Life is hard. This podcast will help. Lessons from the greatest thinkers on the planet with Chris Williamson. Including guests like David Goggins, Dr Jordan Peterson, Naval Ravikant, Sam Harris, Jocko Willink, Dr Andrew Huberman, Dr Julie Smith, Steven Bartlett, Ryan Holiday, Robert Greene, Matthew McConaughey, Alain de Botton, Alex Hormozi, Tony Robbins, Chris Bumstead, Mark Manson and more.
Don't just listen to podcasts. Learn from them with transcripts, summaries, and chapters for every episode. Skim, search, and bookmark insights. Learn more
Andrew Bustamante is a Former CIA Intelligence Officer and a Private Intelligence consultant. The CIA is one of the world's most advanced, secretive, shadowy organisations. Only 10% of their officers are field agents and actually have spent time undercover, Andrew is one of those agents. He's also been in charge of nuclear missiles and been multiple cover stories. Expect to learn why an alarm goes off at least once per hour at every nuclear missile silo across America, how the CIA protects itsel...
Richard Reeves discusses the struggles men face in education, employment, and family life. He argues that structural factors, rather than individual failings, contribute to these issues. The conversation covers the toxicity of "toxic masculinity," the need for male role models, and the importance of engaged fatherhood. Reeves advocates for policies that support men without undermining women's progress, highlighting the need to address gender inequalities running in both directions.
Dr Becky Smethurst is an astrophysicist, author, YouTuber and a Junior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. Black holes are the weirdest, densest, most mysterious objects in the universe. However they're not black, and they're not holes. In fact pretty much everything you think you know about them is probably wrong. Expect to learn why galaxies don't actually orbit black holes, why the biggest black hole in the universe needed an entirely different name, whether black holes can form with...
James Smith is an author, podcaster, online trainer and not a life coach. Many people say that their number one personal development goal is to be more confident. But what if you don't have anything to be confident about? Is competence a required prerequisite to becoming confident or can you fake it until you make it? Expect to learn why most entrepreneurs are miserable, how leaving unasked questions can eat up your mental energy, the relationship between anxiety and confidence, how to deal with...
Dr Stuart Ritchie is a psychologist and science communicator known for his research in human intelligence and an author. The influence of our genes on the outcomes we get in life has been long established and replicated in science. However the public response to this has been very unhappy, making Behavioural Genetics one of the most heated areas of research there is. Expect to learn why some people dislike behavioural genetics so much, what happened with the recent SSRI rug pull, whether Emotion...
Matthew Cobb is a zoologist, professor of zoology at the University of Manchester and an author. Genetic engineering has given humans the ability to modify crops to be resistant to disease and synthesise insulin without needing to kill and extract it from animals. But what are its dangers? Especially in a world where CRISPR and human gene editing is just around the corner. Expect to learn whether we can select and edit embryos to increase IQ or athletic abilities, the biggest close calls we've f...
Catherine Salmon is an evolutionary psychology researcher, professor of Psychology at the University of Redlands and an author. Women can be a mystery, sometimes even to themselves. Modern culture is making many proclamations about what women like and why they should like it, but are these new headlines accurate, or even desirable? Expect to learn why women love erotic stories so much, whether evolutionary psychology is sexist, why Catherine did a study where people rated the attractiveness of f...
Russ Roberts is an economist, a research fellow at Stanford University, an author and a podcaster. Economics promised us a model which works for all of life's decisions. From what to buy for lunch to investing in a company. But when you're faced with decisions like where to live, how many children to have, whether to get married or what sort of person you want to be, it falls short. Thankfully Russ has a new toolkit. Expect to learn why Charles Darwin made a checklist before marriage which said ...
Shawn Ryan is a former US Navy SEAL, former contractor for the CIA and a podcaster. The world's special operations are done in the darkness. If Navy SEALs are a spectre then CIA Contractors are their shadows. Shawn spent decades working behind enemy lines all over the world and has some crazy insights into that life, plus how it feels to re-integrate back into normal society. Expect to learn what it's like to train Keanu Reeves for John Wick, why physical abuse from your fellow SEALs might be ju...
Jonny & Yusef from Propane Fitness join me for another Life Hacks episode. Sit back & enjoy as we run through our favourite tools, apps, websites, strategies & resources for a productive and efficient life. Expect to learn why I've become fully obsessed with my new desk bike, Jonny's solution for protein cereal, how to get free Amazon delivery within a couple of hours, the best tricks to get the most out of Spotify, why Yusef is obsessed with his new pressure cooker, Apple's fantasti...
Kristina Durante is a professor of marketing at Rutgers Business School and a social psychologist who studies the biology of decision-making and evolution of female psychology. For the first time in history, many women have the opportunity to pursue a career as their primary life path. But does this prohibit them from also having a family? Do women actually want to be mothers or was it their only option? Do women actually want careers or is it just a shiny new opportunity? Expect to learn if wom...
Ben Greenfield is a Biohacker, Coach, Author, Speaker and Ironman Triathlete. Boosting your performance in the bedroom is a goal many people want. Thankfully Ben experimented with pretty much every strategy there is from gas station pills to penis stem cell injections, soundwave treatment and red light therapy so we don't have to. Expect to learn why turning your penis black and blue might not be a bad thing long term, why Zevia is as healthy of a soda drink as you can get, how my friend decided...
William Costello is an evolutionary psychologist, writer and Ph.D. student at the University of Texas. Men being hopeless with women is not a new phenomenon. But them self-identifying and creating a subculture around being "genetic dead ends" definitely is. William conducted some of the world's first research into the underlying psychological profile of incels to find out just what's going on. Expect to learn why 45% of working age women will be single and childless by 2030, why many incels woul...
I hit 500k Subscribers on YouTube!! To celebrate, I asked for questions from YouTube, Twitter, Locals and Instagram, so here's another 90 minutes of me trying to answer as many as possible. As always there's some great questions in here about whether Andrew Tate should have been banned, whether I'm autistic and my views on casual sex. Expect to learn how long I spend reading each day, how rarely I drink alcohol and caffeine, whether I think the Red Pill is positive for young men, how to avoid th...
Charlie Walker is an explorer, writer and public speaker. What happens when the Russian government catch you taking photos and writing articles shortly after a war breaks out? Very little that is good. Unfortunately Charlie stumbled into precisely this situation, but thankfully he got out too so he can tell us what happened. Expect to learn what it feels like to travel over 50,000 miles by bicycle, foot, horse, raft, ski and dugout canoe, how close Charlie came to spending his life in a Russian ...
Dr Christian Jarrett is deputy editor of Psyche and an author. Most people believe that they are their personalities. That it's an immutable, unchanging, central part of them as a person. But psychologists and neuroscientists have been studying the science of personality change for many years and have uncovered strategies to nudge your personality in the direction you want. Expect to learn why most personality tests are basically useless, how genetically heritable our personalities are, just how...
Andrew Doyle is Titania McGrath, host of GB News, a comedian and a writer. There are some new puritans in town. They have their own sacred texts, their own high priests, blasphemy, unspeakable words, rites of passage, heathens and practises of sacrilege. So much so that the behaviour of many social justice activists in 2022 seems to echo very closely the behaviour of the Salem Witch Trials in 1692. Expect to learn why Ben Shapiro is a terrifying man, whether not calling me hot makes you a bigot,...
Sabine Hossenfelder is a theoretical physicist, research fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, quantum gravity researcher and an author. There are a lot of big questions in the world, like does the past still exist? Do particles think? Was the universe fine tuned for us? Do we have free will? And are we living in a simulation? Given that we don't have answers yet, why not let a physicist have a crack at them? Expect to learn why physicists who say they know how the universe sta...
Robin Dunbar is an anthropologist, evolutionary psychologist, head of the Social and Evolutionary Neuroscience Research Group at the University of Oxford and an author. Love is something that people have been trying to describe for thousands of years. Beyond asking what love is, is the question of why humans feel something so strange in the first place. Why would evolution have exposed us to this extreme sensation with huge potential for catastrophe and pain? Expect to learn how love is adaptive...
Balaji Srinivasan is an entrepreneur and essayist, he was co-founder of Counsyl, former chief technology officer of Coinbase and former general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. Our information diets are making us mentally fat. Whether it's fake news, mis or disinformation, state propaganda or conspiracy theories, the world is very difficult to navigate. Balaji also wants to start a new type of country, he has views on how to optimise your working day and he generates more new ideas than almost an...
Lee Cronin is the Regius Chair of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow, Head of the Cronin Group Lab and CEO of Chemify. The job of deciding what life is, how it originates and the different forms it could take might sound like a task for UFO theorists but it's actually in the realm of chemists like Lee. This means that some of the biggest questions humanity has rest on his lab's shoulders. Expect to learn why Lee believes that there is life everywhere in the universe, his theory on the origin...
Steve Magness is a world-renowned expert on performance, an author and a consultant on mental skills development for professional sports teams. All elite performers have the rage to master their chosen pursuit. But the difference between the ones who continue to succeed and those who fall away is their toughness and durability. Thankfully, Steve has spent his career deconstructing the mental habits of the world's best athletes and executives. Expect to learn how to accept your achievements witho...
Gurwinder Bhogal is a programmer and a writer. Gurwinder is one of my favourite Twitter follows. He’s written yet another megathread exploring human nature, cognitive biases, mental models, status games, crowd behaviour and social media. It's one of the best things I've read this year, so I just had to bring him on. Expect to learn how bad things can sometimes feel better than good things, why people die on the hill of opinions they've only just begun believing, why intelligence plus ideology is...
David Lundberg Kenrick is the Psychology Program Manager at Arizona State University and Douglas Kenrick is a Professor of psychology at Arizona State University. Our brains were designed to exist in a very different environment to the one they find themselves in. Managing modern problems with stone-age operating systems causes us to act in strange, suboptimal, silly ways. Which is why it's so important to understand how our minds developed. Expect to learn just how violent humans were ancestral...
Peter Zeihan is a geopolitical analyst, author and a speaker. The world is changing faster than ever, and a lot of the countries, dynamics, peace treaties and structures we're familiar with may be about to come to an end. Peter's job consists of him analysing data from geography, demographics, and global politics to understand economic trends and make predictions. And if his predictions are correct, the next 50 years are going to look incredibly different. Expect to learn why China will lose hal...
I hit 450k Subscribers on YouTube!! To celebrate, I asked for questions and got nearly 1000 this time, so here's another 90 minutes of me trying to answer as many as possible. As usual there's some very cool questions in here about my experience on Joe Rogan's podcast, dating advice for young people and my thoughts on masculinity. Expect to learn whether I think Jordan Peterson should debate Andrew Tate, how to become a better speaker, whether I would rather fight Joe Rogan or Mike Tyson in an M...
Will MacAskill is a philosopher, ethicist, and one of the originators of the Effective Altruism movement. Humans understand that long term thinking is a good idea, that we need to provide a good place for future generations to live. We try to leave the world better than when we arrived for this very reason. But what about the world in one hundred thousand years? Or 8 billion? If there's trillions of human lives still to come, how should that change the way we act right now? Expect to learn why w...
Max Dickins is a comedian, writer and a mental health advocate. Loneliness is as dangerous as smoking. And men are suffering worse than ever. This is bad for them, it's bad for their partners, it's bad for their employers, their children and society at large. Men are struggling to toe the line between manning up and opening up and many of them are doing neither. Expect to learn what Max learned from having no best man to choose for his wedding, how men's loneliness differs from female loneliness...
Zack Telander is a weightlifter, coach & YouTuber. More serious problems are afoot. The number of men using viagra is at al time highs, BatGirl has been cancelled, Beyonce has become an ableist abuser, a basketball star gets jailed in Russia and TikTokers are wearing blasphemous bikinis. Obviously, me and Zack must fix all of this. Expect to learn how long you can flog a dead franchise before it stops making money, how men can think themselves into performance anxiety, whether a Russian arms...
Colin O'Brady is a 10-time world record breaking explorer and one of the world's best endurance athletes. The things we believe can act like a glass ceiling. It's an imaginary limit that we place on what we can achieve in life because of our age or experience or money or self trust. Colin is a man who has annihilated his way through that glass ceiling and is here to show us what's on the other side. Expect to learn what it's like to have to drag a 375lb sled 1000 miles across the Antarctic, why ...
