Modern Wisdom

Joyce Benenson is a lecturer of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University whose research focuses on human social structures and sex differences in competition and cooperation. We're often told that men are more competitive, more status-driven and more ruthless with rivals for potential mates. In reality doesn't seem to be true, the difference is that women's competition takes a more subtle,...

Helen Lewis is a journalist at The Atlantic and an author Humanity has become much less religious and in the ruins of this fresh, listless world, bereft of traditional insight, a cadre of new gurus have risen to take the high priests' place of dispensing insights about how to live. Helen's new BBC Sounds documentary series delves into this world of secular gurus. Expect to learn why a Canadian man...

Chris Bailey is a productivity consultant, researcher and best selling author. Being productive is great. Everyone wants to get more done in less time and achieve their goals. But overshooting your tolerance for work can result in misery, fatigue, loss of creativity and days in bed. Finding a balance between the grind and being calm is vital. Expect to learn the scientific theory explaining why bu...

Dean Rickles is Professor of History and Philosophy of Modern Physics at the University of Sydney and a Director of the Sydney Centre for Time. Life doesn't last that long. The ever present spectre of death looms large, even if you life to be 100. This can feel like a tragedy in many ways. What use are our efforts if they'll all be turned to dust eventually? A philosopher is needed here, to give u...

Dr Jonathan Shedler is a psychologist, author, master clinician and clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California. We do not understand ourselves. Almost all of what is inside of our minds is obscured from us. We don't need to exclusively despair though. With a little work and some good insights from psychoanalysis, the view can be made a little clearer. Expect to learn why peop...

David Senra is a podcaster and a writer. Many of the most important insights you need to learn to improve your life have already been discovered in the past. Thankfully David spends all his time reading biographies of the greatest thinkers, founders, entrepreneurs and inventors from history and has synthesised those lessons so you can remember them too. Expect to learn how Steve Jobs came to think...

It's the end of 2022 and to celebrate I thought I'd run through some of the best lessons I've picked up over the last 12 months. This year has had over 10,000 minutes of episodes produced so there was a lot to choose from but I ended up settling on 16 insights from some of my favourite conversations, articles and books, both inside and outside of the podcast. Expect to learn why Jocko Willink thin...

Andrew Schulz is an actor, comedian and a podcaster. The world seems to be losing its mind. No one is sure what the rules for acceptable conduct are any more. From virtue signalling to moral grandstanding, the incentives to take down others are stronger than ever. So why are some people immune to these laws of cancellation and is it a solution that the rest of us can steal for ourselves? Expect to...

Dr Russell Kennedy is an MD, Neuroscientist, author and an anxiety specialist. Anxiety is one of the most common challenges faced by people in 2022. In small doses it makes sense evolutionarily, but why is it running so rampant in the modern world, where does it come from and what methods can limit its impact on our lives? Expect to learn what most people misunderstand about anxiety, the relations...

Mark Normand is a podcaster, an actor and a comedian. Mark grew up in a rundown New Orleans bed & breakfast with a cross-dressing manager. Fertile ground for becoming one of the most popular, hardest working and fastest growing comics in America then. But why is it so important to have a pursuit that you care about if you're going to do other, seemingly unrelated hard things? Expect to learn the p...

Derek is a YouTuber, founder of Gorilla Mind and a fitness expert. The Liver King has seen one of the fastest rises to internet fame ever. Documenting his ancestral lifestyle generated millions of followers and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for his businesses, but it turns out that the physique he displayed in his content was built on massive amounts of performance enhancing drugs, de...

Max Lugavere is a health and wellness expert, author and a diet advocate. Working out what to eat is hard. Which is odd because everybody does it. You'd think that the science of nutrition, a thing the entire human race relies on multiple times per day, would have some definitive answers. Thankfully Max can explain why it's such a mess and give some solid principles we can all use. Expect to learn...

David Puts is a Professor of Anthropology at Penn State whose research focuses on the evolution and development of human sexuality and sex differences. Apparently women orgasm. Why they do it however, has been a mystery for a long time. They don't need to in order to get pregnant. And sometimes they don't do it at all, for ages. So what use is the female orgasm, and what predicts the sort of partn...

Tim Urban is one of the internet's most popular writers and the founder of Wait But Why. When we look to our past, many of us believe that we could have behaved differently, perhaps that we should have behaved differently. Yet when we look to the future we believe that our path is locked in and genuine change is difficult, this couldn't be more backward and Tim explains it in a number of obvious,...

Douglas Rushkoff is a media theorist, futurist, writer and documentarian. The world's richest people are preparing for the end. They're buying up farming land and below-ground bunkers in New Zealand. What catastrophe is it that they think is about to happen? And what happens if technology creates a techno-hell instead of a techno-utopia? Expect to learn what happens when you're invited to brief bi...

Rob Henderson is a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge and a US Air Force Veteran. Men fight. Sometimes they look silly when they fight. But they also collaborate and team up to take on common enemies. Women fight in very different ways that are less obvious, but no less vicious, and they sometimes try to even scupper their own teammates. Expect to learn how men's judgements of formidabil...

Dr Sarah Hill is a psychologist and professor at TCU whose research focusses on women, health, and sexual psychology. Women ovulate, and this changes their behaviour across their cycle. Unless they take hormonal birth control that is, in which case their behaviour changes even more dramatically in ways that no one anticipated and there is evidence to suggest that this might not just be temporary....

Laura Vanderkam is a time management expert and an author. Time is non-renewable. It's the single most important asset we have, and yet almost everyone wishes they spent their time differently. Thankfully Laura has distilled 9 of her best strategies from years of coaching people on how to control their time more effectively. Expect to learn what everyone is getting wrong when it comes to writing t...

Dr Jaimie Krems is an Assistant Professor at Oklahoma State University and a social psychologist whose research explores human social cognition, emotions, and behaviour. Evolution has shaped the way that men and women make and break friendships. It's made us into life-saving, caring, aggressive, jealous, friend-guarding, backbiting, gossiping animals, but why is it that male and female friendships...

Dr Kevin Dutton is a psychologist, author, and elite performance consultant whose research focuses on persuasion and social influence, psychopathic personality and elite cognition. Psychopaths get a bad rap. Perhaps understandably. They have a branding problem to say the least. But there are some personality traits like emotional control, focus, drive and single-mindedness that elite performers ca...

Patrick House is a neuroscientist and writer whose research focuses on free will and how mind-control parasites alter their host's behaviour. If it wasn't for us experiencing it, the universe would give us no indication that consciousness even exists. The most fundamental part of human experience has many proposed explanations, but just how well-grounded are these, and what are we missing? Expect...

Dr James Cantor is a clinical psychologist and sexologist specialising in hypersexuality and paraphilias. There are a broad range of things that turn humans on. Some are common, some are uncommon and some are very illegal. James' study of paraphilias exposes him to some of the world's most interesting and unusual sexual desires with the goal of working out why they exist. Expect to learn how asexu...

Mark Bell is a world record-breaking powerlifter, owner of Super Training Gym and inventor of the Sling Shot. A lack of support killed more dreams than a lack of competence ever did. There's a modern trend that trying hard at things and taking them seriously is uncool. Disincentivising excellence is one of the worst habits a society can have and it's time to put a stop to it. Expect to learn why t...

Tim Harford is an economist, associate member of Nuffield College, Oxford and an honorary fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, a journalist and an author. Humans need to be able to accurately judge the world around them. With more information than ever, this should be getting easier by the year and yet clear thinking seems to be ever more elusive. Why are we so prone to biases and what are som...

Dr Cassie Holmes is a Professor at UCLA's Anderson School of Management, an author and an award-winning researcher of time and happiness. Time management in the modern world is hard. Many people don't feel like they have sufficient space to complete their to do list, let alone manifest their spare-time dreams. With some new strategies and a different mindset around time however, this problem might...