Chris Williamson

Speaking of football, do you know who Cristiano Ronaldo was named after?

Christopher

Go on.

Chris Williamson

You're a big fan of football. How do you know one of the most famous, maybe the most famous player on the planet? Who do you think Cristiano Ronaldo was named after?

Christopher

Well, it wouldn't be the Brazilian Ronaldo because he was almost overlapped in terms of careers. Oh, is it Ronald Reagan?

Chris Williamson

Yes, yes, yes. My parents named me after Ronald Reagan because they both liked this name and thought it sounded strong. Ronaldo, whose full name is Cristiano Ronaldo's. Dos Santos Aveiro, said in a GQ cover story. I know that my father admired him. Ronaldo was born February 5, 1985, while Reagan was still President of the United States. But according to Ronaldo, his dad was a fan long before then. Told Riley that Reagan was his dad's favorite actor. That said, he wasn't too sure how the Republican leader would have felt about Ronaldo's outfit in the GQ cover that accompanied the article. Let's just say it's not very conservative. We've got an image of the outfit that Ronaldo had.

Christopher

Oh, wow.

Chris Williamson

Ronald Reagan.

Christopher

I mean, identical, right? That's very much nominative determinism right there.

Chris Williamson

I forgot because I was. I was. So I've not been in America. Too young for it as well. I forgot the fact that Reagan was an actor. He was an actor beforehand. Was he in big movies and stuff?

Christopher

I believe so, yeah.

Chris Williamson

Okay.

Christopher

It's kind of the prequel to Trump in a lot of way. There's also, if you like footballers, names. There's a South American player called Osama bin Laden whose brother is, I believe, called Saddam Hussein.

Chris Williamson

Can you search ChatGPT? And is it Vin?

Christopher

I think it's Vin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Two brothers in South America.

Chris Williamson

This does sound too good to be true. And like, you've been gazumped by it.

Christopher

Well, it's interesting, particularly like Brazilian names, they often decide their own name. So you've got Ronaldinho, Fred Hulk. Great name.

Chris Williamson

Pepe.

Christopher

Pepe. Well, Pepe's Portuguese. But they often just unlike us, they just kind of. They don't often go with their own name.

Chris Williamson

A Peruvian footballer named Osama bin Laden. Jimenez Lopez, often written simply as Osama bin Laden. Very good. He attracted international attention because it sounds almost identical to Osama bin Laden. Actually, in Spanish, it's even closer because V and B are pronounced the same. Some unusual details that have been widely reported. He said he was named after Osama bin Laden. His brother is Named Saddam Hussein, a Spanish spelling of Saddam Hussein to avoid controversy. His jersey typically displays only Osama rather than his full circuit. Wow. I mean, I want to. I want to meet his parents.

Christopher

Mm. Mm.

Chris Williamson

I want to know what they've been reading.

Christopher

You can just do things. Clearly you can.

Chris Williamson

You can't just name your kid after the most famous terrorist of the 21st century. Yuri after 9 11, too. Oh, fucking hell.

Therapist

Yes. Shit.

Chris Williamson

That was done one year.

Christopher

So really hopping on the bandwagon. Post.

Chris Williamson

That's buying. That's buying Bitcoin while it's on a rip, isn't it?

Christopher

Jesus Christ.

Chris Williamson

What's that story of Rory McDonald's walk out music?

Christopher

Oh, Rory McDonald, UFC fighter, used to walk out to some of the strangest songs, and people would kind of laugh as he was walking out, like, why? Why does he have such a weird niche in music? And it was when it came out, he was interviewed, like, why are you playing out some of these super strange songs? It would mix from, like, classical music. It would also have Jared look it up, like the different Rory McDonald songs. And when they interviewed him, he was like, it's not me who's picking the songs, it's the ufc. Then they go to the UFC and say, rory's saying you're picking the songs. And it's like, no, we text him before every single ufc. And when it actually got into it, they were texting his old phone number, which had been given to somebody if you go on the. Yeah, go on Reddit. So here's the song. So he has a violin orchestra. Scroll down by George A Quintero. One More Road to Cross by DMX. Personal favorite, Can't Touch this by MC Hammer.

Chris Williamson

UFC 133 Screw up by Ludacris.

Christopher

So you got to think. He goes from Lightwork. Lupe Fiasco.

Chris Williamson

Not bad. So, in fact, he did. We Found Love twice in a row. He came out to Saint Anger by Metallica twice in a row as well. He came out by 46 and two by Toole. That's a fucking slamming. And then got the Life by clone. Okay, but so he says the UFC chooses. The UFC says he chooses. What's the truth?

Christopher

Well, it was. Somebody had his old phone number, so the UFC was texting it. And this person was obviously a UFC fan that was kind of in on the joke and just absolutely went on a rampage for multiple years. What would be the worst song to walk out to for you?

Chris Williamson

For me?

Christopher

Yeah. Or best?

Chris Williamson

Well, when I came down the love lift for Take Me Out My first dating show, I wanted Jamie Jones, Hungry for the Power, because at the time I thought I was really cool. Cause I'd just done the season in Ibiza and everybody did remixes of it, saying Hungry for the Powder. And I was like, oh, I'm fucking sick, man. I used to go to I'm Sniffing Ketamine and Ibiza and that. And the producers looked at me and said, why have you got this very low energy, deep house track for the walkout? We're going to give you example. Love kickstarts again. Is that okay? Fair enough. So that's like. As you come down and everyone's doing this, clapping above the heads.

Christopher

And the love kick starts again. Chris Williamson.

Chris Williamson

Yeah. Do you ever think, single man, reveal yourself? That's what it is.

Christopher

Did you get. How did you perform? Did you get a date off take?

Chris Williamson

Did I get a date?

Christopher

I don't know. I don't know. You might have got blackout.

Chris Williamson

The bloke before me did.

Christopher

Yeah.

Chris Williamson

Everyone was backstage shitting themselves that they were going to get a blackout.

Christopher

How did you. How did you fare?

Chris Williamson

I got unwell. What was a deep conspiracy about Take Me out, which for the American people is a British staple dating show. The first of many dating shows for me. And the biggest fear that anybody had was that all of the girls would turn the lights off. But earlier in the season, because for every every time that they don't go on a date, that's another week that they're on tv. So all of the girls were incentivized at the start of the season to hit their lights so that you didn't get as much. And we were episode. I was episode two. So I was doing it on hard mode, mate. I was doing it on hard Mode. Still had 11 girls to choose from at the end.

Christopher

Show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome. Yeah. The ITV producers have taken me out. Do not have not read the almanac of Charlie Munger, which is my concern.

Chris Williamson

What would you want to walk out to?

Therapist

What?

Chris Williamson

To fight?

Christopher

Take me out or a fight? Because I see them both as the same thing. You've got to go. You've got, you know. You already know. I think you've got to go big. Big Phil.

Chris Williamson

Which song?

Christopher

Big Phil. I think in the. In the air tonight. Yeah, I'm both. My fighting. That would be making music. 1.6 speed.

Chris Williamson

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Christopher

1.6 speed. Depending on. Depending on the opponent. Both in the ring.

Chris Williamson

Okay. So is it faster? Is it faster for dating or faster for fighting?

Christopher

That's A great question. That's a great question. I think you probably want to slow it down a little bit for the dating 1.4.

Chris Williamson

Is that to make it feel like you've lasted longer?

Christopher

Yes.

Chris Williamson

Right. I need that we were talking about AI in writing yesterday. One of the Commonwealth short story prizes appears to have been awarded to an obviously AI generated story. This is a relatively prestigious prize. The prize winning stories all appeared in Granta magazine and the editor's response was basically a shrug. When asked whether it was AI generated, AI concluded that it was almost certainly not produced unaided by a human. And a computer scientist claimed that the empty metaphors that often plague the prize winning story and that plague all AI writing as well, they come from human written fan fiction. So this is the source of a lot of the very strange, very clunky analogies that you see. So for instance, the rare phrase the patience of a reptile which appears in this allegedly AI generated story also occurs in a fan fiction based on the Japanese anime and manga Naruto. There's no way to be sure that the LLM sucked it up, spat it back out, but it's worth remembering that a meaningful amount of the text inside of these machines was written by people who were playing pretend with anime characters. So the reason being, if you were to take the total amount of time of people playing football globally and you were to learn how to play football as a robot or an AI system by watching everybody on the planet play football, there are far more people that are bad at football than good at football. Therefore, you will learn to be quite bad at football. And this is the same thing with writing. If you think about how few books that are written get published, how little writing is made for a book, and how many books that are written are actually good and go on to sell anything, I don't think that there's that much of a weighting in terms of the LLM that James Clear's Atomic Habits on Moby Dick is worth 10 million times that of an anime and manga blog. However, by sheer numbers, the amount of bad writing outnumbers the amount of good writing. So there's a sentence from that story, but a belly sound, as if the earth swallows a shout and holds it there. Pretty jarring. It's not really what you find in good writing. Don't worry. This might have been potentially drawn from a fan fiction webpage, the Fall of a Phoenix, where the original sentence was he swallows a shout of pain, breathing heavily, his whole body trembling. Another sentence, his eyes narrowed against the glare outside and the darker glare inside him, eyes narrowed against the glare outside, sounds like unnecessarily vain and ominous in a way that's unnecessary. The reason could be that it was drawn from a random horror blog, the original sentence being his eyes narrowed against the glare of the halogen strip lights. And speaking of the darker glare, whilst it's pretty common, it appears in another fan fiction story. So basically you can't work out what's inside of an LLM's brain, which is probably for the best. But it's entirely possible that when you prompt it to write fiction, it's not scouring through the greatest works ever put together. It's looking at like random fan fiction, manga and anime websites written by somebody at 2am who really shouldn't have been doing it.

Christopher

Well, what makes sense there? And again, snapshot in time. Six months, 12 months from now. This may be completely different, but what's interesting is on a coding side of things is currently way more capable than the writing side. And I wonder if that's because code itself, it's a lot easier to come to an objective conclusion. So thing did compile, thing didn't compile or thing did work, thing didn't work, button appeared, button didn't appear. Whereas with writing it's so much more around taste, it's so much more subjective. So it's harder to almost give the feedback loop of success or failure.

Therapist

But.

Christopher

But it's interesting that you wouldn't that argument there, that you would just have the widest data set possible for writing versus having an LLM that's way more trained. But what would be interesting in theory, that's quite easy to do. So has anybody done that? Probably. But it's still, even when I've given it great writing, it can't for whatever reason repeat it.

Chris Williamson

Maybe it's not large enough. The physics that it's built on top of. It's not just here is good writing. It has to understand what each word inside of that writing means. And the way that it understands what the word inside of the writing is is based on the bigger corpus that it has outside of it. So it's a little bit like saying I've got Usain Bolt, but he's running into a 35 mile an hour headwind. Like regardless of how great the talent is that you're trying to push forward, I think that you're always going to be working against this. Now it's got to be a relatively complex but simple, sorry like arduous but simple sort of solution to be like just weight it toward great pieces of work.

Christopher

It's not arduous. Chris. It's simple.

Chris Williamson

Said like a true Roman senator. Question, question. What man could get the most number of women on the planet to turn up at his house if he gave them the invite?

Christopher

That's. Philosophers have pondered this question for hundreds if not thousands of years. Chrysother. So the real philosophical insight that's plagued the industry is which man alive could post his address right now and have the largest line. Who do you go for?

Chris Williamson

You need international appeal.

Christopher

Yep.

Chris Williamson

You probably need to skew a little bit older, bigger.

Christopher

Tam yeah.

Chris Williamson

Yeah. You've got to expect.

Christopher

Especially with a declining population.

Chris Williamson

Yeah. Aging population. Aging population means that I think Anyone under age 35 is probably going to struggle. Anyone under age 30 is really going to struggle and think that you're going to want as a mid-50s, 60s year old woman. I don't know whether you probably do want to be ravaged by that. But I don't think you're going to go. The likelihood of you upping sticks and getting on the bus, getting on the 59 bus to go to wherever this person's address is. So my, my call for this, I think it's between Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio. I'm trying to think about who the Pop Sara Rockstar would be that would be up there. I bet somebody like a Drake would probably be able to do some damage.

Christopher

I don't think so.

Chris Williamson

He's done his damage. He has done a lot of damage.

Christopher

Yeah.

Chris Williamson

But I think I would put my money, I would say I would put my money on Brad Pitt. I think it's very hard to fight

Christopher

back against Brad Pitt and DiCaprio are very much the intel or Microsoft in this moment. In that I think 10 years ago, I think you're correct. But I think you've got to be looking at a little bit more blue chip. I think David Beckham's probably the Apple stock here been around for a while. But I think Beckham still outperforms Pitt and DiCaprio because I think Beckham's actually more global because you've got to be looking at.

Chris Williamson

You've got to be looking at Africa,

Christopher

you've got to be looking at Southeast

Chris Williamson

Asia, always looking at Africa. What was the last thing that David Beckham did that was globally recognized?

Christopher

If you turned on the World cup recently, he's on every single advert, my friend.

Chris Williamson

I don't think that that is enough.

Christopher

But I also think Dbeck's D7 still has quite a clean Beautiful image.

Chris Williamson

Whereas Brad Pitt doesn't.

Christopher

Pitt, no, definitely not. I think less so as he's got older and DiCaprio seems to have.

Chris Williamson

DiCaprio's really tanked his own stock price intel.

Christopher

This is what I'm saying.

Chris Williamson

Right, I understand, I understand. But I don't think, I don't think that you're right about David Beckham. I don't think that you're going to get. I don't think he's going to reach out into the Middle east in the way that Brad Pitt would. I think that you get. I think David Beckham's going to nail it in like East Asia. I think he's going to absolutely crush it because that kind of sport's crazy over there. I don't think.

Christopher

Are you joking me with the Saudi league and the Qatar World Cup. I think D? Bex is well known out there and the English accent still goes a long way, my friend.

Chris Williamson

I just don't think he's done anything relevant for a long time.

Christopher

Okay, we can agree to disagree. I do think who's an outside favourite. I think Styles is very much the invidious of our moment. Yes, it may fall, the market may collapse, but he is very much leading the charge.

Chris Williamson

Timothee Chalamet is like ChatGPT or OpenAI. He's currently private because he's in a committed long term relationship.

Christopher

DBX is as well. It's not necessarily about private or public stocking.

Chris Williamson

David Beckham was closer to SpaceX pre IPO. Yes, yes, very established for quite a long time. A lot of investment from a variety of countries. People really cared about his success. And then finally he's been able to cash out if he manages to break up with Victoria.

Christopher

Fascinating philosophical question.

Chris Williamson

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Christopher

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Chris Williamson

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Christopher

I saw that and I think the argument, a big argument you'll see online is this behavior is happening in Asia, therefore it's going to downstream happen in the West. And I think it's a little bit of a coin toss. Sometimes Asia is ahead of us, but sometimes it's just such a different culture. So I think it was. I forgot which Facebook product manager was talking about how they'd release a new feature and they'd test it often in the Philippines and there'd be this crazy reaction and they go we have to launch this new feature immediately. And the amount of times they'll then test it on the west or anywhere else in the world and it wouldn't work. So they actually ban doing tests or stop doing tests specifically in the Philippines. In the Philippines because their phone usage is so different to ours. They spend so much more time on their phones than any other part of the world. So it's just where is it like a human thing that these people are just ahead versus where is it just a cultural thing? Have you ever, have you ever come across Montaigne's lists?

Chris Williamson

No.

Christopher

Do you know who Montaigne is? Yeah. So French philosopher. Would be fascinating to hear his perspectives on the old Q debate. But Montaigne used to have lists that he would keep of what different cultures thought were acceptable throughout history, just so he could remind himself that this whole thing is largely made up, it's largely social contagion. So some of my like favorite from Montaigne's Lists. So one where it's normal to grow out your hair on the right side of your body but shave everything on the left. Where white teeth is deemed as unattractive, so they purposely get their teeth blacker and blacker and blacker. Where at a certain age you're supposed to kill your own father. When you and your father hit a certain age, you say goodbye. Another one on Montaigne's lists are when at a funeral, you're supposed to chop up the dead, grind them to a pulp, pour it into wine, and then drink them on the day of the funeral. And a final one, one for you, actually, Christopher, because I'm sure you've attended many events like this, which is certain cultures for their weddings. The success of a wedding was judged by how many of the groom's friends could sleep with the bride, which I know is actually quite common in the northeast of England.

Chris Williamson

But that's only if they're family.

Christopher

So Montaigne kept these lists to himself,

Chris Williamson

like more and more and more and

Christopher

more examples like that, just to hold a mirror up to himself and the times that he's in.

Chris Williamson

So he's collecting weird cultures, cultures that we would find strange and that their norms are different to ours in an attempt to try and highlight, hey, whatever it is that you think is normal is just consensus because of where you are. And. And if you were to be somewhere else, your consensus would be totally different.

Christopher

Yes. Do you want. I tell you what, do you want a list of. I was thinking, okay, let's say Montana came back today. I was writing this chapter recently. So let's say Montaigne came back today and was like, well, what's normal today? So normal consumes 17 teaspoons of sugar per day. Normal has $104,755 in debt. Normal is 30 pounds overweight. Ozempic pending. Normal averages less than 4,000 steps per day. Normal spends 90,000 hours of their life at work disengaged. Normal stays indoors for 22.3 hours per day. Normal spends more time on the toilet than exercising. Normal hasn't finished a book in the last 12 months. Normal experiences under 10 minutes per day in silence. Normal will spend 20 years of their life watching TV or scrolling social media.

Chris Williamson

Under 10 minutes a day in silence and more time on the toilet than exercising

Christopher

averages. But then there's always a criticism around averages that you end up netting it out. But when you begin to look at, oh, this is just what's accepted today, and maybe tomorrow weddings will be back that you like to attend.

Chris Williamson

In the 1830s in Massachusetts, beards were so uncommon and strange that a man named Joseph Parker was mocked and shunned for wearing one. Assailants tried to forcibly shave him, but he fought them off with a knife and was imprisoned for assault. He refused to pay his fine or court fees, so he remained in prison for over a year. And this at least gave him the excuse to create an all time classic tombstone. Oh, wow. The right to a full beard is honored by the grave of a man who was attacked and jailed due to his facial hair. Wow. Talk about norms, mate.

Christopher

That's a great beard.

Chris Williamson

On the.

Christopher

The. One of the things that everybody kind of has discussed in the marketing space for ages is that live streaming will become normal in the west because it's normal in the East. But I'm yet to see, like live shopping where people sit there for hours and hours per day. I'm yet to see that fully take off.

Chris Williamson

Well, it depends what you mean, because live streaming, kick twitch, obviously that's live streaming.

Christopher

Yes, but actual live shopping, sorry, live

Chris Williamson

shopping, different IRL streaming feels. I don't know whether they've got that in. I bet they don't have that in Asia. You know, the IRL stuff where people are walking about and sometimes causing nuisance and doing predator stings. And I imagine that they don't because a good bit of Asia feels like it's got honor culture where you don't want to disrupt. I mean, you've seen the Japanese subways, the Japanese tube. And I've been on the phone to a friend who lives in Japan and he'll warn me while he's on the side of the subway waiting at the terminal. And then he'll tell me, look, I'm just about to get on. And he won't say anything. He won't respond to me on the phone. He won't even whisper. So I'll be talking to him for three minutes without him being able to respond. And then he'll get off and he'll talk back to me. That's how. And he's not native Irish. And that's how much reverence people have. Just complete silence. So they're playing your drill rap on the back of the bus. Not that. Not even whispering, not even talking to each other. Wow, that crazy. Do you know that?

Christopher

I didn't know that. It's interesting how much of who you think you are is just postcode.

Chris Williamson

Oh, it's so much of. It's ecology. Right? I mean, and that's the reason why changing your Environment has such a big impact on your life. If you both me and you change gyms over the last six months. And that made a massive impact. Just a different routine didn't change me as a person, but it changed the way that my day was shaped.

Christopher

Like.

Chris Williamson

Oh, actually my routine is largely built around some of the other things that I already do. And if I change where I go and do them, that alters. Having the office. Having the office in the studio, that's made a massive difference as well. So what do you think from stuff that's happened in Asia that has prophetically come across to America?

Therapist

Ooh,

Chris Williamson

labubus. Asian. They look like they are.

Christopher

What's a labubu?

Chris Williamson

It's these little stuffed animals. It was the Dubai chocolate of the stuffed animal world and people were queuing up for ages to get a keyring and.

Christopher

Yeah.

Chris Williamson

And collect those.

Christopher

It's funny how we're being in the west, we talk about Asia the same way. I always find it absurd when somebody talks about Europe. Obviously Brexit means Brexit, so we're no longer in Europe. But the idea that Asia is this

Chris Williamson

place or Africa is absolutely massive.

Christopher

Yes.

Chris Williamson

And often going to Europe, what the fuck does that mean? But because we're so far away, we don't think of Asia as being anything different than just one big hegemon.

Christopher

And there seems to be a recurring mimetic trend throughout geography, which is, you think two places because they're next door neighbour, are very similar to one another or get on with one another, but historically the opposite.

Chris Williamson

Yeah.

Christopher

I laugh whenever I interact with the

Chris Williamson

French that we are 23 miles away.

Christopher

So different. So fundamentally different. It's actually hard to find a culture as different to Britain in Europe, I would say.

Chris Williamson

Yeah.

Christopher

Than the French. And we're next door neighbors.

Chris Williamson

Yeah, we are. But I mean, speaking as somebody that's dressed as an ex Italian, essentially, you would. You would know, you would know, you would understand. Yeah, I. I don't know about the Asian thing. I definitely know that there's a lot of stuff that goes on over there that doesn't happen over here. You can buy used period pants in vending machines. I saw Craig Jones do this on a vlog some ladies had menstruated through her pants. And then you can buy them in a little. It comes in a little pokeball like that and it's in a specially sealed bag inside of a pokeball.

Christopher

I don't think that's taking off in the west anytime soon.

Chris Williamson

Yeah. There are certain areas that are resisting Globalization. It's kind of impressive. California's gay certification. California is pressuring public utilities to award $633 million in special contracts to LGBT owned firms. To qualify, residents must go through the state's official gay certification program and face up to a year in jail if they're not gay enough. By 2022, the California public Utilities Commission established a goal for utility companies with annual revenues exceeding $25 million to buy things from state certified LGBT businesses. 0.5% of procurement in 2021, 1% in 23, 1.5% in 24 and beyond. If large CPUC regulated utilities meet these goals in 2024, they would have sent $633 million to LGBT owned firms. The scheme raises an obvious how does a business qualify as officially gay? Paperwork Supplier Clearinghouse, a group that certifies firms for the CPUC program, features a list of qualifications linked on its website. Applicants can secure certification by providing a letter from an LGBT organization attesting to their sexual preferences, proof that a newspaper identified them as lgbt, or three letters from personal contacts written on company letterhead attesting to their homosexual orientation. Corporate officials who falsely represent their business as gay face up to a year in county jail. Supply Clearinghouse also accepts gay certification letters from the National LGBTQ and Allied Chamber of Commerce. The chamber has its own list of accepted documents, including human resources complaints or police records claiming LGBT discrimination. As it states on its website, certification is a journey, not a destination. Wow. Think you'd be able to pull off getting California's gay certification to receive $633 million?

Christopher

So what percentage do you need to be gay?

Chris Williamson

Yes, you need to be gay. You don't. It's not a percent.

Christopher

So it's not a recruitment percentage?

Chris Williamson

No.

Christopher

Oh, okay. No, you have to hit if you have a certain level that you get the funding.

Chris Williamson

Yeah, yeah, exactly. But you also need to be gay to unlock it. So if you're not gay, you don't get it. And if you're not big enough, you don't get it. But if you're big enough, they need to be finding sufficiently diverse. So these companies. Actually, one of the best ways to do this would be to hire. This is an incentive to hire C suite executives that are gay.

Christopher

Damn.

Chris Williamson

It would unlock an awful lot of CPUC funding in California. Damn. And you face it, you're in county jail.

Christopher

That's real founder mode right there. Like if you're willing to take it

Chris Williamson

up the ass to. Yeah, if you're going to power bottom your way to the Tip.

Christopher

You can either get fucked by investors or get fucked by someone else. Craig.

Chris Williamson

Well, look, it's going to. I don't know, man. The whole.

Christopher

Is that all real?

Chris Williamson

That's real. That's literally. That's a brand. I'm not going to lie to you.

Christopher

I know, I know.

Chris Williamson

Why would I lie to you? Where'd I get this from? Cityjournal.com There it is. Inside California's gay certification program. The state is pressuring utilities to award 633 million in contracts to LGBT businesses. Interesting. The tip of the spear for LGBT diversity is energy and utilities contracts for state certified gay owned businesses. You could arbitrage the hell out of this. People say, how much would you have to pay to be gay? If the number is less than $633 million, your quid's in.

Christopher

Damn.

Chris Williamson

What else? What else you got? You got some stuff. Do you bring anything from home?

Christopher

Yeah, go on. Do I have some stuff? As always.

Chris Williamson

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Christopher

Spanish chicken farmer called Juan Pollo. So it's 1941, start of World War I and he's essentially a failure his entire life. So he's been a chicken farmer, a manager of a one star hotel before bankruptcy and he's after a new job with a tremendous cv. So he's walking along the streets of Madrid, takes a right, goes into the British Embassy and says, I want a job at MI5 to help out and spy on the Nazis. And MI5 or the embassy sort of say, okay, how about you put that in writing and we'll come back to you? Which is the British way of saying, get the fuck out. So he leaves the building, comes back, walks across, goes into the embassy, says, I want a job of MI5. They ask him to leave, tries again.

Chris Williamson

He just like walks across the street and turns around.

Christopher

No, these are multiple, like, future events. So he keeps coming back. Fourth time he's walking along and he decides he walks up the steps, but this time he goes into the German Embassy and he goes, I hate the Brits. I want a job for the Nazis to spy on Britain. And the Nazis are eyeing him up and he talks about his love for the Fuhrer, the love for the Third Reich, and how much he hates his new inspired hatred for Great Britain. And the Nazis end up training him up, giving him little tasks. And he keeps proving himself, learns how invisible ink works, ends up recruiting multiple agents inside of Great Britain. So he builds his way up and then he walks back, street of Madrid, goes to the British Embassy and says, I now want a job at MI5 because I'm one of the most valuable spies for the Nazis. So he got rejected. Rejected, rejected. And was like, okay, I'll take matters into my own hands. So he then becomes the most valuable spy for Britain during World War II. He builds up a network of 27 sub agents inside of Britain that the Nazis believe are true, but it's all his own imagination, all these different agents that he would create stories from that they were doing so much. So when he arrived, the MI5 called him Garbo because Garbo at the time was the most famous actress in the world.

Chris Williamson

Greta Garbo.

Christopher

Yes. So named after for his acting skills. So Juan Pollo, the Spanish chicken farmer, the most important moment in World War II was D Day. So as D Day was happening, Juan gave so much fake information, he convinced them that D Day was going to happen in Calais. So Hitler and Himmler were getting these reports from Juan. They thought the war was going to happen in Calais, so they sent some of their most important armies to Calais. Then the D Day happens, and Juan was so convincing, even with these fake reports, that Hitler gave him the Iron Cross. So. So he's the only agent to get both an Iron Cross from Hitler and an MBE from. Yeah. Do you know what's tragic, though? So they say that when it comes to D Day, the most important day of World War II, the three most important people were Eisenhower, who looked after the U.S. i think Montgomery, who looked after the Great Britain, and Juan Poyol, the Spanish chicken farmer. That's the three most important people in D day in terms of the impact. But this guy who gets these double awards ends up dying in 1949, Mozambique to malaria. And in the 1980s, three of the agents that worked with him in MI5 are sat at a bar. So they're all in their late 80s now and they're talking about the war. They're in this former little intelligence pub and they're chatting about the war and having a few drinks and they have this kind of confused look on their faces. This old guy is walking towards them and they get more and more confused with their face. And then this 80 year old man who's a MI5 spy breaks down in tears, crying, and they go, it can't be. You're supposed to be dead. So his final last act was to fake his own death in 1949. And he lived in a bookstore in Venezuela, so the n. So the Nazis would never know where he was.

Chris Williamson

That's insane.

Christopher

Spanish chicken farm.

Chris Williamson

Was he really worried about Nazi retribution in 1949?

Christopher

Yes.

Chris Williamson

Were the Nazis still going around and chasing people?

Christopher

Ironically, even though he's in Venezuela, there was a lot of Nazis in South America.

Chris Williamson

Yeah, but if he'd not gone to fucking Venezuela, he supposedly caught malaria in Africa.

Christopher

There's still a lot of.

Chris Williamson

Where's Mozambique?

Christopher

Mozambique is, I think West Africa.

Chris Williamson

Right, okay. But should have stayed there.

Christopher

But in 1949 or even onwards, there was. First off, we're viewing history through hindsight. At the time there was still millions of Germans that served for the Nazis that were still alive. So yeah, there was lots of Nazis

Chris Williamson

afterwards and they would have wanted retribution for people that had. I didn't, I guess I didn't know

Christopher

the most impactful man during D day who was a double agent that gave them all this false information. If there's one person they're going to try and kill.

Chris Williamson

Yeah, that's true, I guess. I don't know what happened in Germany after they lost. I don't know how quickly everybody capitulated.

Christopher

Well, there was this. I was listening to Finn versus history and they was talking about how in, when, after the Nazis commit the Holocaust, I think they were banned for the World cup or from like international games for four years. But when Liverpool had the incident in Juventus where loads of fans died, they were banned for six years. It's like it's not. It doesn't scale quite even. Does it scale accordingly?

Chris Williamson

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's, I mean, unbelievable amount of agency, I suppose to be a guy that wants a job so badly that you take the opposite job to get the first job. It's just as well that he really did want to work for MI5 because if he didn't, he would have just been a great asset for the Nazis.

Christopher

But it's having that, that level of theory of mind of okay, I've been rejected from something. What does this person want that would make me completely invaluable? Because I think there's this kind of myth that oh, if you've been rejected, just keep going. And they're idiots versus can you get inside of their head and think how they think?

Chris Williamson

Yeah, yeah, I think. Is it time to push or is it time to pivot? Is kind of the age old question. But he did both, right? He pivoted into a new one. All right, so that's your story time. This is a new segment. A new segment on our episode. Storytime. My storytime, Shahvash Karapetyan. Are you familiar with Shahvash Karapetyan? No. Okay, so 1976 in Yerevan and there's a trolley bus carrying around about 90 passengers. We don't know what happened. Some people say that the driver of the bus had a heart attack. Some people say that he was having an altercation with a passenger on board. Whatever happened, it crashed into a reservoir. Yerevan. The bus sank roughly 10 meters, 30ft to the bottom. Freezing, murky water. There's a 23 year old man who's training with his brother nearby, Shahbaz Karappadian and without giving it much thought, jumps into the water and ordered his brother to help him from the shore. He said it was scary at first. It was so loud, as if a bomb went off. I almost drowned several times. I could imagine the agony of those 92 people and. And I knew how they would die. The thing was, Karapetnan wasn't an ordinary bystander. He was a 17 time world champion and 11 time world record holder in fin swimming. He was one of the best underwater swimmers on earth. Immediately dives into the water to help. Visibility is basically zero because the reservoir is full of mud and sewage and debris as well. Obviously the bus has gone in, so it's kicked up all of this silt. It's basically impossible to sail. So he swims down into the dark, locates the bus. He called it a traveling coffin for all of these 92 people. He kicks the rear window in underwater to get inside, dives down dive after dive, holds his breath, finds a trapped passenger, drags him back to the surface, hands them to the rescuers and his brother in a rowboat, goes straight back down again. Reportedly made dozens of dives over around about 20 minutes and physically pulled out about 37 people. 20 of them survived. During one dive, he accidentally grabbed a leather seat cushion instead of a passenger because his visibility was so poor, it'd be one of these old school buses that would have had movable cushions. And he grabbed this leather cushion and brought it up, thinking it was maybe a small human. He later said that this one decision haunted him for years because he believed someone may have died while he carried up the cushion. Instead, Karapetyin was hospitalized along with the victims of the accident because he'd lacerated all of his legs, all of his body from going through the broken glass, from breaking the glass himself. Septic fever, double sided pneumonia and nervous prostration had doctors fighting for his life for over a month. When he was finally discharged, Shahvash went back to practice. But swimming underwater echoed painfully in his lungs. But he wouldn't give up without having one final medal. So during the next championship that he swam in a haze still wasn't in any way back to full capacity. His brother Camo ran along the side of the pool ready to jump in in case he suddenly lost consciousness. But he came in first and set another world record without even realizing that he'd done it. At the time, he was so delirious. But the rescue that he'd done of the bus destroyed his athletic career. Broken glass shredded his legs. Polluted water had caused severe pneumonia and sepsis he couldn't recover from. And he spent all of those weeks, plus then months critically ill and then recovering. Soviet authorities initially downplayed the story, so it remained relatively unknown for years. And today the rescue is considered one of the greatest acts of civilian heroism ever recorded.

Christopher

Jesus Christ.

Chris Williamson

There's him. Thick Russian karapen. Yeah, yeah, like a serious Russian guy. That's him there in just a pair of pants. And everybody else is trying to pull it up. Wow. Isn't that insane?

Christopher

Wow.

Chris Williamson

There's an award. Jarrod, ask our bold friend what's the name of the award that's given to people who risk their lives for strangers?

Christopher

The award you're likely thinking of is the Carnegie Medal. It's given to civilians who risk their lives to save or attempt to save strangers.

Chris Williamson

Is there anything interesting about the demographics of the. The people who've been given that award.

Christopher

There are some patterns worth noting. The Carnegie Hero Fund, which awards the medal, has found that recipients come from all walks of life. Age, gender and background vary widely.

Chris Williamson

It's not interesting.

Christopher

Historically, men have been the majority of recipients, but women have also been recognized.

Chris Williamson

How many men? How many men won?

Christopher

The Carnegie Hero Fund has awarded thousands of people since its inception in 1904.

Chris Williamson

So fucking worse.

Christopher

Historically, the majority have been men.

Chris Williamson

What's the percentage of men that have won the Carnegie Award?

Christopher

The Carnegie Hero Fund reports that historically about 90% of recipients have been.

Chris Williamson

All right, shut up. I just, I. Whatever happened in 2020 continues to carry over now. Do you know what I mean? Like, California thinks that the most important thing to do with its utilities is not give people cheap and reliable energy, but to make sure that the diversity of the sexuality of the people who own the companies is important. And you fucking 5.5 need to have a chat with someone about you. Anyway, that Karapetian, I love that story. I think it's fucking awesome. And the kind of kicker is the fact that, you know, that he was, he made such a personal sacrifice, but then also was ravaged by the fact that he picked up a fucking cushion, having gone down 37 times. And one time he made a mistake in pitch blackness when he couldn't see. What's the likelihood that the guy that's running on the side of the road with his brother, like he's got his pants on, he's got. He's the number one fin swimmer, deep sea swimmer in the world. 17 times, 11 world records.

Christopher

Tragic. Tragic.

Chris Williamson

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Christopher

Yeah, it's interesting how often that is the case where you'll have these acts of great heroism that don't have 100% success rate and then the individual spends so much time looping on that.

Chris Williamson

Yeah, that's, that's survivor guilt I suppose. Right.

Christopher

I've known some people who've done some incredible things like in the police or firework for example, and it's the same thing. They don't ruminate on the, the heroism,

Chris Williamson

it's the mistakes that they made. Yeah, yeah. The people they could have saved. I wonder what that's for. I guess that adaptively it's trying to get you to focus on this is something pro social that you could have done if you'd been more prepared, more skillful. Therefore, in future you need to adapt your approach so that this doesn't happen again. Maybe that's the reason for SurvivorGirl. Actually Jared, just type it in. ChatGPT what is the reason, what is the adaptive reason for survivor guilt or adaptive explanation for survivor guilt? Because the only thing that I can think of is that it's supposed to try and guide your future behavior so that. Well, I mean, fucking Bluetooth came up as a thousand year old Norse God or something like that. So fuck knows if we're going to find out what is the adaptive explanation. From an evolutionary or adaptive perspective, survivor guilt can be understood as a byproduct of mechanisms that help humans maintain social bonds, cooperation and group cohesion. Okay, so my hypothesis is looking good so far. Basic idea is that in ancestral environments, humans survive and reproduce largely through belonging to a group or one person benefited while others suffered. There are often social consequences. So the inverse of that, okay, maintaining group cohesion, if you survive a dangerous event while close allies did not, feeling distressed rather than indifferent signals oh that's cool. So because if something bad happens and you were one of the few that survived, if you show that you feel distress as opposed to indifference, it reinforces to everybody else that you weren't selfish and an asshole, that you actually regret the fact that they died and that you didn't. I am still a part of the group. I didn't take it all for myself. I didn't Just swim out the back of the bus myself. I really did try reciprocal altruism and fairness mechanisms. They've got strong intuitions. So when we receive an unexpected benefit relative to others, even when we did nothing wrong, our minds may interpret the situation as a violation of fairness expectations. Survivor guilt may arise from the same psychological machinery that makes people pretty uncomfortable. Receiving disproportionate rewards. Okay. Motivation to help survivors. Yep. Okay. So it encourages caring for bereaved families, supporting injured group members. Counterfactual learning. Humans are unusually prone to imagining alternative outcomes. The counterfactual helps us learn from near misses in dangerous situations. Dude, don't fucking test me on evolutionary theory, okay? Don't test the Hamburglar on evolutionary theory. My intuitions are strong. Costly signal of commitment as well. Grief and function. You can't fake it. That's an interesting one. So that's the reason. Why would it be the case that when you're sad or distressed or overwhelmed with negative emotion, that the same thing your eyes do to make sure that your eyes stay lubricated would go into overdrive? Why do we cry? Like, what's the reason for crying? And one of the adaptive explanations for this, which is pretty fascinating, is it's such a costly signal to do, because the most important sense you have is your eyes. And if you're prepared to fill them with water to say how much I've been hurt or how much I'm suffering, you're in an unbelievably vulnerable position. You can't fight, you can't see, you can't defend yourself. Tears are coming out and you can't fully operate. This is how much I'm in pain. I'm in so much pain that I'm essentially exposing my neck to you.

Christopher

So how do you then factor in tears of joy? Why do we cry out of joy?

Chris Williamson

I did ask this question. So it could be a spandrel, which is just a crossover between the two, but it could just be the same thing. It could be a very costly signal. Hey, look at how much I love this thing that's happening. I am here. Collective effervescence. Me and the group, we are one. I experience this thing with you, too. And I do think when it comes to sort of emotions, sadness, like peak joy, joyful experiences, beautiful experiences and sad or sort of dreadful experiences, they kind of have this same, like, part of the pitch of the chord that they play is kind of similar. Right. It's like an outside of the body. At least when I experience stuff that's really Intense. Whether it's good or bad, I always feel it sort of across the top of my shoulders, my traps and sort of everything feels like it lifts up a little bit. If I'm being delivered bad news by somebody or if there's something that's really beautiful happening, it always feels like I'm sort of being lifted a bit. So there seems to be similarities, resonance between those two.

Christopher

There's two visuals, Jared, if you could pull them up. There's one of how emotion feels in the body. I don't know if you've seen this

Chris Williamson

one, where it's like heat maps. And there's also heat map of emotions.

Christopher

Yeah. There's also the topography of tears. How different types of tears look under a microscope. And they're slightly different.

Chris Williamson

No way.

Christopher

Yeah. This artist produced it.

Chris Williamson

Where.

Christopher

So top left. So here is. Yeah. How emotions at least feel in the body, which kind of makes sense.

Chris Williamson

But is that a map mapping emotions? So is that self report?

Christopher

I think this is more self report of how it feels.

Chris Williamson

I haven't gone any deeper into it. Okay, so anger seems pretty right. So anger's sort of above the, like, upper chest. Arms and hands a lot lower. Face a lot. And head.

Christopher

And if you start with neutral on the right, so you kind of see,

Chris Williamson

okay, this is neutral.

Christopher

And then you compare that to all the different ones.

Chris Williamson

Surprise is definitely a lot in the head. That's cool. Sadness is kind of in the middle of the chest. Happiness sort of everywhere. Disgust definitely in the stomach. So disgust and anxiety both in the stomach the most. That would make sense because disgust is a pathogen. Rejection, fear, middle of the chest. I think that seems quite right. Interesting that happiness is basically just tuned down. Love. Depression's cool, that depression. It says here it's just sort of a low energy state on your extremities as opposed to anxiety. And I would agree with that. I think anxiety is a much more active version of depression. Contempt existing exclusively in the head is pretty cool. Pride. So the swelling in the chest makes sense. Shame, the cheeks. That's. People get embarrassed and envy. Sort of little bit of head and some heart. That's actually. Would you disagree with any of those?

Christopher

I. I think it feels. It feels accurate as trying to be neutral right now. Could you search topography of tears, please, Jared? This was done by, I think, an artist that made this.

Chris Williamson

Go to that video, that Instagram video. Let's just see what this. What this lady's got to say. Third, one click and open.

Therapist

Your tears look different underneath a microscope depending on the emotion that you're experiencing. This project was called the Topography of Tears by Rosalind Fisher. She's a photographer. And what they did is they looked at tears underneath the microscope. And you will see that depending on what these participants were experiencing, their tears look different. This is tears of laughter versus tears of change. Tears of grief versus tears from cutting onions.

Chris Williamson

Wow.

Therapist

This is tears when someone is experiencing. Experiencing a moment of catharsis, whereas someone is experiencing a moment of change. I'm a therapist and I often show this to my clients because I think it gives a really good demonstration that crying is actually really important at times to release certain things from our body. And being able to see that our tears actually look different depending on what we're experiencing, I think really demonstrates that really well.

Christopher

Did you know Insane.

Chris Williamson

That's cool. I want to know what the fuck it. Just ask Jared as ChatGPT from the topography of Tiers study. What are the differences in the structure of tears or why are they there? Because I want to know what. What is inside of the tier that's different? Is it more salt content? Is it like how much shit's in tiers? I guess maybe you could have. I don't know. Is cortisol in the blood that leaks into the tears? But surely tears are kind of like sperm produced in advance and then released. There are three main categories. Basal tears constantly produced to lubricate the eyes reflex tears produced in response to irritants. Iconians and emotional tears. Key biochemical difference. Here we go. Is that emotional tears contain higher concentrations of certain proteins and hormones including prolactin, adrenocorticotropic hormone, stress related hormone. Lewenkephalin, a natural pain relieving peptide. Differences in minerals such as potassium and manganese. When tear dries on a slide, these dissolved substances crystallize into different patterns. Wow. There isn't a simple one to one mapping of grief always looks like X and joy always looks like Y. The patterns vary considerably even within the same emotional category. The amount of ratios of protein, salts, hormones and other biochemists. I didn't realize that you had that much. Obviously you can cry for different reasons. If I start cutting an onion in front of you or if you're in pain or if you're feeling something or if you're just lubricating your eyes.

Christopher

Testosterone tears as well. The higher T that you have, the completely different. That's Greg Levecchi. That's what.

Chris Williamson

Yeah, Greg Levecchi is. Tears from Bloom are actually a protein shake for the people that don't know Greg levecchi has got 2,000 nanograms per deciliter of testosterone.

Christopher

Greg's tears.

Chris Williamson

That's actually in this bag. It's not money, it's just Greg's next testosterone.

Christopher

You pull up Greg's tears, they're just fucking detriment.

Chris Williamson

Exactly. They've got the vascular tears. Yeah, yeah. It's the emotions thing's been interesting trying to navigate this over the last 18 months or so. I still think kind of interested in what the conversation around men showing emotions is. Obviously, I've talked about it a lot, like, everyone's talked about it a lot. But one of the interesting wrinkles that I learned about was I don't think that men are particularly good at receiving other men's emotions. We often talk about guys need to open up more. Look at all of the people that are taking their own lives. Whatever it is, however many men per minute or men per day are doing this, you need to open up. But a lot of the time, if a guy does that on the Internet, it's not just women that are unaccommodating to a guy that's maybe crying or feeling bad or seeming a little weak. Like guys, I would guess, on average are actually more discarding. Men are less accommodating of other men's sad emotions than women are. And a lot of the time these would be the same men that would say something to the effect of, wow, men's mental health. In a state like nobody really cares that much, you go, okay, so which one is it? Because if you're not prepared to hold your boy, like, while he's going through a hard time, you don't also really get to say, we need to talk about men's mental health more. You need to put your emotions where your mouth is, so to speak.

Christopher

My natural thought, at least from my experience, is I don't expect friends to be these pure mixed martial artists that have everything across the board. So I know if, let's say, for example, I want to break down in tears, there's certain people who I will. Who I'd speak to, and then there's other friends where if I, you know what I mean, want to pull it together, I'll speak to them. So this like having a little bit more of a decentralized on chain friend base. I just think, yeah, I think expecting the person who helps you to pull it together to then also be the person that's perfect with your emotions, it's hard to have that.

Chris Williamson

I agree. But if it's the person who is saying we need to have better resources for men's mental health, but they're also not being accommodating. That just seems like a kind of hypocrisy to me. And this is from Men are Good Tom Golden's thing. And it makes sense because what you basically have as a man, I think that it takes a lot of work for guys to get over their sort of visceral ick of other men's sad emotions. This is a price that's maybe not seen by women or it's also hidden by men. But if there's a guy who's able to sit and hold, like Charlie Hoopert for instance, or Conor Beaton or Joe Hudson or Dr. K, these are people that are trained professionally to be able to do this. Obviously the fact that they can sit, they've had to get over a lot of their programming. Because your programming as a man is if I'm around another guy who doesn't seem to be able to hold it together emotionally, he's an unreliable ally. How do I know that when we go on our next hunt or when the tribe from the next valley comes and tries to attack us, that he's actually gonna be able to hold it together? How do I not know that he's gonna break down in tears? This is the same reason. This is a spicy one. I need to put a second fucking pair of glasses on for this. William Costello taught me that most homophobia in men isn't homophobia, it's femophobia. So we're actually the disgust mechanism that gets turned on or the aversion that some men have to. Seeing gay men isn't necessarily about the gayness. It's about the femininity that is being presented by a man. And that's the same mechanism, that unreliable ally. If this guy doesn't seem to be showing the typical masculine sort of control, conquer aggression, 10 toes forward energy that I expect from other guys. What happens when there is some sort of altercation or issue in future that we need to step in on? So yeah, femophobia, homophobia is like kind of interesting.

Christopher

I immediately think of who's the most masculine gay man?

Chris Williamson

Who's the most masculine gay man who then breaks that?

Christopher

Who creates a paradox.

Chris Williamson

Tell me, who's the most masculine gay man that you know?

Christopher

I don't know. I'm usually multiple drinks deep at the time.

Chris Williamson

That is a fucking great question. A lot of the tech bro people, would you look at Peter Thiel and guess gay? I don't think I'd look at him and guess gay.

Christopher

He was in the closet for a long time until Gorka.

Chris Williamson

Yeah, yeah, with the Hulk Hogan thing. By the way, if you need a new listen on Audible of a very old, relatively old book, Ryan Holiday's book, Conspiracy Guy, that's written a lot about stoicism. Books on stoicism are good. This one's his best one by a distance. So fucking good. Tell me you've read it.

Christopher

A while ago.

Chris Williamson

It's fucking amazing. It's so fantastic.

Christopher

What's the plot? It's around Hulk Hogan.

Chris Williamson

So Peter Thiel gets ousted by Gorka. I think it's Gorka's subsidiary company. I can't remember what it's called, that was reporting on Silicon Valley. And I swear the headline was something like, peter Thiel's gay as shit, people. And at this point he still wasn't out about the fact that he is. And he held onto this for maybe five or six years. And he's building this case behind the scenes and he recruits this guy called Mr. A. Mr. A was this operator that came to him who was just going to be able. A legal expert, Machiavellian, conniving sort of guy, and they start to look for ways to take down this company. And then the Hulk Hogan sex tape happens. And during the trial for the Hulk Hogan sex tape, it turns out that Terry Bolleo, Hulk Hogan's just got like infinity money. He's got the best lawyers. He just can drive this thing into the ground to keep on taking Gorkon down. It turns out that Peter Thiel uses the Hulk Hogan sex tape as a way to get back at the organization and reporters that ousted him as gay like nearly 10 years ago. By the time that this thing happens, and revenge is a dish best served cold, is no better epitomized by any other story than that a decade of just sitting on it and seething and having this huge secret that you've kept as a very public person who's early into Facebook and supporting conservative candidates.

Christopher

And yeah, it's widely discussed the evil nature of social media or the ills of social media that exist today. And a lot of people hark back to this previous long gone era where you're from. But the. Where I am from? No, not quite there just yet. But the golden. The thing people forget about the golden era that they're harking back to is the shit. We always forget the shit. And even the journalist standards that used to exist, the amount of journalists, particularly British press, that would pay people to sleep with people Then report the stories. This was a regular thing in journalism in the uk. Even numerous football players, athletes. They'd have to be constantly wary of, does this person actually like me? Or has a well known British publication who I shan't name because they're still going, is paying, or they may pay somebody to approach me is using it as a story. That was a thing. That was why that was common.

Chris Williamson

A honey pot type scenario should be a crime. And that was. Is that legal? Was that legal?

Christopher

I don't know.

Chris Williamson

But guess what's the difference between a kiss and tell and pay and a pay and kiss and tell? Like the order of the money is the only thing that's different here.

Christopher

Depends on the invoice, technically, gets cleared, always comes down to finance.

Chris Williamson

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it depends. If you've got a negative cash flow conversion cycle, do you want to explain why you were so obsessed with Gymshark's negative cash flow conversion cycle?

Christopher

No, no, no, no, no.

Chris Williamson

First off, don't defend yourself.

Christopher

No, no, no, no.

Chris Williamson

Stop defending yourself.

Christopher

So for people who want to know what a cash flow conversion cycle is, which is approximately about 1% of people listening, I'll get through it fast. Essentially, a cashflow conversion cycle is when you get the money. So let's say, for example, Chris is running Nutonic. He'll pay a manufacturer to make this beautiful drink. Then he will obviously sell it to potentially supermarkets, big stores around the uk. There's a crunch period of well, how much credit can I get with manufacturers? And then how much credit can I get with the supermarkets? Because if you have to pay your manufacturers today for stock, that will arrive in three months and then the supermarket doesn't pay you for three months. That's what's like, I think, a positive cash flow conversion cycle. So a negative cashflow conversion cycle is when you get the. You almost have delayed for the manufacturers and then you can sell right away, which is a lot of what E commerce companies do. So I was once at a bar in Manchester talking to my friend about negative cash flow conversion cycles and we

Chris Williamson

saw these like repelling anyone in a five meter radius.

Christopher

Well, no, no, no. We saw these group of girls like look over and like say hello. And I had a girlfriend at the time, so I wasn't gonna do anything, but I just started laughing at the thought of if only they could hear, they would be repulsed.

Chris Williamson

Well, we've done that. Was it Summer of Loud festival last year in the Amphitheater, the Georgia Amphitheater here in Austin. And we were backstage and we got all the cool passes and there were all of these like cool metal chicks walking around. And then a couple came over and sat down next to us. We. What the fuck were we talking about? I swear it was something like this. There was some debate that we were having and these girls sat down from a distance and we had a couple of our kind of like super chatty mates with us. Keegan was with us. Right. Who's essentially like proper Roman Adonis. Not you laugh.

Christopher

The Chad's Chad.

Chris Williamson

Yeah, he's the Chad's chad. And these women come over and obviously look, thinking, what are they gonna be talking about? It's gonna be so cool and sexy. And they came over and they were talking about how we all come from a conversion rate optimization background and the blended NCPA of our Facebook ads could be doing with a little bit of improvement. Well, tell me how many you're split testing on the back end. It's interesting. I'm not sure if Opus 5.5 is actually going to be as good as people expect. And they just slowly, over time, got this look of. It's probably. It wasn't boredom. It was closer to disgust. It was like watching somebody desecrate a beautiful temple. Because what they saw was this amazing potential in Keegan, this beautiful man, but the way that he was handling himself and what he was talking about.

Christopher

The biggest takeaway I always get, whenever I'm in a. A friend's birthday or a bachelor party, there'll be a moment where I'll just start chuckling to myself. Often it'll be somebody might have a girlfriend. Like one of the guys will have a new relationship where she's been really wary about him going to this birthday party or bachelor party. Meanwhile, it's me in a one hour debate at dinner talking about whether Ruud Van Esterooy was a better footballer than Thierry Henry. Like that's what they don't see. Or like Gymshark's negative cash flow conversion cycle. I think of a lot of guys, girlfriends or wives can see they have this imagination that there's going to be all this chaos. And these girls that are coming over and the strip club, meanwhile, it's usually Google Sheet or Excel formulas.

Chris Williamson

It's us trying to track down that guy that bought the cigars and opened up the Strait of Hormuz by sneaking himself into the middle of a run.

Christopher

Yes.

Chris Williamson

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I wonder if it might be inverse. It might be the fact that the guys that you don't think are getting up to naughty shit while they're away. Probably are, yes. And the guys that you don't think are getting. The guys that you think are getting up to it aren't. They're the ones that are talking about how they come from a conversion rate optimization background. Yeah. Very, very important. By the way, if you're coming to the UK and Ireland tour later this year, I'm going to be bringing some of you up on stage to answer your questions. So if you've got a question or a story that you think would be worth me talking about, you can go to ChrisWilliamson live/questions and give me your questions and I'll be picking the best ones and you can join me on tour. So most people have no idea where their testosterone levels sit. But what if I told you there was a solution, Something that identifies low T faster than a high school bully and it won't cost you all your lunch money. That's where function comes in. Gives you access to over 160 lab tests, including a deep dive into your full hormone panel. Every result is reviewed by clinicians. Anything out of range is flagged and you get clear explanations with a personalized protocol with actionable next steps. So if something's off, you know exactly what to do about it. Whether you just need to go to the gym more or you need to play creed louder in your car, function will tell you exactly where your testosterone and everything else stands. Normally, this level of testing would usually cost thousands, but with function, it's $365 a year. That's $1 a day to stop guessing with your health and start knowing. And right now you can get $25 off, bringing it down to 340 bucks. So get the exact same blood panels that I do and save $25 by going to the link in the description below or heading to functionhealth.com ModernWisdom using the code ModernWisdom at checkout.

Christopher

Little question for you. Yep, I can't pronounce this word, but I'm gonna give it a go. Have you heard of. I think it's hypo Hypomanetta?

Chris Williamson

No.

Christopher

So I got it from my friend Henrik Carlson who has this wonderful substack. And during my era, the either ancient Greek or Roman era, it's very different to what it was today. So we have this kind of bombardment of new information. We're constantly scrolling social media. I'm sure you have this where you'll see this amazing pithy tweet or you'll read something incredible and your life's going to change forever after from this point onwards. And then three months later you see the thing again. You go, completely forgot about that. And it had no impact at all. So what the ancient Greeks or the Romans used to do would be they would have a book of all these insights that they'd collected and each morning they would think of a problem that they're facing and they would go and meditate on the specific passage or the specific quote. So what I was actually, this is where my question time kicks in, is let's say you was to have that little notepad notebook of lessons that you often forget or simply just wish that you took more seriously, that you would look at each day what is on your list.

Chris Williamson

So what are the most known but

Christopher

not followed, not necessarily not followed by other people. It could just be, or it could even be followed by yourself, just not as much. You always underprice this lesson. You wish you took it more seriously.

Chris Williamson

Something like, no amount of worrying is going to make any difference to what happens. Some lesson along those lines, because worrying is very addictive. It's very addictive because it feels like making progress. Hormozi once, when I started doing investing, he gave me this really wonderful piece of advice on a call and he said, the most dangerous calls in all of business are just calling to connect. Would just love to explain the business to you because they have all of the trappings of doing work and making progress, but never result in work being done. You need to join that sequence further down the line once. Once more scrutiny's being done. Like the first stage, second stage. This is why I think in order to end up in front of him, to do acquisition.com, 10 stages deep into the circle of hell. And worrying kind of feels like the same thing, although it's not as conscious. You're not doing it because you think that it's going to. You forget, this is not moving my situation forward. No amount of anxiety is going to change the outcome. No amount of worrying is going to actually make a difference to anything that happens. And ultimately all of your worries were a waste of time. In any case, there's a great

Christopher

book that I like, book of stories of interviewing old people about their lives. And one of them said, what was one of your best lessons you ever had? She goes, I had this nightmare thing that I was ruminating on worrying about. So I called one of my friends and I tell her I just kept spilling and telling everything that I'm worried about. And she goes, do you remember six months ago when you came to me about this nightmare worry that you had, and she names it back, she goes, no, I don't. And she goes, exactly. Just hung up. Just. It was one of the best lessons of my life. I was like, oh, this thing is going to be here today and then gone tomorrow. I also saw this humorous statistic, which was they had people apparently with generalized anxiety disorder, put down their worries, and then they tracked how many of them came true, and it was found that 91.6% didn't come true. But if you have true anxiety, you start wondering, well, what about that remaining 8.4%? That's real anxiety right there.

Chris Williamson

I'm in the 8.4%. I knew that I would be in the 8.4%.

Christopher

There was another guy who helped, Louis Capaldi of anxiety. I think he wrote a book called Addicted to Anxiety, and he apparently once cured somebody of their anxiety, like, removed a lot of the issues, and they rang them the next day saying, I'm anxious. Where's my anxiety gone? It's like almost this addiction that exists.

Chris Williamson

Yeah. I was talking to Joe Hudson yesterday, and there's a bunch of stuff that's maybe exciting or that is exciting that's happening. I shouldn't hedge the fact that this thing is maybe exciting. Bunch of stuff going on that's exciting. And I was like, I'm a little. I'm unsure how to navigate this preamble. The buildup. Toward the buildup. And he said, if I was your coach, which obviously he is, he's like, if I was your coach, I would tell you that you need to work on your pleasure anxiety, which is that being excited about something in advance often feels an awful lot like anxiety. And they're very, very close. What would it be for you? What would the lesson be that you most repeatedly come back to or want?

Therapist

Ooh.

Christopher

You know, one would be David Ogilvy's line of, you think you're advertising to a standing army, but you're actually advertising to a moving parade. So in the niche world of advertising, Ogilvy applies it in the sense that he would work with these huge brands, and these huge brands would be like, why are we still running this ad? I've seen it everywhere, and it's like, nobody else has seen things the way you've seen them. But what I love about that idea is it's not just necessarily ad campaigns. It applies to. We constantly observe ourselves significantly more than anybody else is observing us. So it's this standing army versus moving parade.

Chris Williamson

And how does that relate to you.

Christopher

Okay, so here. Like a little one, right? So I put together this list recently of all the best books that I've read. And I'll post it out there. Highagency.com books for people listening. I'll post it out there and I will then think about. Oh, I don't necessarily want to post that again. People have already seen it. But on the 17th post, somebody goes, oh, I've just found this. And often it's the case that nobody has fucking seen it. It's always a moving parade. So that's one lesson.

Chris Williamson

There's a legendary story in advertising circles about auto magnate Henry Ford. He had a layout of the company's latest print ad tacked to his wall, which he saw every time he came into his office. One day, he loudly announced that he was tired of the ad. It was high time to create a new one. But Mr. Ford, his assistant, stammered, that hasn't even started running yet. It's only natural for a client to get tired of an ad long before its intended audience does. So how can you determine when it's time to change your campaign?

Christopher

And they'll see this when. This is particularly British syndrome. I don't think Americans struggle with this as much. But when a Brit will do some new creative endeavor, do a business, do anything, they almost feel past the first initial ask to follow up is very un British.

Chris Williamson

Christopher, were you friends with me when I made gas your friends up my tagline for a couple of years?

Christopher

Yes.

Chris Williamson

That would have been at the start of our friendship.

Christopher

I believe I was gassed.

Chris Williamson

Yeah. Were you trying. You were. You've actually been probably the most gassed of all of my friends about everything I've done. But, yeah, I just had this line that if you support Rihanna's new single more than your friend's new business, you're a bad friend. It's so fucking true. Like, gas your friends up, dude. Buy their shit, support them, share their work, tell them they're doing good. Like, obviously don't encourage them to do something which is horrendous and give them feedback. But, like, at the very least, you can support it. They've done something in their prep. Buy the fucking ticket. Go to the show, Support your friends.

Christopher

It's very mimetic, though, right?

Chris Williamson

You kind of have someone needs to begin. It's like having an open, emotionally intimate relationship until somebody opens up. It's different.

Christopher

No, I mean more that. I think one of the reasons why you have less of that is that people see sometimes their friends weirdly as rivals because they have more similarities in common with them.

Chris Williamson

Narcissism is small differences, maybe, but I think my point still stands, which is if you want your friends to support you more, a great way to do that is to start supporting your friends now. It's another Joe Hudsonism when it comes to communicating that if you show up in your relationship differently after about six or seven, like very differently, there is a typical flow that you and your partner go through. They get to be the bully and you get to be the victim, or they get to be the victim and you get to be the savior. There is a dance, a sort of tone, a rhythm to the way that you communicate. And if when that happens, you show up in a very different way, presumably a much more positive way, more regulated, more calm, more peaceful, empathetic. It only takes seven times of you doing that. They'll notice after the first time. After the next few, they'll really notice after about seven times on average. He said their pattern just can't continue. It's like playing tennis with the other person, not hitting the ball back. So if you want to change the situation that you're in, the best thing to do is change your own behavior. That's beautiful. Cool.

Christopher

That would be on my list. What else would you have on your list?

Chris Williamson

Your default choices are almost always wrong. If you don't step into your programming and just think a little. And this is where the rumination trap comes in. Because you think, oh, thinking's good for me. Let's do an infinite amount. Let's do an infinite amount of it. No, it's like you need to do just a little bit. You need to practice something before you end up relying on instinct. At least that's a lesson that keeps coming back to me that most of your defaults are confused chemical signals coming from your body or social norms or paths of least resistance, or the way that you've dealt with past trauma. Almost all of those are not things that you've consciously chosen.

Christopher

Yes.

Chris Williamson

Like the things that you want aren't the things that you want to want. If you don't take some time designing your desires, you end up following the path that everyone else does. And outsourcing your wisdom to the group is usually a bad idea.

Christopher

Even what you said then around the questioning the thirst thought, assuming the first thought isn't necessarily you. I always go back to that wonderful meditation exercise of what's the next thought going to be? Yeah, you sit there. Try it. Now, if anybody, when you sit there and you just ask yourself, I'm not going to think, but let's just see what the next thought appears is you just become the watcher. And I find when I did that for the first time, it was simply the Bayern Munich player Ian Robben cutting in on his left foot. And then it's like, huh?

Chris Williamson

Why is that there?

Christopher

I haven't thought of him in a long, long time. And you begin to realize a lot of it is just an automatic response.

Chris Williamson

What else do you like from meditation questions? I know that's one of your favorites. What are some of the other ones that have been really resonant with you?

Christopher

The problem with talking about meditation is first you look like a wanker. Well, yeah, but

Chris Williamson

very late for that.

Christopher

So that you've got to. You've got to address that up front. The second problem is, have you ever heard there's this great line where when what happens is learning meditation, it's kind of like learning Japanese. And then you go and tell everybody how wonderful it is, but you do so in Japanese. So that's why when you read anything about it, it almost doesn't make sense. A cool one is to try and turn like awareness in on itself. Have you ever tried that where you think of your awareness and then you try and become aware of it and it's almost like this mirror and you go, oh, shit. That's quite scary.

Chris Williamson

That's one of Sam's quick hit things where you try and catch your own awareness quickly. It's kind of strange because most of the time when you're doing any meditation or mindfulness, it's this evolving. It's slow. But this is more like trying to get an animal in a trap. Except the animal is you and the trap is also you. Anyway, George, Mac, ladies and gentlemen, love you all. Thank you very much for tuning in. Where should people go?

Christopher

Highagency.com Books. Read them.

Chris Williamson

Heck yeah. All right. Goodbye, my beauties. Dude. Yes.

Christopher

Let's go.

Chris Williamson

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