Zack Telander is a weightlifter, coach & YouTuber. TikTok may be a colossal waste of time, but at least most people consider it to be harmless. A recently blog post made me think differently and today we look at the world's first digital weapon of mass-destruction through pleasure rather than pain. Expect to learn why Digital Dementia is a real phenomenon, how young girls are developing tourettes-like tics from watching videos, the dangers of atrophying focus through watching too much TikTok, wh...
Jan 28, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 582
Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist, planetary scientist, author and science communicator. The universe is filled with mystery. Science has answered a lot and yet there's still so many fundamental questions which we seem no closer to understanding. What is consciousness? Are we alone in the universe? And why do people argue so much on the internet? Expect to learn what would happen if the moon disappeared, how Neil has dealt with the fallout from Patrick Bet David's podcast, why Sir Christo...
Jan 26, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 581
Dr Tania Reynolds is an Assistant Professor in Psychology at the University of New Mexico whose research focuses on women's intrasexual competition, biases in moral evaluations and social and sexual selection. Ancestrally, men needed to go to war and hunt. Given this, it would be rather useful to be friends with the spear-wielding bloke next to you so that you know he's got your back. Women's use case for friends is much more subtle and difficult to determine however, and today we try to deciphe...
Jan 23, 2023•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 580
Peter Diamandis is an engineer, physician, founder of the X Prize Foundation and cofounder of Singularity University. If you got rid of Elon Musk's money, or Steve Jobs' factories, they would likely still end up in a successful place because of their mindset. Peter has incubated some of the fastest growing and most innovative CEOs, businesses and performers and developed a number of rules around how to optimise your mental state. Expect to learn the practises that Peter teaches his students to m...
Jan 21, 2023•57 min•Ep. 579
Robert Waldinger is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, Zen priest and Director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, the longest-running study of adult life ever conducted. What makes for a good life? That was one of the main questions I asked myself when I began this podcast. A far easier solution would have been to speak to Dr Waldinger as his team has been researching thousands of the same individuals for 75 years to answer this question definitively. Expect to learn how you operate a longit...
Jan 19, 2023•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 578
David Goggins is a retired United States Navy SEAL, ultramarathon runner, triathlete, public speaker and an author. The ability to overcome challenges in life is one we will all need sooner or later. Make no mistake, discomfort is coming for you whether you're ready or not. Goggins happens to be one of the best individuals on earth at dealing with hard things and after a long time without any podcast appearances, I met him in Vegas to find out what new insights he's uncovered. Expect to learn wh...
Jan 16, 2023•1 hr 53 min•Ep. 577
Dr John Barry is a Chartered Psychologist and Professional Researcher, Co-Founder of The Centre for Male Psychology and a leading expert in men’s mental health. Men and women both need help with their mental wellbeing, now more than ever. Yet there seems to be a particular blindness when it comes to men's psychology and how to treat it, plus how to effectively communicate with men about their issues. Expect to learn why traditional masculinity is seen as problematic by the American Psychological...
Jan 14, 2023•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 576
Michael Malice is an author, political commentator & podcaster. The 1900s saw some of the worst atrocities in human history. Evil was abound and the bad guys were on top a lot, with the Soviet Union being one of the most brutal examples. Given this, what reason do we have for any hope in the modern world? Expect to learn just how brutal the Soviet jails and gulags were, the torture methods used to extract confessions, how the Western Press were complicit in covering up Russian crimes, the incred...
Jan 12, 2023•2 hr 11 min•Ep. 575
I hit 600k 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 Lex Fridman is coming on the podcast, who the most overrated thinker is and my plans for 2023. Expect to learn what my thoughts are on masculinity being in a crisis, my best advice for men in their 20's, whether it's possible to have a well meaning ...
Jan 09, 2023•1 hr 24 min•Ep. 574
Dr Victor Kumar is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Boston University, part of the Mind & Morality Lab's Moral Psychology Research Group and an author. Morality might seem like something that exists independently of humans. Things are either good or bad, the current evolutionary state humans in in should not impact this judgement. Yet it seems that culture and evolution heavily influenced each other, and they influenced morality too. Expect to learn why Asian people get red faces when the...
Jan 07, 2023•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 573
Jonny & Yusef from Propane Fitness join me for a new year's 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 the best sleep supplements we've found, how to get served faster at every restaurant, how to fix tennis elbow, why you need multiple gym memberships, a fix for caffeine dependency, Jonny's best new app for tracking your diet, how to beat procrastination, where to find the...
Jan 05, 2023•1 hr 44 min•Ep. 572
Joyce Benenson is a lecturer of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University whose research focuses on human social structures and sex differences in competition and cooperation. We're often told that men are more competitive, more status-driven and more ruthless with rivals for potential mates. In reality doesn't seem to be true, the difference is that women's competition takes a more subtle, cynical and sophisticated route to drive away their competitors. Expect to learn how women compete ...
Jan 02, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 571
Helen Lewis is a journalist at The Atlantic and an author Humanity has become much less religious and in the ruins of this fresh, listless world, bereft of traditional insight, a cadre of new gurus have risen to take the high priests' place of dispensing insights about how to live. Helen's new BBC Sounds documentary series delves into this world of secular gurus. Expect to learn why a Canadian man has started drinking his own urine, why Steve Jobs was much more than just a tech inventor, how muc...
Dec 29, 2022•1 hr 35 min•Ep. 570
Chris Bailey is a productivity consultant, researcher and best selling author. Being productive is great. Everyone wants to get more done in less time and achieve their goals. But overshooting your tolerance for work can result in misery, fatigue, loss of creativity and days in bed. Finding a balance between the grind and being calm is vital. Expect to learn the scientific theory explaining why burnout exists, why calmness and productivity are intrinsically linked, how being dopamine-driven is a...
Dec 26, 2022•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 569
Dean Rickles is Professor of History and Philosophy of Modern Physics at the University of Sydney and a Director of the Sydney Centre for Time. Life doesn't last that long. The ever present spectre of death looms large, even if you life to be 100. This can feel like a tragedy in many ways. What use are our efforts if they'll all be turned to dust eventually? A philosopher is needed here, to give us a fresh perspective. Expect to learn why keeping your options open is a path to an early grave, ho...
Dec 22, 2022•59 min•Ep. 568
Dr Jonathan Shedler is a psychologist, author, master clinician and clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California. We do not understand ourselves. Almost all of what is inside of our minds is obscured from us. We don't need to exclusively despair though. With a little work and some good insights from psychoanalysis, the view can be made a little clearer. Expect to learn why people believe that their suffering makes them more moral than others, how you can create a false identi...
Dec 19, 2022•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 567
David Senra is a podcaster and a writer. Many of the most important insights you need to learn to improve your life have already been discovered in the past. Thankfully David spends all his time reading biographies of the greatest thinkers, founders, entrepreneurs and inventors from history and has synthesised those lessons so you can remember them too. Expect to learn how Steve Jobs came to think about time, what Kobe Bryant believed about the dangers of success making you soft, how the Rockefe...
Dec 17, 2022•1 hr 48 min•Ep. 566
It's the end of 2022 and to celebrate I thought I'd run through some of the best lessons I've picked up over the last 12 months. This year has had over 10,000 minutes of episodes produced so there was a lot to choose from but I ended up settling on 16 insights from some of my favourite conversations, articles and books, both inside and outside of the podcast. Expect to learn why Jocko Willink thinks that most people overcomplicate motivation, what Joe Rogan taught me about difficult and valuable...
Dec 15, 2022•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 565
Andrew Schulz is an actor, comedian and a podcaster. The world seems to be losing its mind. No one is sure what the rules for acceptable conduct are any more. From virtue signalling to moral grandstanding, the incentives to take down others are stronger than ever. So why are some people immune to these laws of cancellation and is it a solution that the rest of us can steal for ourselves? Expect to learn whether Elon Musk is a hero or a villain, whether True Geordie's cancellation was appropriate...
Dec 12, 2022•2 hr 11 min•Ep. 564
Dr Russell Kennedy is an MD, Neuroscientist, author and an anxiety specialist. Anxiety is one of the most common challenges faced by people in 2022. In small doses it makes sense evolutionarily, but why is it running so rampant in the modern world, where does it come from and what methods can limit its impact on our lives? Expect to learn what most people misunderstand about anxiety, the relationship between anxiety and trauma, why most existing treatments don't create lasting improvements to an...
Dec 10, 2022•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 563
Mark Normand is a podcaster, an actor and a comedian. Mark grew up in a rundown New Orleans bed & breakfast with a cross-dressing manager. Fertile ground for becoming one of the most popular, hardest working and fastest growing comics in America then. But why is it so important to have a pursuit that you care about if you're going to do other, seemingly unrelated hard things? Expect to learn the price that you pay for being a famous comedian, why Mark's life would fall apart if he didn't have a ...
Dec 08, 2022•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 562
Derek is a YouTuber, founder of Gorilla Mind and a fitness expert. The Liver King has seen one of the fastest rises to internet fame ever. Documenting his ancestral lifestyle generated millions of followers and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for his businesses, but it turns out that the physique he displayed in his content was built on massive amounts of performance enhancing drugs, despite him denying it on many occasions. Expect to learn what Derek thinks of the Liver King's apolog...
Dec 05, 2022•1 hr 44 min•Ep. 561
Max Lugavere is a health and wellness expert, author and a diet advocate. Working out what to eat is hard. Which is odd because everybody does it. You'd think that the science of nutrition, a thing the entire human race relies on multiple times per day, would have some definitive answers. Thankfully Max can explain why it's such a mess and give some solid principles we can all use. Expect to learn whether carnivore is an optimal diet for us all to follow, whether organic and non-GMO actually mak...
Dec 03, 2022•1 hr 36 min•Ep. 560
David Puts is a Professor of Anthropology at Penn State whose research focuses on the evolution and development of human sexuality and sex differences. Apparently women orgasm. Why they do it however, has been a mystery for a long time. They don't need to in order to get pregnant. And sometimes they don't do it at all, for ages. So what use is the female orgasm, and what predicts the sort of partner who'll make it happen? Expect to learn if the female orgasm is just a gatekeeper for oxytocin, wh...
Dec 01, 2022•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 559
Tim Urban is one of the internet's most popular writers and the founder of Wait But Why. When we look to our past, many of us believe that we could have behaved differently, perhaps that we should have behaved differently. Yet when we look to the future we believe that our path is locked in and genuine change is difficult, this couldn't be more backward and Tim explains it in a number of obvious, face-palm-inducing ways. Expect to learn what Tim thinks about Elon's takeover of Twitter, why leisu...
Nov 28, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 558
Douglas Rushkoff is a media theorist, futurist, writer and documentarian. The world's richest people are preparing for the end. They're buying up farming land and below-ground bunkers in New Zealand. What catastrophe is it that they think is about to happen? And what happens if technology creates a techno-hell instead of a techno-utopia? Expect to learn what happens when you're invited to brief billionaires on the future downfall of the earth, whether having your own sovereign nation at sea is a...
Nov 26, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 557
Rob Henderson is a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge and a US Air Force Veteran. Men fight. Sometimes they look silly when they fight. But they also collaborate and team up to take on common enemies. Women fight in very different ways that are less obvious, but no less vicious, and they sometimes try to even scupper their own teammates. Expect to learn how men's judgements of formidability are better at predicting future sexual partners than women's judgements of attractiveness, why m...
Nov 24, 2022•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 556
Dr Sarah Hill is a psychologist and professor at TCU whose research focusses on women, health, and sexual psychology. Women ovulate, and this changes their behaviour across their cycle. Unless they take hormonal birth control that is, in which case their behaviour changes even more dramatically in ways that no one anticipated and there is evidence to suggest that this might not just be temporary. Expect to learn why hormonal birth control can make women prioritise wealth in men, why women who co...
Nov 21, 2022•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 555
Laura Vanderkam is a time management expert and an author. Time is non-renewable. It's the single most important asset we have, and yet almost everyone wishes they spent their time differently. Thankfully Laura has distilled 9 of her best strategies from years of coaching people on how to control their time more effectively. Expect to learn what everyone is getting wrong when it comes to writing their to-do lists, why intentionality is such a crucial skill to develop, how having a bedtime can fi...
Nov 19, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 554
Dr Jaimie Krems is an Assistant Professor at Oklahoma State University and a social psychologist whose research explores human social cognition, emotions, and behaviour. Evolution has shaped the way that men and women make and break friendships. It's made us into life-saving, caring, aggressive, jealous, friend-guarding, backbiting, gossiping animals, but why is it that male and female friendships are so different, plus a ton of other fascinating insights. Expect to learn why a woman's body shap...
Nov 17, 2022•1 hr 30 min•Ep. 553
