Kelly Starrett is a physical therapist, speaker, author, and considered one of the most influential voices in the fitness industry. Deep down we know we should take better care of ourselves. The random aches, pains and cracks many of us have become accustomed to simply shouldn't be a part of our everyday experience. Thankfully, Kelly has broken down his philosophy into simple vital signs you should focus on to move smoother, sleep better, live longer and train harder. Expect to learn how to fix ...
Apr 08, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 612
Hannah Barnes is an award-winning investigative journalist, and an author. Finding your place in the world can be hard. However, some interventions for struggling children may cause more harm than good. Britain's Gender Identity Development Service at The Tavistock Clinic has recently been shut down after controversial use of puberty blockers and Hannah's investigation uncovers exactly what happened. Expect to learn why there was a huge increase in the number of children being referred for puber...
Apr 06, 2023•1 hr 32 min•Ep. 611
Alex Hormozi is a founder, investor and an author. Alex's Twitter has been one of my favourite sources of great insights over the last year. Today we get to go through some of my favourite lessons from him about life, human behaviour, psychology, business and resilience. This is really good. Expect to learn how your ego is keeping you poor, why you never need to care about what anyone else thinks of you, why having a life that sucks is actually a blessing, whether most easy opportunities are jus...
Apr 03, 2023•1 hr 46 min•Ep. 610
Uri Gneezy is a behavioural economist, a professor at the University of California and an author who's research focuses on human incentives. Incentives encourage humans to do things. But they're not as straight forward as you might think. They often have unintended and disastrous consequences for our personal lives, businesses and societies. Basically, a bad incentive is worse than no incentive at all. Expect to learn why paying citizens 10p for a rat tail is a bad idea, how fining parents for t...
Apr 01, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 609
Paul Bloom is Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Yale University and an author. The human mind is a mystery. If it wasn't for the fact that we experience it, the universe would give us absolutely no indication that consciousness existed. After an entire career studying psychology, Professor Bloom has some answers to the psychology questions we've all asked ourselves. Expect to learn whether you actually remember everything that you've ever e...
Mar 30, 2023•1 hr 29 min•Ep. 608
Mike Thurston is a podcaster, YouTuber and a fitness model. Me and Mike went to university together 15 years ago. Even though we were odd, awkward creatures, there was no pressure to get our life together. In 2023, it seems like there is much more pressure on both men and women to sort it out. What's changed, and why is life more confusing than ever before? Expect to learn why Mike wants Derek from More Plates More Dates to test him for steroids, why going to university wasn't a waste of time, w...
Mar 27, 2023•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 607
Katherine Dee is a writer, journalist and internet historian. There are lots of male subcultures. Incels, RedPill, Pickup Artists, Soy Boys. But what are women getting up to? Trends like Hot Girls Have IBS. Hot Girls Eat Fish. And most well known, the girlboss meme. Katherine is here to explain just what is happening in the oestrogen-fuelled underbelly of the internet. Expect to learn why the girlboss meme came about, why there is a coming wave of sex-negativity, whether it really is possible to...
Mar 25, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 606
Ben Carpenter is a personal trainer, researcher, international speaker, fitness model and diet expert. There are a million diets out there. All of them claim to work. Many of us have tried many of them, and many failed. So which diet is the best? What are the principles of fat loss that science agrees on as the most effective? How do we all get a 6-pack? Expect to learn whether calories are a total lie, why the weight loss industry is filled with so much conflicting advice, the 4 key components ...
Mar 23, 2023•1 hr 33 min•Ep. 605
Robin Dunbar is an anthropologist, evolutionary psychologist, head of the Social and Evolutionary Neuroscience Research Group at the University of Oxford and an author. Most animals need friends to survive. But no other animal has as layered and complex a social life as humans. The last 2 million years from trees to plains to apartments has caused huge changes to the setup of our social groups, and it's a fascinating story. Expect to learn why any group size over 90 ends up with more people bein...
Mar 20, 2023•1 hr 26 min•Ep. 604
Abby Davisson is an author, social innovation leader and career development expert whose research focuses on decision making in money management and romance. There are some big decisions we all need to make. What job to take, what city to live in, whether to get married or divorced or have kids. Having a prescriptive formula for this might seem impossible, but Abby helped run the most popular course at Stanford on exactly this topic, and today we get to find out what she's discovered. Expect to ...
Mar 18, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 603
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 fantastic, and today we go through some of my favourites. Expect to learn why asking questions is the most selfish thing you can do, why people create hatred in an attempt to feel love, the real danger of censorship, why it's more important to avoid being w...
Mar 16, 2023•1 hr 50 min•Ep. 602
Dr Andrew Thomas is a senior lecturer of psychology at Swansea University whose research focuses on sex differences and relationship preferences from an evolutionary perspective. Evolution explains a large portion of why we like the things we like. Who we're attracted to, why we fall into and out of love, how our mental state affects our mating strategies. Therefore, if you are a human who ever intends on being in a relationship, this might be useful. Expect to learn the 5 evolutionary theories ...
Mar 13, 2023•1 hr 36 min•Ep. 601
To celebrate 600 episodes on Modern Wisdom, I broke down some of my favourite lessons, insights and quotes from the last hundred episodes. Expect to learn how to have unlimited charisma, why this might be the best your life ever gets, how to work out if the entire world is a coordinated conspiracy, what Douglas Murray taught me about not having an opinion, why stupid people are more dangerous than evil people, why female self-improvement is patronising, how to gauge the honesty of anyone in your...
Mar 11, 2023•1 hr•Ep. 600
Adam Lane Smith is a psychotherapist and an author. Adam has helped thousands of patients and couples to deal with problems from childhood, their relationships and their sex lives. He also writes amazing Twitter threads filled with insights from his time as a therapist and today we get to go through some of my favourites. Expect to learn the common trend Adam saw in every couples' therapy session he conducted, the biggest differences between male and female communication styles, why so many youn...
Mar 09, 2023•1 hr 30 min•Ep. 599
Dr Jonathan Anomaly is a philosopher who writes about the social implications of emerging biotechnologies, teaches classes in ethics and game theory, and helped design the Philosophy, Politics and Economics program at Duke University. The ability to select from potential embryos is already here. Soon, we will be able to select for height, intelligence, personality types, moral disposition, athletic ability and maybe even enhance traits which aren't present. This creates a vortex of complex ethic...
Mar 06, 2023•1 hr 53 min•Ep. 598
Lewis Howes is a former professional athlete, podcaster and an author. Many people are wildly uncertain that they can achieve the things they want in life. If a lack of confidence killed more dreams than a lack of capability ever will, how can we get past this self-doubt and find a place of genuine, positive reassurance to start working from? Expect to learn why your heroes aren't gods, where self doubt comes from, how to discover your mission in life, what you can learn about positivity from an...
Mar 04, 2023•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 597
Mary Harrington is a contributing editor at UnHerd and an author. Women have been subject to a lot of changes over the past 200 years. Liberated first from the land, then from the house, then from the womb, and finally even from their own nature. But has it actually helped? Has modern feminism been for the best or has it made women's lives more confusing than ever? Expect to learn why feminism might not have delivered on the promises it made to the world, why there is a war on relationships betw...
Mar 02, 2023•1 hr 44 min•Ep. 596
I hit 700k 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 Ray Dalio is coming on the podcast, how to overcome negative self talk and whether I'll be doing a live tour soon. Expect to learn how I deal with nerves before big podcasts, my very simple memorisation tactic for the books I read, whether I class m...
Feb 27, 2023•1 hr 28 min•Ep. 595
Dr Richard Wrangham is an anthropologist and primatologist, a Professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University and an author whose research focuses on ape behaviour, human evolution, violence, and cooking. Humans have the capacity for incredible benevolence and kindness, but also are able to be execute other members of our species with a uniquely effective ruthlessness. Why would evolution give us such differing capacities to chimps and apes and what can this tell us about our nature? ...
Feb 25, 2023•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 594
Alex DatePsych is a Neuroscience and Behavioural Science researcher whose work focuses on attractiveness and dating. We are in a new age of sexlessness. It could be that right now, the human race is having less sex than ever before. Given the rise of dating apps, the sexual revolution and hormonal birth control, how is this happening? Expect to learn what the science says about whether girls find it creepy to be approached, whether dating is harder for young men now than in the past, why women's...
Feb 23, 2023•1 hr 30 min•Ep. 593
Richard Shotton is a behavioural scientist, Founder of Astroten and an author. This might not be news to you, but the human brain isn't designed to be rational. There are cheat codes to get the brain to believe strange things, do strange things and change in ways you might not anticipate. Richard has one of the best insights into this world of mental models, psychology, consumer behaviour, principles for advertising and social change. Expect to learn the marketing secret about behaviour change t...
Feb 20, 2023•1 hr 38 min•Ep. 592
Critical Drinker is a movie critic, an analyst of modern entertainment media and a YouTuber. Cinema is no longer just about entertainment, it's now a platform for social and cultural ideologies to be pushed through. If you don't like what Hollywood's execs tell you to like? Too bad, that's your prejudice showing, you bigot. Expect to learn why there are no more positive heroic role models in movies, the problem with Velma getting naked on a cartoon, why Rotten Tomatoes reviews are diverging more...
Feb 18, 2023•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 591
Mark Manson is a best selling author, blogger and a movie star. You're not supposed to just get older, you're supposed to mature as well. You're supposed to leave the juvenile patterns and beliefs and behaviours behind as you shed your past self like a wise awakened crab. So why do so many people get stuck in old habits, and how can they get out of them? Expect to learn what most people don't understand about how relationships work, why so many men are enticed by Andrew Tate's message, what Mark...
Feb 16, 2023•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 590
It's Modern Wisdom's 5th birthday!! 5 years ago on February 12th 2018 I launched this podcast with a conversation in my old company's office in the North East of England. Over the last 589 episodes, 1000+ hours and nearly 2000 days of working away on this project I've learned a lot, and today I'm going through some of the most important lessons and insights I've picked up. Expect to learn the importance of a wide vocabulary, why all amateurs are narcissists, why learning about the reasons for yo...
Feb 13, 2023•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 589
Dr David Ley is a clinical psychologist and a board member of the Sexual Health Alliance whose research focuses on issues related to sexuality, pornography and mental health. Your partner being intimate with another guy should evolutionarily be one of the biggest fears of a man's life. Actually encouraging this behaviour seems almost unthinkable, and yet cucking is becoming a much more common pursuit and one of the most popular categories of online porn. Expect to learn the stats around how comm...
Feb 11, 2023•59 min•Ep. 588
Rory Sutherland is one of the world's leading consumer behaviour experts, the Vice Chairman of Ogilvy Advertising and an author. Humans are an odd animal. Our behaviour sometimes makes very little sense, but when we exchange our money for products it can make even less sense. Thankfully Rory has spent decades studying the most fascinating parts of consumer psychology and today gives us some insights. Expect to learn why having a Japanese toilet might change your life, why I've become addicted to...
Feb 09, 2023•1 hr 47 min•Ep. 587
Dr Khandis Blake is an Evolutionary Social Psychologist at the University of Melbourne whose research focuses on status seeking, the menstrual cycle & sexual politics. It is no surprise that women try to enhance their beauty, put on makeup, wear high heels and sometimes take off some layers for photos. But what predicts beautification? Is it all a product of the patriarchy or is it something else? Just why are women making all this effort? Expect to learn whether women condemn promiscuity more w...
Feb 06, 2023•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 586
Adam Mastroianni is a postdoctoral research scholar at Columbia Business School and a writer whose research focuses on how people perceive and misperceive their social worlds. Does being smart make you happy? Does being dumb make you miserable? Why did the guy who created eugenics also get published in Nature for a revolutionary way to cut a cake? Adam is one of my favourite writers so today I get to ask him all these things. Expect to learn why super smart people can be so stupid, Adam's issue ...
Feb 04, 2023•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 585
Dr Gloria Mark is the Chancellor's professor in the Department of Informatics at the University of California and an author whose research focuses on human-computer interaction. Not being able to focus and suffering with distracted attention is one of the most common complaints amongst people in the modern world. The ability to stay focussed on a single task for a long period of time is hugely beneficial and yet has never been more difficult to achieve. Expect to learn what attention actually is...
Feb 02, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 584
Stephen J Shaw is a data scientist and filmmaker. Over the last 7 years, Stephen has visited 24 countries and analysed millions of piece of data to work out what is happening with global birthrates and predict the earth's future population. The answer is shocking and literally every person needs to be aware of it. Expect to learn how 70% of countries on earth are below the population tipping point, what the cause of such rapidly changing birthrates can be attributed to, why women seem to find mo...
Jan 30, 2023•1 hr 25 min•Ep. 583
