you're doing uh

check out my music it rules any streaming sites just search talender spotify apple all that good stuff uh Instagram, Zach underscore Talender, and YouTube, Zach Talender.

Wait, Chris, I have one thing.

Hit me.

Hit me with it.

Don't end the show.

It's a rhythm stick.

Hit me.

Okay.

Okay, this one's going to be.

Get serious here for a second.

Okay.

Chris.

So much of the good in my life has occurred because you've been in it.

You've taught me lessons I couldn't teach myself.

You inspired me to work harder.

You have been an incredible influence on me these five very formative years of my life.

Because of you, I believe in myself.

Because of you, I believe I'm smart enough to speak freely in front of audiences.

Because of you, I believe that I have enough talent to perform my songs for crowds I wouldn't dream of playing for.

Because of you, I...

know what it means to have a friend.

In a time in a man's life when the rubber hits the road, the friends from childhood start to peel away, the conversations between them become

fewer and far between.

I expected this in my life, and then you came along.

You have been my biggest fan, and not because I tried to make you one, but because you believe in me.

I don't care.

If you're a successful podcaster, I don't care if you have a million subscribers and followers.

I care about you.

I care about your happiness.

Ultimately, I want you to win more than anything.

You're my best man, the godfather to my beautiful daughter, Charlie, and you're my best friend.

I love you, man.

I love you.

Love you too, bro.

That's it.

That's a wrap.

Thank you.

Wow.

What a way to finish.

When I first started doing personal growth, I really wanted to read the best books, the most impactful ones, the most entertaining ones, the ones that were the easiest to read and the most dense and interesting, but there wasn't a list of them.

So I scoured and scoured and scoured and then gave up and just started reading on my own.

And then I made a list of 100 of the best books that I've ever found.

And you can get that for free right now.

So if you want to spend more time around great books that aren't going to completely kill your memory and your attention just trying to get through a single page, go to chriswillx.com/slash books to get my list completely free of 100 books you should read before you die.

That's chriswillx.com slash books.