78% of women want to date a man who is

as educated or as employed as they are.

This is just a straight up imbalance.

And this is what I've called the tall

girl problem. So Chris Williamson, he is

an entrepreneur, former club promoter

turned podcaster with more than 70

million downloads.

How did I get here?

Chris, are you aware of the dark side

that's driving you?

I really want to go here. I've been

chronically unpopular throughout all of

school, badly bullied, didn't have a

group of friends, so [music] I'd

compromised an awful lot of who I truly

was to try and just be as popular and

successful in that world as possible.

But there was a ambient sense that

something is broken with me in a

journal. I I've got a couple of

different entries and it just put I

think I'm lonely. 15% of men say that

they have zero close friends.

Where did we go wrong? The world of

social connection has been made less and

less social. The single biggest

predictor of your health outcomes in

life are the number of close connections

that you have. It's more than going to

the gym. It's more than stopping

drinking. People that are in

relationships have better health

outcomes. But one in three men between

the ages of 18 and 30 hasn't had sex in

the last year. 80% of men report not

approaching a woman because they are

scared of being seen as creepy. And by

2040, 45% of 25 to 45year-old women will

be single and childless. You can start

to see how this imbalance could cause a

problem. This is a very difficult

conversation. The first thing that we

need to [music] do is

before this episode starts, I have a

small favor to ask from you. 2 months

ago, 74% of people that watch this

channel didn't subscribe. We're now down

to 69%.

My goal is 50%. So, if you've ever liked

any of the videos we've posted, if you

like this channel, can you do me a quick

favor and hit the subscribe button? It

helps this channel more than you know,

and the bigger the channel gets, as

you've seen, the bigger the guests get.

Thank you and enjoy this episode.

[music]

Chris,

you do a lot of things and you do a lot

of things very, very well.

One of the struggles I had when thinking

about how to direct this conversation

was really like understanding because

you're so diverse in your thinking and

your ideas and the subject matter that

you're curious about, how to try and

encapsulate exactly who you are. So I

guess the question I wanted to start

with is in your own words, what is your

mission?

I'm a very curious person. I always have

been. And I now have the opportunity

with my podcast Modern Wisdom to

commercialize, utilize, weaponize that

so that I can bring people in that I'm

interested in. So a good example, I did

a master's and a bachelor's degree at

uni in business. And I always regretted

not going and doing philosophy or

psychology. And in retrospect, it always

made me resentful of uni a little bit

because I'd spent all of this time

learning stuff that didn't teach me

anything about the business world. But

then upon starting the podcast, what I

realized was that I've been able to

design my perfect university degree with

the top lecturers on the planet and I

get to do it three times a week at the

cadence that I want. And not only do I

get the lecturers that I want, but I get

to ask them about the specific area of

their work that I want as well. So, it's

curiosity. The thing that drives me is

curiosity. The reason that I do this is

because I want to know I want to know

about everything. I want to know about

why the guy that was sat next to us at

dinner last night decided to wear a suit

with like Converse like I want to know

what is it about that? Uh so curiosity

that answer is um focused on what you

get from it right is there an sort of an

external mission something that it gives

to the world that you're particularly

and something that provides you meaning

by delivering it to the world is there

is there an answer there too

yeah so toward the end of my 20ies I had

a lot of the trappings of success that

maybe society would tell you that you

should have so uh running this big

nightlife events business which I was

very proud of and still Um, but there

was something missing despite the fact

that I had the blue tick on Twitter and

the free charcoal toothpaste and I'd

been on Love Island and Take Me Out and

people knew my name and I had, you know,

monetary success and status and stuff,

but there was something missing. And I

didn't really understand myself

particularly well. And I think that

that's a problem that a lot of people

get to, especially guys toward the end

of their 20s. They think all of the

values that I have absorbed that are

supposed to be the things that make me

happy maybe don't fulfill me in the way

that they were promised. And that

required me to do some reflection. And I

realized I actually didn't have very

many opinions. What I'd been doing was

I'd been playing a role as this big name

on campus, party boy, club promoter, big

dick around town guy. And I'd

compromised an awful lot of who I truly

was to try and just be as popular and

successful in that world as possible.

Right? What that meant was I didn't

really understand myself. I didn't

really understand my mission or my

purpose. And now looking back, I

realized that all of the steps that I

took to get from where I was to where I

am now, which is still like an adult

infant, but slightly less so. All of

that they are lessons that I can gift to

other people that will help them to

expedite success, avoid the pitfalls, do

it in less time, with less loneliness,

with less pain and suffering than I had

to go through to achieve the same thing.

And hopefully

by speaking to people that changed my

life, that gave me lessons, I can then

pass those on to other people and get

them from where I was to somewhere

that's even better than where I am now.

Okay. So, take me back. What are the

dominoes that fell or the connecting

dots that took you to that point where

you were the party boy on campus that

was on Take Me Out on TV and running

club nights? Take me back to the start.

What are the most important things I

need to know about that early experience

that took you to that moment?

Arrive at university in Newcastle and

I've been chronically unpopular

throughout all of school. Uh pretty

badly bullied, pretty alone. I'm an only

child and just didn't have a a squad.

didn't have a a group of friends really.

Was successful in in sports and had a

team but didn't really have a a tight

group of friends. Got to college and

that was a little bit better. Started to

come out of my shell a little bit but

still not much. And then you get to uni

and the same as every school kid, you

know, you'd go home for summer and you'd

be like, I'm going to reinvent myself

and I'm going to be the cool kid. So I

arrived at university and that was a

good intersection of a new opportunity

to be a new person and also maybe a

little bit more social ability. Start

running a nightlife events business with

the guy that I sit next to in my first

ever seminar. After that we get to the

stage where that's very successful very

quickly. I immediately tied a lot of my

identity to the first thing I've ever

been super successful in in life which

is running a night life. I can get

renown. I can have uh people that need

me, which is not really the same as

wanting me, but they need me, which is

close enough. So, I think, right, well,

if I just throw all of myself into this

business, then I'm going to be accepted

by the world at large, and over the

space of the next 10 years or so, that

meant that I uh fully dedicated myself

to that mission. And we were very, very

good at it. We expanded from Newcastle

to Manchester, multiple nights per week,

across multiple cities. And then I did

whatever it took to get more clout as

well. So Take Me Out, then first season

of Love Island, first person through the

doors on Love Island. And I spend all of

this time. And Love Island was an

interesting reflection period because

there was nowhere for me to hide. No

distractions, no TV, no phone, no

laptop, no friends, no books, no

nothing. Right? There's just you and

this group of people. [snorts] And the

group of people that were in the Love

Island villa were genuine versions of

the person that I thought I was. I

thought that I was this big name on

campus party boy. And then I get

deposited into this inescapable

uh weaponsgrade bunker of those party

boys and party girls. And I look around

and go, "Ah, [sighs] I'm not supposed to

be here. Something's off. Something's

discordant. It's not working." And then

I get out and it wasn't like and then

[clears throat] the skies opened and I

realized that my path was not to wear

small swim shorts on TV. Uh however, it

did make me think it was a a very I call

it a fatal dose of contrast that I was

no longer able to hide that there is

something a little bit off here. And

that was a good time. Your Jordan

Petersons, your Alanderon from the

School of Lights, your Sam Harris's,

your Joe Rogan's all coming to the

front. I start consuming their stuff and

it makes me think, wow, I I actually

this speaks to me. It helps to educate

me to be better and to understand myself

and that's kind of how I phased out I

suppose.

When you talk about struggling in school

socially,

what was the reason for that? Have you

ever sort of diagnosed why you didn't

quote unquote fit in in school?

Yeah. So uh quite I think any only child

struggles to be socialized to the level

that they need to in order to have the

same set of social skills that

anyone with a a brother or sister does,

right? Like think about how much time

you with a sibling spend arguing,

hitting each other, going to sleep, them

knocking on your door when you're trying

to get ready, arguing for the bathroom,

all of these tiny little interactions. I

had none of that. Right? And even if you

spent every waking moment of free time

in clubs and sports and whatnot that I

did, it's going to be hard. And then I

think that there is some inherent

introversion in me. And it kind of

combined for me to not really understand

other kids. Uh so I used to obsess over

things like um the kind of hairstyle

that other kids had or the way that they

tied their tie in school or the type of

shoes that they wore, the way that they

carried their bag, which shoulder their

bag was on because I was adamant. I

would fixate on that and that would be

the reason that they had friends and I

didn't because I couldn't understand why

I didn't have friends. What it was was

that I couldn't socially relate to kids

particularly well because I didn't have

a wide variety of social skills. So I

struggled but I was taking this super

attentive like what is it? What's going

on? Trying to like assess is it because

Steven wears his watch on his right

wrist instead of his left wrist? Is it

because of whatever whatever? uh because

I was trying to diagnose what was going

on.

Do you know what's driving you from, you

know, the good and the bad, the light

and the dark? I'm I'm more specifically

interested to start with the dark. Do

you ever have conversations with

yourself about the When I say dark, it's

a subjective term, but the dark side

that's driving you.

Absolutely. Yeah. Chronically, of

course. I think anybody that believes

that they're driven by a pure love uh

and positive reinforcement is usually

confused. I think that uh there was a a

study done that looked at the three most

common traits of highly successful

people, hyper successful people. We're

talking top level CEOs. The first one

was uh crippling sense of insufficiency.

The second one was a superiority

complex. And the third one was uh an

ability to have maniacal focus. So what

you have and it's this this Petersonen

story which you may be familiar with.

They starve rats and put them into a

tube. They attach a spring to the tail

of the rat so that they can tell how

much force they're pulling with. And

that gives a uh proxy for desire, right?

That's how much they want it. They waft

the smell of cheese in from the front

and the rat pulls toward the cheese. You

think these rats are starving. They're

going to be pulling very hard. Then they

take the rats out and they do another

iteration of the study. This time they

waft the smell of cheese in from the

front and they waft the smell of a cat

in from behind. The rats pull harder.

What's the lesson in life? Not only do

you need to run towards something that

you want, but you need to run away from

something that you fear. And I've spent

I've spoken to 600 high performers on my

show, right? I would say that on average

most of the people that are unbelievably

good at anything that they do are driven

by a fear of insufficiency, not by a

perfectly balanced desire for success.

And this tension between success and

happiness I think is something that both

me and you are quite interested in. So

the reason it's interesting is a lot of

the time we sacrifice the thing we want

for the thing which is supposed to get

it right. So if in service of becoming

happy we sacrifice happiness to achieve

success in the hopes that success will

make us happy. If you created an

equation of what's going on and you just

remove success from both sides, what are

you left with? Just happiness. Now, I'm

not saying that you can recant all of

your desires for status and accolade and

and striving and stuff like you need to

go out and and do things. But I do think

that a lot of the time we overco

complicate the world. And a lot of it is

because when we're [snorts] kids, our

parents will reinforce our um successes

by praising us and will criticize us

when we fail, which can metastasize as

we grow up into being I am only worthy

of love and acceptance and admiration

and praise if I win. It cause causes you

to fear being a loser more than want to

be a winner. And winning solves it's

like an anesthetic, right? that that

papers over fears of insufficiency. So

yeah, I mean when I was a club promoter,

uh I knew that if I was stood on the

front door of a nightclub that people

would need me. They want the VIP bands.

They want to be in the place where the

pretty girls are. They want to get in

for cheaper or a free bottle of vodka or

they they want to skip the queue or

whatever. So they need me. And then when

you roll it forward to the podcast, I

have to be very careful that I don't

just transmute that same energy into

instead of gifting people entry into

nightclubs, now I'm gifting them

insights that I've learned, concepts

from some interesting person that's

going to improve their life as we sit

around a dinner table or as we go out

for a lunch or whatever. I have to be

careful that that's not the case. And

for the people that maybe resonate with

this fear of insufficiency and this

requirement to offer the world something

in order for the world to feel like

they're worthy. Uh it is possible to

deprogram it. It is possible to tune

that volume down. But one of the things

that you're going to pay a price with is

your drive because the rat that is

running away from something that it

fears will pull harder than the rat

that's just running towards something

that it wants. The traits of super

competitive people don't just include

the superiority complex, but the

crippling anxiety about being a failure.

So this tension between success and

failure is

it is a driver, but it's an incredibly

toxic fuel, right? To be propelled by

fear of insufficiency can work super

well, but it it's very dangerous. As a

final example, Eddie Hall, World's

Strongest Man, and he retires on the

podium. He's holding this trophy in the

air and he's saying, "This is for you,

Nana." And his grandma's passed away

recently, and he's crying and he's 200

kilos and 6'4. And, you know, he's

worked his entire life. And he said in

an interview shortly afterward that if

he hadn't won the World's Strongest Man,

he would be dead, single, with no

relationship to his kid because he was

pushing his body so hard with the

lifting and presumably the drugs that he

was taking. He was training so much that

his relationship with his wife was

breaking down and he was out of the

house so much he had no relationship to

his kid. Jason Paran says, uh, except

that all of your heroes are full of

[ __ ] Your heroes aren't gods. They're

just regular people who got particularly

good at one thing by sacrificing

literally everything else. That's the

price that you pay for success. And most

people wouldn't pay it.

That point about reprogramming the toxic

drive that you have. Um, I often ponder

with myself. I'm like, and when I think

about status games and how status games

that, you know, we often think that

we're over a certain status game. So,

you know, I had a um a guy on my podcast

who talked a lot about the evolutionary

basis of status and how if you go to uh

an estate in the UK where there's not a

lot of money, they'll have bigger logos

on their tracksuits.

Will store.

Will store great game.

Um, and then as people get richer and

richer, the logos get smaller and

obviously they play a different type of

game. Correct. It's about boats and

other things. And I that really hit me

like a ton of bricks because I I thought

dressed in all black, I really don't

have any. I have one material

possession. You saw it last night, which

is the bag I had on, which I'm waiting

for it to break.

Nice bag.

It's a nice bag. Yeah. Um but outside I

thought I'm over status games. And I

realized that I'm just playing a

different set of status games.

Just a counter signal. Yeah. It's the

red sneaker effect. It's the reason that

the CEO that's worth a billion can turn

up in a hoodie, but the CEO that's worth

half a million still wears a three-piece

suit.

It's called the There's another idea

called the barber pole of status. So you

can imagine that uh people who are at

the absolute top in terms of status they

need to make sure that the people below

them can't be confused for them but they

can counter signal by having the so you

look at the vagabond style of flares and

hoodie you know even essentials uh Yeezy

yay stuff all it's almost like hobo chic

why well it's because I am so cool and

so trendy that I can counter signal off

the top so everyone is playing a status

game everybody is at all times it's just

a case of what game are you playing?

And that toxic drive, the the big shift

I've had in my life is I'm now focusing

on something which is also driving me to

a more fulfilling place. Whereas before

I was focusing on like a monetary game

where I was like how much money can I

acquire? How much um how big can I build

a business? Now I'm focusing it more on

things that are more intrinsically

aligned with um that which that makes me

happy. So this for example or writing or

DJing for example, but it's still there.

So my question to you there's kind of

two questions there is what's your

journey been like with reprogramming

that that toxic driving force or that

dark driving force or those in feelings

of insufficiency and secondly you said

that we can reprogram it we can dilute

it but it comes at the cost of drive

how does one do such such a thing

so

what I was missing for me personally was

I didn't feel competent in things I

needed to feel like I was competent and

I was proving something to the world

each time that I succeeded.

Why did you need to feel competent?

Because that would solve my feelings of

insufficiency. For every time that I

won, we had a good club night, the

business was good, we broke a record

with entries at a different event or

whatever that would make me feel, yeah,

wow, I'm like less of a piece of [ __ ]

Was there a time where you were made to

feel incompetent? I think just

chronically through my childhood of not

being super accepted, there was a

ambient sense that something is broken

with me, something is wrong because if

there wasn't something wrong, I would

have friends.

Okay,

people would want me, right? I think

that was just a relatively logical

if this then that statement that came

out of it. And um when it comes to

changing that, Alex Homozi, who you had

on the show recently, has this great

quote where he says, "You don't become

confident by shouting affirmations in

the mirror, but by having a stack of

undeniable proof that you are who you

say you are. Outwork your self-doubt."

And it wasn't until I had a project

where I could no longer deny that my

efforts were bearing fruits and that I

was becoming competent at something. It

was a a crushing amount of volume and

incontrovertible evidence that smashed

my imposter syndrome into the ground.

Did it?

Yeah. Yeah.

Do the games do the games you because

now you're in a different

differently category, right? But I feel

like I'm supposed to be here. I feel

like I deserve to be here.

You know, often my guests talk about

like that voice in their head which

whispers to them, you know, words of

self-doubt. And it seems to me like I'd

say 95% of them haven't managed to shake

that in some form. It still shows up at

some time in some place.

Well, it's still there, but it's a lot

quieter. A lot quieter. And you have to

accept after a while that if you

continue to disprove your imposter

syndrome in the real world, every single

time that you're faced with a challenge,

you succeed despite the fact that you

were adamant that you were going to fail

or you had fears of insufficiency or all

the rest of it. After a while, you have

to accept that it has nothing to do with

your competence and everything to do

with your addiction to feeling like an

imposter. You are delusional about your

competence in reverse.

Every single time that you are faced

with a challenge, you succeed. Every

single time you are faced with a future

challenge, you believe that you're going

to fail. It's got nothing to do with

your competence. So Rogan calls it um

building a mountain with layers of

paint, right? incredibly thin each time,

but after 600 episodes or however many

million dollars of revenue or whatever,

you go, maybe there's something to this,

you know, maybe I don't maybe I'm not a

totally worthless piece of [ __ ]

On that point of how it diminishes one's

drive, have you seen a diminishment in

your drive then as your feelings of

sufficiency have improved?

No, because I have changed what is

driving me to something which is much

more aligned with who I am. So the

curiosity for me is crippling and I want

to know about everything which the my

desire to learn things is so much

stronger than any fear of insufficiency

or desire for success was ever going to

be right

that I've just supplanted one toxic type

of drive for one incredibly personal

very

scalable leverable beautiful kind of

drive. That being said, there are times

this is I I'm speaking from, you know,

the perfect version of me. That voice,

that negative voice comes in a few times

a week. It reminds me that I maybe I'm

not supposed to be here. I'm not who I

pretend to be, but it's getting quieter

and quieter and quieter. And I think

it's getting quieter because I have a

stack of undeniable proof that I'm

supposed to be here.

Do you remember the last time that voice

came in?

Yeah, I think I told you about this last

night. Uh I was I was on a podcast and

my blood sugar fell through the floor.

And what it showed me was that under

times of extreme stress, we revert back

to a voice from somewhere in our past. I

don't know who it was. I don't know

whether it was an angry parent or a

teacher that was annoyed at me or

whatever. But this voice came in and it

said, "You're not supposed to be here.

You were never supposed to be here.

You're boring. No one cares what you've

got to say. You know that you're a fake.

Everyone's going to find out.

Everybody's laughing at you. Nobody

likes you. And I thought as I'm talking

away on this show and my head is

spinning with all of this stuff and I'm

thinking, where the [ __ ] is this voice

come from? What like who who is that? I

thought that I'd transcended this voice.

However, in a high pressure situation

when I felt bad,

something came back through. So I think

what it does remind me is that there is

always work to be done. there's always

something there that's hiding behind and

that becoming uh complacent about

personal growth is something that is

going to allow that to seep back in. You

talked about the the paint y like the

layers of paint that build confidence.

This is something that I've been

particularly compelled by because so

many people that listen to this podcast

struggle with the idea of confidence and

there's a big industry out there as

you've said that says, you know, look in

the mirror, tell yourself you're a

millionaire. Um say it three times,

write it in your journal. [laughter]

But then as I reflected and as I've

written in my my book, um the thing that

and it relates to what Alex Hozi said is

the thing that I've learned is it's all

evidence for better or for worse.

Stack of undeniable proof.

And it goes the other way. That evidence

that you got at 7 years old when you

went up and tried to do a public speech

and everyone laughed at you is more it's

a thicker layer,

correct?

Than than one layer of evidence to say

that you're you're capable. It's a

harder layer to sort of strip. Um, if

there is someone listening now and they

want to maybe orientate their drive to

the fulfilling pursuits that you talk

about, but also they want to build their

confidence, what advice would you give

them? I imagine that's 80% of the

listening basia. Act first.

Okay. [clears throat] You have to lead

with action. Because if you are someone

that deals with a crippling sense of

insufficiency,

your ability to discount

any good thoughts you have in your mind

is going to be so strong. If you try and

lead with positivity first, I need to

think it, wish it, believe it, and I

will achieve it. Your set point of

negativity is going to just crush that

into the ground. I'm speaking from

personal experience, right? As the guy

that was chronically unconfident and

still has, you know, the imposter

syndrome that does creep in.

You have to start with action. It needs

to be okay. What would have had to have

happened in a week's time for me to look

back on that week and find pride in

myself? Pride's seen as uh something

that you uh should be ashamed of. It's

one of the seven deadly sins. Uh but

David Gogggins, I did an episode with

him a couple of months ago. We can put

it in the in the show notes if people

are interested. And he said pride is

something that everybody misses. That

having pride in your name, your

performance, uh the way that you show up

for other people is something that you

can do. But you need to do something

that is worthy of being prideful about,

right? What would have had to have

happened in a week for you to look back

on that week with pride? Okay, maybe

stop breaking promises to yourself. When

you say, "I'm going to wake up tomorrow

at 7 a.m." And when the option comes to

hit the snooze button, don't do it.

There's one win that you've got for the

day. That's action, right? And it is

just, you know, it's tried to say the

Peterson clean your room thing, but the

reason that that works is that you start

with the smallest step and you expand

out from there. You want to become a

writer. You want to leave your job and

become a writer. Okay? Can you commit to

writing one blog post on Substack per

week for the next three weeks?

That would make you feel like less of a

loser if you did that. Action has to

come first if you are the sort of person

who is chronically unconfident because

you will drag your sense of identity

behind you. Mark Manson says that

identity lags behind our status by about

1 to two years. So for both me and you

in two years time, we'll go, "Ah, I

understand why I was in LA that day."

and and and look back.

Start with action and [clears throat]

make small promises to yourself that you

don't break. If you had a friend and

every single time that you and your

friend decided that you were going to go

out for dinner, that friend either

showed up 2 hours late or didn't show up

at all, you would stop trusting that

person. That is the relationship that

you have with yourself. You need to be

able to trust your own word. And a lot

of us don't because life is very

convenient and it is easy for people to

not stick to the promises that they set

themselves because our ability to be

idealistic is always going to outstrip

reality's ability to deliver that to us.

Soon as you posit an ideal, you then

begin to compare yourself to that ideal.

And true hell is when the person that

you are meets the person that you could

have been.

Sometimes I ponder how um you've

probably seen this in your own life. I'm

sure you have where you'll have a friend

in your life. I've got a couple of

friends back home who

I've tried to help in some way. Maybe

give some advice when they're struggling

in their hardest times and the advice

has been ineffective. And then you've

got another friend who will just need

one idea. They'll be listening to your

podcast and one idea will be the seed

that changes their life. I often like

think that I over overestimate the power

of words because everything you've said

there makes perfect sense.

Mhm. But we both know that 95% maybe

more of people that have just received

that it will not convert into any kind

of behavior.

Habits are hard to break, man. And the

habit of not doing things is

unbelievably difficult to get past.

It's one of the problems with

anyone that listens to your show or my

show, you will love being cerebral,

right? You will love the idea that I can

use cognitive horsepower to just get

myself out of problems. And there is a

case of learning as masturbation, right?

Uh and believing that learning about

something is the same as enacting it.

And it's not. That's why it has to be

action first.

A quote from one of my friends that he

uses when he's thinking about a concept

is, "Does this grow corn?" Basically, is

it useful? Tell me how I can use this in

my life. Does it grow [ __ ] corn?

Right? I It's this beautifully uh

beautiful sounding concept, cognitive

bias that helps me understand the way

that my brain works and my relationship

with everybody else. How do I use that

in my life? Give me something to apply

it to. And that's why with the

confidence thing,

choose promises that you will never

break to yourself. I'm going to get up

on time for the next month. I am not

going to hit the snooze button. If you

do that and you look back in a month and

you go, "Oh my god, that's the first

time I've done that in forever." Maybe

that's a big win. And you can do the

James Clear thing. We'll write it on a

board. We'll track it. What gets like

measured, etc., etc. But the main thing

is just keep promises to yourself. And

that is a good way to go from here is an

insight I learned about I want to do

breath work, cold plunge, go to the gym,

fast until 12 midday, get up on time,

sunlight in the eyes in the whatever it

is, right, that you want to do,

turn it into a promise. Don't break the

promise.

One of the really important things you

said there was about the size of that

first step. I I was reflecting there on

the way that video games are designed to

make sure that every subsequent level is

not too intimidating that you lose

motivation, but it's not too um too

small that you lose motivation as well.

You can lose motivation on both ways.

And so it's the same with crosswords and

video games, they get incrementally more

challenging to keep you engaged. The

size of that first step is is I think a

central point there because when people

listen to podcasts with people like me

and you or Andrew Huberman and they hear

that they've got to maybe get up at this

time, go outside, gaze earth, like put

their feet on the ground, cold plunge,

duh. and I go, I'm going to do that and

I set that as my first step.

Yeah.

I'm set up for failure.

Yeah.

How important do you think the size and

the subjective size of that small that

first step you take to build trust with

yourself is and to start that

discipline? The goal isn't to have the

perfect daily routine tomorrow. The goal

is to still be winning your daily

routine in 50 years time. If you expand

your time horizon sufficiently, you will

realize that very, very tiny steps can

compound. Look at the graph of mine or

your followers on Spotify, especially

mine, right? Because I was doing my show

for so long and it's just nothing,

nothing, nothing, nothing, everything.

Well, why? Well, it's because it's

latent leverage. It takes so many layers

of paint to get there. So, yes, the

first step has to be incredibly small.

Do that. Make it so small that you can't

say no to it. And then what's next? And

then what's next? So when I decided that

I was going to try and become a more

virtuous version of me, I was going to

start telling the truth. I was going to

uh have a morning routine. I was going

to develop a meditation habit. I was

going to read. All of these things I

wanted to do. None of which I did right

toward the end of my 20s. None of which

I did. All of which are now the

foundation of of my life. Over I don't

know 1500 meditation sessions and all of

the authors on the podcast, etc., etc.

[snorts]

I had to do that one step at a time. I

didn't have a stable sleep and wake

pattern until co ever in my adult life.

I'd never gone to bed and woken up at

the same time for seven days in a row

until COVID because I was running

nightlife events, right? So

if no matter how difficult the setback

is, even if you're a shift worker,

you're a nurse, you're a parent,

whatever your challenge is, just make

the promise to yourself sufficiently

small that even with that challenge in

front of you, you can make it work.

I hear that and I'm motivated as a lot

of people will be because that's what

happens. You know, like a shower, as the

cliche goes, motivation comes and then

it slowly it slowly washes over us and

slowly starts to fade. How do I prepare

or how should I be preparing for the day

where I've heard Chris Williams and

Steve speaking about this and then in

three and a half days time I wake up in

the morning, life has happened, the kids

screaming, my motivation seems to have

escaped me.

Mhm.

The distinction between discipline on

that day and the motivation I got from

the source and that came from the

inspiration of this conversation. What

do I do?

Discipline eats motivation for

breakfast. You don't need motivation.

It's great if it arrives. It's some

extra fuel on the fire. But discipline

is the thing that you need. What would

you tomorrow want you today to do? You

tomorrow would want you to keep that

promise to yourself. And it's why

discipline is so much more valuable. I

remember this conversation between

Jocker Willink and Sam Harris six years

ago. They're talking about how you can't

fake bravery because if you do a thing

in spite of being scared of doing the

thing, that is bravery, right? There's

no such thing as fake bravery. Like you

just if you do the thing and you're

scared, that's bravery. If you don't do

the thing and you weren't scared, that's

not bravery, right? The same thing goes

for discipline. Doing the thing in spite

of not wanting to do the thing is

discipline, right? You don't need

motivation to get yourself up to go and

do a thing. Make the promise small.

Build it up step by step. Know that you

are going to have setbacks. And this is

my favorite rule from James Clear, which

is a habit missed once is a mistake. A

habit missed twice is the start of a new

habit. Never miss two days in a row. So

ideally, go for a month, build it up.

But after that, if you ever miss one

day, go, okay, that's mistakes are going

to happen. Tomorrow I double down.

Tomorrow I go on time, absolutely

perfect. I'm straight up out of bed or I

go to the gym or I walk the dog or I do

my meditation or whatever. And that's a

good heruristic stops errors snowballing

into new habits.

What about if I get to day three? It's

then, in James CLA's definition, the

start of a new habit. Do I not just

apply the same thinking that I did when

I missed it on day one?

You just need to Well, I mean, if you

don't ever miss two days, you shouldn't

be able to get to day three.

What if I do though? I mean, I think

about my own fitness journey. I've been

working out for the last 3 years. M

and there will be a week where

motivation is gone and there'll be

multiple weeks. So there'll be sometimes

there'll be two weeks in a row where I'm

like taking my ass to the gym,

but the my workout is absolutely

atrocious. I might as well have not have

gone.

Um and I do that because I'm trying to

continue the behavior in spite of the

motivation.

Well, it doesn't change your worth as a

person. You know, you you want to do

this because you think that it's good

for you. Because you believe that it's

good for you. Because you care about

yourself. You care about Steven and his

body and his mind. you want him to have

a long and healthy life. And the same

for everybody else that's listening.

They want to have good outcomes from the

things that they do in life. You don't

need to lambast yourself because you

don't do a thing that is perfectly

designed to make you feel good. Okay.

Like you missed three days in a row. We

get back on the horse. We go again.

Discipline.

You talked a second ago about the

fundamentals of your life now. The

things you wanted to put in place. You

referenced meditation and these kinds of

things. When I think about the the Chris

Williams that was running those club

nights was on Love Island, take me out

and the guy that sat in front of me now.

If there were a couple of key

fundamental tools or devices that have

taken you from there to the guy sat in

front of me here

and you know what are what are those

what are those things? And I say this

because you know when people give advice

on this podcast sometimes when in books

and stuff they'll talk to things they

think they're supposed to say

but you never really get the truth

stuff. They'll say oh meditation I've

never heard that before. I'm like for

Chris Williams, what what took you from

from there to the Chris Williams in

Sanford to be now?

Getting up on time every day.

Every day.

Every day.

And what's what's on time for you?

Uh 7 7 to 7:30 depending on what time I

went to bed. So it'll change each night,

but I'll set an alarm and I will get up

on time. Go to bed and wake up at around

about the same time each day. Makes a

massive difference. Go for a morning

walk first thing. So sunlight before

screen light was something that I was

doing before Huberman talked about the

down reggulation of the amygdala

response and the lateral eye movement

helps blah blah blah in the brain. I

came upon this because I wanted to go

for a walk more in order to get as many

steps in as I could. Uh get up and go

for a walk because it just so many

people are

stopped the second they wake up because

they use their phone as their alarm.

They roll over, they hit the alarm on

their phone, and now their phone's in

their hand. And now they're in bed for

half an hour doing the cycle through all

of their social media apps. Sleep with

your phone outside of your bedroom. That

was the number one change that I made.

Phone is outside of the bedroom. And I

bought How long have radio alarms been

around? A million years, right? Like

just get any kind of alarm clock. Wake

up, go for a walk before you use your

phone. that will change so many of the

problems that people encounter because

it the addiction to technology is

primary I think to a lot of people's

challenges in their day.

Meditation has been interesting for me.

It it it's definitely helped me to be

calmer to be more peaceful. It's not an

insane performance enhancer. The breath

work as well. I really enjoy doing that.

It's not an insane performance enhancer.

um reading I would say some form of

content absorption that could come from

reading articles, reading books,

listening to podcasts, listening to

audio books. Something that pushes your

understanding is is very important. Uh

and for me that's moved. It was books a

while ago. Now it's more Substack

articles that I read on my Kindle. For a

long time it's always been podcasts.

Sometimes it's audio books, sometimes

it's not.

What about content creation? the other

side of that coin and the obligation to

create.

What impact has that had on your life?

It's everything because

by having to

talk about the things that I learn, it

forces me to learn them, right? Until

you can explain something to somebody

else, you don't really understand it.

So, okay, prove to me that you

understand it by telling me about it. I

can't. Okay, well, you don't understand

it then. So, uh, this is one of the

reasons I suggest to people that they

should do a fake podcast with a friend,

uh, for 30 minutes every week. Uh,

phones are outside of the room. Put one

phone face down on the table, press the

record button, and just have a

conversation and pretend that people are

watching. Welcome back to the show,

Stephen. Today, we're going to talk

about the UFC or Tommy Fury and Jake

Paul. Who do you think is going to win?

And it forces you to be rigorous and

precise and consistent with the things

that you believe. And it is a forcing

function that synthesizes the things

that you're doing. Other people might

prefer to write or draw. One of the

advantages of doing it for an audience

is that you actually feel like someone's

keeping you accountable, right? If it's

just, oh, I'm going to draw a drawing

every week for my own pleasure as

opposed to I'm going to draw a drawing

every week and post it on my Instagram

or I'm going to write a Substack

article. I mean, I have a posting

cadence on the show Monday, Thursday,

Saturday. Uh, and if it wasn't for the

fact that I know if I don't post on

those days, the audience is going to be

like, "Hang on a second, mate. Like,

it's Monday. Where's the where's the

podcast episode?" it would be a lot less

motivating for me to do it driven by

that. So, I think that absolutely

creating some kind of content, whether

it be just for you or whether it be to

put out into the world and to build a

platform with, is a a good start.

The most important thing I think in

hindsight that I've gained from content

creation is in fact like honing my skill

of sales because you're forced in this

medium to make your ideas as concise as

you possibly can and say them in a way

which is engaging. And I reflect over

the last 10 years or so of making

content and recording videos and go,

man, the impact it's had on my business,

my ability to pitch and sell. But even

if you're a guy and you're looking to

pick someone up in a bar, man or woman,

it's profound to me the impact that the

obligation to create content,

specifically on video in in um

in speaking form, has had on all facets

of my life. And I just don't feel like

there's enough of a charge to both

introspect but then the obligation to

create. I think it's life-changing.

There's a a interesting quote from

Vickinstein, Ludvid Vickinstein, and he

says, "The limits of my language mean

the limits of my world."

So you could see a richer vocabulary

means a richer life. If you take the

fact that you have ideas in your head,

they're these sort of wishy-washy

ephemeral notion. It's like a smell,

right? An idea is kind of like a smell.

It's it's just amorphous blob of a thing

and you go yeah I feel like this I feel

like this is an idea until you make it

take form through spoken word written

word or drawing

it doesn't really exist. It's not

tangible. You can't see it. You can't

work out where the holes are in whatever

this idea is. So what that means is that

first off the more words that you have

in your arsenal the more precisely you

can describe the thing which is in your

head. The more frictionlessly you can

take ideas from your brain to your

mouth, your fingertips, or the end of a

pencil, the more accurately you're going

to be able to put that out into the

world, which means that when you need to

turn it over and assess it and look at

it, you go, "Oh my god, I thought that I

knew this inside out, and there's this

big gaping hole here. I need to work out

what's going on." which is why a

loneliness epidemic, uh, the massive

falling rates of friendlessness in in

the world aren't particularly good

because not only is it bad for the

community and for social cohesion, but

it's bad for the individual's personal

growth as well. If you want to fully

learn something, you want to spend time

synthesizing your ideas.

And you can really only ever do that for

somebody else. Again, you can write the

journal to you, for you, but it's never

going to be as disciplined or as

consistent as if you're writing it for

an audience, even if the audience is

only five people or only your friends.

And you spoke to something which is

because you were outside of the social

circle when you were young, you were

able to, I guess, vicariously see the

impact that small things had, which made

you kind of socially attuned. Talking

then about the loneliness epidemic.

Is it an is it an epidemic? How bad is

it? Is it something that you believe

society should be paying more attention

to? Um I sat here with Simon Synynic the

other day and he disclosed to me that he

was going through a real struggle with

loneliness at the moment and it was

somewhat surprising. It was somewhat

surprising because again in a very naive

way Simon Synynic is someone of great

success. He's got a career most people

would um would die for. He's a man of

you know that's greatly admired. He goes

on stages and thousands of people roar

his name, but then on a personal level,

he's lonely. And one of the things he

said to me was there's a real difference

between being alone and being lonely.

Do you can you see the distinction

between the two?

Yeah. I mean, solitude is something that

many of us enjoy. I know that me and you

both enjoy, right? Loneliness isn't. I

used to write I I've got um in a journal

that I used to keep in my phone a couple

of different entries from my mid20s and

it just put I think I'm lonely. Yeah.

Because I just I I I couldn't work out

what was going on. I had a sense that

there was maybe something that was a

little bit wrong. I think I'm lonely. Um

when it comes to the loneliness

epidemic,

uh in 1990, the number of men who said

that they had six or more close friends

was around about 55%. In 2020, that

dropped to 21%. It's less than half,

right? 21% of men say that they have

less than six close friends. The number

of men who say that they have zero close

friends has increased by fivefold from

1990 and it's now at 15%.

15% of men say that they have zero close

friends. I don't know the stats for

women. It seems like women are able to

hold on to social groups a little bit

more effectively than men are. Uh the

loneliness epidemic does seem to be

hitting men a little bit more hard.

I'm compelled by your diary entry before

we get into the stats and the causation.

You wrote in your diary in your

mid20ies, I think I'm lonely.

Yep. It's funny because I I reflect on

my early 20s between 20 and 25 and I was

definitely lonely but had no idea until

later.

That was why I only that was why I only

thought that I was lonely, you know?

[clears throat] I was like and what is

it? What were we just saying?

It's a notion.

It's a It's a smell. Someone shouted it

from the other room. [ __ ]

I

What is that? I think I'm lonely.

No one's described it. I didn't have a

description of it. So, I had this sort

of innate fe this feeling inside my

being, but no one had put a word to it

before or told me what the like job

description of someone that's lonely

looks like.

So, it was a signal like something's not

right, but I don't know what it is.

Yep.

And I only learned when I was not

lonely, when I felt a real sense of

connection

what I was missing.

Oh [ __ ] That's not what life's supposed

to be like.

Yeah. So, tell me about what what had

caused what factors had come together to

put you in a situation where you were

lonely. I've met about a million people

in my life and I only had a handful of

friends.

That made me think my exposure to friend

conversion seems to be off. There is

something not right here. And this was

largely due to the fact that I was

playing a role as this big name on

campus party boy. And quite rightly, who

was I going to resonate with when I

wasn't being me? they were going to at

best become friends with a projection of

what I thought they wanted me to be.

Right? So this was almost exclusively on

myself. Uh but also I was struggling a

little bit in the industry to find um

the I I can't have a conversation about

like the deeper sense of human nature or

the existential pain of being alive or

status from Will store his brand new

book when someone's desperately trying

to get a VIP wristband off me so that

they can go and see the hot girls

downstairs. like it's it's not quite the

right environment for that. But again,

largely this was due to the fact that I

wasn't being sufficiently confident that

other people would be interested in what

I was interested in. And yeah, I mean,

you can be have all of the success in

the world. You can be uh surrounded by

people and yet feel alone in a crowd and

hollow in victory. Because if you're

only playing a role, anything that you

do, any love that people give to you

won't feel like it hits you

existentially. You'll feel praise, but

you won't feel love because they're not

in love with you. They're just

applauding the role that you're playing.

Does that make sense?

Makes perfect sense. Makes perfect

sense. It's such an apt description. It

really brings in this idea of what the

person is connecting to matters the

most. I if they're connecting to the

image that I've created which is

inauthentic to myself, I'm never going

to receive that connection. The only way

to cure my loneliness is to show up as

myself and to build connection on that

basis which is again makes a ton of

sense to me because I was a young CEO

who had hundreds of employees.

My relationship to them wasn't

necessarily Steve the true sense of

Steve

to them. So

Steve to CEO

it was exactly it was CEO to employee.

And then in my personal life in that

early 20s phase there was maybe one

person maybe two that knew Ste that were

connected to Steve. Yep.

But even maybe one actually um which is

super interesting because we don't it

also talks to Simon Synynic's thing

where I go well he's this guy's amazing

but but how many people are connected to

the true Simon the guy behind the books

the guy behind the admiration. That

study you referenced a second ago about

men getting increasingly lonelier. I I

think I read the same thing. The thing I

read was about the amount of people

we have to turn to in a time of crisis

and how that's decayed over the last

couple of decades.

Why is that happening? What is happening

in culture and society that's causing us

to become more and more disconnected in

terms of proximity but also in just in

sense of sort of psychological

connection? What is going on?

It's a good question. Uh I don't think

that is a there's a single answer to

this. Um social media probably has a lot

to answer for. What's happened now is

the world of social connection has been

made less and less social, right? You're

more more connected than ever before,

but more atomized than ever before as

well. I think that there are some really

worrying trends in rising rates of

social anxiety that are mostly

downstream from people not spending

enough time being social. If you look at

the average amount of hours that kids

would have played outside versus the

average amount of hours that kids are

spending watching television on social

media and playing video games now you

are basically creating an army of young

Chrises right that were socially

uneducated in that regard downstream

those turn into adults that similarly

don't they haven't got the habits of

going out and being social which means

that they don't develop the skills to

connect to people to be able to make

friends and that causes loneliness. Like

that's I think a large portion of what

we're talking about.

What about the like optimization of our

lives and the way that we've built

cities and the way that we're you know

when I say optimization of our lives I

mean like if we order food

convenience

it's a it's a screen.

I mean this this is just

if we date it's a screen. If we connect

to my mother or my sister in Australia

it's a screen.

Yeah.

Well the problem is that what is

convenient or enjoyable is not always

what's good for you. Right. Ice cream

for dinner every single night for the

two-year-old is both convenient and

enjoyable, but probably not good for it.

The issue is that we are all our own

parents when it comes to our social

media and uh social interaction lives.

The pain of rejection, whether that be

from a potential friend, a potential

partner or a job offer, a business,

whatever, is is painful. And we have

done incredible things to try and nerf

the world, right? To wrap it in cotton

wool so that the pain of rejection is

removed as much as possible. This is why

online dating is so successful because

the pain of rejection, you don't know

the people that swiped left on you. You

only know the people that swiped right.

That's taken the pain of rejection of

dating away, right?

What do you think of dating apps? Do you

think they're net positive or net

negative for the world?

I really want to go here.

Of course, I want to go.

Okay. [laughter] Okay.

I think that dating apps are a perfect

example of something which is both

convenient and enjoyable, but not good

for you.

They have certainly opened up more

opportunities for people to meet

potential partners. And yet we are in a

world with the highest rates of

sexlessness ever amongst young people.

One in three men between the ages of 18

and 30 hasn't had sex in the last year.

That tripled from 8% to 28% from 2008 to

2018.

50% of men say that they are not looking

for a committed relationship. That's

down from 61% of men saying that they

were. only half of men between the ages

of 18 and 30 are looking for a

relationship. You go, "Okay, well, if

the promises of easy access online

dating were so true, how is it that

we've ended up with a world where people

having less sex than ever, that sex uh

sexlessness has also increased for women

too, but for men it's increased more and

they were starting at a higher baseline

as well.

50.1% of women for the first time in

history uh are

mothers there are more childless women

at 30 than there are women with

children. Right? So for almost all of

human history more women had kids under

the age of 30 than over. And now it's

switched. There's a study from Morgan

Stanley that says by 2040 45% of 25 to

45 year old women will be single and

childless.

If online dating was creating this

perfect facilitation for relationships

to start, how are we ending up with all

of these

outcomes?

It's a question.

What's wrong with the outcomes?

What do you mean? Why should people care

about being single?

All the stats you've just said,

um, I could look at them and say they're

just sort of objectively neutral. like

there's no adverse consequence to

society or the world. It's fine that

people aren't having kids. It's fine

that people are aren't having sex. I'm

playing devil's advocate here, but like

what what is the what is the negative

consequence of all of those outcomes

that you've described in your view?

There are people for whom a life without

a partner is the right choice. That's

absolutely something that I'm prepared

to accept. But it's not most people.

It's

one of the biggest levers. In fact, the

single biggest predictor of your health

outcomes in life are the number of close

connections that you have. It's the

number of friends. It's more than

quitting smoking. It's more than going

to the gym. It's more than stopping

drinking. It's the number of close

friends that you've got. And a

relationship is a big close friend.

Robin Dunar says that in order to get

into a relationship, you have to

sacrifice two friendships

because you can have around about five

very close friends. If you want to get

into a relationship, you need to get rid

of two of them because there is a

minimum time investment. So, people that

are in relationships have better health

outcomes. They have onset of dementia

later. They have Alzheimer uh problems

later on in life. Uh they are less

lonely.

That seems pretty uncontroversial. And

yet both sides of the aisle, both men

and women are retreating from

relationships and finding ways that they

can uh justify this. Uh you know, uh

boss [ __ ] culture and sort of the

lean-in um women's mentality or men

going their own way and incel culture

and the black pill for guys are both

ways that each sex is trying to deal

with the challenges that are coming out

of the mating market. Both sexes are

saying, "I don't want to be a part of

this anymore. I'm finding it so painful

and difficult to be in this world that

I'm just going to cast off any of it

altogether and then retroactively come

up with a lot of explanations that can

justify why they didn't need to be in a

relationship in any case. And for some

people that's true, but for most people

that's not.

Dating apps are clearly not, you know,

as you say in your own words and

previously aren't the only causal

factor. So my question to you is where

did we go wrong and how do we go right?

Okay. So I think challenges in the

mating market are coming from many

directions. One of the main ones that

will be pertinent to the people that are

listening is the increase in female

achievement in education and employment.

Now about 50 years ago when Title 9 came

in, there was a 13 percentage point

swing in favor of men to women in

universities. There were significantly

more men than women.

What's Title 9?

It was an affirmative action uh policy

that helped to get more women into

higher education.

50 years later, 2023, it's a 15

percentage point swing between men and

women in university in the other

direction. There are two women for every

one man at a four-year US college

degree. Round about by 2030. Women on

average between the ages of 21 and 29

earn £1,111

more than their male counterparts. Women

are roughly twice as likely as men to

say that they will value financial

prospects in a partner. Around about 78%

of women say that a stable job is

something that is important for a

partner to have. Whereas around about

only sort of 45% of men say the same

thing. For a man to increase his uh

rating on a 10-point scale by two

points, he requires around about a

t-fold uh increase in his salary. For a

woman to achieve the same twopoint

improvement on a 10point scale, her

salary would need to increase by 10,000

times.

My point being that women are

they

are concerned about a partner's

socioeconomic status significantly more

than men are. Now you can start to see

that if you have a world in which women

are attending university at high rates.

They are achieving uh more success in

employment at least in that sort of 21

to 29 range which is when most people

are perhaps looking for potential

partners. And yet the socioeconomic

status of a partner to a woman is a big

determinant of their level of

attraction. You can start to see how

this imbalance could cause a problem.

Similarly, when we talk about education,

a man with a master's degree on Tinder

gets 90% more right swipes than a man

with a bachelor's degree. So for all of

the guys that are considering going and

getting a master's degree, even if you

think it's going to be useless, at least

accept the fact that you'll get 90% more

right swipes for the rest of your life

or just lie about your masters. I don't

know. All of this rolled together

describes something called hypergamy,

which is the female tendency to date up

and across. On average, women want to

date a man who is as educated or as

employed as they are. Now, in a world in

which quite rightly women have finally

been able to achieve parity in education

and employment and status and have

independence and not be financially

reliant on their partner, all the rest

of it, that's great for them, but it it

does cause some challenges for their

dating. And this is what I've called the

tall girl problem. So everybody knows

what it's like to have a girl friend who

is six foot without heels. You go, if

you want to wear heels, you're looking

at professional athletes because on

average, women want to date a man who is

at least as tall or a little bit taller

than they are. So as women rise up

through their own competence hierarchy

in education and employment, they

further shorten down the potential pool

of eligible men that are as educated or

more educated and as employed or more

employed than they are. This is a

challenge. This is just a straight up

imbalance, right? What this causes is a

very large group of men toward the

bottom of this distribution to be

essentially invisible to women. It

causes a very large number of women an

increasing cohort to compete for an

increasingly small group of turbochad

super performers at the top. These guys,

the super high value guys have a wealth

of options. So they are commitment

averse. Why would they decide to sit

down with one girl for the rest of time

when they have this wealth of options

which can cause them to uh use and

discard many of these women which then

causes most of these women to resent men

overall. And then the guys that were

forgotten at the bottom that say, "Well,

hang on a second. I didn't use and

discard you. I haven't even been seen by

you. No, no, all men are whatever it

might be, right? That they are users and

abusers that we don't need them. That

where all of the good men at, etc., etc.

There's a big group of men that feel

like they are good men that are

invisible. There's a big portion of

women who have finally managed to

achieve educational and employment

independence that are chasing after a

smaller group of guys. These guys are

commitment averse. I don't think it's

necessarily good for them either. It's

the child with the ice cream, right?

Like guys being able to keep it in their

pants when there's a lot of options on

the table is going to be difficult for

them too. This is one of the main

drivers. This

uh tall girl problem is a massive change

I think in uh the dating dynamics.

It obviously begs a question, Chris,

which is

if everything you've said is objectively

correct and spot on and supported by the

data, then how does if I make Chris

Williamson the prime minister or

president of the world and I say your

first job is to fix this challenge.

What do you do? The first thing that you

don't do is roll back women's education

and employment. And this is one of the

problems with this discussion, right?

The things that I've just said there are

borne out in pure research data, Morgan

Stanley results. Like these are

incontrovertible facts, right? They are

there. And any girl that is listening

who earns more than £50,000 a year and

has got a masters or above level

education and is toward their late 30s

or in their toward their late 20s or in

their 30s knows this problem. You know

the fact that you are struggling to find

a man that you feel is eligible for you,

right?

That needs to be out there.

The problem that happens around this

discourse is that it posits men and

women as adversaries and competitors of

each other, right? As enemies.

This means that worthwhile

compassion which is needed to both women

and men. If you're a woman who has gone

through your education, you've dedicated

yourself to achieving a degree, you

know, your mother's generation wasn't

able to achieve this, and you're the

first person that's maybe gone to uni or

got a bachelor's or got a masters or got

a PhD, and then you spend some time in a

career grinding away, and you now earn

150 grand a year. You think, right, I'm

31. I'd love to settle down. This would

be amazing for me. Where are all of the

men at? I hang on a second. And what you

realize is that not only now are you

competing with all of the other

increasing cohort of women that are high

achievers with status, employment, and

education, but you're also competing

with a 21-year-old barista who still

lives at home with her parents for this

small cohort of guys.

That requires sympathy for women. Okay,

that is not a good position for women to

be in. At the same time, this huge

cohort of sexless men, 30% of men

haven't had sex in the last year. 50% of

men say that they are not looking for a

relationship. You are a man. You have

been through your 20s. You know the

power of the male sex drive between the

ages of 18 and 30. Can you imagine

getting yourself into a situation where

you say, "I'm not bothered about

pursuing women." That is an unbelievably

extreme statement for men to make. And

they're self-identifying as this in pure

research data. This isn't on incel

forums. This is pure research. 50% of

men aren't looking for a relationship.

When they say aren't looking for a

relationship, do they mean I'm not

looking for a woman or I'm not looking

for commitment?

Not actively pursuing any kind of

interaction with women.

Oh [ __ ]

Casual included.

What?

50%.

Here's the point, right? You asked about

solutions. The first thing that we need

to do is turn down the volume of

adversarial uh nature between these two.

Anybody that listens to those two

stories, right, the plight of men and

the plight of women in the modern dating

world and doesn't see it as, wow, that's

[ __ ] That that really really sucks

for both sexes.

Men have it worse in some ways. Women

have it worse in different ways. Right?

This isn't a competition of like, oh,

let's wave the flag of who's actually

accumulated more victimhood points.

The first thing that needs to happen

before anything is the volume of the

conversation needs to be turned down. We

need to see the challenges that are

faced by both sexes. The second thing

that needs to be put out front is that

there needs to be a way to raise men up

without bringing women down because it

is very easy for you to say, "Okay, so

women are out achieving men in education

and employment. Let's just put the

reinss on them and then everything's

going to be brought back." go. Look, I

am not trying to roll back any of the

gains that have been made by women over

the last 50 years,

but you do want to have eligible male

partners, right? If the thermodynamics

of attraction include the fact that

women tend to want to date across and up

in terms of status, employment, and

education, you need to do something,

right?

[snorts]

Some of the things that you could look

at doing in terms of solutions would be

uh

red shirting boys. So starting boys in

school one year later. This is something

that was put forward by Richard Reeves.

The reason for this is that boys tend to

mature less quickly than girls. If you

were to start boys one year later in

school, it would mean that they would be

more effective at their age. They would

be more mature mentally. Uh that's one

start. Another one that I think is

probably more controversial but would

make a big impact would be to stop

dergating motherhood, right? To start

pedestalizing motherhood again. There is

a huge movement in

certain corners of women's advice that

any woman who decides to become a mother

is a second essentially a secondass

citizen. I don't think that that's true.

I don't think that a woman that chooses

to become a mother is a secondass

citizen. But women often

fear becoming just a mother, right? Or

just a wife or at worst a domestic

prostitute. And they flee from this

spectre of family life into the open

arms of a corporate employer. And

laughably, we call this process freedom.

How can it be that

the thing

that most of us

are are grateful for, a great mother in

our life, has now been deriggated as

some sort of

uh

it's it's like somebody's been rubed

into a role that the patriarchy always

wanted them to do, right? There was an

article a little while ago uh that said

maternal instinct is a myth.

That basically uh the only reason that

maternal instinct exists is because the

patriarchy has convinced women that

they're actually supposed to like kids.

It's like

I I can't even begin to explain how

ridiculous that is. If you look at all

of the sex differences in terms of the

way that humans work,

pedestalizing motherhood would make

women

fear being a mother less. it would make

it an aspirational goal for them to to

pursue.

One of the scariest stats that I learned

was from a guy called Steven Shaw. He

wrote a did a documentary called Birth

Gap and in it he talks about this

declining birth rate. [snorts]

A meta analysis by Professor Rinska

Kaiser says that 80% of women who aren't

mothers after their fertility window

closes didn't intend to not be mothers.

Involuntary childlessness. Around about

10% of women are physiologically

incapable of having kids. Very

unfortunate. Around about 10% of women

intended to not have children, which

leaves a whopping four out of five

nonmother

women who didn't intend to not be

mothers. And these women have support

groups where they come together to

grieve for families that they never had.

And it breaks their hearts that they

weren't able to find the right partner

in time before their fertility window

closed.

And Professor Kaiser talks about the

pain that these women feel. And Steven

Shaw has been to these support groups

that women who thought that they had

more time that struggled to find a

partner in time, they grieve for

families that they never had. And that

that sentence just it makes me it makes

me feel so upset. Like it's so painful

to hear the prospect of a woman that

that wanted to have a family and

couldn't. It's very difficult.

So there's there's two solutions there

that you've kind of offered up as

potential solutions to that. Um

does that alone fix the other side of

the coin which is the the huge quantity

of men that are avoiding relationships,

intimacy, women altogether?

Not particularly. Um raising men up

somehow would be great but I mean where

we begin with that I don't know. I think

men are heavily checked out of education

uh and employment. uh men have been

retreating from the US labor force

market by 0.1% per year since 1950. It's

87% in 1950. It's about 67% now. By 2050

or 2040 or 2050 it'll be 65%.

Given that women want on average about

80% of women want a man with a stable

job, this retreat is not good. Each step

that men take where they take themselves

out of education and employment not only

isolates them and makes them

economically uh less viable as

contributors to society, it also makes

them less eligible as mates. On average,

men between 18 and 30 in the US spend

2,000 hours per year playing video

games, stoned, or on prescription drugs.

that's not the eligible partner, right?

So, one other thing that you could look

at doing is

re encouraging in-person dating. So,

online dating does worsen this issue

because it allows you to optimize for

object objective metrics of success,

right? On uh a dating app, and this is

for both men and women, on a dating app,

particularly for men, you can have your

education level, you can have the car

that you're with, you can talk about

your job, you can So women are very much

encouraged by the platform itself to

take a a incredibly lowresolution view

of this person. So all of the things

that guys are able to work on like you

know vibe and humor,

being pleasant, being kind, being

caring, being charming, none of that can

come across on a Tinder profile. And

this means that it further worsens the

tall girl problem. You see how it would