Modern Wisdom

Dr Becky Smethurst is an astrophysicist, author, YouTuber and a Junior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. Black holes are the weirdest, densest, most mysterious objects in the universe. However they're not black, and they're not holes. In fact pretty much everything you think you know about them is probably wrong. Expect to learn why galaxies don't actually orbit black holes, why the biggest black hole in the universe needed an entirely different name, whether black holes can form without neutron stars, what happens when two black holes collide, why nothing can go faster than the speed of light and much more... Sponsors: Get $100 off plus an extra 15% discount on Qualia Mind at https://neurohacker.com/modernwisdom (use code MW15) Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT Flavours at https://www.drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Our Sponsor LetsGetChecked - get 25% discount on your at-home testosterone test at https://trylgc.com/wisdom (use code: WISDOM25) Extra Stuff: Buy Dr Becky

James Smith is an author, podcaster, online trainer and not a life coach. Many people say that their number one personal development goal is to be more confident. But what if you don't have anything to be confident about? Is competence a required prerequisite to becoming confident or can you fake it until you make it? Expect to learn why most entrepreneurs are miserable, how leaving unasked questions can eat up your mental energy, the relationship between anxiety and confidence, how to deal with fear and failures, the heritability of confidence, whether women are actually more confident than men, the simplest way to build genuine confidence and much more... Extra Stuff: Buy How To Be Confident - https://amzn.to/3C0gBfe  Check out James' Academy - https://www.jamessmithacademy.com/  Follow James on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jamessmithpt  Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwi

Dr Stuart Ritchie is a psychologist and science communicator known for his research in human intelligence and an author. The influence of our genes on the outcomes we get in life has been long established and replicated in science. However the public response to this has been very unhappy, making Behavioural Genetics one of the most heated areas of research there is. Expect to learn why some people dislike behavioural genetics so much, what happened with the recent SSRI rug pull, whether Emotional Intelligence is an actual thing, how to be skeptical without becoming nihilistic, which psychological phenomenon were debunked during the replication crisis and much more... Extra Stuff: Buy Science Fictions - https://amzn.to/3y666Wl Follow Stuart on Twitter - https://twitter.com/stuartjritchie  Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chr

Matthew Cobb is a zoologist, professor of zoology at the University of Manchester and an author. Genetic engineering has given humans the ability to modify crops to be resistant to disease and synthesise insulin without needing to kill and extract it from animals. But what are its dangers? Especially in a world where CRISPR and human gene editing is just around the corner. Expect to learn whether we can select and edit embryos to increase IQ or athletic abilities, the biggest close calls we've faced with bioweapon leaks from labs, why there has been 4 complete stops on genetic engineering worldwide when the research community has got scared at what they've discovered, the dark truth behind those two Chinese gene edited girls and much more... Sponsors: Get 10% discount on your first month from BetterHelp at https://betterhelp.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get 10% discount on all Optimal Carnivore’s products at www.amazon.com/optimalcarnivore (use code: WISDOMSAVE10) Get 15% discount on the

Catherine Salmon is an evolutionary psychology researcher, professor of Psychology at the University of Redlands and an author. Women can be a mystery, sometimes even to themselves. Modern culture is making many proclamations about what women like and why they should like it, but are these new headlines accurate, or even desirable? Expect to learn why women love erotic stories so much, whether evolutionary psychology is sexist, why Catherine did a study where people rated the attractiveness of faces which had jizz on them, why feminine men are being pushed in media but don't feature in dark romance novels, the role of commitment in female attraction and much more... Sponsors: Get the Whoop 4.0 for free and get your first month for free at http://join.whoop.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get $100 off plus an extra 15% discount on Qualia Mind at https://neurohacker.com/modernwisdom (use code MW15) Get 5 Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D and Free Shipping from Athletic Greens at https:/

Russ Roberts is an economist, a research fellow at Stanford University, an author and a podcaster. Economics promised us a model which works for all of life's decisions. From what to buy for lunch to investing in a company. But when you're faced with decisions like where to live, how many children to have, whether to get married or what sort of person you want to be, it falls short. Thankfully Russ has a new toolkit. Expect to learn why Charles Darwin made a checklist before marriage which said his wife was slightly better than a dog, why the decision about whether to have children is so difficult to predict, whether rationality is totally incompatible with the decisions that define us, why happiness is overrated as an optimising function, whether tradition is any use and much more... Sponsors: Get 83% discount & 3 months free from Surfshark VPN at https://surfshark.deals/MODERNWISDOM (use code MODERNWISDOM) Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT Flavours at https://www.drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom (discount automa

Shawn Ryan is a former US Navy SEAL, former contractor for the CIA and a podcaster. The world's special operations are done in the darkness. If Navy SEALs are a spectre then CIA Contractors are their shadows. Shawn spent decades working behind enemy lines all over the world and has some crazy insights into that life, plus how it feels to re-integrate back into normal society. Expect to learn what it's like to train Keanu Reeves for John Wick, why physical abuse from your fellow SEALs might be just what you need, the crazy breadth of tasks CIA contractors are asked to complete, why the establishment elite are losing touch with every day people, Shawn's reflections on sobriety after drinking to deal with his anger and much more... Sponsors: Get 10% discount on your first month from BetterHelp at https://betterhelp.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get 10% discount on all Optimal Carnivore’s products at www.amazon.com/optimalcarnivore (use code: WISDOMSAVE10) Extra Stuff: Subscribe to Shawn's You

Jonny & Yusef from Propane Fitness join me for another Life Hacks episode. Sit back & enjoy as we run through our favourite tools, apps, websites, strategies & resources for a productive and efficient life. Expect to learn why I've become fully obsessed with my new desk bike, Jonny's solution for protein cereal, how to get free Amazon delivery within a couple of hours, the best tricks to get the most out of Spotify, why Yusef is obsessed with his new pressure cooker, Apple's fantastic new iPhone Background Sounds feature and much more... Sponsors: Get 5 Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D and Free Shipping from Athletic Greens at https://athleticgreens.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get 15% discount on the amazing 6 Minute Diary at https://bit.ly/diarywisdom (use code MW15) (USA - https://amzn.to/3b2fQbR and use 15MINUTES) Our Sponsor LetsGetChecked - get 25% discount on your at-home testosterone test at https://trylgc.com/wisdom (use code: WISDOM25) Extra Stuff: Access Propane's Free

Kristina Durante is a professor of marketing at Rutgers Business School and a social psychologist who studies the biology of decision-making and evolution of female psychology. For the first time in history, many women have the opportunity to pursue a career as their primary life path. But does this prohibit them from also having a family? Do women actually want to be mothers or was it their only option? Do women actually want careers or is it just a shiny new opportunity? Expect to learn if women have an impulse to actually have children or just to have sex, whether careers make women happy, whether the marriages of career women are more or less successful, whether women's ovulatory cycles change their preferences for badboy mates, what buying expensive bags and shoes signals and much more... Extra Stuff: Check out Kristina's website - https://kristinadurante.com/  Follow Kristina on Twitter - https://twitter.com/KristinaDurante  Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswil

Ben Greenfield is a Biohacker, Coach, Author, Speaker and Ironman Triathlete. Boosting your performance in the bedroom is a goal many people want. Thankfully Ben experimented with pretty much every strategy there is from gas station pills to penis stem cell injections, soundwave treatment and red light therapy so we don't have to. Expect to learn why turning your penis black and blue might not be a bad thing long term, why Zevia is as healthy of a soda drink as you can get, how my friend decided he's a 95th percentile semen producer, whether I should get injected with loads of stem cells in Colombia, the most important diet and training protocols everyone is missing and much more... Sponsors: Get 7 days free access and 25% discount from Blinkist at https://blinkist.com/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM) Get 83% discount & 3 months free from Surfshark VPN at https://surfshark.deals/MODERNWISDOM (use code MODERNWISDOM) Get 20% discount on the highest quality CBD Products from Pure Sport at https://bit.ly/cbdw

William Costello is an evolutionary psychologist, writer and Ph.D. student at the University of Texas. Men being hopeless with women is not a new phenomenon. But them self-identifying and creating a subculture around being "genetic dead ends" definitely is. William conducted some of the world's first research into the underlying psychological profile of incels to find out just what's going on. Expect to learn why 45% of working age women will be single and childless by 2030, why many incels would rather bond over failure than over trying to improve, why women dating down is causing huge problems, whether Leonardo DiCaprio should date people his own age, whether incels are alt-right, why the claim that incels are all white men is superbly wrong and much more... Sponsors: Get £150 discount on Eight Sleep products at https://eightsleep.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get 5 Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D and Free Shipping from Athletic Greens at https://athleticgreens.com/modernwisdom

I hit 500k Subscribers on YouTube!! To celebrate, I asked for questions from YouTube, Twitter, Locals and Instagram, so here's another 90 minutes of me trying to answer as many as possible. As always there's some great questions in here about whether Andrew Tate should have been banned, whether I'm autistic and my views on casual sex. Expect to learn how long I spend reading each day, how rarely I drink alcohol and caffeine, whether I think the Red Pill is positive for young men, how to avoid the gravitational pull of mediocrity, how I dealt with depression in my 20's, whether I'll be writing a book and doing live events, whether I'd bring Peter Thiel on the show and much more... Sponsors: Get $100 off plus an extra 15% discount on Qualia Mind at https://neurohacker.com/modernwisdom (use code MW15) Get 15% discount on all VERSO’s products at https://ver.so/modernwisdom (use code: MW15) Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT Flavours at https://www.drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Extra

Charlie Walker is an explorer, writer and public speaker. What happens when the Russian government catch you taking photos and writing articles shortly after a war breaks out? Very little that is good. Unfortunately Charlie stumbled into precisely this situation, but thankfully he got out too so he can tell us what happened. Expect to learn what it feels like to travel over 50,000 miles by bicycle, foot, horse, raft, ski and dugout canoe, how close Charlie came to spending his life in a Russian prison, how long a triathlon needs to be in order for it to takes 4 months to complete, why distinctions between European and Asian people makes no difference to anyone on the border and much more... Sponsors: Get 15% discount on the amazing 6 Minute Diary at https://bit.ly/diarywisdom (use code MW15) (USA - https://amzn.to/3b2fQbR and use 15MINUTES) Get 10% discount on all Optimal Carnivore’s products at www.amazon.com/optimalcarnivore (use code: WISDOMSAVE10) Get 20% discount on the highest quality CBD Products from

Dr Christian Jarrett is deputy editor of Psyche and an author. Most people believe that they are their personalities. That it's an immutable, unchanging, central part of them as a person. But psychologists and neuroscientists have been studying the science of personality change for many years and have uncovered strategies to nudge your personality in the direction you want. Expect to learn why most personality tests are basically useless, how genetically heritable our personalities are, just how much of a change we can make from where we start off, how to stop being shy or introverted, the best strategies to become more ambitious and conscientious, the most effective ways to maintain personality change and much more... Sponsors: Get 20% discount & free shipping on your Lawnmower 4.0 at https://www.manscaped.com/ (use code MODERNWISDOM) Get the Whoop 4.0 for free and get your first month for free at http://join.whoop.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Our Sponsor - get 25% discount on your at-ho

Andrew Doyle is Titania McGrath, host of GB News, a comedian and a writer. There are some new puritans in town. They have their own sacred texts, their own high priests, blasphemy, unspeakable words, rites of passage, heathens and practises of sacrilege. So much so that the behaviour of many social justice activists in 2022 seems to echo very closely the behaviour of the Salem Witch Trials in 1692. Expect to learn why Ben Shapiro is a terrifying man, whether not calling me hot makes you a bigot, why social justice captures smart people just as much as stupid people, why tyrannies are particularly dangerous when they claim to help the oppressed, whether it's accurate to characterise the culture war as left vs right and much more... Sponsors: Get 15% discount on all VERSO’s products at https://ver.so/modernwisdom (use code: MW15) Get 83% discount & 3 months free from Surfshark VPN at https://surfshark.deals/MODERNWISDOM (use code MODERNWISDOM) Get 10% discount on your first month from BetterHelp at https://bett

Sabine Hossenfelder is a theoretical physicist, research fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, quantum gravity researcher and an author.  There are a lot of big questions in the world, like does the past still exist? Do particles think? Was the universe fine tuned for us? Do we have free will? And are we living in a simulation? Given that we don't have answers yet, why not let a physicist have a crack at them? Expect to learn why physicists who say they know how the universe started aren't telling the truth, whether we can compute a human brain, why no one gets any younger, if maths is the ultimate basis of reality, why there might be copies of all of us out there in the universe, how your entire life could be the imagined history of a brain floating in space and much more... Extra Stuff: Buy Existential Physics - https://amzn.to/3Rqbk6F  Subscribe to Sabine's YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/c/SabineHossenfelder Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https:/

Robin Dunbar is an anthropologist, evolutionary psychologist, head of the Social and Evolutionary Neuroscience Research Group at the University of Oxford and an author. Love is something that people have been trying to describe for thousands of years. Beyond asking what love is, is the question of why humans feel something so strange in the first place. Why would evolution have exposed us to this extreme sensation with huge potential for catastrophe and pain? Expect to learn how love is adaptive, why humans need to have more sex than almost all other animals to get pregnant, why ancestral men who hunted big animals were only doing it to get laid, how the length of your fingers can tell you how promiscuous you are, whether Robin thinks humans were ancestrally monogamous and much more... Extra Stuff: Buy The Science Of Love - https://amzn.to/3wyJsW6 Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwis

Balaji Srinivasan is an entrepreneur and essayist, he was co-founder of Counsyl, former chief technology officer of Coinbase and former general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. Our information diets are making us mentally fat. Whether it's fake news, mis or disinformation, state propaganda or conspiracy theories, the world is very difficult to navigate. Balaji also wants to start a new type of country, he has views on how to optimise your working day and he generates more new ideas than almost anyone. Today we get an insight into his thought process behind all of this. Expect to learn why socialism always continues to arise across the world, how Balaji tracks all of the ideas he has in his head, why Singapore is a powerhouse of a new country, how immigration will deal with remote VR workers in India, why everyone should use a dashboard to track what's going on in their life, the key trick that the legacy media uses to manipulate you and much more... Sponsors: Get $100 off plus an extra 15% discount on Qualia M

Lee Cronin is the Regius Chair of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow, Head of the Cronin Group Lab and CEO of Chemify. The job of deciding what life is, how it originates and the different forms it could take might sound like a task for UFO theorists but it's actually in the realm of chemists like Lee. This means that some of the biggest questions humanity has rest on his lab's shoulders. Expect to learn why Lee believes that there is life everywhere in the universe, his theory on the origin of life here on earth, why we haven't seen any aliens yet, whether Robin Hanson's Great Filter hypothesis is true, what common traits all types of life will have, the most exotic types of life forms Lee has imagined and much more... Extra Stuff: Lee's Lab - http://www.chem.gla.ac.uk/cronin/  Follow Lee on Twitter - https://twitter.com/leecronin  Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get i

Steve Magness is a world-renowned expert on performance, an author and a consultant on mental skills development for professional sports teams. All elite performers have the rage to master their chosen pursuit. But the difference between the ones who continue to succeed and those who fall away is their toughness and durability. Thankfully, Steve has spent his career deconstructing the mental habits of the world's best athletes and executives. Expect to learn how to accept your achievements without believing your limitations, why Steve blew the whistle on Nike Oregon Project's unethical practises, why your emotions are messengers not masters, how obsession can be both a tragedy and a gift, the difference between responding and reacting to difficulties and much more... Sponsors: Get 15% discount on the amazing 6 Minute Diary at https://bit.ly/diarywisdom (use code MW15) (USA - https://amzn.to/3b2fQbR and use 15MINUTES) Get 10% discount on all Optimal Carnivore’s products at www.amazon.com/optimalcarnivore (use